Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Homocysteine as an Independent Risk Factor for Cerebral Ischemic Stroke in South Indian Population in Rural Tertiary Care Centre

Objective: Cerebral ischemic stroke is a life threatening neurological disorder leads to mortality and long term disability in survival patients. Atherosclerosis is a common cause of ischemic strokes which inturn predisposes thromboembolism and than triggers thrombotic strokes or transient ischemic attacks. The atherogenic nature of homocysteine plays a vital role in the development of cardiac or cerebral ischemic strokes. The purpose of this case control study was to corelate homocysteine in cerebral ischemic stroke patients. Method: This study was done at the Department of Medicine, DR. PSIMS & RF foundation Chinaoutpally, A.P.India between March 2011 to March 2013. In this study, we recruited patients of ischemic non cardioembolic stroke with history of sudden onset of focal neurological deficit lasted more than 24 hours. Results: The mean homocystein levels in cases were 17.58 + 10.3 statistically significant than controls 6.34 + 4.22(p< 0.05). Mean homocystein levels of cerebral ischemic stroke males were 19.21 ± 12.1statistically significant than controls 7.428 ± 4.091 (p 0.05). Mean homocystein levels of cerebral ischemic stroke females were 14.86 ± 5.34 statistically significant than controls 4.536 ± 3.844 (<0.05). Presence of hyperhomocysteinemia in 59cases and 6 controls, statistically significant than controls (p <0.05), among in males, hyperhomocysteinemia in 40 cerebral ischemic stroke patients than control (4) group, statistically significant than controls ( p <0.05) Conclusions: Elevated serum homocysteine is a strong and modifiable risk factor of cerebral ischemic strokes. Many studies are showed the significance of development of complications like cardiac and cerebral vascular events. We support the consideration of serum homocysteine as a regular and routine screening marker to protect target organ damage.
Self-Compassion and Self-Criticism in Recovery in Psychosis: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis Study.

OBJECTIVE To increase understanding of the internal processes of recovery in psychosis, with particular consideration given to self-compassion and self-criticism. METHOD Qualitative data were collected by semistructured interviews, from 10 participants with psychosis, and analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. RESULTS Five superordinate themes emerged: (a) "my mind can't take the load": the "curse" of psychosis; (b) the "trap" of self-criticism; (c) "coming to terms" with psychosis in my life to "move on"; (d) "on my own two feet"; and (e) "an opportunity" for growth. The themes included a reciprocal relationship between psychosis and self-criticism, processes of acceptance, empowerment, and posttraumatic growth. CONCLUSIONS The internal process of self-to-self relating contributed to 2 maintenance cycles: self-criticism maintained distressing experiences of psychosis and compassionate self-acceptance resulted in empowered action and promoted recovery and growth. The dual process of acceptance and change in relationship to self was central to recovery.
Historical Monetary Policy Analysis and the Taylor Rule

This study examines the usefulness of the Taylor-rule framework as an organizing device for describing the policy debate and evolution of monetary policy in the United States. Monetary policy during the 1920s and since the 1951 Treasury-Federal Reserve Accord can be broadly interpreted in terms of this framework with rather surprising consistency. In broad terms, during these periods policy has been generally formulated in a forward-looking manner with price stability and economic stability serving as implicit or explicit guides. As early as the 1920s, measures of real economic activity relative to "normal" or "potential" supply appear to have influenced policy analysis and deliberations. Confidence in such measures as guides for activist monetary policy proved counterproductive at times, resulting in excessive activism, such as during the Great Inflation and at the brink of the Great Depression. Policy during the past two decades is broadly consistent with natural-growth targeting variants of the Taylor rule that exhibit less activism.
The E.E.G. in presenile dementia.

There are numerous E.E.G. studies of patients with primary presenile dementia but general agreement on the findings is lacking, especially over (1) particular E.E.G. patterns in diagnostic subgroups and (2) the relationship between the degree of E.E.G. abnormality and the severity of dementia as manifested clinically. This lack of uniformity is due in part to the infrequency of an exact, that is, histological diagnosis. For example, the detailed E.E.G. study by Letemendia and Pampiglione (1958) was made on 17 patients with Alzheimer's disease but in only five was cerebral biopsy performed to confirm the diagnosis. Liddell's (1958) study of E.E.G. findings in 11 presenile dements provided a histological diagnosis in only three patients and that after necropsy. Green, Stevenson, Fonseca, and Wortis (1952), who performed cerebral biopsy in 19 patients with primary presenile dementia, reported the E.E.G. findings in only seven cases of Alzheimer's disease and found that they did not differ essentially from those obtained in eight patients with non-specific encephalopathy. As all but one of their patients with Alzheimer's disease were incontinent, this would suggest that the disease was well advanced (Sim, Turner, and Smith, 1966). As most E.E.G. studies reported concern presenile dements in relatively advanced stages of their particular disease, this has led to (1) blurring of the end-points of clinical diagnosis where there was no histological confirmation, and/or (2) confining the E.E.G. findings to only one stage of the disease, namely, the late stage. For example, Letemendia and Pampiglione (1958) state that most of their patients with Alzheimer's disease exhibited apathy, the average duration of illness being seven years, and that 'an artefact-free record was difficult to obtain as the patient's cooperation was often poor. In the frontal region the potential changes due to eye movement were often troublesome'. Again, Liddell (1958) commented that most of his patients were so demented that they were not capable of being tested psychologically.
Are there developmental differences in face processing

This thesis examines whether there are developmental differences in face processing. Performance on face processing tasks improving steadily with age, however, there is no consensus over whether this improvement is quantitative or qualitative in nature. This research aims to determine whether children process faces in the same way as do adults and become more efficient as they get older, indicative of quantitative improvements, or, whether children process faces differently from adults and undergo a qualitative shift that can account for the observed improvement with age. The experiments in this thesis investigate whether there are developmental differences in face processing in three specific areas. The first strand examines whether children show advantage for recognising familiar faces from the internal features. The second strand explores whether children show the same difficulties, as do adults, when trying to recall the names of familiar people. Finally, the third strand draws these two areas of research together and examines how children and adults process and remember unfamiliar faces and explores how face representations change as unfamiliar faces become more familiar. In each of these experiments, the aim is to determine whether age-related differences on these tasks can be attributed to quantitative or qualitative change. The results show that when age-appropriate stimuli are used, the same pattern of results is obtained in children aged 7-12 years and adults, indicating gradual quantitative improvement on these tasks with increasing age.
Gender and affect recognition based on GMM and GMM-UBM modeling with relevance MAP estimation

The paper presents our efforts in the Gender Sub-Challenge and the Affect Sub-Challenge of the INTERSPEECH 2010 Paralin-guistic Challenge. The system for the Gender Sub-Challenge is based on modeling the Mel-Frequency Cepstrum Coefﬁcients using Gaussian mixture models, building a separate model for each of the gender categories. For the Affect Sub-Challenge we propose a modeling schema where a universal background model is ﬁrst trained an all the training data and then, employing the maximum a posteriori estimation criteria, a new feature vector of means is produced for each particular sample. The feature set used is comprised of low level descriptors from the baseline system, which in our case are split into four sub-sets, and modeled by its own model. Predictions from all sub-systems are fused using the sum rule fusion. Aside from the baseline regression procedure, we also evaluated the Support Vector Regression and compared the performance. Both systems achieve higher recognition results on the development set compared to baseline, but in the Affect Sub-Challenge our system’s cross correlation is lower than that of the baseline system, although the mean linear error is slightly superior. In the Gender Sub-Challenge the unweighted average recall on the test set is 82.84%, and for the Affect Sub-Challenge the cross-correlation on the test set is 0.39 with mean linear error of 0.143.
Nascent RNA sequencing reveals distinct features in plant transcription

Significance Transcription is a fundamental and dynamic step in the regulation of gene expression, but the characteristics of plant transcription are poorly understood. We adapted the global nuclear run-on sequencing (GRO-seq) and 5′GRO-seq methods for plants and provide a plant version of the next-generation sequencing software HOMER (homer.ucsd.edu/homer/plants) to facilitate data analysis. Mapping nascent transcripts in Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings enabled identification of known and novel transcripts and precisely mapped their start sites, revealing distinct characteristics in plant transcription. Our modified method to map engaged RNA polymerases and nascent transcripts in primary tissues paves the way for comparative and response studies. Transcriptional regulation of gene expression is a major mechanism used by plants to confer phenotypic plasticity, and yet compared with other eukaryotes or bacteria, little is known about the design principles. We generated an extensive catalog of nascent and steady-state transcripts in Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings using global nuclear run-on sequencing (GRO-seq), 5′GRO-seq, and RNA-seq and reanalyzed published maize data to capture characteristics of plant transcription. De novo annotation of nascent transcripts accurately mapped start sites and unstable transcripts. Examining the promoters of coding and noncoding transcripts identified comparable chromatin signatures, a conserved “TGT” core promoter motif and unreported transcription factor-binding sites. Mapping of engaged RNA polymerases showed a lack of enhancer RNAs, promoter-proximal pausing, and divergent transcription in Arabidopsis seedlings and maize, which are commonly present in yeast and humans. In contrast, Arabidopsis and maize genes accumulate RNA polymerases in proximity of the polyadenylation site, a trend that coincided with longer genes and CpG hypomethylation. Lack of promoter-proximal pausing and a higher correlation of nascent and steady-state transcripts indicate Arabidopsis may regulate transcription predominantly at the level of initiation. Our findings provide insight into plant transcription and eukaryotic gene expression as a whole.
Long‐term inactivation particle for voltage‐gated sodium channels

Action potential generation is governed by the opening, inactivation, and recovery of voltage‐gated sodium channels. A channel's voltage‐sensing and pore‐forming α subunit bears an intrinsic fast inactivation particle that mediates both onset of inactivation upon membrane depolarization and rapid recovery upon repolarization. We describe here a novel inactivation particle housed within an accessory channel subunit (A‐type FHF protein) that mediates rapid‐onset, long‐term inactivation of several sodium channels. The channel‐intrinsic and tethered FHF‐derived particles, both situated at the cytoplasmic face of the plasma membrane, compete for induction of inactivation, causing channels to progressively accumulate into the long‐term refractory state during multiple cycles of membrane depolarization. Intracellular injection of a short peptide corresponding to the FHF particle can reproduce channel long‐term inactivation in a dose‐dependent manner and can inhibit repetitive firing of cerebellar granule neurons. We discuss potential structural mechanisms of long‐term inactivation and potential roles of A‐type FHFs in the modulation of action potential generation and conduction.
THE FORMATION OF THE COLLISIONAL FAMILY AROUND THE DWARF PLANET HAUMEA

Haumea, a rapidly rotating elongated dwarf planet (∼1500 km in diameter), has two satellites and is associated with a “family” of several smaller Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) in similar orbits. All members of the Haumea system share a water ice spectral feature that is distinct from all other KBOs. The relative velocities between the Haumea family members are too small to have formed by catastrophic disruption of a large precursor body, which is the process that formed families around much smaller asteroids in the main belt. Here, we show that all of the unusual characteristics of the Haumea system are explained by a novel type of giant collision: a graze and merge impact between two comparably sized bodies. The grazing encounter imparted the high angular momentum that spun off fragments from the icy crust of the elongated merged body. The fragments became satellites and family members. Giant collision outcomes are extremely sensitive to the impact parameters. Compared to the main belt, the largest bodies in the Kuiper Belt are more massive and experience slower velocity collisions; hence, outcomes of giant collisions are dramatically different between the inner and outer solar system. The dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt record an unexpectedly large number of giant collisions, requiring a special dynamical event at the end of solar system formation.
Guidelines on use of anti‐IFN‐β antibody measurements in multiple sclerosis: report of an EFNS Task Force on IFN‐β antibodies in multiple sclerosis

Therapy‐induced binding and neutralizing antibodies is a major problem in interferon (IFN)‐β treatment of multiple sclerosis. The objective of this study was to provide guidelines outlining the methods and clinical use of the measurements of binding and neutralizing antibodies. Systematic search of the Medline database for available publications on binding and neutralizing antibodies was undertaken. Appropriate publications were reviewed by one or more of the task force members. Grading of evidence and recommendations was based on consensus by all task force members. Measurements of binding antibodies are recommended for IFN‐β antibody screening before performing a neutralizing antibody (NAB) assay (Level A recommendation). Measurement of NABs should be performed in specialized laboratories with a validated cytopathic effect assay or MxA production assay using serial dilution of the test sera. The NAB titre should be calculated using the Kawade formula (Level A recommendation). Tests for the presence of NABs should be performed in all patients at 12 and 24 months of therapy (Level A recommendation). In patients who remain NAB‐negative during this period measurements of NABs can be discontinued (Level B recommendation). In patient with NABs, measurements should be repeated, and therapy with IFN‐β should be discontinued in patients with high titres of NABs sustained at repeated measurements with 3‐ to 6‐month intervals (Level A recommendation).
Faces and Orientational Metaphors: The Effects of Valenced Faces and Facial Manipulations on Neutral Targets

Previous research has shown that there may be an association between affect (negative vs. positive) and vertical position (up vs. down) of stimuli. The following research aimed to investigate whether individuals show spatial biases, either up or down, when asked to respond to neutral targets after seeing valenced faces. The research also aimed to investigate what impact manipulating automatic facial mimicry responses would have on response times. The research was conducted over three experiments. In Experiment 1, participants responded to neutral targets in either high or low vertical positions on a computer screen that were preceded by happy and sad schematic faces. There were two facial manipulation conditions. One group held a straw between their lips to inhibit smiling and another group held a straw between their teeth to facilitate smiling. A third group performed the response task without a straw (control condition). The procedure of Experiment 2 was identical to Experiment 1 except the happy and sad schematic faces had additional internal facial features (noses, eyebrows) that varied across trials. For both Experiment 1 and 2, targets preceded by a happy face were responded to significantly faster. In Experiment 3, the procedure was identical to Experiments 1 and 2, except photographic images of happy, neutral, and sad expressions were used. Participants were significantly faster to respond to targets in the high vertical position. Participants were also faster to respond to targets in the control (no straw) condition than the other two straw conditions. In the inhibition smiling condition, participants were faster to respond to targets in the high vertical position than low vertical position after seeing a happy or neutral face. These findings indicate that there may be an association between valenced faces and vertical selective attention that is consistent with orientational metaphors (positive = up), but further research is needed to clarify this.
Interns' and Cooperating Teachers' Concerns Dining the Extended Practicum

This study examined teacher interns' and their classroom cooperating teachers' concerns about the extended practicum both before and after their completion of the 16-week program. Respondents completed pre- and post-internship surveys identifying their initial concerns about the internship and the subsequent alleviation of these concerns (or the emergence of others). All the respondents reported that some of their initial apprehensions were alleviated by the end of the internship, but nearly all also stated that some concerns remained and that some new concerns had emerged. The teacher interns all reported having developed specific professional strengths during the internship. Evidence supporting some of Fuller and Bown's (1975) three-stage concern theory was found. Implications of these findings are drawn for enhancing the effectiveness of extended practicum programs.
Energy expenditure of male farmers in dry and rainy seasons in Upper-Volta

1. Thirty Mossi male farmers from Upper-Volta were investigated, twenty-three in the dry season (March-April) and sixteen in the rainy season (July-August), eight of them being studied twice. A 48 htime-and-motion study was carried out and the daily energy expenditure was computed. 2. The mean height was 1.70 m and the mean weight 58.5 kg. The average percentage of body fat calculated from skinfold thickness was 10. 3. During the dry season the subjects could be classified as very moderately active with an energy output of 10.1 MJ (2410 kcal)/d. By contrast, with an energy expenditure of 14.4 MJ (3460 kcal)/d, they were considered as exceptionally active in July-August when performing the agricultural work. 4. In this study we measured the intensity of physical work in a society where human labour is still the main tool of production. The determination of seasonal variations in energy expenditure may be useful to assess the nutritional requirements in arid zones of West Africa.
Image Multi-Thresholding to Characterise the Mechanical Stability of Rubber Latex Concentrate

Thresholding which is a crucial part of image segmentation has been known to help in the unification of objects and moreover, it will attenuate the noise within the regions of interest which ultimately, leads to significantly better results. Rubber latex concentrate, which is essentially an intermediate state between suspensions and solutions, is the raw material for making many common household and industrial products. A common measure of its quality is the mechanical stability time, which is defined as the time at the first onset of flocculation when the latex is subjected to the physical stress from rotating it at speeds of 14,000 rev/min. Nevertheless, the common approach to determine this, based on the widely adopted ISO 35 & ASTM 1076 standards[3, 4] relies heavily on the experience, eye sight and analytical skills of the human operator when presented with the extracted samples taken at regular time intervals[5]. In this paper, we propose a new approach to determine the mechanical stability time of the sample but as it involves particle enumeration, we will show how multi-thresholding based on Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) can significantly improve the accuracy of this enumeration.
Increased amyloid β-peptide uptake in skeletal muscle is induced by hyposialylation and may account for apoptosis in GNE myopathy

GNE myopathy is an autosomal recessive muscular disorder of young adults characterized by progressive skeletal muscle weakness and wasting. It is caused by a mutation in the UDP-N-acetylglucosamine 2-epimerase/N-acetylmannosamine kinase (GNE) gene, which encodes a key enzyme in sialic acid biosynthesis. The mutated hypofunctional GNE is associated with intracellular accumulation of amyloid β-peptide (Aβ) in patient muscles through as yet unknown mechanisms. We found here for the first time that an experimental reduction in sialic acid favors Aβ1-42 endocytosis in C2C12 myotubes, which is dependent on clathrin and heparan sulfate proteoglycan. Accordingly, Aβ1-42 internalization in myoblasts from a GNE myopathy patient was enhanced. Next, we investigated signal changes triggered by Aβ1-42 that may underlie toxicity. We observed that p-Akt levels are reduced in step with an increase in apoptotic markers in GNE myopathy myoblasts compared to control myoblasts. The same results were experimentally obtained when Aβ1-42 was overexpressed in myotubes. Hence, we propose a novel disease mechanism whereby hyposialylation favors Aβ1-42 internalization and the subsequent apoptosis in myotubes and in skeletal muscle from GNE myopathy patients.
Affine-invariant face detection and localization using GMM-based feature detector and enhanced appearance model

We present an affine-invariant face detection and localization using GMM-based feature detector and enhanced appearance model. We measure the performance of the method on the realistic BioID and also XM2VTS databases applying a stringent localization error criterion. Compared to our original method, the results have improved by a factor of 2 and are considerably better on a challenging database than those of a baseline method.