Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Metabolic Aspects of Five Commonly Used Non-Insulin Anti-Hyperglycemic Medications in Type 2 Diabetes

Type 2 diabetes is a growing public health challenge while carrying a significant health burden for the patient suffering from it. The worldwide prevalence of diabetes in 2019 was estimated to be 9.3%. Fortunately, a number of drug classes are now available for the medical management of hyperglycemia in this disorder. Metformin and the sulfonylureas are time-tested medications that are effective and inexpensive as first-line medications. The incretin-based therapies, namely the glucagon-like peptide-1 agents and the dipeptyl peptidase-4 inhibitors, offer novel mechanisms of gut hormone and appetite modulation. The former combine weight loss and cardiovascular benefit with glycemic control. The sodium glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors have a unique glycosuric action that lowers glucose while being of value in congestive heart failure. Almost all these classes of antihyperglcyemic agents can be used in various combinations with one another as well as with different insulin regimens. This article shows the chemical structures and summarizes the mechanistic and therapeutic aspects of the five main classes of noninsulin glucose-lowering medications approved for use in patients with type 2 diabetes.
TUG-10: A Modification of the Timed Up and Go Test for Aerobic Assessment in Older Adults

Purpose: Cardiorespiratory fitness tests are important for older adults to determine baseline cardiovascular fitness and appropriate aerobic exercise intensity. The Timed Up and Go (TUG) is a test that can be modified to challenge the aerobic system by performing 10 continuous repetitions (TUG-10). The TUG-10 advantages include less space and time requirements and incorporation of functional tasks with balance challenges. The purpose of this study was to relate the performance and physiologic responses of the TUG-10 to other common aerobic capacity tests. Methods: Fourteen independent community-dwelling adults performed the 6-minute-walk test (6MWT), 2-minute-step test (2MST), and TUG-10. Heart rate (HR), diastolic and systolic blood pressure, and rate of perceived exertion (RPE) were recorded before and after each test. Bland–Altman plots were used to determine the agreement between test performances. Repeated measures mixed models compared differences in the physiologic changes between the tests. Results: Participants had a clinically greater increase in the adjusted mean change in HR during the 2MST (22.5 bpm) than the 6MWT (17.0 bpm) and TUG-10 (12.3 bpm). Diastolic blood pressure response was similar across all 3 tests with no significant change. Systolic blood pressure increased less during the 6MWT (15.4 mm Hg) compared with the 2MST (33.3 mm Hg) and TUG-10 (28.7 mm Hg). Participants reported a higher RPE during the 2MST (7.9) than the 6MWT (6.1) and TUG-10 (5.2). The Bland–Altman plots indicated that participants' performance on the 3 tests was comparable. Conclusions: The TUG-10, 6MWT, and 2MST demonstrated comparable performances and clinically similar physiologic changes. Heart rate and RPE changes were greater during the 2MST than the other tests, suggesting that the 2MST was more demanding. Findings support the TUG-10 as a potential functional outcome measure to estimate cardiorespiratory fitness. Moreover, the TUG-10 required minimal space and time and may facilitate the gap in aerobic testing in physical therapy practice.
A Random Pulse Position-Based Selective Noise Cancellation Modulation Method for SVPWM Driven PMSMs

Permanent magnetsynchronous motors (PMSMs) are usually driven by the SVPWM technique, which leads to annoying sideband noise near the switching frequency. Traditional random modulation techniques increase the possibility of resonance with the motor structure. This study proposes a novel random pulse position modulation-based strategy to eliminate the current harmonics and electromagnetic noise at a specific frequency. The proposed method adopts a constant switching frequency. A unique design between the pulse position and duty ratio cancels the current harmonics and acoustic noise at the selected frequency. The results show that resonance can be avoided effectively if the chosen frequency is close to the natural frequency. It is concluded that the proposed method is beneficial at lower fundamental frequencies. The techniques can substitute classic random modulation techniques with variable switching frequency in the low speed applications.
THE REACTION SPEED OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF TRAINING ON FENCING ATHLETES

ABSTRACT Introduction: Fencing is a combat sport with fierce confrontation and variations in offense and defense. To a certain extent, speed is the decisive factor in winning the game. Objective: To explore the influence of different training methods on the reaction time of fencers. Method: 20 fencers were selected and divided into three groups with different fencing levels, in addition to one control group. The experimental groups trained in three 10-minute sessions a week. The control group trained for 3 hours in the afternoons, from Monday to Saturday. Results: After training, the experimental group fencers showed a highly significant difference in the selective response to foot movement (t=4.004, P=0.001<0.01). The simple reaction test of the fencers in the control group improved slightly after training, but it was not statistically significant (t=2.223, P=0.09>0.05). In the selective reaction time test without foot movement, the reaction time of the control group was significantly lower after training (t=3.450, P=0.026<0.05). Conclusion: Regardless of the student›s fencing level, different training methods can significantly improve their reaction time. Level of evidence II; Therapeutic studies - investigation of treatment results.
Potential Resistance of SARS-CoV-2 Main Protease (Mpro) against Protease Inhibitors: Lessons Learned from HIV-1 Protease

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has been one of the most devastating pandemics of recent times. The lack of potent novel antivirals had led to global health crises; however, emergence and approval of potent inhibitors of the viral main protease (Mpro), such as Pfizer’s newly approved nirmatrelvir, offers hope not only in the therapeutic front but also in the context of prophylaxis against the infection. By their nature, RNA viruses including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) have inherently high mutation rates, and lessons learnt from previous and currently ongoing pandemics have taught us that these viruses can easily escape selection pressure through mutation of vital target amino acid residues in monotherapeutic settings. In this paper, we review nirmatrelvir and its binding to SARS-CoV-2 Mpro and draw a comparison to inhibitors of HIV protease that were rendered obsolete by emergence of resistance mutations, emphasizing potential pitfalls in the design of inhibitors that may be of important relevance to the long-term use of novel inhibitors against SARS-CoV-2.
Radiomics Profiling Identifies the Incremental Value of MRI Features beyond Key Molecular Biomarkers for the Risk Stratification of High-Grade Gliomas

Objective To identify the incremental value of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) features beyond key molecular biomarkers for the risk stratification of high-grade gliomas (HGGs). Methods A total of 241 patients with preoperative magnetic resonance (MR) images and clinical and genetic data were retrospectively collected from our institution and The Cancer Genome Atlas/The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCGA/TCIA) dataset. Radiomic features (n = 1702) were extracted from both postcontrast T1-weighted (CE-T1) and T2-weighted fluid attenuation inversion recovery (T2FLAIR) MR images. The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) method was used to select effective features. A multivariate Cox proportional risk regression model was established to explore the prognostic value of clinical features, molecular biomarkers, and radiomic features. Kaplan–Meier survival analysis and the log-rank test were used to evaluate the prognostic model, and a stratified analysis was conducted to demonstrate the incremental value of the radiomics signature. A nomogram was developed to predict the 1-year, 2-year, and 3-year overall survival (OS) probabilities of the patients with HGGs. Results The radiomics signature provided significant prognostic value for the risk stratification of patients with HGGs. The combined model integrating the radiomics signature with clinical data (age) and O6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT) promoter methylation status had the best prognostic value, with C-index values of 0.752 and 0.792 in the training set and external validation set, respectively. Stratified Kaplan–Meier survival analysis showed that the radiomics signature could identify the risk subgroups in different clinical and molecular subgroups. Conclusion This radiomics signature can be used for the risk stratification of patients with HGGs and has incremental value beyond key molecular biomarkers, providing a preoperative basis for individualized diagnosis and treatment decision-making.
Supplier Menus for Dynamic Matching in Peer-to-Peer Transportation Platforms

Peer-to-peer transportation platforms dynamically match requests (e.g., a ride, a delivery) to independent suppliers who are not employed nor controlled by the platform. Thus, the platform cannot be certain that a supplier will accept an offered request. To mitigate this selection uncertainty, a platform can offer each supplier a menu of requests to choose from. Such menus need to be created carefully because there is a trade-off between selection probability and duplicate selections. In addition to a complex decision space, supplier selection decisions are vast and have systematic implications, impacting the platform’s revenue, other suppliers’ experiences (in the form of duplicate selections), and the request waiting times. Thus, we present a multiple scenario approach, repeatedly sampling potential supplier selections, solving the corresponding two-stage decision problems, and combining the multiple different solutions through a consensus algorithm. Extensive computational results using the Chicago Region as a case study illustrate that our method outperforms a set of benchmark policies. We quantify the value of anticipating supplier selection, offering menus to suppliers, offering requests to multiple suppliers at once, and holistically generating menus with the entire system in mind. Our method leads to more balanced assignments by sacrificing some “easy wins” toward better system performance over time and for all stakeholders involved, including increased revenue for the platform, and decreased match waiting times for suppliers and requests.
Bioactive Properties of Halymenia durvillei Bory 1828 for Pharmaceutical Application: Antioxidant, Antidiabetic, Antiwrinkling and Skin-Whitening Activities

Article Info Abstract: Seaweeds are known sources of bioactive compounds that provide diverse health benefits. However, knowledge on the potential pharmaceutical application of some economically important seaweeds such as Halymenia durvillei is still limited. In this study, the bioactive properties of H. durvillei were studied. The results showed that the macroalga contains a total phenolic content (TPC) of 6.77 ± 0.03 mg GAE/g. Antioxidant activity of H. durvillei exhibited potent ABTS+ radical scavenging activity and high copper reduction capacity with IC50 value of 106 μg GAE/mL and 20.44 μg GAE/mL, respectively. In vitro assessment of tyrosinase and elastase inhibition properties of H. durvillei extract showed that the alga has potent inhibitory activity with IC50 of 40 μg GAE/mL and IC50 of 696 μg GAE/mL, respectively more effective than kojic acid and tocopherol. In addition, evaluation of a-amylase inhibition properties showed that H. durvillei extract has potent inhibitory activity with IC50 value of 56 μg GAE/mL more effective than acarbose (standard anti-diabetic drug) with IC50 of 101 μg/mL. The current investigation shows the potential of H. durvillei for the pharmaceutical application, which can be utilized for the synthesis of novel drugs. Received: 28.10. 2021 Accepted: 25.01. 2022 Online published: 15.03. 2022 DOI:10.29133/yyutbd.1016050
Alpha-Tocopherol, a Powerful Molecule, Leads to the Formation of Oxylipins in Polyunsaturated Oils Differently to the Temperature Increase: A Detailed Study by Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance of Walnut Oil Oxidation

Lipid oxidation causes food degradation and the formation of toxic compounds. Therefore, the addition to foods of compounds able to avoid, delay or minimize this degradative process is a commonly used strategy. Nevertheless, neither the identity of most of the formed compounds in this complex process nor the way in which their formation is affected by the strategy used are well known. In this context, the effect the temperature increase and the enrichment level in alpha-tocopherol on the evolution of the walnut oil oxidation, as a model of an oil rich in polyunsaturated omega-6 acyl groups, submitted to storage conditions, are tackled by 1H NMR. The study has allowed knowing the degradation kinetic of both the oil acyl groups and alpha-tocopherol, the identification of a very high number of oxylipins and the kinetic of their formation. The temperature increase accelerates the formation of all oxylipins, favouring the formation of hydroperoxy conjugated E,E-dienes and related derivatives versus that of the Z,E-isomers. The enrichment in alpha-tocopherol accelerates the formation of hydroperoxy conjugated Z,E-dienes and related derivatives, and delays in relation to the formation of the former that of the E,E-isomers and related derivatives, hindering, to a certain extent, the formation of the latter in line with the enrichment level.
Fully Squeezed Multiscale Inference Network for Fast and Accurate Saliency Detection in Optical Remote-Sensing Images

Recently, salient object detection in optical remote-sensing images (RSIs) has received more and more attention. To tackle the challenges of RSIs including large-scale variation of objects, cluttered background, irregular shape of objects, and big difference in illumination, the cutting-edge convolutional neural network (CNN)-based models are proposed and have achieved an encouraging performance. However, the performance of the top-level models usually depends on the large model size and high computational cost, which limits their practical applications. To remedy the issue, we introduce a fully squeezed multiscale (FSM) module to equip the entire network. Specifically, the FSM module squeezes the feature maps from high dimension to low dimension and introduces the multiscale strategy to endow the capability of feature characterization with different receptive fields and different contexts. Based on the FSM module, we build the FSM inference network (FSMI-Net) to pop-out salient objects from optical RSIs, which is with fewer parameters and fast inference speed. Particularly, the proposed FSMI-Net only contains 3.6M parameters, and its GPU running speed is about 28 fps for $384 \times 384$ inputs, which is superior to the existing saliency models targeting optical RSIs. Extensive comparisons are performed on two public optical RSIs datasets, and our FSMI-Net achieves comparable detection accuracy when compared with the state-of-the-art models, where our model realizes a balance between the computational cost and detection performance.
Pathogenicity and Its Implications in Taxonomy: The Brucella and Ochrobactrum Case

The intracellular pathogens of the genus Brucella are phylogenetically close to Ochrobactrum, a diverse group of free-living bacteria with a few species occasionally infecting medically compromised patients. A group of taxonomists recently included all Ochrobactrum organisms in the genus Brucella based on global genome analyses and alleged equivalences with genera such as Mycobacterium. Here, we demonstrate that such equivalencies are incorrect because they overlook the complexities of pathogenicity. By summarizing Brucella and Ochrobactrum divergences in lifestyle, structure, physiology, population, closed versus open pangenomes, genomic traits, and pathogenicity, we show that when they are adequately understood, they are highly relevant in taxonomy and not unidimensional quantitative characters. Thus, the Ochrobactrum and Brucella differences are not limited to their assignments to different “risk-groups”, a biologically (and hence, taxonomically) oversimplified description that, moreover, does not support ignoring the nomen periculosum rule, as proposed. Since the epidemiology, prophylaxis, diagnosis, and treatment are thoroughly unrelated, merging free-living Ochrobactrum organisms with highly pathogenic Brucella organisms brings evident risks for veterinarians, medical doctors, and public health authorities who confront brucellosis, a significant zoonosis worldwide. Therefore, from taxonomical and practical standpoints, the Brucella and Ochrobactrum genera must be maintained apart. Consequently, we urge researchers, culture collections, and databases to keep their canonical nomenclature.
Analysis of the performance properties of knitted fabrics containing elastane

Purpose – Knitted fabrics containing elastane provide high level of comfort and ease of usage because of the elastic and drape properties over the body. Knitted fabrics respond to every movement of the body and return back to its original shape easily so they are used widely for apparel production. The most important properties required from the elastic knitted garments are wear comfort, fit, breathability and durability. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of elastane yarn count and ground yarn count on the performance properties of 12 single jersey knitted fabrics were analysed after dying. Design/methodology/approach – The research design for this study consists an experimental study. In all, 12 fabrics containing half plating and full plating elastane were produced using 30/1-40/1 Ne yarn counts. Bursting strength, stretch recovery, residual extension, air permeability, spirality and drape properties of fabrics were evaluated. Findings – As a result of study it was found a certain effec.
Effect of Audit Committee Characteristics on Real Earnings Management through Abnormal Cash Flow

Aims: The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of audit committee characteristics on real earnings management (REM) through abnormal cash flow from operations of listed companies in Nigeria. The study was conducted on non-financial listed companies in Nigeria for the period of five years (2016-2020). The data were extracted from the sample of firm's annual reports and Thompson Reuters database. Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression was employed to test the study model. The analysis is based on a sample of 76 listed non-financial companies for five years with 380 firm-year observations. The finding shows that audit committee size and financial expertise reduces management opportunistic earnings manipulations. Also, the result demonstrates that the presence of independent directors in the audit committee is significantly associated with lower earnings management practices. However, the result further establishes that audit committee meeting frequency and real earnings management are positively related. The findings will give an insight to investors, policymakers, and regulators by enabling them to better understand the importance of audit committee in improving the financial reporting quality (FRQ), and the effect of audit committee characteristics in mitigating earnings manipulations.
Research on Semantic Information Retrieval Based on Improved Fish Swarm Algorithm

In order to improve the effectiveness of semantic information retrieval, the improved fish swarm algorithm is proposed to carry out semantic information retrieval. Firstly, the system of semantic information retrieval is designed, and theory model of search engine is established. Secondly, the information retrieval model based on semantic similarity is constructed, and the mathematical model is deduced. Thirdly, the improved fish algorithm is established, and the analysis procedure of it is designed. Finally, the simulation analysis of semantic information retrieval is carried out, results show that the proposed model can obtain higher classification accuracy, precision rare and recall rate, therefore it has higher performance on semantic information retrieval.
Stability mechanism and emergency control of power system with wind power integration

In power system electromechanical transients, wind power (WP) with power electronic interfaces is more capable of controlling active power compared to synchronous generators (SGs), but less capable of controlling voltage. WP is beneficial to transient rotor angle stability because it improves the deceleration of SG, but it is detrimental to transient voltage stability. A mechanism of WP inducing voltage instability is studied. The fast dynamics related to power electronic control transients can be neglected, and the WP is simplified to static power injection model in electromechanical transients. The WP is modelled with power balance algebraic equations, and the system dynamic equations are differential algebraic equations (DAEs). The trajectory encountering a singular point of the DAE corresponds to transient voltage instability in the system. The power balance equation of the WP becomes unsolvable at the point. Simulation results validate the mechanism, and reveal the variation of instability mode of a wind-thermal-bundled sending system. When the proportion of WP in the system increases, the dominant stability problem changes from rotor angle stability to voltage stability, and the stability of the system first gets better then gets worse. An emergency control strategy against the transient voltage instability induced by WP is proposed. WP is shed to shift the singular surface and avoid encountering singular points. An approach to select the most effective locations for WP shedding is proposed.
Efficacy of the modified staged method of surgical treatment for proliferative diabetic retinopathy

Odesa (Ukraine) E-mail: v.zavodnaya@gmail.com Background. Anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) agents have been successfully used to reduce the incidence of perioperative and postoperative complications in patients with proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR). Purpose: To evaluate the efficacy of a modified staged method of surgical treatment for PDR which involves intravitreal aflibercept (IVA) injection 1-mg prior to vitrectomy. Material and Methods: This study involved 75 patients (75 eyes) with PDR. Group 1 (the control group) received vitrectomy only; Group 2, IVA 1.0 mg prior to vitrectomy; and Group 3, IVA 2.0 mg prior to vitrectomy. Results: Mean visual acuity at 2 months and 6 months was significantly better in eyes treated with aflibercept than in those not treated with aflibercept (p1-2 = 0.0001; p1-3 = 0.0001). In the early postoperative period, transient vitreous hemorrhage was observed significantly more frequently in the control group than in group 2 (p1-2 = 0.0003) or group 3 (p1-3 = 0.0004). The incidence of transient vitreous hemorrhage within 2 months after vitrectomy was also significantly higher in the control group than in group 2 (p1-2=0.09) or group 3 (p1-2=0.017). By 6 months after surgery, rubeosis developed in 5 eyes (16.1%) of the control group, and in no eye of the 44 eyes that received intravitreal aflibercept (р= 0.02). Conclusion: Our modified staged method of surgical treatment for PDR enabled an improvement in visual acuity at 2 months and 6 months after surgery; a reduction in the incidence of transient vitreous hemorrhage in the early postoperative period; and reduction in the risk of the development of iris rubeosis in the late period after surgery.