Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Gluten Sensitivity in a Subset of Children With Insulin Dependent Diabetes Mellitus

OBJECTIVES:The association between celiac disease and insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) is well established. Rectal gluten challenge has been used in patients with celiac disease and in first degree relatives as a tool to assess the mucosal immune response to gluten. The aim of this study was to assess the mucosal immune response to gluten in IDDM children by rectal gluten challenge.METHODS:Rectal biopsy specimens were obtained from 19 children with IDDM before and 6 h after rectal challenge with 2 g of a peptic tryptic digest of gliadin. A total of 16 treated celiac patients and 10 control subjects were also investigated. Epithelium and lamina propria CD3+ and γδ+ lymphocytes were counted with reference to a standard reference area of muscolaris mucosae (104 μm2). RESULTS:After a local instillation of gliadin, a significant (>mean + 1 SD) percentage increment of lamina propria and epithelium CD3+ and of lamina propria and epithelium γδ+ lymphocytes was observed in five IDDM children, as compared to 11 and 13 celiac patients and one and two controls, respectively. A discriminant analysis allowed correct classification of 100% of patients with celiac disease and controls. The same analysis classified four of 19 IDDM children in the group of celiac patients. The positivity was associated with normal serology (antigliadin antibody, antiendomysial antibody, and antitissue transglutaminase antibodies) and a morphologically normal jejunal mucosa. All four patients had HLA-DQ alleles associated with celiac disease.CONCLUSIONS:Approximately 20% of IDDM children react to rectal instillation of gliadin. Long term follow-up is necessary to establish whether these subjects are at increased risk for developing celiac disease.
Human-robot embodied interaction in hallway settings: a pilot user study

This paper explores the problem of embodied interaction between a service robot and a person in a hallway setting. For operation in environments with people that have limited experience with robots, a behaviour that signals awareness of the persons and safety of motion is essential. A control strategy based on human spatial behaviour studies is presented that adopts human-robot interaction patterns similar to those used in person-person encounters. The results of a pilot study with human subjects are presented in which the users have evaluated the acceptability of the robot behaviour patterns during passage with respect to three basic parameters: the robot speed, the signaling distance at which the robot starts the maneuver and the lateral distance from the person for safe passage. The study has shown a good overall user response and has provided some useful indications on how to design a hallway passage behaviour that could be most acceptable to human users.
On Bootstrapping the ROC Curve

This paper is devoted to thoroughly investigating how to bootstrap the ROC curve, a widely used visual tool for evaluating the accuracy of test/scoring statistics in the bipartite setup. The issue of confidence bands for the ROC curve is considered and a resampling procedure based on a smooth version of the empirical distribution called the "smoothed bootstrap" is introduced. Theoretical arguments and simulation results are presented to show that the "smoothed bootstrap" is preferable to a "naive" bootstrap in order to construct accurate confidence bands.
Variability of interpretive accuracy among diagnostic mammography facilities.

BACKGROUND Interpretive performance of screening mammography varies substantially by facility, but performance of diagnostic interpretation has not been studied. METHODS Facilities performing diagnostic mammography within three registries of the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium were surveyed about their structure, organization, and interpretive processes. Performance measurements (false-positive rate, sensitivity, and likelihood of cancer among women referred for biopsy [positive predictive value of biopsy recommendation {PPV2}]) from January 1, 1998, through December 31, 2005, were prospectively measured. Logistic regression and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses, adjusted for patient and radiologist characteristics, were used to assess the association between facility characteristics and interpretive performance. All statistical tests were two-sided. RESULTS Forty-five of the 53 facilities completed a facility survey (85% response rate), and 32 of the 45 facilities performed diagnostic mammography. The analyses included 28 100 diagnostic mammograms performed as an evaluation of a breast problem, and data were available for 118 radiologists who interpreted diagnostic mammograms at the facilities. Performance measurements demonstrated statistically significant interpretive variability among facilities (sensitivity, P = .006; false-positive rate, P < .001; and PPV2, P < .001) in unadjusted analyses. However, after adjustment for patient and radiologist characteristics, only false-positive rate variation remained statistically significant and facility traits associated with performance measures changed (false-positive rate = 6.5%, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 5.5% to 7.4%; sensitivity = 73.5%, 95% CI = 67.1% to 79.9%; and PPV2 = 33.8%, 95% CI = 29.1% to 38.5%). Facilities reporting that concern about malpractice had moderately or greatly increased diagnostic examination recommendations at the facility had a higher false-positive rate (odds ratio [OR] = 1.48, 95% CI = 1.09 to 2.01) and a non-statistically significantly higher sensitivity (OR = 1.74, 95% CI = 0.94 to 3.23). Facilities offering specialized interventional services had a non-statistically significantly higher false-positive rate (OR = 1.97, 95% CI = 0.94 to 4.1). No characteristics were associated with overall accuracy by ROC curve analyses. CONCLUSIONS Variation in diagnostic mammography interpretation exists across facilities. Failure to adjust for patient characteristics when comparing facility performance could lead to erroneous conclusions. Malpractice concerns are associated with interpretive performance.
Investigation of Kinetic Isotopic Fractionation of Water During Bare Soil Evaporation

The kinetic fractionation factor (αK) controls to a large extent the isotopic enrichment of surface waters during evaporation (E). In contrast to the well‐known vapor‐to‐liquid isotopic equilibrium fractionation factor, αK has still not yet been properly characterized for soil water evaporation. In this study, we investigated the αK daily dynamics during a series of three laboratory experiments differing in soil water availability and aerodynamic conditions. For this, we applied a commonly used isotopic evaporation model and tested it in two different approaches. First, a two‐end‐member mixing model (Keeling plot) was fitted to the measured isotopic composition of the laboratory air water vapor to obtain αK. In a second approach, αK was obtained from the slope of the evaporation line in a dual isotopic coordinate system. For both methods, the isotopic composition of the soil water was determined nondestructively and online by sampling the soil water vapor with gas‐permeable microporous tubing. Results highlighted the limitation of the first approach, as the determination of the isotopic composition of E with the Keeling plot was challenging with the laboratory setup. The second approach provided αK values within the range ( αK2H = 1.0132 ± 0.0013; αK18O = 1.0149 ± 0.0012) reported in the literature and pointed to the prevalence of turbulent water vapor transport under water‐saturated soil conditions but also at soil water content significantly lower than the saturated value. In a third experiment, temporal dynamics of the atmospheric water vapor intrusion in the topmost soil layer could be observed during an isotopic labeling pulse.
Prevalence and correlates of adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: meta-analysis

Background In spite of the growing literature about adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), relatively little is known about the prevalence and correlates of this disorder. Aims To estimate the prevalence of adult ADHD and to identify its demographic correlates using meta-regression analysis. Method We used the MEDLINE, PsycLit and EMBASE databases as well as hand-searching to find relevant publications. Results The pooled prevalence of adult ADHD was 2.5% (95% CI 2.1–3.1). Gender and mean age, interacting with each other, were significantly related to prevalence of ADHD. Metaregression analysis indicated that the proportion of participants with ADHD decreased with age when men and women were equally represented in the sample. Conclusions Prevalence of ADHD in adults declines with age in the general population. We think, however, that the unclear validity of DSM–IV diagnostic criteria for this condition can lead to reduced prevalence rates by underestimation of the prevalence of adult ADHD.
CodeTube: Extracting Relevant Fragments from Software Development Video Tutorials

Nowadays developers heavily rely on sources of informal documentation, including Q&A forums, slides, or video tutorials, the latter being particularly useful to provide introductory notions for a piece of technology. The current practice is that developers have to browse sources individually, which in the case of video tutorials is cumbersome, as they are lengthy and cannot be searched based on their contents. We present CodeTube, a Web-based recommender system that analyzes the contents of video tutorials and is able to provide, given a query, cohesive and self-contained video fragments, along with links to relevant Stack Overflow discussions. CodeTube relies on a combination of textual analysis and image processing applied on video tutorial frames and speech transcripts to split videos into cohesive fragments, index them and identify related Stack Overflow discussions.DEMO URL: http://codetube.inf. usi.ch VIDEO URL: https://youtu.be/yUsUG3g87Dg
Local Similarity-Aware Deep Feature Embedding

Existing deep embedding methods in vision tasks are capable of learning a compact Euclidean space from images, where Euclidean distances correspond to a similarity metric. To make learning more effective and efficient, hard sample mining is usually employed, with samples identified through computing the Euclidean feature distance. However, the global Euclidean distance cannot faithfully characterize the true feature similarity in a complex visual feature space, where the intraclass distance in a high-density region may be larger than the interclass distance in low-density regions. In this paper, we introduce a Position-Dependent Deep Metric (PDDM) unit, which is capable of learning a similarity metric adaptive to local feature structure. The metric can be used to select genuinely hard samples in a local neighborhood to guide the deep embedding learning in an online and robust manner. The new layer is appealing in that it is pluggable to any convolutional networks and is trained end-to-end. Our local similarity-aware feature embedding not only demonstrates faster convergence and boosted performance on two complex image retrieval datasets, its large margin nature also leads to superior generalization results under the large and open set scenarios of transfer learning and zero-shot learning on ImageNet 2010 and ImageNet-10K datasets.
Applying a Time‐Patterned Typology of Homelessness Among Individuals with Mental Illness

Identification of subgroups of the homeless populations, or typologies, has been an important research priority to guide homelessness services and policies. This study builds on previous typological research conducted in the general homeless population by focusing on individuals with mental illness to further delineate typologies within a more homogenous subset of the homeless population. A time-patterned typology based on episodes of street and shelter homelessness over a four-year period was applied to a sample of 246 individuals identified through mental health administrative records. Four groups were created based upon patterns of homelessness: 26.8% experienced homelessness for 4 years, 13.4% had one episode of homelessness but were no longer homeless at the end of the follow-up, 48.4% had at least two episodes of homelessness, and 11.4% had a single episode of homelessness lasting 3 months or less. Findings from a multinomial logistic regression indicated that gender, presence of a psychotic disorder, substance abuse, and year of study enrollment significantly predicted group membership. Residential trajectories upon exit from homelessness and at the end of the four-year follow-up were examined. Implications for current policy and future research are discussed.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE NUMBER OF REPETITIONS PERFORMED AT GIVEN INTENSITIES IS DIFFERENT IN ENDURANCE AND STRENGTH TRAINED ATHLETES

Prescribing training intensity and volume is a key problem when designing resistance training programmes. One approach is to base training prescription on the number of repetitions performed at a given percentage of repetition maximum due to the correlation found between these two measures. However, previous research has raised questions as to the accuracy of this method, as the repetitions completed at different percentages of 1RM can differ based upon the characteristics of the athlete. The objective of this study was therefore to evaluate the effect of an athlete's training background on the relationship between the load lifted (as a percentage of one repetition maximum) and the number of repetitions achieved. Eight weightlifters and eight endurance runners each completed a one repetition maximum test on the leg press and completed repetitions to fatigue at 90, 80 and 70% of their one repetition maximum. The endurance runners completed significantly more repetitions than the weightlifters at 70% (39.9 ± 17.6 versus 17.9 ± 2.8; p < 0.05) and 80% (19.8 ± 6.4 versus 11.8 ± 2.7; p < 0.05) of their one repetition maximum but not at 90% (10.8 ± 3.9 versus 7.0 ± 2.1; p > 0.05) of one repetition maximum. These differences could be explained by the contrasting training adaptations demanded by each sport. This study suggests that traditional guidelines may underestimate the potential number of repetitions that can be completed at a given percentage of 1RM, particularly for endurance trained athletes.
Determination of heavy metal pollution index of ground water of village Wallipur in Ludhiana district

The objective of the study was to reveal the seasonal variations in the groundwater quality with respect to heavy metals contamination near Buddha Nullah in Ludhiana district. To get the extent of trace metals contamination, groundwater samples from tube wells were randomly collected from 16 different points on both sides along the course of Buddha Nullah from areas of Bhamian Kalan, Khasi Kalan and Wallipur Kalan villages of Ludhiana district during first fortnight of June (Pre-monsoon), first fortnight of November (Post-monsoon) and first fortnight of January (Winter season) during the year 2013-14. The concentrations of toxic and heavy metals such as metalloids B, As, Pb; alkaline earth metals Mg, Ca; alkali metals Na, K; transition metals Cr, Mn, Fe, Cu, Zn, Cd and nonmetal S were determined. The heavy metal pollution index (HPI) was calculated. Most of the parameters were found within permissible limit of BIS, 2004. The average values of concentration of Ca, Cr, Mn, As and Pb for pre-monsoon season was higher than average concentration of post-monsoon and winter season. Overall HPI calculated based on the mean concentration of the heavy metals was found to be 18.11, 15.32 and 16.10 for pre-monsoon, post-monsoon and winter season, respectively, which was below the critical pollution index value of 100. The study recommended proper treatment to the sewage water which is being discharged into the Buddha Nullah.
Online Review Ratings and the Impact on the Number of Visits to a Tourist and Cultural Attraction: the case of the Loire Valley and TripAdvisor

Do TripAdvisor ratings affect the choice of attraction visited? Is there a link between these ratings and browsing experience on the tourist attraction’s web page? The first part of this research programme focuses on precisely measuring web and physical visits of 104 large tourist attractions in the Loire Valley. Each attraction has over 10,000 annual visits and some exceed 50,000. A study was made of all the attractions, and then according to the size and type of tourist attraction. The results are counter-intuitive. TripAdvisor ratings do not seem to have a significant impact on the choice of the site visited. A number of suggestions are put forward as to the reason for this. First, an attraction’s size impacts the number of ratings and therefore the level of risk for a consumer. Further, some large Loire Valley sites have a very important “natural attraction” (the Chateau de Chambor, for example), which means they are able to attract a large number of visitors irrespective of their TripAdvisor rating. This makes them must-see tourist attractions in central France. Finally, this study did not take into account the role of tour operators. Many tour operators offer package tours to central France, their itinerary is pre-planned and the traveller is unable to alter these. The first part of the research ends with a recommendation that further study be carried out.
[Long-term results of total hip arthroplasty in patients with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis].

OBJECTIVES We evaluated the long-term results of total hip arthroplasty (THA) in patients with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA). METHODS The study included 37 hips of 23 patients (22 females, 1 male; mean age 22 years; range 17 to 30 years) who underwent THA for hip degeneration secondary to JRA. All arthroplasties were performed through an anterolateral approach by the same senior surgeon. The mean body surface of the patients was 1.5 m2 (range 1.1 to 1.7 m2) and the mean symptom duration to surgery was 12 years (range 7 to 16 years). Twenty-three hips received cemented, 14 hips received hybrid prostheses. In seven hips with an extremely narrow femoral medulla and shallow acetabulum, a CDH prosthesis was used. The hips were evaluated using the Harris hip score. Prosthetic loosening and displacement and heterotopic bone formation were assessed on follow-up radiographs. The mean follow-up period was 135 months (range 58 to 212 months). RESULTS The mean Harris hip score increased from 27.2 (range 11 to 69) to 79.5 (range 37 to 87) postoperatively. At final follow-ups, all the patients were satisfied with the outcome and were able to walk without support. Three hips (8.1%; 3 patients) required revision. The overall Kaplan-Meier implant survival rate was 86.5%. There were no significant correlations between the Harris hip score and radiographic loosening and the presence of calcification around the prosthesis. Heterotopic bone formation of grade I was observed in 17 hips (46%). CONCLUSION Even though it is performed at young ages, THA considerably improves quality of life of patients with JRA having hip joint involvement and has a comparable implant survival.
Identification of bacterial agents of enteric diseases by multiplex PCR in growing-finishing pigs

In Brazil, the most common bacterial enteric diseases affecting growing and finishing pigs are porcine proliferative enteritis, porcine intestinal spirochetosis, swine dysentery, and salmonellosis. The diagnosis of these diseases by routine culture techniques is expensive, difficult, time-consuming, and even impossible, in cases of porcine proliferative enteritis. The detection of pathogens by polymerase chain reaction is a highly sensitive and specific method that can be an useful tool in veterinary diagnosis. Two multiplex PCR (M-PCR) assays were tested for simultaneous detection and identification of bacterial agents associated with porcine proliferative enteritis, porcine intestinal spirochetosis, swine dysentery, and salmonellosis in diarrheic fecal samples. The DNA obtained from pure cultures of each bacterial agent or mixed in different combinations and concentrations was amplified by using Lawsonia intracellularis and Salmonella, or Brachyspira pilosicoli and Brachyspira hyodysenteriae specific M-PCR assays. After electrophoresis in agarose gel and staining, the amplification products indicated the presence of individual or simultaneous amplification of L. intracellularis and Salmonella or B. pilosicoli and B. hyodysenteriae specific DNA sequences. After standardization, the M-PCR tests were used to test 541 swine diarrheic fecal samples obtained from different regions in Brazil. The most frequently detected pathogen was Lawsonia intracellularis (13%), followed by Salmonella (4.8%), B. hyodysenteriae (1.4%), B. pilosicoli (1%) and their various associations. Results from this study suggest that the two M-PCR assays can be used for specific detection and identification of four important enteric bacterial pathogens alone or in combination.
Effect of Feline Interferon‐Omega on the Survival Time and Quality of Life of Cats with Feline Infectious Peritonitis

Background: There is no therapy with proven efficacy to treat cats with feline infectious peritonitis (FIP). Hypothesis: Feline interferon‐omega (FeIFN‐ω) prolongs survival time and increases quality of life in cats with FIP. Animals: Thirty‐seven privately owned cats were subjects of this study. Methods: The study was performed as a placebo‐controlled double‐blind trial. Feline infectious peritonitis was confirmed by histology or immunostaining of feline coronavirus (FCoV) antigen in effusion or tissue macrophages or both. The cats were randomly selected for treatment with either FeIFN‐to or a placebo. All cats received adjunctive treatment with glucocorticoids and antibiotics and passive immunization with Feliserin. Results: There was no statistically significant difference in the survival time of cats treated with FeIFN‐ω versus placebo or in any other variable evaluated (with the exception of the lymphocyte count). The cats survived between 3 and 200 days (median, 9 days). There was only 1 long‐term survivor (>3 months), and the cat was in the FeIFN‐ω group. Conclusion and Clinical Relevance: No effect of FeIFN‐ω on survival time or quality of life could be demonstrated in this study.