Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Validity and Reliability of the European Portuguese Version of Neuropsychiatric Inventory in an Institutionalized Sample

Background Neuropsychiatric symptoms are very common in dementia and have been associated with patient and caregiver distress, increased risk of institutionalization and higher costs of care. In this context, the neuropsychiatric inventory (NPI) is the most widely used comprehensive tool designed to measure neuropsychiatric Symptoms in geriatric patients with dementia. The aim of this study was to present the validity and reliability of the European Portuguese version of NPI. Methods A cross-sectional study was carried out with a convenience sample of institutionalized patients (≥ 50 years old) in three nursing homes in Portugal. All patients were also assessed with mini-mental state examination (MMSE) (cognition), geriatric depression scale (GDS) (depression) and adults and older adults functional assessment inventory (IAFAI) (functionality). NPI was administered to a formal caregiver, usually from the clinical staff. Inter-rater and test-retest reliability were assessed in a subsample of 25 randomly selected subjects. Results The sample included 166 elderly, with a mean age of 80.9 (standard deviation: 10.2) years. Three out of the NPI behavioral items had negative correlations with MMSE: delusions (rs = -0.177, P = 0.024), disinhibition (rs = -0.174, P = 0.026) and aberrant motor activity (rs = -0.182, P = 0.020). The NPI subsection of depression/dysphoria correlated positively with GDS total score (rs = 0.166, P = 0.038). NPI showed good internal consistency (overall α = 0.766; frequency α = 0.737; severity α = 0.734). The inter-rater reliability was excellent (intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC): 1.00, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.00 - 1.00), as well as test-retest reliability (ICC: 0.91, 95% CI 0.80 - 0.96). Conclusion The results found for convergent validity, inter-rater and test-retest reliability, showed that this version appears to be a valid and reliable instrument for evaluation of neuropsychiatric symptoms in institutionalized elderly.
The infrastructure of brachiopod shells - A mechanically optimized material with hierarchical architecture

Brachiopod shells consist of low-magnesium calcite and belong to one of the most intriguing species for studies of marine paleoenvironments, variations in oceanographic conditions and ocean chemistry [6, 7, 11 - 13]. We have investigated the ultrastructure together with nano- and microhardness properties of modem brachiopod shells with transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), nanoindentation and Vickers microhardness analyses. Brachiopod shells are structured into several layers, a thin, outer, hard, protective primary layer composed of randomly oriented nanocrystalline calcite, which is followed inward towards the soft tissue of the animal by a much softer shell segment (secondary layer) built of long calcite fibres, stacked parallely into blocks. The hardness distribution pattern within the shells is non-uniform and varies on scales as small as a few tens of microns, Our results show that the hardness of this biomaterial is controlled by two predominant features: (1.) The morphological orientation of the calcite fibres (not by the crystallographic orientation of the fibres), and (2.) the amount and distribution pattern of organic material between and within the calcite crystals.
Hierarchical Saliency Detection

When dealing with objects with complex structures, saliency detection confronts a critical problem - namely that detection accuracy could be adversely affected if salient foreground or background in an image contains small-scale high-contrast patterns. This issue is common in natural images and forms a fundamental challenge for prior methods. We tackle it from a scale point of view and propose a multi-layer approach to analyze saliency cues. The final saliency map is produced in a hierarchical model. Different from varying patch sizes or downsizing images, our scale-based region handling is by finding saliency values optimally in a tree model. Our approach improves saliency detection on many images that cannot be handled well traditionally. A new dataset is also constructed.
Clinical Utility of Esophageal manometry in the patients with dysphagia - Experience from Sudan.

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to assess the clinical utility of esophageal manometry among Sudanese patients presenting to the National Centre for Gastrointestinal and Liver Diseases, Ibn Sina Hospital, Khartoum, Sudan. METHODOLOGY Consecutive patients referred for esophageal manometry at the aforementioned center from July 2008 through January 2011 were included in the study. Manometric studies were done after stopping medicines with a known effect on esophageal motility and an overnight fast. Immediately before the manometric study, the patients' history and clinical examination were recorded using a structured questionnaire. RESULTS The major referral reason was the investigation of dysphagia in 78 patients (60.5%), followed by the evaluation of Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) in 39 patients (30%), while 11 patients (9%) were referred because of non-cardiac chest pain. The manometric diagnosis in the 78 patients with dysphagia, where 51(65.4%) had achalasia, 13(16.7%) had nonspecific motility disorder, the remaining percentage was formed by GERD diffuse esophageal spasm, connective tissue disease, Nutcracker esophagus, hypertensive lower esophageal sphincter, patient manometry suggestive of myasthenia gravis, and normal manometry. CONCLUSION GERD and Achalasia were the commonest conditions among the study group. Patients presenting with achalasia manifest the same clinical symptoms as published in the literature. The leading abnormality predisposing to GERD was hypotensive lower esophageal sphincter and weak esophageal clearance function. GERD was main cause of non-cardiac chest pain in the study population. However, it is difficult to generalize the findings of this study for the whole country since it was a single center study.
A ‘living fossil’ eel (Anguilliformes: Protanguillidae, fam. nov.) from an undersea cave in Palau

We report the discovery of an enigmatic, small eel-like fish from a 35 m-deep fringing-reef cave in the western Pacific Ocean Republic of Palau that exhibits an unusual suite of morphological characters. Many of these uniquely characterize the Recent members of the 19 families comprising the elopomorph order Anguilliformes, the true eels. Others are found among anguilliforms only in the Cretaceous fossils, and still others are primitive with respect to both Recent and fossil eels. Thus, morphological evidence explicitly places it as the most basal lineage (i.e. the sister group of extant anguilliforms). Phylogenetic analysis and divergence time estimation based on whole mitogenome sequences from various actinopterygians, including representatives of all eel families, demonstrate that this fish represents one of the most basal, independent lineages of the true eels, with a long evolutionary history comparable to that of the entire Anguilliformes (approx. 200 Myr). Such a long, independent evolutionary history dating back to the early Mesozoic and a retention of primitive morphological features (e.g. the presence of a premaxilla, metapterygoid, free symplectic, gill rakers, pseudobranch and distinct caudal fin rays) warrant recognition of this species as a ‘living fossil’ of the true eels, herein described as Protanguilla palau genus et species nov. in the new family Protanguillidae.
Cyclin D1 overexpression correlates with poor tumor differentiation and prognosis in gastric cancer

Overexpression of cyclin D is associated with the molecular tumorigenesis of gastric cancer. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the expression of cyclin D in human gastric cancer and to determine the potential correlations between cyclin D expression and clinicopathological characteristics of specific histological types, as well as its prognostic significance. In the present study, the expression of the cyclin D1 (CCND1), cyclin D2 (CCND2) and cyclin D3 (CCND3) genes in gastric cancer patients was explored using the Oncomine database, and their correlation with overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) was evaluated using Kaplan-Meier analysis. The prognostic significance of CCND1 protein expression was evaluated by western blot analysis of 32 matched specimens of gastric adenocarcinomas and normal tissues obtained from patients treated at the National Cheng Kung University Hospital (Tainan, Taiwan). Analysis of the Oncomine cancer microarray database revealed that CCND1 gene expression was significantly increased in gastric intestinal-type adenocarcinoma, while CCND2 was significantly increased in diffuse gastric adenocarcinoma, gastric intestinal-type adenocarcinoma and gastric mixed adenocarcinoma. Kaplan-Meier analysis indicated that overexpression of CCND1 was associated with reduced OS and PFS. In addition, overexpression of CCND1 and downregulation of CCND2 were significantly correlated with receptor tyrosine-protein kinase erb-2-negative tumors and poor differentiation. The ratio of relative CCND1 expression (expressed as the CCND1/β-actin ratio) in tumor tissues compared with that in normal tissues was correlated with poor differentiation (P=0.0018). In summary, CCND1 overexpression is associated with shorter survival in patients with gastric cancer and with poorly differentiated tumors.
Privacy-aware location privacy preference recommendations

Location-Based Services have become increasingly popular due to the prevalence of smart devices and location-sharing applications such as Facebook and Foursquare. The protection of people's sensitive location data in such applications is an important requirement. Conventional location privacy protection methods, however, such as manually defining privacy rules or asking users to make decisions each time they enter a new location may be overly complex, intrusive or unwieldy. An alternative is to use machine learning to predict people's privacy preferences and automatically configure settings. Model-based machine learning classifiers may be too computationally complex to be used in real-world applications, or suffer from poor performance when training data are insufficient. In this paper we propose a location-privacy recommender that can provide people with recommendations of appropriate location privacy settings through user-user collaborative filtering. Using a real-world location-sharing dataset, we show that the prediction accuracy of our scheme (73.08%) is similar to the best performance of model-based classifiers (75.30%), and at the same time causes fewer privacy leaks (11.75% vs 12.70%). Our scheme further outperforms model-based classifiers when there are insufficient training data. Since privacy preferences are innately private, we make our recommender privacy-aware by obfuscating people's preferences. Our results show that obfuscation leads to a minimal loss of prediction accuracy (0.76%).
Ultra-Lithium-deficient Halo Stars and Blue Stragglers: A Common Origin?

We present data for four ultra-Li-deficient, warm, halo stars. The Li deficiency of two of these is a new discovery. Three of the four stars have effective temperatures Teff ~ 6300 K, in contrast to previously known Li-deficient halo stars, which spanned the temperature range of the Spite plateau. In this paper we propose that these and previously known ultra-Li-deficient halo stars may have had their surface lithium abundances reduced by the same mechanism as produces halo field blue stragglers. Even though these stars have yet to reveal themselves as blue stragglers, they might be regarded as "blue-stragglers-to-be. " In our proposed scenario, the surface abundance of Li in these stars could be destroyed (1) during the normal pre-main-sequence single-star evolution of their low-mass precursors, (2) during the post-main-sequence evolution of an evolved mass donor, and/or (3) via mixing during a mass-transfer event or stellar merger. The warmest Li-deficient stars at the turnoff would be regarded as emerging "canonical" blue stragglers, whereas cooler ones represent sub-turnoff-mass blue-stragglers-to-be. The latter are presently hidden on the main sequence, Li depletion being possibly the clearest signature of their past history and future significance. Eventually, the main-sequence turnoff will reach down to their mass, exposing those Li-depleted stars as canonical blue stragglers when normal stars of that mass evolve away. Arguing against this unified view is the observation that the three Li-depleted stars at Teff ≃ 6300 K are all binaries, whereas very few of the cooler systems show evidence for binarity; it is thus possible that two separate mechanisms are responsible for the production of Li-deficient main-sequence halo stars.
Division Planes Alternate in Spherical Cells ofEscherichia coli

ABSTRACT In the spherical cells of Escherichia coli rodAmutants, division is initiated at a single point, from which a furrow extends progressively around the cell. Using “giant” rodA ftsA cells, we confirmed that each new division furrow is initiated at the midpoint of the previous division plane and runs perpendicular to it.
Identification of philippine herbal medicine plant leaf using artificial neural network

The study described in this paper consists of a system that involves image processing techniques to extract relevant features related to leaf in conjunction with using artificial neural network in order to detect and identify some Philippine herbal plants. Real samples of twelve different herbal medicine plant leaves are collected where each leaf are isolated in single image. Several features are extracted using techniques in image processing. With the artificial neural network acting as autonomous brain network, the system can identify the species of the herbal medicine plant leaves being tested. The system can also provide information about the diseases the herbal plant can cure. For the training, a features dataset of 600 images coming from 50 images per herbal plant are used. With the aid of Python, a neural network model with optimized parameters are established producing 98.16 % identification for the whole dataset. To evaluate the actual performance of the system, a separate 72 sample images of herbal plants are tested with the neural network model implemented in MATLAB. Experimental results demonstrate a 98.61 % accuracy of herbal plant identification.
The Theory and Practice of Pancreatic Surgery in France

Objective: Measure the caseload of pancreatectomies that influences their short-term outcome, at a national level, and assess the applicability of a centralization policy. Background: There is agreement that pancreatectomies should be centralized. However, previous studies have failed to accurately define a “high-volume” center. Methods: French healthcare databases were screened to identify all adult patients who had elective pancreatectomies between 2007 and 2012. The patients’ age, comorbidities, indication, and extent of surgery, and also the hospital administrative-type and location were retrieved. The annual-caseload of pancreatectomy was calculated for each hospital facility. The primary endpoint was 90-day mortality. Spline modeling was used to identify the different annual-caseload that influenced mortality. Logistic regressions were performed to assess if their influence was independent of confounders, and the accuracy of the model calculated. Results: Overall, 22,366 patients underwent a pancreatectomy and the mortality was 8.1%. Two cut-offs were identified (25 and 65 per year): compared with centers performing >65 resections per year, the adjusted OR of mortality was 1.865 (1.529–2.276) in centers performing ⩽25 resections per year and 1.234 (1.031–1.478) in those performing 26 to 65 resections per year. The average number of facilities performing ⩽25, 26 to 65, and >65 pancreatectomies per year was 456, 20, and 9, respectively. The percentage of patients operated in these facilities was 56.6%, 19.9%, and 23.3%, respectively. For pancreaticoduodenectomies (12,670 patients; mortality 9.2%), there were 2 cut-offs (16 and 40 pancreaticoduodenectomies per year), and both were independent predictors of mortality (adjusted OR of 1.979 and 1.333). For distal pancreatectomies (7085 patients; 6.2% mortality), there were 2 cut-offs (13 and 25 distal pancreatectomies per year), but neither was an independent predictor of outcome (area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve of the model = 0.778). Conclusions: Centralization of pancreatic surgery is theoretically justified, but currently unrealizable. As the incidence of pancreatic cancer increases, there is an urgent need to improve the training of surgeons and develop both intermediate and high-volume centers.
Alkali salt vapour deposition and in-line ion exchange on flat glass surfaces

This study suggests a different route for the modification of flat/float glass surfaces; i.e. exchange of ionic species originatingfrom in-line vapour deposition of salt as compared to the conventional route of immersing the glass in a molten saltbath. The aim of this work is to develop a more flexible and, eventually, more rapid process for improving the mechanicalstrength of flat glass by introducing external material into the surface. We discuss how chemical strengthening can beperformed through the application of potassium chloride on the glass surface by vapour deposition, and in-line thermallyactivated ion exchange. The method presented here has the potential to be up-scaled and to be used in in-line productionin the future, which would make it possible to produce large quantities of chemically strengthened flat glass at aconsiderably lower cost.
Optical properties of the human round window membrane

Abstract. Optical techniques are effective tools for diagnostic applications in medicine and are particularly attractive for the noninvasive analysis of biological tissues and fluids in vivo. Noninvasive examinations of substances via a fiber optic probe need to consider the optical properties of biological tissues obstructing the optical path. This applies to the analysis of the human perilymph, which is located behind the round window membrane. The composition of this inner ear liquid is directly correlated to inner ear hearing loss. In this work, experimental methods for studying the optical properties of the human round window membrane ex vivo are presented. For the first time, a comprehensive investigation of this tissue is performed, including optical transmission, forward scattering, and Raman scattering. The results obtained suggest the application of visible wavelengths (>400 nm) for investigating the perilymph behind the round window membrane in future.
Meta‐analysis of Trade‐offs among Plant Antiherbivore Defenses: Are Plants Jacks‐of‐All‐Trades, Masters of All?

On the basis of physiological and ecological costs of defense allocation, most plant defense theories predict the occurrence of trade‐offs between resource investment in different types of antiherbivore defenses. To test this prediction, we conducted a meta‐analysis of 31 studies published in 1976–2002 that provided data on covariation of different defensive traits in plant genotypes. We found no overall negative association between different defensive traits in plants; instead, the relationship between defensive traits varied from positive to negative depending on the types of co‐occurring defenses. Evidence of trade‐off was found only between constitutive and induced defenses. Therefore, to a large extent, plants appear to be jacks‐of‐all‐trades, masters of all and may successfully produce several types of defense without paying considerable trade‐offs. Our survey thus provides little evidence that genetic trade‐offs between defensive traits significantly constrain the evolution of multiple defenses in plants.
Salt Blocks the Renal Benefits of Ramipril in Diabetic Hypertensive Rats

To establish if the benefit of angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor therapy in retarding progressive diabetic renal injury is due to a specific intrarenal effect or the systemic hypotensive effect, we studied the effect of long-term ramipril treatment on blood pressure, glomerular filtration rate, and urinary protein excretion in streptozotocin-diabetic spontaneously hypertensive rats. The hypotensive effect of ramipril was prevented by a high salt diet, which did not alter the degree of renal angiotensin converting enzyme inhibition. Three weeks after uninephrectomy and induction of diabetes, rats were allocated to three groups. Groups 1 and 2 were given 1% NaCl, whereas group 3 was given water as drinking solution. One week later, groups 2 and 3 received 0.4 mg/kg/day ramipril in their drinking solution, which was continued over a 2-month period. Ramipril produced a blood pressure fall only in water-drinking rats (group 3) despite a similar reduction in plasma and renal angiotensin converting enzyme activity in groups 2 and 3. Salt-loaded rats had a progressive increase in urinary protein excretion over the duration of study. Ramipril treatment prevented an increase in protein excretion only in animals given water and with a reduced systolic blood pressure. Glomerular nitration rate was similar in all three groups. Ramipril treatment improved animal survival independently of a reduction in blood pressure or an effect on proteinuria. Although it is possible that angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors have specific intrarenal effects reducing progression of diabetic proteinuria, concomitant control of systemic blood pressure appears to be necessary to demonstrate a benefit.
Impaired dendritic cell function in Crohn’s disease patients with NOD2 3020insC mutation

The nucleotide oligomerization domain 2 (NOD2) 3020insC (NOD2fs) mutation increases susceptibility to Crohn’s disease (CD), but the mechanism remains controversial. Loss‐of‐function and gain‐of‐function phenotypes have been described as a result of NOD2fs. Here, we show that dendritic cells (DC) derived from CD patients homozygous for this mutation respond normally to purified Toll‐like receptor (TLR) ligands but fail to up‐regulate the costimulatory molecules CD80 and CD86 in response to the NOD2 ligand muramyl dipeptide (MDP). Moreover, they lack MDP‐induced enhancement of TLR‐mediated tumor necrosis factor α, interleukin (IL)‐12, and IL‐10 production, which is observed in control DC with intact NOD2. These data indicate that the NOD2fs mutation results in a loss‐of‐function phenotype in human myeloid DC and imply decreased immune regulation by IL‐10 as a possible mechanism for this mutation in CD.