LLukas22/scidocs huggingface dataset:
Towards chemical analysis of nanostructures in biofilms II: tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy of alginates.

This study examines the feasibility of using tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS) for label-free chemical characterization of nanostructures in biological systems. For this purpose, a well-defined model system consisting of calcium alginate fibers is studied. In a companion paper, calcium alginate fibers and their network structures were shown to be a good model for the extracellular polysaccharides of biofilms at the nanoscale. TERS analysis of biological macromolecules, such as alginates, is complicated by heterogeneity in their sequence, molecular weight, and conformations, their small Raman cross-section, and the large number of functional groups, which can chemically interact with the silver surface of the tip and cause significant band shifts. Due to these effects, Raman frequencies in TERS spectra of biopolymers do not necessarily resemble band positions in the normal Raman spectrum of the bulk material, as is the case for less complex samples (e.g., dye molecules) studied so far. Additionally, analyte decomposition due to laser heating can have a significant influence, and carbon contamination signals can sometimes even overwhelm the weak analyte signals. Based on the investigation of alginates, strategies for spectra correction, choice of appropriate reference samples, and data interpretation are presented. With this approach, characteristic frequency ranges and specific marker bands can be found for biological macromolecules that can be employed for their identification in complex environments.
3D dynamic expression recognition based on a novel Deformation Vector Field and Random Forest

This paper proposes a new method for facial motion extraction to represent, learn and recognize observed expressions, from 4D video sequences. The approach called Deformation Vector Field (DVF) is based on Riemannian facial shape analysis and captures densely dynamic information from the entire face. The resulting temporal vector field is used to build the feature vector for expression recognition from 3D dynamic faces. By applying LDA-based feature space transformation for dimensionality reduction which is followed by a Multi-class Random Forest learning algorithm, the proposed approach achieved 93% average recognition rate on BU-4DFE database and outperforms state-of-art approaches.
Small effects of low-energy quantum gravity

Small effects of quantum gravity on the scale $\sim 10^{-3} eV$ and their cosmological consequences are discussed and compared with observations of supernovae 1a, gamma-ray bursts and galaxies.
Local neighbourhood extension of SMOTE for mining imbalanced data

In this paper we discuss problems of inducing classifiers from imbalanced data and improving recognition of minority class using focused resampling techniques. We are particularly interested in SMOTE over-sampling method that generates new synthetic examples from the minority class between the closest neighbours from this class. However, SMOTE could also overgeneralize the minority class region as it does not consider distribution of other neighbours from the majority classes. Therefore, we introduce a new generalization of SMOTE, called LN-SMOTE, which exploits more precisely information about the local neighbourhood of the considered examples. In the experiments we compare this method with original SMOTE and its two, the most related, other generalizations Borderline and Safe-Level SMOTE. All these pre-processing methods are applied together with either decision tree or Naive Bayes classifiers. The results show that the new LN-SMOTE method improves evaluation measures for the minority class.
Functional gait assessment and balance evaluation system test: reliability, validity, sensitivity, and specificity for identifying individuals with Parkinson disease who fall.

BACKGROUND
Gait impairments, balance impairments, and falls are prevalent in individuals with Parkinson disease (PD). Although the Berg Balance Scale (BBS) can be considered the reference standard for the determination of fall risk, it has a noted ceiling effect. Development of ceiling-free measures that can assess balance and are good at discriminating "fallers" from "nonfallers" is needed.


OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to compare the Functional Gait Assessment (FGA) and the Balance Evaluation Systems Test (BESTest) with the BBS among individuals with PD and evaluate the tests' reliability, validity, and discriminatory sensitivity and specificity for fallers versus nonfallers.


DESIGN
This was an observational study of community-dwelling individuals with idiopathic PD.


METHODS
The BBS, FGA, and BESTest were administered to 80 individuals with PD. Interrater reliability (n=15) was assessed by 3 raters. Test-retest reliability was based on 2 tests of participants (n=24), 2 weeks apart. Intraclass correlation coefficients (2,1) were used to calculate reliability, and Spearman correlation coefficients were used to assess validity. Cutoff points, sensitivity, and specificity were based on receiver operating characteristic plots.


RESULTS
Test-retest reliability was .80 for the BBS, .91 for the FGA, and .88 for the BESTest. Interrater reliability was greater than .93 for all 3 tests. The FGA and BESTest were correlated with the BBS (r=.78 and r=.87, respectively). Cutoff scores to identify fallers were 47/56 for the BBS, 15/30 for the FGA, and 69% for the BESTest. The overall accuracy (area under the curve) for the BBS, FGA, and BESTest was .79, .80, and .85, respectively.


LIMITATIONS
Fall reports were retrospective.


CONCLUSION
Both the FGA and the BESTest have reliability and validity for assessing balance in individuals with PD. The BESTest is most sensitive for identifying fallers.
Cohomological structure of the mapping class group and beyond

In this paper, we briefly review some of the known results concerning the cohomological structures of the mapping class group of surfaces, the outer automorphism group of free groups, the diffeomorphism group of surfaces as well as various subgroups of them such as the Torelli group, the IA outer automorphism group of free groups, the symplectomorphism group of surfaces. Based on these, we present several conjectures and problems concerning the cohomology of these groups. We are particularly interested in the possible interplays between these cohomology groups rather than merely the structures of individual groups. It turns out that, we have to include, in our considerations, two other groups which contain the mapping class group as their core subgroups and whose structures seem to be deeply related to that of the mapping class group. They are the arithmetic mapping class group and the group of homology cobordism classes of homology cylinders.
Low Serum Vitamin D Levels May Contribute to Gastric Dysmotility in de novo Parkinson's Disease.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Gastrointestinal dysfunction is a common non motor symptom in Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the potential association between vitamin D and gastroparesis in PD has not been previously investigated. The aim of this study was to compare vitamin D levels between drug-naive de novo PD patients with normal gastric emptying and those with delayed gastric emptying.


METHODS
Fifty-one patients with drug-naive de novo PD and 20 age-matched healthy controls were enrolled in this study. Gastric emptying time (GET) was assessed by scintigraphy, and gastric emptying half-time (T1/2) was determined. The PD patients were divided into a delayed-GET group and a normal-GET group.


RESULTS
The serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 levels were decreased in the delayed-GET group compared with the normal-GET and control groups (11.59 ± 4.90 vs. 19.43 ± 6.91 and 32.69 ± 4.93, respectively, p < 0.01). In the multivariate model, the serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 level was independently associated with delayed gastric emptying in PD patients.


CONCLUSIONS
Vitamin D status may be an independent factor for gastric dysmotility in PD. Although the underlying mechanism remains to be characterized, vitamin D status may play a role in the pathogenesis of delayed gastric emptying in drug-naive PD.
Eradicating poliomyelitis: India's journey from hyperendemic to polio-free status

India's success in eliminating wild polioviruses (WPVs) has been acclaimed globally. Since the last case on January 13, 2011 success has been sustained for two years. By early 2014 India could be certified free of WPV transmission, if no indigenous transmission occurs, the chances of which is considered zero. Until early 1990s India was hyperendemic for polio, with an average of 500 to 1000 children getting paralysed daily. In spite of introducing trivalent oral poliovirus vaccine (tOPV) in the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) in 1979, the burden of polio did not fall below that of the pre-EPI era for a decade. One of the main reasons was the low vaccine efficacy (VE) of tOPV against WPV types 1 and 3. The VE of tOPV was highest for type 2 and WPV type 2 was eliminated in 1999 itself as the average per-capita vaccine coverage reached 6. The VE against types 1 and 3 was the lowest in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where the force of transmission of WPVs was maximum on account of the highest infant-population density. Transmission was finally interrupted with sustained and extraordinary efforts. During the years since 2004 annual pulse polio vaccination campaigns were conducted 10 times each year, virtually every child was tracked and vaccinated - including in all transit points and transport vehicles, monovalent OPV types 1 and 3 were licensed and applied in titrated campaigns according to WPV epidemiology and bivalent OPV (bOPV, with both types 1 and 3) was developed and judiciously deployed. Elimination of WPVs with OPV is only phase 1 of polio eradication. India is poised to progress to phase 2, with introduction of inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV), switch from tOPV to bOPV and final elimination of all vaccine-related and vaccine-derived polioviruses. True polio eradication demands zero incidence of poliovirus infection, wild and vaccine.
A phase III randomized double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial to determine the efficacy of low level laser therapy for the prevention of oral mucositis in patients undergoing hematopoietic cell transplantation

Oral mucositis (OM) is a significant early complication of hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). This phase III randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study was designed to compare the ability of 2 different low level GaAlAs diode lasers (650 nm and 780 nm) to prevent oral mucositis in HCT patients conditioned with chemotherapy or chemoradiotherapy. Seventy patients were enrolled and randomized into 1 of 3 treatment groups: 650 nm laser, 780 nm laser or placebo. All active laser treatment patients received daily direct laser treatment to the lower labial mucosa, right and left buccal mucosa, lateral and ventral surfaces of the tongue, and floor of mouth with energy densities of 2 J/cm2. Study treatment began on the first day of conditioning and continued through day +2 post HCT. Mucositis and oral pain was measured on days 0, 4, 7, 11, 14, 18, and 21 post HCT. The 650 nm wavelength reduced the severity of oral mucositis and pain scores. Low level laser therapy was well-tolerated and no adverse events were noted. While these results are encouraging, further study is needed to truly establish the efficacy of this mucositis prevention strategy. Future research needs to determine the effects of modification of laser parameters (e.g., wavelength, fluence, repetition rate of energy delivery, etc.) on the effectiveness of LLE laser to prevent OM.
Context-Aware Service Ranking in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are widely used in practice for comprehensively monitoring and gathering physical information via a multitude of sensors. As the development of WSNs, the integration of them with the external Internet is a urgent need. By wrapping the sensor functionality as a WSN service, the Web service is considered as the most promising technology to incorporate WSNs into the Internet. The quest for selecting the service with the best performance promotes service ranking technology. However, due to the dynamic WSN environment, traditional quality of service (QoS) based ranking approaches for general Web services are no longer suitable for the WSN service. In this article, in order to fit the characteristics of the WSN environment, we propose a context-aware WSN service ranking approach by aggregating the user rating and WSN service context. First, the User QoS Assessment(UQA) and Context QoS Assessment(CQA) are proposed, respectively. Then, through the performance influence on the WSN service by the variations in their context, a Fuzzy mechanism is further developed to aggregate the UQA and the CQA. Finally, the experiments are presented to confirm the validity of the proposed approach.
Emotion in criminal offenders with psychopathy and borderline personality disorder.

BACKGROUND
Criminal offenders with a diagnosis of psychopathy or borderline personality disorder (BPD) share an impulsive nature but tend to differ in their style of emotional response. This study aims to use multiple psychophysiologic measures to compare emotional responses to unpleasant and pleasant stimuli.


METHODS
Twenty-five psychopaths as defined by the Hare Psychopathy Checklist and 18 subjects with BPD from 2 high-security forensic treatment facilities were included in the study along with 24 control subjects. Electrodermal response was used as an indicator of emotional arousal, modulation of the startle reflex as a measure of valence, and electromyographic activity of the corrugator muscle as an index of emotional expression.


RESULTS
Compared with controls, psychopaths were characterized by decreased electrodermal responsiveness, less facial expression, and the absence of affective startle modulation. A higher percentage of psychopaths showed no startle reflex. Subjects with BPD showed a response pattern very similar to that of controls, ie, they showed comparable autonomic arousal, and their startle responses were strongest to unpleasant slides and weakest to pleasant slides. However, corrugator electromyographic activity in subjects with BPD demonstrated little facial modulation when they viewed either pleasant or unpleasant slides.


CONCLUSIONS
The results support the theory that psychopaths are characterized by a pronounced lack of fear in response to aversive events. Furthermore, the results suggest a general deficit in processing affective information, regardless of whether stimuli are negative or positive. Emotional hyporesponsiveness was specific to psychopaths, since results for offenders with BPD indicate a widely adequate processing of emotional stimuli.
Generalized aggregation and coordination of residential loads in a smart community

Flexibility from residential loads presents an enormous potential to provide various services to the smart grid. In this paper, we propose a unified hierarchical framework for aggregation and coordination of various residential loads in a smart community, such as Thermostatically Controlled Loads (TCLs), Distributed Energy Storages (DESs), residential Pool Pumps (PPs), and Electric Vehicles (EVs). A central idea of this framework is a virtual battery model, which provides a simple and intuitive tool to aggregate the flexibility of distributed residential loads. Moreover, a multi-stage Nash-bargaining-based coordination strategy is proposed to coordinate different aggregations of flexible loads for demand response. Case studies are provided to demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed framework and coordination strategy in managing peak power demand in a smart residential community.
A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Mindfulness-Based (Baduanjin) Exercise for Alleviating Musculoskeletal Pain and Improving Sleep Quality in People with Chronic Diseases

OBJECTIVE
we performed the first systematic review with meta-analyses of the existing studies that examined mindfulness-based Baduanjin exercise for its therapeutic effects for individuals with musculoskeletal pain or insomnia.


METHODS
Both English- (PubMed, Web of Science, Elsevier, and Google Scholar) and Chinese-language (CNKI and Wangfang) electronic databases were used to search relevant articles. We used a modified PEDro scale to evaluate risk of bias across studies selected. All eligible RCTS were considered for meta-analysis. The standardized mean difference was calculated for the pooled effects to determine the magnitude of the Baduanjin intervention effect. For the moderator analysis, we performed subgroup meta-analysis for categorical variables and meta-regression for continuous variables.


RESULTS
The aggregated result has shown a significant benefit in favour of Baduanjin at alleviating musculoskeletal pain (SMD = -0.88, 95% CI -1.02 to -0.74, p < 0.001, I² = 10.29%) and improving overall sleep quality (SMD = -0.48, 95% CI -0.95 to -0.01, p = 004, I² = 84.42%).


CONCLUSIONS
Mindfulness-based Baduanjin exercise may be effective for alleviating musculoskeletal pain and improving overall sleep quality in people with chronic illness. Large, well-designed RCTs are needed to confirm these findings.
Influence of hemolysis on routine clinical chemistry testing.

BACKGROUND
Preanalytical factors are the main source of variation in clinical chemistry testing and among the major determinants of preanalytical variability, sample hemolysis can exert a strong influence on result reliability. Hemolytic samples are a rather common and unfavorable occurrence in laboratory practice, as they are often considered unsuitable for routine testing due to biological and analytical interference. However, definitive indications on the analytical and clinical management of hemolyzed specimens are currently lacking. Therefore, the present investigation evaluated the influence of in vitro blood cell lysis on routine clinical chemistry testing.


METHODS
Nine aliquots, prepared by serial dilutions of homologous hemolyzed samples collected from 12 different subjects and containing a final concentration of serum hemoglobin ranging from 0 to 20.6 g/L, were tested for the most common clinical chemistry analytes. Lysis was achieved by subjecting whole blood to an overnight freeze-thaw cycle.


RESULTS
Hemolysis interference appeared to be approximately linearly dependent on the final concentration of blood-cell lysate in the specimen. This generated a consistent trend towards overestimation of alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), creatinine, creatine kinase (CK), iron, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), lipase, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium and urea, whereas mean values of albumin, alkaline phosphatase (ALP), chloride, gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT), glucose and sodium were substantially decreased. Clinically meaningful variations of AST, chloride, LDH, potassium and sodium were observed in specimens displaying mild or almost undetectable hemolysis by visual inspection (serum hemoglobin < 0.6 g/L). The rather heterogeneous and unpredictable response to hemolysis observed for several parameters prevented the adoption of reliable statistic corrective measures for results on the basis of the degree of hemolysis.


CONCLUSION
If hemolysis and blood cell lysis result from an in vitro cause, we suggest that the most convenient corrective solution might be quantification of free hemoglobin, alerting the clinicians and sample recollection.
Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development

Lawrence Kohlberg (1958) agreed with Piaget's (1932) theory of moral development in principle but wanted to develop his ideas further. He used Piaget’s storytelling technique to tell people stories involving moral dilemmas. In each case, he presented a choice to be considered, for example, between the rights of some authority and the needs of some deserving individual who is being unfairly treated. One of the best known of Kohlberg’s (1958) stories concerns a man called Heinz who lived somewhere in Europe. Heinz’s wife was dying from a particular type of cancer. Doctors said a new drug might save her. The drug had been discovered by a local chemist, and the Heinz tried desperately to buy some, but the chemist was charging ten times the money it cost to make the drug, and this was much more than the Heinz could afford. Heinz could only raise half the money, even after help from family and friends. He explained to the chemist that his wife was dying and asked if he could have the drug cheaper or pay the rest of the money later. The chemist refused, saying that he had discovered the drug and was going to make money from it. The husband was desperate to save his wife, so later that night he broke into the chemist’s and stole the drug.
Assessment of OPG/RANK/RANKL gene expression levels in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) after treatment with strontium ranelate and ibandronate in patients with postmenopausal osteoporosis.

CONTEXT
Recent research results have confirmed the high significance of the OPG/RANK/RANKL system in the development of bone diseases.


AIM
The aim of the reported study was to assess gene expression levels of the OPG/RANK/RANKL system in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) after strontium ranelate (SR) and ibandronate administered to patients with postmenopausal osteoporosis.


PATIENTS AND METHODS
A total of 89 postmenopausal women, aged 51 to 85 years, patients of the Outpatient Clinic of Osteoporosis of the Military Teaching Hospital in Lodz, were enrolled into the study. The patients were randomly assigned to different medical therapies: ibandronate and SR. Patients of the control group received only calcium and vitamin D₃ supplements. Patient visits were repeated after 3 and 6 months. Measurements of serum alkaline phosphatase concentrations and of RNA expression in PBMCs as well as of total serum calcium and phosphate levels and of their 24-hour urine excretion rates were carried out in material, collected at baseline and after 3 and 6 months of the therapy. Densitometry of the left hip and of the lumbar spine was done at the baseline visit and after 6 months.


RESULTS
The differences in gene expressions of RANKL and RANK were not significant during the study period and did not differ between the groups in a statistically significant manner. No OPG gene expression was observed in PBMCs of patients in any of the studied groups and at any time point. The tendency of correlation (P = .07) was observed between decreasing RANK gene expression and increasing bone mineral density in the patients treated with SR.


CONCLUSIONS
Both ibandronate and SR do not seem to cause any significant changes in gene expression levels of OPG/RANK/RANKL in PBMCs during the first 6 months of treatment.
The Rey 15-item memory test for malingering: a meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND
The Rey 15-Item Memory Test (RMT) is frequently used to detect malingering. Many objections to the test have been raised. Nevertheless, the test is still widely used.


OBJECTIVE
To provide a meta-analysis of the available studies using the RMT and provide an overall assessment of the sensitivity and specificity of the test, based on the cumulative data.


RESULTS
The results show that, excluding patients with mental retardation, the RMT has a low sensitivity but an excellent specificity.


CONCLUSIONS
These results provide the basis for the ongoing use of the test, given that it is acceptable to miss some cases of malingering with such a screening test, but one does not want to have many false positives.