Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Meditation and the Brain - Neurophysiological Effects of Meditation

Meditation is aimed at altering mental states and traits. To achieve this, practitioners engage in different attentional and emotional regulatory practices. Based on the assumption that different mental states are accompanied by different neurophysiological states, meditation practices are believed to induce both short-term and long-term neurophysiological changes. In addition, by frequently engaging in mental training it is believed that meditation practitioners can provide useful information about mental states and conscious subjective experiences. As a result, meditation has been the subject of neuroscientific studies investigating the possible changes in attention, emotion, and consciousness. The present thesis provides an overview on the recent literature on these topics and a structured analysis of the research findings. This overview shows that different forms of meditation yield different effects related to differences in attention distribution, emotion regulation, and cultivated awareness. Furthermore, intensity of the meditation state and the level of experience have consistently been shown to correlate with changes in brain activity. Lastly, structural changes have repeatedly been observed as a consequence of long-term meditation practice. These findings show that the alterations of mental states in meditation practices are accompanied by neurophysiological changes. The overview also demonstrates that the ways through which meditation exert these effects are now beginning to be understood and that results are becoming more cohesive and directed.
Accelerated progression of coronary calcification: four-year follow-up in patients with stable coronary artery disease.

PURPOSE To prospectively assess the 4-year progression rate of coronary artery calcium (CAC) in patients with clinically stable coronary artery disease (CAD) with multi-detector row computed tomography (CT). MATERIALS AND METHODS The study group consisted of 382 consecutive patients. All underwent baseline dual-sector spiral CT, and CT was repeated at 2 and 4 years later. Progression of CAC was assessed with measurement of the increase in total calcium score (TCS) and with repeated-measures analysis and multivariate linear regression models. Logistic regression model was used to predict incidence of new lesions. RESULTS Eighty-seven percent (333 of 382) of the study group were men, with mean age of 65 years +/- 11, and 13% (49 of 382) were women, with mean age of 68 years +/- 11. The average TCS increased after 4 years by sixfold from baseline in the 1st quartile, and by four-, two- and 1.5-fold in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th quartiles of baseline TCS (P <.01), respectively. Multiple linear regression analysis included age; sex; natural logarithm of baseline TCS; history of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, current smoking, hypercholesterolemia, and lipid-lowering therapy with cholesterol synthesis enzyme inhibitor (statin); and family history of premature CAD. Results demonstrated that natural logarithm of baseline TCS and history of current smoking were independent predictors of the 4th-year natural logarithm of TCS levels (R(2) = 0.85, P <. 001). New lesions were diagnosed in 56 (15%) patients. History of statin therapy (odds ratio = 0.35; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.16, 0.77; P <.01), age with an increment of 5 years (odds ratio = 0.76; 95% CI: 0.64, 0.90; P =.01), and natural logarithm of baseline TCS (odds ratio = 0.73; 95% CI: 0.62, 0.86; P <.01) were independent predictors for new calcific lesions during 4 years. CONCLUSION Accelerated progression of CAC during 4 years was found in clinically stable patients with CAD.
Energetics of Cytosine Singlet Excited‐State Decay Paths—A Difficult Case for CASSCF and CASPT2 †

Three deactivation paths for singlet excited cytosine are calculated at the CASPT2//CASSCF (complete active space second‐order perturbation//complete active space self‐consistent field) level of theory, using extended active spaces that allow for a reliable characterization of the paths and their energies. The lowest energy path, with a barrier of approximately 0.1 eV, corresponds to torsion of the C5–C6 bond, and the decay takes place at a conical intersection analogous to the one found for ethylene and its derivatives. There is a further path with a low energy barrier of approximately 0.2 eV associated with the (nN,π*) state which could also be populated with a low energy excitation. The path associated with a conical intersection between the ground and (nO,π*) states is significantly higher in energy (>1 eV). The presence of minima on the potential energy surface for the (n,π*) states that could contribute to the biexponential decay found in the gas phase was investigated, but could not be established unequivocally.
A Case of Pemphigus Vulgaris Successfully Treated with Single Filtration Plasmapheresis: A Correlation of Clinical Disease Activity with Serum Antibody Levels

We report a patient with pemphigus vulgaris (PV) successfully treated with single filtration plasmapheresis. A 40‐year‐old man with PV was started on therapy with prednisolone (PSL). Although the dosage of PSL was doubled, and both cyclosporin A (CyA) and pulse therapy were added, the disease was not controlled. After single filtration plasmapheresis began, most of the eroded lesions on the trunk reepithelialized. A switch to double filtration was followed by recurrence. Finally, additional treatments with single filtration plasmapheresis were required to obtain remission. To evaluate the efficacy of the treatment, circulating antibodies were measured by immunofluorescence (IIF) and enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) using recombinant desmoglein (Dsg) 3. IIF titer and the ELISA scores correlated with the clinical disease activity. It is suggested that ELISA was more sensitive than IIF.
Separation logic and abstraction

In this paper we address the problem of writing specifications for programs that use various forms of modularity, including procedures and Java-like classes. We build on the formalism of separation logic and introduce the new notion of an abstract predicate and, more generally, abstract predicate families. This provides a flexible mechanism for reasoning about the different forms of abstraction found in modern programming languages, such as abstract datatypes and objects. As well as demonstrating the soundness of our proof system, we illustrate its utility with a series of examples.
Genetic loci associated with coronary artery disease harbor evidence of selection and antagonistic pleiotropy

Traditional genome-wide scans for positive selection have mainly uncovered selective sweeps associated with monogenic traits. While selection on quantitative traits is much more common, very few signals have been detected because of their polygenic nature. We searched for positive selection signals underlying coronary artery disease (CAD) in worldwide populations, using novel approaches to quantify relationships between polygenic selection signals and CAD genetic risk. We identified new candidate adaptive loci that appear to have been directly modified by disease pressures given their significant associations with CAD genetic risk. These candidates were all uniquely and consistently associated with many different male and female reproductive traits suggesting selection may have also targeted these because of their direct effects on fitness. This suggests the presence of widespread antagonistic-pleiotropic tradeoffs on CAD loci, which provides a novel explanation for the maintenance and high prevalence of CAD in modern humans. Lastly, we found that positive selection more often targeted CAD gene regulatory variants using HapMap3 lymphoblastoid cell lines, which further highlights the unique biological significance of candidate adaptive loci underlying CAD. Our study provides a novel approach for detecting selection on polygenic traits and evidence that modern human genomes have evolved in response to CAD-induced selection pressures and other early-life traits sharing pleiotropic links with CAD. Author Summary How genetic variation contributes to disease is complex, especially for those such as coronary artery disease (CAD) that develop over the lifetime of individuals. One of the fundamental questions about CAD — whose progression begins in young adults with arterial plaque accumulation leading to life-threatening outcomes later in life — is why natural selection has not removed or reduced this costly disease. It is the leading cause of death worldwide and has been present in human populations for thousands of years, implying considerable pressures that natural selection should have operated on. Our study provides new evidence that genes underlying CAD have recently been modified by natural selection and that these same genes uniquely and extensively contribute to human reproduction, which suggests that natural selection may have maintained genetic variation contributing to CAD because of its beneficial effects on fitness. This study provides novel evidence that CAD has been maintained in modern humans as a byproduct of the fitness advantages those genes provide early in human lifecycles.
Semantic Mutation Testing

Mutation testing is a powerful and flexible test technique. Traditional mutation testing makes a small change to the syntax of a description (usually a program) in order to create a mutant. A test set is considered to be good if it distinguishes between the original description and all of the (functionally nonequivalent) mutants. These mutants can be seen as representing potential small slips and thus mutation testing aims to produce a test set that is good at finding such slips. It has also been argued that a test set that finds such small changes is likely to find larger changes. This paper introduces a new approach to mutation testing, called semantic mutation testing. Rather than mutate the description, semantic mutation testing mutates the semantics of the language in which the description is written. The mutations of the semantics of the language represent possible misunderstandings of the description language and thus capture a different class of faults. Since the likely misunderstandings are highly context dependent, this context should be used to determine which semantic mutants should be produced. The approach is illustrated through examples with state charts and C code. In addition, a semantic mutation testing tool for C is proposed.
Continuous Representation of Location for Geolocation and Lexical Dialectology using Mixture Density Networks

We propose a method for embedding two-dimensional locations in a continuous vector space using a neural network-based model incorporating mixtures of Gaussian distributions, presenting two model variants for text-based geolocation and lexical dialectology. Evaluated over Twitter data, the proposed model outperforms conventional regression-based geolocation and provides a better estimate of uncertainty. We also show the effectiveness of the representation for predicting words from location in lexical dialectology, and evaluate it using the DARE dataset.
Circulating tumor cell count is a prognostic factor in metastatic colorectal cancer patients receiving first-line chemotherapy plus bevacizumab: a Spanish Cooperative Group for the Treatment of Digestive Tumors study.

BACKGROUND The Maintenance in Colorectal Cancer trial was a phase III study to assess maintenance therapy with single-agent bevacizumab versus bevacizumab plus chemotherapy in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer. An ancillary study was conducted to evaluate the circulating tumor cell (CTC) count as a prognostic and/or predictive marker for efficacy endpoints. PATIENTS AND METHODS One hundred eighty patients were included. Blood samples were obtained at baseline and after three cycles. CTC enumeration was carried out using the CellSearch® System (Veridex LLC, Raritan, NJ). Computed tomography scans were performed at cycle 3 and 6 and every 12 weeks thereafter for tumor response assessment. RESULTS The median progression-free survival (PFS) interval for patients with a CTC count ≥3 at baseline was 7.8 months, versus the 12.0 months achieved by patients with a CTC count <3 (p = .0002). The median overall survival (OS) time was 17.7 months for patients with a CTC count ≥3, compared with 25.1 months for patients with a lower count (p = .0059). After three cycles, the median PFS interval for patients with a low CTC count was 10.8 months, significantly longer than the 7.5 months for patients with a high CTC count (p = .005). The median OS time for patients with a CTC count <3 was significantly longer than for patients with a CTC count ≥3, 25.1 months versus 16.2 months, respectively (p = .0095). CONCLUSIONS The CTC count is a strong prognostic factor for PFS and OS outcomes in metastatic colorectal cancer patients.
Total homocysteine, vitamin B(12), and total antioxidant status in vegetarians.

BACKGROUND Decreasing or eliminating animal products from the diet decreases the intake of some essential nutrients, such as vitamin B(12), which may lead to hyperhomocysteinemia. We investigated vitamin B(12)-dependent metabolism and oxidative stress in groups with various or no intake of meat or animal products. METHODS We investigated 44 high meat eaters, 19 low meat eaters, 34 lacto-ovo/lacto vegetarians, and 7 vegan vegetarians. Homocysteine (HCY) was assayed by HPLC, methylmalonic acid (MMA) by capillary gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, serum folate and vitamin B(12) with a chemiluminescence immunoassay, and total antioxidant status (TAS) by a Randox method. RESULTS The mean serum HCY concentration of vegetarians was significantly increased, and in vegans the median concentration exceeded 15 micromol/L. Vegetarians had a higher serum concentration of MMA but a lower TAS. Vitamin B(12) and folate did not differ significantly between vegetarian and omnivorous subjects. Overall, HCY and MMA were significantly correlated. Vitamin B(12) correlated negatively with MMA, HCY, and folate, whereas the correlation with TAS was positive. Backward regression analysis revealed an independent influence of MMA on HCY, of HCY and vitamin B(12) on MMA, and of vitamin B(12) on TAS. The increased MMA concentration suggested a 25% frequency of functional vitamin B(12) deficiency in all vegetarians. Serum vitamin B(12) was below the lower reference limit in only five subjects. CONCLUSIONS Functional vitamin B(12) deficiency in vegetarians may contribute to hyperhomocysteinemia and decreased TAS, which may partly counteract the beneficial lifestyle of vegetarians. However, increased serum HCY is most likely not responsible for the lower TAS values in vegetarians. We recommend assaying of MMA and HCY to investigate functional vitamin B(12) status.
Evaluation of speech synthesis systems for Dutch in telecommunication applications

An evaluation was conducted to compare four TTS systems for Dutch with respect to intelligibility and acceptability, as a follow-up to an evaluation study conducted in 1997. Intelligibility was measured by the ability of listeners to write down correctly semantically unpredicatable sentences. Acceptability was tested in two ways: by asking listeners for subjective judgments on a number of semantic scales for individual TTS systems, and by asking for preference judgments in a pairwise comparison. For the acceptability tests a weather forecast and an e-mail text were used as test materials. It was found that the system giving best intelligibility performed worst in the acceptability tests. It was concluded that subjective acceptability is not a simple consequence of intelligibility, and that a distinction needs to be made between the esthetic and functional dimensions of synthetic speech. In comparing the results of the current study with those of the evaluation study conducted in 1997, it appeared fair to conclude that at least two systems are available for Dutch which constitute a substantial improvement over last year’s state of the art, although it is evident from the results that many aspects are still in need of improvement.
Revitalizing Classroom Assessment The Highest Instructional Priority

RICHARD J. STIGGINS is director of the Center for Performance Assessment, North west Regional Educational Laboratory, Port land, Ore. ments, and of measurement-driven in struction, we are again failing to address the central issue in school assessment: in suring the quality and appropriate use of teacher-directed assessments of student achievement used every day in class rooms from coast to coast. Classroom as sessments are the tools teachers use to de termine whether the pace of instruction is appropriate and whether their instruc tional objectives have been met. They are the assessments that determine to a large extent what grades students receive and Classroom assessment requires a great deal of time and effort; teachers may spend as much as 40% of their time directly involved in assessment-related activities. Yet teachers are nei ther trained nor prepared to face this demanding task, says Mr. Stiggins.
Adaptive Observer for a Class of Parabolic PDEs

The problem of state observation, based on spatially-sampled output measurements, is addressed for a class of infinite dimensional systems, modelled by a semi-linear heat equation augmented with a structured uncertain part involving a set of unknown parameters. An adaptive observer is designed that provides online estimates of the system (spatially distributed) state and unknown parameters based on sampled data (in space). Sufficient conditions for the observer to be exponentially convergent are established. These include an ad-hoc persistent excitation condition as well as a condition on how the observer gain must be selected in relation with the space sampling interval.
Effects of running on human Achilles tendon length–tension properties in the free and gastrocnemius components

SUMMARY The elastic properties of the human Achilles tendon are important for locomotion; however, in vitro tests suggest that repeated cyclic contractions lead to tendon fatigue – an increase in length in response to stress applied. In vivo experiments have not, however, demonstrated mechanical fatigue in the Achilles tendon, possibly due to the limitations of using two-dimensional ultrasound imaging to assess tendon strain. This study used freehand three-dimensional ultrasound (3DUS) to determine whether the free Achilles tendon (calcaneus to soleus) or the gastrocnemius tendon (calcaneus to gastrocnemius) demonstrated tendon fatigue after running exercise. Participants (N=9) underwent 3DUS scans of the Achilles tendon during isometric contractions at four ankle torque levels (passive, and 14, 42 and 70 N m) before and after a 5 km run at a self-selected pace (10–14 km h−1). Running had a significant main effect on the length of the free Achilles tendon (P<0.01) with a small increase in length across the torque range. However, the mean lengthening effect was small (<1%) and was not accompanied by a change in free tendon stiffness. There was no significant change in the length of the gastrocnemius tendon or the free tendon cross-sectional area. While the free tendon was shown to lengthen, the lack of change in stiffness suggests the tendon exhibited mechanical creep rather than fatigue. These effects were much smaller than those predicted from in vitro experiments, possibly due to the different loading profile encountered and the ability of the tendon to repair in vivo.
Comparative evaluation of MAL algorithms in a diverse set of ad hoc team problems

This paper is concerned with evaluating different multiagent learning (MAL) algorithms in problems where individual agents may be heterogenous, in the sense of utilizing different learning strategies, without the opportunity for prior agreements or information regarding coordination. Such a situation arises in ad hoc team problems, a model of many practical multiagent systems applications. Prior work in multiagent learning has often been focussed on homogeneous groups of agents, meaning that all agents were identical and a priori aware of this fact. Also, those algorithms that are specifically designed for ad hoc team problems are typically evaluated in teams of agents with fixed behaviours, as opposed to agents which are adapting their behaviours. In this work, we empirically evaluate five MAL algorithms, representing major approaches to multiagent learning but originally developed with the homogeneous setting in mind, to understand their behaviour in a set of ad hoc team problems. All teams consist of agents which are continuously adapting their behaviours. The algorithms are evaluated with respect to a comprehensive characterisation of repeated matrix games, using performance criteria that include considerations such as attainment of equilibrium, social welfare and fairness. Our main conclusion is that there is no clear winner. However, the comparative evaluation also highlights the relative strengths of different algorithms with respect to the type of performance criteria, e.g., social welfare vs. attainment of equilibrium.
T-wave morphology can distinguish healthy controls from LQTS patients

Long QT syndrome (LQTS) is an inherited disorder associated with prolongation of the QT/QTc interval on the surface electrocardiogram (ECG) and a markedly increased risk of sudden cardiac death due to cardiac arrhythmias. Up to 25% of genotype-positive LQTS patients have QT/QTc intervals in the normal range. These patients are, however, still at increased risk of life-threatening events compared to their genotype-negative siblings. Previous studies have shown that analysis of T-wave morphology may enhance discrimination between control and LQTS patients. In this study we tested the hypothesis that automated analysis of T-wave morphology from Holter ECG recordings could distinguish between control and LQTS patients with QTc values in the range 400–450 ms. Holter ECGs were obtained from the Telemetric and Holter ECG Warehouse (THEW) database. Frequency binned averaged ECG waveforms were obtained and extracted T-waves were fitted with a combination of 3 sigmoid functions (upslope, downslope and switch) or two 9th order polynomial functions (upslope and downslope). Neural network classifiers, based on parameters obtained from the sigmoid or polynomial fits to the 1 Hz and 1.3 Hz ECG waveforms, were able to achieve up to 92% discrimination between control and LQTS patients and 88% discrimination between LQTS1 and LQTS2 patients. When we analysed a subgroup of subjects with normal QT intervals (400–450 ms, 67 controls and 61 LQTS), T-wave morphology based parameters enabled 90% discrimination between control and LQTS patients, compared to only 71% when the groups were classified based on QTc alone. In summary, our Holter ECG analysis algorithms demonstrate the feasibility of using automated analysis of T-wave morphology to distinguish LQTS patients, even those with normal QTc, from healthy controls.