Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Atherosclerosis and Atheroma Plaque Rupture: Imaging Modalities in the Visualization of Vasa Vasorum and Atherosclerotic Plaques

Invasive angiography has been widely accepted as the gold standard to diagnose cardiovascular pathologies. Despite its superior resolution of demonstrating atherosclerotic plaque in terms of degree of lumen stenosis, the morphological assessment for the plaque is insufficient for the analysis of plaque components, and therefore, unable to predict the risk status or vulnerability of atherosclerotic plaque. There is an increased body of evidence to show that the vasa vasorum play an important role in the initiation, progression, and complications of atherosclerotic plaque leading to major adverse cardiac events. This paper provides an overview of the evidence-based reviews of various imaging modalities with regard to their potential value for comprehensive characterization of the composition, burden, and neovascularization of atherosclerotic plaque.
PRO AND CON FOR THE APPLICATION OF THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES IN THE EDUCATION

The computer is a great student assistant in the process of digestion, understanding and remembering of new information. It helps finding the right means for individual work and control. Through the computer and the computer technologies a specific new studying environment is created. The electronic dialogue conducted with the computer creates new rules, norms, and educational technologies between the teacher and the student. Objective: The current paper represents analysis of students’ opinion (medical nurses) about the application of computer technologies in the process of learning in study course “Medical equipment in the nursing practice”.
In vitro Studies of Mucoadhesiveness and Release of Nicotinamide Oral Gels Prepared from Bioadhesive Polymers

— The aim of the present study was to evaluate the mucoadhesion and the release of nicotinamide gel formulations using in vitro methods. An agar plate technique was used to investigate the adhesiveness of the gels whereas a diffusion apparatus was employed to determine the release of nicotinamide from the gels. In this respect, 10% w/w nicotinamide gels containing bioadhesive polymers: Carbopol 934P (0.5-2% w/w), hydroxypropylmethyl cellulose (HPMC) (4-10% w/w), sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (SCMC) (4-6% w/w) and methylcellulose 4000 (MC) (3-5% w/w) were prepared. The gel formulations had pH values in the range of 7.14 - 8.17, which were considered appropriate to oral mucosa application. In general, the rank order of pH values appeared to be SCMC > MC4000 > HPMC > Carbopol 934P. Types and concentrations of polymers used somewhat affected the adhesiveness. It was found that anionic polymers (Carbopol 934 and SCMC) adhered more firmly to the agar plate than the neutral polymers (HPMC and MC 4000). The formulation containing 0.5% Carbopol 934P (F1) showed the highest release rate. With the exception of the formulation F1, the neutral polymers tended to give higher relate rates than the anionic polymers. For oral tissue treatment, the optimum has to be balanced between the residence time (adhesiveness) of the formulations and the release rate of the drug. The formulations containing the anionic polymers: Carbopol 934P or SCMC possessed suitable physical properties (appearance, pH and viscosity). In addition, for anionic polymer formulations, justifiable mucoadhesive properties and reasonable release rates of nicotinamide were achieved. Accordingly, these gel formulations may be applied for the treatment of oral mucosal lesions.
Cone-Beam Computed Tomography Comparison of Canal Transportation after Preparation with BioRaCe and Mtwo Rotary Instruments and Hand K-Flexofiles

Introduction: The aim of this in vitro study was to evaluate the transportation of mesiobuccal canals of mandibular first molars prepared with either BioRaCe or Mtwo rotary instruments or hand K-Flexofile, by means of cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT). Methods and Materials: Forty-five mandibular molars were selected and randomly divided into three groups (n=15). Mesiobuccal roots of these teeth were prepared by BioRaCe, Mtwo, or hand K-Flexofile. Transportation was measured by pre- and post-operative CBCT images. Two-way ANOVA analysis was applied to detect any differences between the groups followed by the post hoc Tukey’s tests. The level of significance was set at 0.05. Results: The non-parametric Friedman test was used to compare the behavior of each file at 3-, 6- and 9-mm levels. There were no significant differences between different levels in Mtwo group (P=0.15); however, the differences in K-Flexofile and BioRaCe groups were significant (P>0.05). The post hoc Tukey’s test revealed significant differences between BioRaCe and K-Flexofile and also between Mtwo and K-Flexofile, both in the 3-mm depths (P<0.05). Conclusion: Under the limitations of the present study, BioRaCe and Mtwo rotary instruments are considered suitable for canal preparation to greater apical sizes provided that the recommended sequences are observed.
Inferring the Frequency Spectrum of Derived Variants to Quantify Adaptive Molecular Evolution in Protein-Coding Genes of Drosophila melanogaster

Many approaches for inferring adaptive molecular evolution analyze the unfolded site frequency spectrum (SFS), a vector of counts of sites with different numbers of copies of derived alleles in a sample of alleles from a population. Accurate inference of the high-copy-number elements of the SFS is difficult, however, because of misassignment of alleles as derived vs. ancestral. This is a known problem with parsimony using outgroup species. Here we show that the problem is particularly serious if there is variation in the substitution rate among sites brought about by variation in selective constraint levels. We present a new method for inferring the SFS using one or two outgroups that attempts to overcome the problem of misassignment. We show that two outgroups are required for accurate estimation of the SFS if there is substantial variation in selective constraints, which is expected to be the case for nonsynonymous sites in protein-coding genes. We apply the method to estimate unfolded SFSs for synonymous and nonsynonymous sites in a population of Drosophila melanogaster from phase 2 of the Drosophila Population Genomics Project. We use the unfolded spectra to estimate the frequency and strength of advantageous and deleterious mutations and estimate that ∼50% of amino acid substitutions are positively selected but that <0.5% of new amino acid mutations are beneficial, with a scaled selection strength of Nes ≈ 12.
Emotional and Utilitarian Appraisals of Moral Dilemmas Are Encoded in Separate Areas and Integrated in Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex

Moral judgment often requires making difficult tradeoffs (e.g., is it appropriate to torture to save the lives of innocents at risk? ). Previous research suggests that both emotional appraisals and more deliberative utilitarian appraisals influence such judgments and that these appraisals often conflict. However, it is unclear how these different types of appraisals are represented in the brain, or how they are integrated into an overall moral judgment. We addressed these questions using an fMRI paradigm in which human subjects provide separate emotional and utilitarian appraisals for different potential actions, and then make difficult moral judgments constructed from combinations of these actions. We found that anterior cingulate, insula, and superior temporal gyrus correlated with emotional appraisals, whereas temporoparietal junction and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex correlated with utilitarian appraisals. Overall moral value judgments were represented in an anterior portion of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Critically, the pattern of responses and functional interactions between these three sets of regions are consistent with a model in which emotional and utilitarian appraisals are computed independently and in parallel, and passed to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex where they are integrated into an overall moral value judgment. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Popular accounts of moral judgment often describe it as a battle for control between two systems, one intuitive and emotional, the other rational and utilitarian, engaged in winner-take-all inhibitory competition. Using a novel fMRI paradigm, we identified distinct neural signatures of emotional and utilitarian appraisals and used them to test different models of how they compete for the control of moral behavior. Importantly, we find little support for competitive inhibition accounts. Instead, moral judgments resembled the architecture of simple economic choices: distinct regions represented emotional and utilitarian appraisals independently and passed this information to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex for integration into an overall moral value signal.
Ideology as Opinion: A Spatial Model of Common-Value Elections

Spatial election literature attributes voters' political differences to irreconcilable conflicts of interest. Alternatively, voters may merely hold differing beliefs regarding which policies best promote the public interest, as in the classic common-value model of Condorcet (1785). This paper shows how a spatial version of the common-value model explains empirical patterns of public opinion, ideology, electoral margins, and participation that are puzzling from the standard perspective, suggesting that voters may implicitly view politics as a contest between truth and error. If so, this has important consequences for political analysis.
Muscle atrophy and hypertrophy signaling in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

RATIONALE The molecular mechanisms of muscle atrophy in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are poorly understood. In wasted animals, muscle mass is regulated by several AKT-related signaling pathways. OBJECTIVES To measure the protein expression of AKT, forkhead box class O (FoxO)-1 and -3, atrogin-1, the phosphophrylated form of AKT, p70(S6K) glycogen synthase kinase-3beta (GSK-3beta), eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E binding protein-1 (4E-BP1), and the mRNA expression of atrogin-1, muscle ring finger (MuRF) protein 1, and FoxO-1 and -3 in the quadriceps of 12 patients with COPD with muscle atrophy and 10 healthy control subjects. Five patients with COPD with preserved muscle mass were subsequently recruited and were compared with six patients with low muscle mass. METHODS Protein contents and mRNA expression were measured by Western blot and quantitative polymerase chain reaction, respectively. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS The levels of atrogin-1 and MuRF1 mRNA, and of phosphorylated AKT and 4E-BP1 and FoxO-1 proteins, were increased in patients with COPD with muscle atrophy compared with healthy control subjects, whereas atrogin-1, p70(S6K), GSK-3beta, and FoxO-3 protein levels were similar. Patients with COPD with muscle atrophy showed an increased expression of p70(S6K), GSK-3beta, and 4E-BP1 compared with patients with COPD with preserved muscle mass. CONCLUSIONS An increase in atrogin-1 and MuRF1 mRNA and FoxO-1 protein content was observed in the quadriceps of patients with COPD. The transcriptional regulation of atrogin-1 and MuRF1 may occur via FoxO-1, but independently of AKT. The overexpression of the muscle hypertrophic signaling pathways found in patients with COPD with muscle atrophy could represent an attempt to restore muscle mass.
Trends and impacts of migrant transnationalism

The transnational approach to migration phenomena, despite many critiques, suggests that a variety of institutions are changing, particularly among migrants themselves. How deep-seated and long-lasting are these changes, and to they have implications for broader forms of structural transformation in migration sending and receiving contexts? In this paper, a wide range of studies and materials are reviewed to address this question concerning possible modes of transformation affecting sociocultural, political and economic transformation. These include shifting patterns impacts of transnational practices on families, norms and modes of perceptual orientation; dual citizenship, homeland politics in diaspora and the ‘identities-borders-orders’ of nation-states; and the sending and use of individual and collective remittances for economic development. These modes or sites of transformation both draw from and contribute to wider processes of globalization.
Maximize Pointwise Cost-sensitively Submodular Functions With Budget Constraint

We study the worst-case adaptive optimization problem with budget constraint. Unlike previous works, we consider the general setting where the cost is a set function on sets of decisions. For this setting, we investigate the near-optimality of greedy policies when the utility function satisfies a novel property called pointwise cost-sensitive submodularity. This property is an extension of cost-sensitive submodularity, which in turn is a generalization of submodularity to general cost functions. We prove that two simple greedy policies for the problem are not near-optimal but the best between them is near-optimal. With this result, we propose a combined policy that is nearoptimal with respect to the optimal worst-case policy that uses half of the budget. We discuss applications of our theoretical results and also report experimental results comparing the greedy policies on the active learning problem.
Crowd Density Estimation Using Texture Analysis and Learning

This paper presents an automatic method to detect abnormal crowd density by using texture analysis and learning, which is very important for the intelligent surveillance system in public places. By using the perspective projection model, a series of multi-resolution image cells are generated to make better density estimation in the crowded scene. The cell size is normalized to obtain a uniform representation of texture features. In order to diminish the instability of texture feature measurements, a technique of searching the extrema in the Harris-Laplacian space is also applied. The texture feature vectors are extracted from each input image cell and the support vector machine (SVM) method is utilized to solve the regression problem of calculating the crowd density. Finally, based on the estimated density vectors, the SVM method is used again to solve the classification problem of detecting abnormal density distribution. Experiments on real crowd videos show the effectiveness of the proposed system.
Biological Instability in a Chlorinated Drinking Water Distribution Network

The purpose of a drinking water distribution system is to deliver drinking water to the consumer, preferably with the same quality as when it left the treatment plant. In this context, the maintenance of good microbiological quality is often referred to as biological stability, and the addition of sufficient chlorine residuals is regarded as one way to achieve this. The full-scale drinking water distribution system of Riga (Latvia) was investigated with respect to biological stability in chlorinated drinking water. Flow cytometric (FCM) intact cell concentrations, intracellular adenosine tri-phosphate (ATP), heterotrophic plate counts and residual chlorine measurements were performed to evaluate the drinking water quality and stability at 49 sampling points throughout the distribution network. Cell viability methods were compared and the importance of extracellular ATP measurements was examined as well. FCM intact cell concentrations varied from 5×103 cells mL−1 to 4.66×105 cells mL−1 in the network. While this parameter did not exceed 2.1×104 cells mL−1 in the effluent from any water treatment plant, 50% of all the network samples contained more than 1.06×105 cells mL−1. This indisputably demonstrates biological instability in this particular drinking water distribution system, which was ascribed to a loss of disinfectant residuals and concomitant bacterial growth. The study highlights the potential of using cultivation-independent methods for the assessment of chlorinated water samples. In addition, it underlines the complexity of full-scale drinking water distribution systems, and the resulting challenges to establish the causes of biological instability.
THE TREATMENT OF SLEEP DISORDERS WITH MELATONIN

Fifteen children (most of whom were neurologically multiply disabled) with severe, chronic sleep disorders were treated with 2 10 10mg of oral melatonin, given at bedtime. Nine had fragmented sleep patterns, three had delayed sleep onset and three others had non‐specific sleep disturbance of unclear aetiology; all had failed to respond to conventional management. Nine patients had ocular or cortical visual impairment. The health, behavioural and social benefits of treatment were significant, and there were no adverse side‐effects. While the response was not always complete, the study clearly showed that melatonin has an important role in the treatment of certain types of chronic sleep disorders.
Measuring Future Grandparents' Preferences for Equality and Relative Standing

Individuals’ aversion to risk and inequality, and their concern for relative standing, are measured through experimental choices between hypothetical societies. It is found that, on average, individuals are both fairly inequality-averse and have a strong concern for relative income. The results are used to illustrate welfare consequences based on a utilitarian SWF and a modified CRRA utility function. It is shown that the social marginal utility of income may then become negative, even at income levels that are far from extreme.
Intracellular analysis of relations between the slow (< 1 Hz) neocortical oscillation and other sleep rhythms of the electroencephalogram

The newly described slow cortical rhythm (approximately 0.3 Hz), whose depolarizing-hyperpolarizing components are analyzed in the preceding article, is now investigated from the standpoint of its relations with delta (1–4 Hz) and spindle (7–14 Hz) rhythmicity. Regular-spiking and intrinsically bursting cortical neurons were mostly recorded from association suprasylvian areas 5 and 7; fewer neurons were also recorded from pericruciate motor and posterolateral visual areas. Although most cells were investigated under various anesthetics, a similar slow cortical rhythm was found in animals with brainstem transection at the low- or high-collicular levels. These cerveau isole (isolated forebrain) preparations display the major sleep rhythms of the EEG in the absence of general anesthetics. In 38% of recorded cortical neurons (n = 105), the slow rhythm was combined with delta oscillation. Both cellular rhythms were phase locked to the slow and delta oscillations in the surface- and depth-recorded EEG. In a group of this cell sample (n = 47), delta activity occurred as stereotyped, clock-like action potentials during the interdepolarization lulls of the slow rhythm. In another neuronal subsample (n = 58), delta events were grouped in sequences superimposed upon the depolarizing envelope of the slow rhythm, with such sequences recurring rhythmically at approximately 0.3–0.4 Hz. The associations between the two cellular and EEG rhythms (1–4 Hz and 0.3–0.4 Hz) were quantified by means of autocorrelograms, cross-correlograms, and spike-triggered averages. In 26% of recorded neurons (n = 72), the slow rhythm was combined with spindle oscillations. Regular-spiking cortical neurons fully reflected the whole frequency range of thalamically generated spindles (7–14 Hz). However, during similar patterns of EEG spindling, intrinsically bursting cells fired grouped action potentials (with intraburst frequencies of 100–200 Hz) at only 2–4 Hz. The dependence of the slow cortical oscillation upon the thalamus was studied by lesions and stimulation. The slow rhythm survived extensive ipsilateral thalamic destruction by means of electrolytic lesions or kainate-induced loss of perikarya in thalamic nuclei that were input sources to the recorded cortical neurons. To further prevent the possibility of a thalamic role in the genesis of the slow rhythm, through the contralateral thalamocortical systems and callosal projections, we also transected the corpus callosum in thalamically lesioned animals, and still recorded the slow rhythm in cortical neurons. These data indicate that the thalamus is not essentially implicated in the genesis of the slow rhythm. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Monocular Advantage for Face Perception Implicates Subcortical Mechanisms in Adult Humans

The ability to recognize faces accurately and rapidly is an evolutionarily adaptive process. Most studies examining the neural correlates of face perception in adult humans have focused on a distributed cortical network of face-selective regions. There is, however, robust evidence from phylogenetic and ontogenetic studies that implicates subcortical structures, and recently, some investigations in adult humans indicate subcortical correlates of face perception as well. The questions addressed here are whether low-level subcortical mechanisms for face perception (in the absence of changes in expression) are conserved in human adults, and if so, what is the nature of these subcortical representations. In a series of four experiments, we presented pairs of images to the same or different eyes. Participants' performance demonstrated that subcortical mechanisms, indexed by monocular portions of the visual system, play a functional role in face perception. These mechanisms are sensitive to face-like configurations and afford a coarse representation of a face, comprised of primarily low spatial frequency information, which suffices for matching faces but not for more complex aspects of face perception such as sex differentiation. Importantly, these subcortical mechanisms are not implicated in the perception of other visual stimuli, such as cars or letter strings. These findings suggest a conservation of phylogenetically and ontogenetically lower-order systems in adult human face perception. The involvement of subcortical structures in face recognition provokes a reconsideration of current theories of face perception, which are reliant on cortical level processing, inasmuch as it bolsters the cross-species continuity of the biological system for face recognition.
IMPROVEMENT IN DIRECT TORQUE CONTROL OF INDUCTION MOTOR USING FUZZY LOGIC DUTY RATIO CONTROLLER

This paper shows the application of fuzzy logic based duty ratio control technique to reduce torque ripple in an induction motor employing Direct Torque Control (DTC). This technique increases the number of voltage vectors beyond the available eight discrete voltage vectors without any increase in the number of semiconductor switches in the inverter. Look-up Table based on-line tuning PI controller is proposed for outer speed control loop to achieve swift response, less overshoot and precision speed control to have wide torque-speed characteristics. A new algorithm for optimized value of stator flux based on the maximum reference value of electromagnetic torque is proposed to operate in conjunction with duty ratio control. The performance of the proposed drive system is evaluated through digital simulation using MATLABSIMULINK package. The simulation results clearly depict the superiority of devised method over the existing methods of DTC.
Similarity in fuzzy reasoning

Fuzzy set theory is based on a `fuzzification' of the predicate in (element of), the concept of membership degrees is considered as fundamental. In this paper we elucidate the connection between indistinguishability modelled by fuzzy equivalence relations and fuzzy sets. We show that the indistinguishability inherent to fuzzy sets can be computed and that this indistinguishability cannot be overcome in approximate reasoning. For our investigations we generalize from the unit interval as the basis for fuzzy sets, to the framework of GL-monoids that can be understood as a generalization of MV-algebras. Residuation is a basic concept in GL-monoids and many proofs can be formulated in a simple and clear way instead of using special properties of the unit interval.