Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Common Features in Patients With Superior Canal Dehiscence Declining Surgical Treatment

Background Superior canal dehiscence (SCD) is a benign condition in which a surgical treatment may be considered depending on the patients’ tolerance of their symptoms. In this study, we aim to identify driving factors behind the patients’ choice of a surgical management over watchful waiting. Methods Sixty-two patients with cochlear and/or vestibular symptoms and a temporal bone high-resolution CT (HRCT) scan showing SCD were included in the study. All patients have been offered either surgical management or watchful waiting. Results Of these, 28 elected surgery and 34 declined it. The operated group showed more cochlear (6.6 vs. 2.4) symptoms than the non-operated group (P < 0.001) except for hypoacousis, but no significant difference (P = 0.059) was found for the number of vestibular symptoms between both groups (3.4 vs. 1.1). Footstep and eating hyperacousis were both present in 57.1% of operated vs. 3% of non-operated patients (P < 0.001). Oscillopsia with effort and with walking was found in 50% and 35.7% of operated patients, respectively, but none in the non-operated group (P < 0.001). Hearing tuning fork at malleolus and Valsalva and pneumatic speculum induced vertigo showed a statistically significant difference between the two groups (P = 0.003, P < 0.001, P = 0.010 respectively). Cervical vestibular-evoked myogenic potential (cVEMP) thresholds, air and bone conduction thresholds, and mean air-bone gap (ABG) were similar in the two populations (P > 0.05). The average dehiscence size was 4.7 mm (2.0 - 8.0 mm) and 3.8 mm (1.3 - 7.7 mm) in the operated and non-operated patients, respectively (P = 0.421). Conclusions The natures of cochleovestibular signs and symptoms were shown to be key factors in patients’ choice of a surgical management whereas paraclinical tests seem to be less significant in the patients’ decision for a surgical treatment.
The Effect of Age of Epilepsy Onset on Cognition, Brain Structure and Network Organization in People with Left and Right Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is a characterized by recurrent seizures in the temporal lobes and is associated with memory impairments, widespread cortical abnormalities, and altered network properties. This disorder emerges at varying ages from perinatal periods to midlife. This thesis examines the relationship between the age of epilepsy onset with memory, cortical thickness and network properties. In the first study, I found that, in people with left TLE (LTLE), earlier onset was associated with worse verbal memory, visual memory, IQ, and thinner cortex in left frontal language regions, while onset in young adulthood was associated with peak memory and cortical thickness in these regions. Further, cortical thickness in these regions correlated with verbal memory ability. Conversely, in people with right TLE (RTLE), earlier onset was associated with better visual memory, but with thinner posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and superior frontal cortex and thinner cortex in these regions was associated with worse visual memory. In study 2, I found that early onset was associated with higher network segregation in RTLE. Higher network segregation also related to better visual memory ability, suggesting that this network organization seen in early onset individuals is beneficial. In study 3, I used functional connectivity to parcellate the hippocampus into anterior and posterior divisions. In LTLE,
Searching for Limited Connectivity in Genetic Network Models

The inference of regulatory interactions between genes from time-course micro-array data is one of the most challenging tasks in the field of functional genomics. The multitude of genes that can now be measured using micro-array technology requires analysis tools that can easily scale-up with respect to the number of genes. This scalability is especially important when inferring genetic interactions, because this task is complicated by the combinatorial nature of gene interaction and because the high cost of micro-array measurements still severely limits the number of measured timepoints. Because of this limitation of the data, it is essential to incorporate as much additional information as possible. This can be achieved by applying constraints based on general biological knowledge and by including specific knowledge about known interactions. In this paper we employ the fact that genetic networks are believed to exhibit limited connectivity. We propose a general approach in which we separate the task of finding the structure of the networks from the task of finding the best parameters of the model, given the structure. The second task can be solved efficiently for most models, but the first task amounts to a search problem which requires the choice of a suitable evaluation function and search strategy. Experimental investigations determined that the best evaluation function is simply the mean squared error on the training data. Through further extensive experimental investigation of several search strategies, it was found that the best search strategy is based on an approach of greedily increasing the number of connections. The strength of the proposed approach lies in the fact that it can be employed to all genetic network models and allows genetic network models to scale up to a large number of genes.
Modelling urban land change processes and patterns for climate change planning in the Durban metropolitan area, South Africa

ABSTRACT Urbanization is one of the most significant and irreversible forms of land change, but we lack empirical evidence of these changes in the Global South. This is the first study to quantify past and explore future land change for the Durban metropolitan, using Land Change Modeler (LCM) software. Results show between 1994–2016, the total changed area was 118,403 ha (47% of landscape) and eleven transition categories were responsible for these changes. Three scenarios were explored: Scenario 1: business as usual (BAU), Scenario 2: green space protection (GSP), and Scenario 3: integrated rapid public transport network (IRPTN), up to the year 2076. BAU and IRPTN show similar projected spatial change concentrated in the west and north. GSP shares temporal change trends with BAU, but projects spatial change concentrated in the north and south. We discuss the utility of this modelling approach to understand land change processes useful for climate change planning.
Memory for places: A navigational model in support of Marr's theory of hippocampal function

In this report we describe a model that applies Marr's theory of hippocampal function to the problem of map‐based navigation. Like many others we attribute a spatial memory function to the hippocampus, but we suggest that the additional functional components required for map‐based navigation are located elsewhere in the brain. One of the key functional components in this model is an egocentric map of space, located in the neocortex, that is continuously updated using ideothetic (self‐motion) information. The hippocampus stores snapshots of this egocentric map. The modeled activity pattern of head direction cells is used to set the best egocentric map rotation to match the snapshots stored in the hippocampus, resulting in place cells with a nondirectional firing pattern. We describe an evaluation of this model using a mobile robot and demonstrate that with this model the robot can recognize an environment and find a hidden goal. This model is discussed in the context of prior experiments that were designed to discover the map‐based spatial processing of animals. We also predict the results of further experiments. © 1997 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A case study on a generalist service delivery model for street children in Durban, South Africa: Insights from the capability approach

School of Social Work and Community Development, University of KwaZulu‐Natal, Durban, South Africa Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Department of Sociology: Social Work, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium School of Sociology and Social Sciences, University of KwaZulu‐Natal, Durban, South Africa Correspondence Laura Van Raemdonck, School of Social Work and Community Development University of KwaZulu‐Natal, South Africa. Email: vanraemdoncklaura@hotmail.com
THE STRUCTURE OF THE MERGING RCS 231953+00 SUPERCLUSTER AT z ∼ 0.9

The RCS 2319+00 supercluster is a massive supercluster at z = 0.9 comprising three optically selected, spectroscopically confirmed clusters separated by <3 Mpc on the plane of the sky. This supercluster is one of a few known examples of the progenitors of present-day massive clusters (1015 M☉ by z ∼ 0.5). We present an extensive spectroscopic campaign carried out on the supercluster field resulting, in conjunction with previously published data, in 1961 high-confidence galaxy redshifts. We find 302 structure members spanning three distinct redshift walls separated from one another by ∼65 Mpc (Δ z = 0.03). The component clusters have spectroscopic redshifts of 0.901, 0.905, and 0.905. The velocity dispersions are consistent with those predicted from X-ray data, giving estimated cluster masses of ∼1014.5–1014.9 M☉. The Dressler–Shectman test finds evidence of substructure in the supercluster field and a friends-of-friends analysis identified five groups in the supercluster, including a filamentary structure stretching between two cluster cores previously identified in the infrared by Coppin et al. The galaxy colors further show this filamentary structure to be a unique region of activity within the supercluster, comprised mainly of blue galaxies compared to the ∼43%–77% red-sequence galaxies present in the other groups and cluster cores. Richness estimates from stacked luminosity function fits result in average group mass estimates consistent with ∼1013 M☉ halos. Currently, 22% of our confirmed members reside in ≳ 1013 M☉ groups/clusters destined to merge onto the most massive cluster, in agreement with the massive halo galaxy fractions important in cluster galaxy pre-processing in N-body simulation merger tree studies.
Intelligent Adaptive Curiosity: a source of Self-Development

This paper presents the mechanism of Intelligent Adaptive Curiosity. This is a drive which pushes the robot towards situations in which it maximizes its learning progress. It makes the robot focus on situations which are neither too predictable nor too unpredictable. This mechanism is a source of self-development for the robot: the complexity of its activity autonomously increases. Indeed, we show that it first spends time in situations which are easy to learn, then shifts progressively its attention to situations of increasing difficulty, avoiding situations in which nothing can be learnt.
Maximal Strength Testing in Healthy Children

Strength training has become an accepted method of conditioning in children. However, there is concern among some observers that maximal strength testing may be inappropriate or potentially injurious to children. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the safety and efficacy of 1 repetition maximum (1RM) strength testing in healthy children. Thirty-two girls and 64 boys between 6.2 and 12.3 years of age (mean age 9.3 ±1.6 years) volunteered to participate in this study. All subjects were screened for medical conditions that could worsen during maximal strength testing. Under close supervision by qualified professionals, each subject performed a 1RM test on 1 upper-body (standing chest press or seated chest press) and 1 lower-body (leg press or leg extension) exercise using child-size weight training machines. No injuries occurred during the study period, and the testing protocol was well tolerated by the subjects. No gender differences were found for any upper- or lower-body strength test. These findings demonstrate that healthy children can safely perform 1RM strength tests, provided that appropriate procedures are followed.
Only a Subset of Phosphoantigen-Responsive γ9δ2 T Cells Mediate Protective Tuberculosis Immunity1

Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium bovis bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) induce potent expansions of human memory Vγ9+Vδ2+ T cells capable of IFN-γ production, cytolytic activity, and mycobacterial growth inhibition. Certain phosphoantigens expressed by mycobacteria can stimulate γ9δ2 T cell expansions, suggesting that purified or synthetic forms of these phosphoantigens may be useful alone or as components of new vaccines or immunotherapeutics. However, we show that while mycobacteria-activated γ9δ2 T cells potently inhibit intracellular mycobacterial growth, phosphoantigen-activated γ9δ2 T cells fail to inhibit mycobacteria, although both develop similar effector cytokine and cytolytic functional capacities. γ9δ2 T cells receiving TLR-mediated costimulation during phosphoantigen activation also failed to inhibit mycobacterial growth. We hypothesized that mycobacteria express Ags, other than the previously identified phosphoantigens, that induce protective subsets of γ9δ2 T cells. Testing this hypothesis, we compared the TCR sequence diversity of γ9δ2 T cells expanded with BCG-infected vs phosphoantigen-treated dendritic cells. BCG-stimulated γ9δ2 T cells displayed a more restricted TCR diversity than phosphoantigen-activated γ9δ2 T cells. In addition, only a subset of phosphoantigen-activated γ9δ2 T cells functionally responded to mycobacteria-infected dendritic cells. Furthermore, differential inhibitory functions of BCG- and phosphoantigen-activated γ9δ2 T cells were confirmed at the clonal level and were not due to differences in TCR avidity. Our results demonstrate that BCG infection can activate and expand protective subsets of phosphoantigen-responsive γ9δ2 T cells, and provide the first indication that γ9δ2 T cells can develop pathogen specificity similar to αβ T cells. Specific targeting of protective γ9δ2 T cell subsets will be important for future tuberculosis vaccines.
Increasing Donating Behavior Through a Game for Change: The Role of Interactivity and Appreciation

Games for change have attracted the interest of humanitarian aid organizations and researchers alike. However, their effectiveness to promote behavior such as donating remains unclear. Furthermore, little is known about how key game properties interactivity and presentation mode impact the effectiveness of these games, or how player attitudes and experiences relate to the interplay between game properties and donating behavior. In this study, experimental conditions were systematically varied in their interactivity and presentation mode. Thereby, 234 participants played, watched, or read through one of six variations of the narrative of the game Darfur is Dying. Following this, they were asked to choose the percentage of an unexpected bonus to donate to a charity. While interactivity increased donating by an average of 12%, presentation mode had no significant impact on the percentage donated. Thus, between presentation mode and interactivity, interactivity was found to be the more impactful game property. Moreover, appreciation fully mediated the relationship between interactivity and donating, hinting at its relevance for the evaluation of the effectiveness of games for change.
Cheat detection for MMORPG on P2P environments

In this paper, we propose a new method for detecting cheat in P2P-based MMORPG. We suppose a typical P2P-based event delivery architecture where the entire game space is divided into subareas and a responsible node (selected from player terminals) delivers each event happened in the sub-area to player nodes there every predetermined time interval called timeslot. In the proposed method, we introduce multiple monitor nodes (selected from player terminals) which monitor the game state and detect cheat when it happens. In order to allow monitor nodes to track the correct game states for the corresponding subarea, we let monitor nodes and a responsible node retain a random number seed and player nodes send their events not only to responsible node but also monitor nodes so that the monitor nodes and the responsible node can uniquely calculate the latest game state from the previous game state and game events which happened during the current timeslot. Either responsible node, monitor nodes or player nodes can detect cheat by comparing hash values of game state which are retained by those nodes periodically, and role back events happened since the last correct game state. Through experiments in PlanetLab, we show that our method achieves practical performance to detect cheats.
Managing compassionately? Managerial narratives about grief and compassion

How do you manage a team following the death of an employee? This article explores this question and inquires if managerial responses to suffering can be compassionate with a decentralized team structure, in the restaurant industry where employees are faced with a high degree of emotional labour. To date, the compassion process has suggested that a focal actor, often a manager, first must notice suffering, then must feel empathic concern, and act in ways to alleviate a sufferer’s pain (Kanov et al., 2004). In this study, against the backdrop of the compassion process with a narrative approach and stories-as-text design, the findings articulate the material conditions that impede, disavow and inhibit the compassion process from the point of view of three restaurant managers acting as focal actors and their (rather unsuccessful) attempts to aid and alleviate the suffering of their grieving team members. By explicating the dynamics of their managerial failure using the link of grief and compassion, this article extends our understanding of grief at work and management in the restaurant industry more broadly.
Optical and NIR spectroscopy of Mrk 1210: constraints and physical conditions of the active nucleus

Received; — accept Abstract. Near-infrared and optical spectroscopy of the nuclear and extended emission region of the Seyfert 2 galaxy Mrk 1210 is presented. This galaxy is outstanding because it display s signatures of recent circumnuclear star formation and a high-level of X-ray activity, in addition to the classical spectral cha racteristics typical of an AGN. The NIR nuclear spectrum, which covers the interval 0.8-2.4� m, is dominated by Hi and Hei recombination lines as well as (Sii), (Siii) and (Feii) forbidden lines. Coronal lines of (Sviii), (Six), (Sivi), (Six), and (Caviii) in addition to molecular H2 lines are also detected. Outside the nuclear region, extended emission of (Siii) and Hei is found up to a distance of 500 pc from the center. An estimate of the contribution of the stellar population to the continuum is made by means of the 12 CO(6− 3) 1.618� m overtone bandhead. It was found that 83± 8% of the H-band continuum is of stellar origin. It improves previous estimates, which claimed that at least 50% of the observed continuum was attributed to the AGN. The analysis of the emission line profiles, both allowed and forbidden, shows a narrower (FWHM∼ 500 km s −1 ) line on top of a broad (FWHM> 1 000 km s −1 ) blue-shifted component. The latter seems to be associated to a nuclear outflow. This hy pothesis is supported by 6 cm VLBI observations, which show a radio ejecta extending of up to∼30 pc from the nucleus. This result does not required the presence of a hidden BLR claimed to be present in previous NIR observations of this object. Internal extinction, calculated by means of several indicators including (Feii) flux ratios not previously used before in AGNs, reveals a dus ty AGN, while the extended regions are little or not affected by dust. Density and temperature for the NLR are calculated using optical and NIR lines diagnostic ratios. The results sh ow electronic temperatures from 10 000 K up to 40 000 K and densities between 10 3 − 10 5 cm −3 . The larger temperatures points out that shocks, most probably related to the radio outflow, m ust contribute to the line emission.
KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER AMONG CULTURE-DRIVEN CO-WORKERS – A MULTI-DIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS OF CORPORATE CULTURE AS A CRITICAL FACTOR FOR SUCCESSFUL KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER WITHIN ENTERPRISES

This paper analyses the impact of corporate culture on knowledge transfer. A structural equation model is developed to test to what extent corporate culture influences knowledge transfer behaviour and how this leads to successful knowledge transfer. Based on a sample of 168 German firms the results reflect a highly significant impact of corporate culture on successful knowledge transfer within the firm. The study was accomplished in cooperation with the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) and identifies three fields of activity in order to enable successful knowledge transfer with respect to corporate culture in
Extract from Aronia melanocarpa fruits potentiates the inhibition of platelet aggregation in the presence of endothelial cells

Introduction Some polyphenolic compounds extracted from Aronia melanocarpa fruits (AM) have been reported to be cardioprotective agents. In this study we evaluated the ability of AM extract to increase the efficacy of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) to inhibit platelet functions in vitro. Material and methods This study encompasses two models of monitoring platelet reactivity: optical aggregation and platelet degranulation (monitored as the surface CD62P expression) in PRP upon the stimulation with ADP. Results We observed that only at low concentrations (5 µg/ml) did AM extract significantly improve antiplatelet action of HUVECs towards ADP-activated platelets in the aggregation test. Conclusions It is concluded that the potentiating effect of AM extract on the endothelial cell-mediated inhibition of platelet aggregation clearly depends on the used concentrations of Aronia-derived active compounds. Therefore, despite these encouraging preliminary outcomes on the beneficial effects of AM extract polyphenols, more profound dose-effect studies should certainly be considered before the implementation of Aronia-originating compounds in antiplatelet therapy and the prevention of cardiovascular diseases.
Development of Elementary Numerical Abilities: A Neuronal Model

Despite their lack of language, human infants and several animal species possess some elementary abilities for numerical processing. These include the ability to recognize that a given numerosity is being presented visually or auditorily, and, at a later stage of development, the ability to compare two nume-rosities and to decide which is larger. We propose a model for the development of these abilities in a formal neuronal network. Initially, the model is equipped only with unordered numerosity detectors. It can therefore detect the numerosity of an input set and can be conditioned to react accordingly. In a later stage, the addition of a short-term memory network is shown to be sufficient for number comparison abilities to develop. Our computer simulations account for several phenomena in the numerical domain, including the distance effect and Fechner's law for numbers. They also demonstrate that infants' numerosity detection abilities may be explained without assuming that infants can count. The neurobiological bases of the critical components of the model are discussed.