Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dose-Dependent Effect of Melatonin on BAT Thermogenesis in Zücker Diabetic Fatty Rat: Future Clinical Implications for Obesity

Experimental data have revealed that melatonin at high doses reduced obesity and improved metabolic outcomes in experimental models of obesity, mainly by enhancing brown adipose tissue (BAT) thermogenesis. A potential dose-response relationship has yet to be performed to translate these promising findings into potential clinical therapy. This study aimed to assess the effects of different doses of melatonin on interscapular BAT (iBAT) thermogenic capacity in Zücker diabetic fatty (ZDF) rats. At 6 wk of age, male ZDF rats were divided into four groups (n = 4 per group): control and those treated with different doses of melatonin (0.1, 1, and 10 mg/kg of body weight) in their drinking water for 6 wk. Body weight (BW) was significantly decreased at doses of 1 and 10 mg/kg of melatonin, but not at 0.1 mg/kg compared with the control, with a similar rate of BW decrease being reached at the dose of 1 mg/kg (by ~11%) and 10 mg/kg (by ~12%). This effect was associated with a dose-dependent increase in the thermal response to the baseline condition or acute cold challenge in the interscapular area measurable by infrared thermography, with the highest thermal response being recorded at the 10 mg/kg dose. Upon histology, melatonin treatment markedly restored the typical brownish appearance of the tissue and promoted a shift in size distribution toward smaller adipocytes in a dose-dependent fashion, with the most pronounced brownish phenotype being observed at 10 mg/kg of melatonin. As a hallmark of thermogenesis, the protein level of uncoupled protein 1 (UCP1) from immunofluorescence and Western blot analysis increased significantly and dose-dependently at all three doses of melatonin, reaching the highest level at the dose of 10 mg/kg. Likewise, all three doses of melatonin modulated iBAT mitochondrial dynamics by increasing protein expression of the optic atrophy protein type 1 (OPA1) fusion marker and decreasing that of the dynamin-related protein1 (DRP1) fission marker, again dose-dependently, with the highest and lowest expression levels, respectively, being reached at the 10 mg/kg dose. These findings highlight for the first time the relevance of the dose-dependency of melatonin toward BW control and BAT thermogenic activation, which may have potential therapeutic implications for the treatment of obesity. To clinically apply the potential therapeutic of melatonin for obesity, we consider that the effective animal doses that should be extrapolated to obese individuals may be within the dose range of 1 to 10 mg/kg.
The Effect of Selected Polymorphisms of the ACTN3, ACE, HIF1A and PPARA Genes on the Immediate Supercompensation Training Effect of Elite Slovak Endurance Runners and Football Players

We aimed to evaluate the effect of selected polymorphisms of the ACTN3, ACE, HIF1A and PPARA genes on the immediate supercompensation training effect of elite Slovak endurance runners and football players compared with a sedentary control group. Adaptation effect levels were evaluated by 10 s continuous vertical jump test parameters measured by Optojump. Genetic polymorphisms were determined by PCR and Sanger sequencing. We found significant differences in the effect of PPARA genotypes in the experimental group. C allele genotypes represented an advantage in immediate supercompensation (p < 0.05). We observed a significant combined effect of multiple genes on immediate supercompensation (p < 0.05): the RR genotype of the ACTN3 gene, the ID genotype of the ACE gene, the Pro/Pro genotype of HIF1A, and the GC and GG genotypes of PPARA genes. In the control group, we found a significant effect (p < 0.05) on immediate supercompensation of the II genotype of the ACE gene and the Pro/Ser genotype of the HIF1A gene. We found significant differences in genotype frequency of ACE (p < 0.01) and PPARA (p < 0.001) genes. We confirmed that individual genetic polymorphisms of ACTN3, ACE, HIF1A and PPARA genes have a different effect on the level of immediate supercompensation of the lower limbs depending on the training adaptation of the probands and the combination of genotypes.
Women’s Perceived Barriers to Accessing Post-Abortion Care Services in Selected Districts in KwaZulu Natal Province, South Africa: A Qualitative Study

Background: Despite different interventions to curb unwanted pregnancies, repositioning Family Planning and post-abortion care services as critical priorities in health programme in Kwa-Zulu Natal, women are still admitted with induced abortion complications. Aim: The aim was to explore challenges experienced by women who are accessing post-abortion care services at selected public hospitals. Methods: A qualitative explorative, descriptive, and contextual approach was used. The population comprised all women who presented with incomplete abortion and had accessed PAC services in the selected hospitals. Purposive convenience sampling was used to select the 23 participants. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with all participants on discharge and analysed through open-coding method. Trustworthiness was ensured, by considering the criteria of credibility, dependability, applicability, and transferability. Ethical considerations were secured by requesting consent and permission to conduct the study. All interviews were voluntarily conducted following the ethically approved informed consent, anonymity and confidentiality were maintained. Findings: Three themes emerged reflecting challenges from women’s perspectives on accessing post abortion care. These themes were: transportation barriers, stigma, and mistreatment (lack of analgesics, early discharge). Conclusion: Conclusion showed the description of perceived barriers and experiences related to accessing, seeking and care received during the process of PAC. Inaccessibility to PAC was due to poor road, poor mode, lack of transport and long distance from the community to the hospital, long waiting queues, stigma, and discrimination. The PAC services should be accessible with the increased number of facilities and adequately trained staff with functional equipment and guidelines. Value clarification workshops for health professionals are essential.
Torrefaction of Pulp Industry Sludge to Enhance Its Fuel Characteristics

Recently, under COP26, several countries agreed to phase-out coal from their energy systems. The torrefaction industry can take advantage of this, as the fuel characteristics of torrefied biomasses are comparable to those of coal. However, in terms of economic feasibility, torrefied biomass pellets are not yet competitive with coal without subsidies because of the high price of woody biomass. Thus, there is a need to produce torrefied pellets from low-cost feedstock; pulp industry sludge is one such feedstock. In this context, this study was focused on the torrefaction of pulp industry sludge. Torrefaction experiments were carried out using a continuous reactor, at temperatures of 250, 275, and 300 °C. The heating value of the sludge increased from 19 to 22 MJ/kg after torrefaction at 300 °C. The fixed carbon content increased from 16 wt. % for dried pulp sludge to 30 wt. % for torrefied pulp sludge. The fuel ratio was in the range of 0.27 to 0.61. The ash content of the pulp sludge was comparable to that of agricultural waste, i.e., around 12 wt. % (dry basis). The cellulose content in the sludge was reduced from 35 to 12 wt. % at 300 °C. Ash related issues such as slagging, fouling, and bed agglomeration tendency of the sludge were moderate. This study shows that torrefaction treatment can improve the fuel properties of pulp industry sludge to a level comparable to that of low-rank coal.
Everyday concepts and classification errors: judgments of disability and residence

This article examines two neglected sources of misinterpretations of survey questions. Respondents may misunderstand the questions because the survey uses an everyday term in a technical way that differs from the everyday sense (and respondents fail to recognize the difference); in addition, respondents may have trouble applying the concept to borderline cases, situations that do not map neatly onto whichever sense of the concept they are trying to use. We call these two problems misalignment of the concepts and imperfect fit between concept and instance. We examined two everyday concepts – residence and disability – that figure prominently in surveys. Our initial experiment gave respondents definitions for residence and disability and asked them to classify vignettes describing concrete instances. We constructed one definition that reflected the everyday concept (the everyday definition) and a second one that departed from it (the technical definition). The vignettes varied in how well the instance depicted matched the requirements of the two definitions (for example, some vignettes clearly met the requirements of one definition but clearly did not meet the requirements of the other). Participants who got the technical definition for residence seemed able to keep it distinct from the everyday definition but those who got the technical definition for disability seemed to fall back on their everyday concept. In addition, participants were better at classifying vignettes that closely matched the definition (central instances) than ones that did not match it so well ( peripheral instances). In our second experiment, we tried to encourage participants to pay more attention to the definition of the concepts by giving the concepts unfamiliar labels (e.g., calling a residence an enumeration unit). Although the use of unfamiliar terminology did increase the proportion of respondents who consulted the definition of the concept as they judged the vignettes, there was strong evidence (especially for disability) that participants still relied on their everyday sense of the concepts. Respondents were again more accurate in classifying central than peripheral instances. People have difficulty using concepts in unfamiliar ways and, when they have to, they often make errors. Even with concepts used in their everyday senses, people have trouble classifying borderline instances, those that only partially match the definition of the concept. Category membership is graded, rather than all or none, and people have trouble dealing with cases that are near the concept’s boundary. We suspect that both misalignment and imperfect fit often produce substantial measurement error in surveys.
Some partial differential Volterra equation problems arising in viscoelasticity

The constitutive law relating stress to strain for viscoelas- tic materials can be written as a Volterra equation of the second kind. This results in the mathematical models of viscoelastic behaviour taking the form of partial dierential equations with memory. In this article we illustrate how the memory terms arise in these equations and also summarize the various partial dierential Volterra equations used when modelling problems of quasistatic and dynamic viscoelasticity, and non- Fickian diusion in polymers. We also indicate some of the numerical analysis work that has been carried out for these problems. AMS Subject Classication. 73F15, 45D05, 45K05, 65M15
Open-set speaker identification with diverse-duration speech data

The concern in this paper is an important category of applications of open-set speaker identification in criminal investigation, which involves operating with short and varied duration speech. The study presents investigations into the adverse effects of such an operating condition on the accuracy of open-set speaker identification, based on both GMMUBM and i-vector approaches. The experiments are conducted using a protocol developed for the identification task, based on the NIST speaker recognition evaluation corpus of 2008. In order to closely cover the real-world operating conditions in the considered application area, the study includes experiments with various combinations of training and testing data duration. The paper details the characteristics of the experimental investigations conducted and provides a thorough analysis of the results obtained.
Path Planning with Modified RRT* Algorithm for Lung Biopsy

– Path planning plays a central role in robot-assisted percutaneous insertion. The main challenge of path planning exists in the motion constraints inherited from the geometry and mechanics of the needle, and the complex anatomic environment of human body. In nonholonomic planning, the classic Rapidly-Exploring Random Trees (RRT) algorithm may fail to provide a continuous and obstacle-avoidable path. To find a feasible path and minimize the damage on soft tissues based on a newly-introduced curvature-controllable steerable needle, we propose a method that utilizes RRT* and quadratic Bezier curve smoothing technique. RRT* with Bezier Curve Smoothing can generate a path composed of smooth piecewise planar curves with continuous connections. Comparisons are employed to show that our method generates shorter and less torturous paths with a higher success rate.
Soil-Air Temperature Relationships and Cold Acclimation of Container Grown Juniperus chinensis ‘Hetzi’1

Roots of container grown ‘Hetzi’ juniper developed cold hardiness to -10°C on December 2, 1963 in St. Paul, Minnesota as determined by controlled freezing tests. The temperature of container soil, under natural conditions, did not fall below 0° until after December 2. Once frozen, the soil temperature responded rapidly to falling ambient temperatures. Container soil temperatures of -10° occurred several times after December 2 resulting in root injury. Tops developed cold hardiness from -15°C on September 11 to greater than -39° on December 2, 1963. No top injury occurred at any stage during the study. Winter injury common to container grown Hetzi Juniper in Minnesota is apparently root injury.
The development of mathematics support: teaching and learning practices, scholarship and communities

Mathematics support for students is an innovation in the teaching and learning of mathematics which now plays a vital role in their learning experience and which is provided by most universities in the United Kingdom, and increasingly in other parts of the world. This paper describes and reviews research into the development of this provision over the last 30 years or so, providing a rationale for its establishment in terms of student under-preparedness for the mathematical demands of university study, widening participation in higher education and the increasing importance of mathematical and statistical skills to a very wide range of disciplines. The most common model used to provide mathematics support is a 'drop-in' centre which offers one-to-one support to students who attend to see an
Raising the AWAREness of BFT Protocols for Soaring Network Delays

Classic BFT protocols are often deployed in the LAN setting, with low delays and reliable links. Recent publications of BFT protocols have decreased drastically in their communication complexity and the application to previously unsuited areas such as mobile or sensor networks is getting more traction. To facilitate that development and showcase suitability under harsher network conditions, we take one of the most recent BFT protocols, HotStuff, and analyze the impact of increased and varying network delays on its performance. We apply the delay prediction scheme AWARE and make some simple modifications to the prediction algorithm in order to increase its performance even further.
Design, Synthesis and Biological Evaluation of New Carbohydrate-Based Coumarin Derivatives as Selective Carbonic Anhydrase IX Inhibitors via “Click” Reaction

In this work, we designed a series of new carbohydrate-based coumarin carbonic anhydrase IX inhibitors by using 1,2,3-triazoles as linker. Next, these designed compounds were synthesized by the optimized one-pot click chemistry reaction condition. Subsequently, these target compounds were assayed for the inhibition of three carbonic anhydrase isoforms (CA I, CA II and CA IX). Intriguingly, all the compounds showed better CA IX inhibitory activity than initial coumarin fragments. Among them, compound 10a (IC50: 11 nM) possessed the most potent CA IX inhibitory activity, which was more potent than the reference drug acetazolamide (IC50: 30 nM). Notably, compound 10a showed 3018-fold, 1955-fold selectivity relative to CA I and CA II, respectively. Meanwhile, representative compounds could reduce tumor cell viability and the extracellular acidification in HT-29 and MDA-MB-231 cancer cell lines. Even more interestingly, our target compounds had no apparent cytotoxicity toward MCF-10A cell line. In addition, the in vitro stability assays also indicated our developed compounds possessed good liver microsomal metabolic stabilities and plasma stability. Furthermore, representative compounds revealed relatively low hERG cardiac toxicity and acute toxicity. Furthermore, docking studies were carried out to understand the interactions of our target compounds with the protein target CA IX. Collectively, our results suggest that compound 10a, as a selective CA IX inhibitor, could be an important lead compound for further optimization and development as an anticancer agent.
CAR-T-Zell-Therapie – personalisierte zelluläre Immuntherapie im Jahr 2022

Chimäre Antigen-Rezeptor-T-Zellen (CAR-T-Zellen) sind genetisch modifizierte autologe oder allogene T-Lymphozyten, die sich gegen spezifische Antigene richten und z. B. zur Bekämpfung von Tumorzellen eingesetzt werden können. Die Zulassungsstudien zeigen eine hohe Ansprech- und Remissionsrate bei massiv vorbehandelten Patient*innen mit aggressiven B-Zell-Lymphomen, akuter lymphoblastischer Leukämie oder Multiplem Myelom. Der Beitrag stellt die Zulassungsindikationen, die klinische Durchführung und das Management der Nebenwirkungen der CAR-Zell-Therapie vor.
Householders co-managing energy systems: space for collaboration?

ABSTRACT The potential role of households as ‘co-managers’ of energy in smart grids is widely discussed in the social science literature. Much remains uncertain about the social relations and practices emerging around novel smart grid technologies and their contribution to sustainability. Drawing on 14 ‘show-and-tell’ home tours with householders in a smart grid trial, an analysis is presented of how home energy management (HEM) is performed in everyday life. The focus is on three technologies: monitoring technologies, smart heat pumps and home batteries. How and why householders do (not) engage with energy management during the pilot project is described. When householders participate in HEM practices, they gain energy management understandings and an awareness of smart grid objectives. Since HEM practices are shared between householders and actors from the energy provision system, they display particular ways of distributing responsibilities, power and agency over technologies, experts and householders. The time and space granted to these three smart grid technologies are shown to depend on the trust relationships between householders and the more or less absent providers of technologies and services. These insights emphasize the need to develop smart grid solutions reflexively with respect to the different spaces and practices in households in which they operate.
Analysis of the Application Effect of Multidisciplinary Team Cooperation Model in Chronic Heart Failure under WeChat Platform

Methods From April 2020 to May 2021, 56 patients with CHF who were discharged from the cardiology department of our hospital after treatment were randomly divided into two groups: experimental group (n = 28) and control group (n = 28). The control group was given conventional nursing measures and health education and discharge instructions, while the experimental group received collaborative multidisciplinary team nursing care based on the WeChat platform on the basis of the control group, all for 3 months. All enrolled patients underwent the Self-Care of Heart Failure Index Version 6.2 (SCHFI v6.2), the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire (MLHFQ), and the 6-minute walking test (6MWT test). The SCHFI v6.2 and MLHFQ scores, 6 MWT test results, and readmission rates within 3 months were observed and compared between the two groups. Results There was no significant difference between the SCHFIv6.2 and MLHFQ scores of the two patients at admission and at discharge, and the scores of the experimental group were significantly higher than the scores of the control group at the end of 3 months after discharge. On the other hand, the SCHFIv6.2 and MLHFQ scores of the two groups were significantly higher at discharge compared to admission; the 6-minute walking distance of the experimental group was significantly higher than that of the control group at the end of 3 months. The readmission rate in the experimental group was significantly lower than that in the control group. Conclusion The multidisciplinary teamwork model based on the WeChat platform can significantly improve the self-care ability and quality of life of CHF patients and reduce the readmission rate.
High‐density genomic data reveal fine‐scale population structure and pronounced islands of adaptive divergence in lake whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis) from Lake Michigan

Understanding patterns of genetic structure and adaptive variation in natural populations is crucial for informing conservation and management. Past genetic research using 11 microsatellite loci identified six genetic stocks of lake whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis) within Lake Michigan, USA. However, ambiguity in genetic stock assignments suggested those neutral microsatellite markers did not provide adequate power for delineating lake whitefish stocks in this system, prompting calls for a genomics approach to investigate stock structure. Here, we generated a dense genomic dataset to characterize population structure and investigate patterns of neutral and adaptive genetic diversity among lake whitefish populations in Lake Michigan. Using Rapture sequencing, we genotyped 829 individuals collected from 17 baseline populations at 197,588 SNP markers after quality filtering. Although the overall pattern of genetic structure was similar to the previous microsatellite study, our genomic data provided several novel insights. Our results indicated a large genetic break between the northwestern and eastern sides of Lake Michigan, and we found a much greater level of population structure on the eastern side compared to the northwestern side. Collectively, we observed five genomic islands of adaptive divergence on five different chromosomes. Each island displayed a different pattern of population structure, suggesting that combinations of genotypes at these adaptive regions are facilitating local adaptation to spatially heterogenous selection pressures. Additionally, we identified a large linkage disequilibrium block of ~8.5 Mb on chromosome 20 that is suggestive of a putative inversion but with a low frequency of the minor haplotype. Our study provides a comprehensive assessment of population structure and adaptive variation that can help inform the management of Lake Michigan's lake whitefish fishery and highlights the utility of incorporating adaptive loci into fisheries management.