Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The impact of treatment of depression on quality of life, disability and relapse in patients with Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disease affecting up to one million individuals in the United States. Depression is found in 40 to 50% of these patients and is associated with a variety of poor outcomes for both patients and their families. Despite this, there are few evidence‐based data to guide clinical care. This was an NIH‐funded, randomized, controlled trial of paroxetine, nortriptyline, and placebo. It included an 8 week acute phase and a 16 week blind extension phase. This report details the impact of depression treatment on quality of life (QoL) and disability in the acute and extension phase of this study. Secondary outcomes included relapse, tolerability, safety, and the impact of depression treatment on PD physical functioning. Patients who had improvement in depression, compared with those who did not, had significant gains in measures of QoL and disability (PDQ‐8, P = 0.0001; SF‐36, P = 0.0001) at 8 weeks and maintained their gains in the extension phase. Patients who were on active drug were significantly less likely to relapse in the extension phase than those on placebo (P = 0.041). Though relatively modest in size, this trial provides the first controlled data on the impact of treatment of depression on QoL and disability in PD. It suggests that successfully treating depression in PD leads to important, sustained improvements in these outcomes and that patients who improve on antidepressants are less likely to relapse than are patients who initially improve on placebo. © 2009 Movement Disorder Society
Strategic Human Resource Practice: A Functional Framework and Causal Model of Leadership Behavior, Job Satisfaction, Organizational Commitment, and Job Performance

Research objectives were to determine a functional framework and to synthesize a causal model of leadership behavior, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job performance of sugar company employees in Thailand. The study reported the responses of 591 operational employees from 24 sugar companies operating in different parts of Thailand. Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics using SPSS (version 11.5) and path analysis using LISREL (version 8). Research findings indicated that dimensions of leadership behavior, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment have mediated positive effect on job performance. Organizational commitment positively mediates the relationships between leadership behavior and job performance and between job satisfaction and job performance. Furthermore, leadership behavior is positively correlated with job satisfaction.
Factors Affecting Muslim Students Awareness of Halal Products in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

This paper is aimed to investigate the factors affecting the awareness of Muslim students towards halal food products. The variables used are religious belief, self-identity and media exposure as the independent variables and costumers’ awareness as the dependent variable. Using the convenience sampling, 234 respondents, students of Universitas Islam Indonesia, Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta and Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta were involved in this study through questionnaires. Data gathered was analysed with descriptive and causal through regression. Results of this study indicated that religious beliefs, self-identity and media exposure affect the awareness of Muslim customers towards halal food, either from partial and simultaneous analysis. Keywords: Halal Products, Religious Beliefs, Self-Identity, Media Exposure, Costumers’ Awareness JEL Classifications: D11; N35; P46
Path-planning for elastically-mounted space manipulators: experimental evaluation of the Coupling Map

The Coupling Map has been proposed as an analytical tool to describe the dynamic interaction between space manipulators which are either elastically mounted or carried by free-flying spacecraft. The Coupling Map has yielded a number of path-planning algorithms which have been successfully demonstrated in simulation to improve system performance. This paper presents an experimental evaluation of the Coupling Map and some of its path-planning algorithms. These experimental results show that the Coupling Map based path-planning algorithms are valid and viable candidates for practical implementation on space manipulator systems. <<ETX>>
Fast disentanglement-based blind quantum source separation and process tomography using a feedforward quantum-classical adapting structure

Our recent investigations of blind quantum source separation and process tomography methods for Heisenberg-coupled quantum bits (qubits) were focused on introducing a new separation principle, based on output disentanglement. We here extend them by proposing a more advanced implementation of their cost function and optimization algorithm. This leads us to move from a feedback to a feedforward adapting block, which avoids potential issues related to feedback in quantum circuits. The number of quantum source state preparations required to blindly adapt the separating system is thus strongly decreased (roughly from 107 to 104), yielding much faster adaptation.
Australasian Society of Infectious Diseases updated guidelines for the management of Clostridium difficile infection in adults and children in Australia and New Zealand

The incidence of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) continues to rise, whilst treatment remains problematic due to recurrent, refractory and potentially severe nature of disease. The treatment of C. difficile is a challenge for community and hospital‐based clinicians. With the advent of an expanding therapeutic arsenal against C. difficile since the last published Australasian guidelines, an update on CDI treatment recommendations for Australasian clinicians was required. On behalf of the Australasian Society of Infectious Diseases, we present the updated guidelines for the management of CDI in adults and children.
Crown fuel spatial variability and predictability of fire spread

Fire behavior predictions, as well as measures of uncertainty in those predictions, are essential in operational and strategic fire management decisions. While it is becoming common practice to assess uncertainty in fire behavior predictions arising from variability in weather inputs, uncertainty arising from the fire models themselves is difficult to assess. This is the case with fires in crown fuels and the operational fire behavior models used in the United States, where model assumptions, such as fuel homogeneity and steady-state spread, limit the capability of those models to provide reliable results, possibly leading to uncertainties of unknown magnitude. An emerging body of work with dynamic physics-based fire models illustrates the capabilities of those models to address potentially important factors that are not considered by operational models, such as fuel heterogeneity and transitional behaviors.
Aryl hydrocarbon receptor-interacting protein gene mutations in familial isolated pituitary adenomas: analysis in 73 families.

CONTEXT An association between germline aryl hydrocarbon receptor-interacting protein (AIP) gene mutations and pituitary adenomas was recently shown. OBJECTIVE The objective of the study was to assess the frequency of AIP gene mutations in a large cohort of patients with familial isolated pituitary adenoma (FIPA). DESIGN This was a multicenter, international, collaborative study. SETTING The study was conducted in 34 university endocrinology and genetics departments in nine countries. PATIENTS Affected members from each FIPA family were studied. Relatives of patients with AIP mutations underwent AIP sequence analysis. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Presence/absence and description of AIP gene mutations were the main outcome measures. INTERVENTION There was no intervention. RESULTS Seventy-three FIPA families were identified, with 156 patients with pituitary adenomas; the FIPA cohort was evenly divided between families with homogeneous and heterogeneous tumor expression. Eleven FIPA families had 10 germline AIP mutations. Nine mutations, R16H, G47_R54del, Q142X, E174frameshift, Q217X, Q239X, K241E, R271W, and Q285frameshift, have not been described previously. Tumors were significantly larger (P = 0.0005) and diagnosed at a younger age (P = 0.0006) in AIP mutation-positive vs. mutation-negative subjects. Somatotropinomas predominated among FIPA families with AIP mutations, but mixed GH/prolactin-secreting tumors, prolactinomas, and nonsecreting adenomas were also noted. Approximately 85% of the FIPA cohort and 50% of those with familial somatotropinomas were negative for AIP mutations. CONCLUSIONS AIP mutations, of which nine new mutations have been described here, occur in approximately 15% of FIPA families. Although pituitary tumors occurring in association with AIP mutations are predominantly somatotropinomas, other tumor types are also seen. Further study of the impact of AIP mutations on protein expression and activity is necessary to elucidate their role in pituitary tumorigenesis in FIPA.
Estimates for the luminosity function of galaxies and its evolution

ABSTRA C T A new method is presented to obtain a non-parametric maximum likelihood estimate of the luminosity function and the selection function of a flux-limited redshift survey. The method parametrizes the selection function as a series of stepwise power laws and allows possible evolution of the luminosity function. We also propose a new technique to estimate the rate of evolution of the luminosity function. This is based on a minimization of the observed large-scale power with respect to the evolutionary model. We use an ensemble of mock surveys extracted from an N-body simulation to verify the power of this method. We apply our estimators to the 1.2-Jy survey of IRAS galaxies. We find a far-infrared luminosity function in good agreement with previously published results and evidence for rather strong evolution. If the comoving number density of IRAS galaxies is assumed to scale ~﷿1 ˛ zfi P , we estimate P o 4:3 6 1:4.
Early Triassic Marine Biotic Recovery: The Predators' Perspective

Examining the geological past of our planet allows us to study periods of severe climatic and biological crises and recoveries, biotic and abiotic ecosystem fluctuations, and faunal and floral turnovers through time. Furthermore, the recovery dynamics of large predators provide a key for evaluation of the pattern and tempo of ecosystem recovery because predators are interpreted to react most sensitively to environmental turbulences. The end-Permian mass extinction was the most severe crisis experienced by life on Earth, and the common paradigm persists that the biotic recovery from the extinction event was unusually slow and occurred in a step-wise manner, lasting up to eight to nine million years well into the early Middle Triassic (Anisian) in the oceans, and even longer in the terrestrial realm. Here we survey the global distribution and size spectra of Early Triassic and Anisian marine predatory vertebrates (fishes, amphibians and reptiles) to elucidate the height of trophic pyramids in the aftermath of the end-Permian event. The survey of body size was done by compiling maximum standard lengths for the bony fishes and some cartilaginous fishes, and total size (estimates) for the tetrapods. The distribution and size spectra of the latter are difficult to assess because of preservation artifacts and are thus mostly discussed qualitatively. The data nevertheless demonstrate that no significant size increase of predators is observable from the Early Triassic to the Anisian, as would be expected from the prolonged and stepwise trophic recovery model. The data further indicate that marine ecosystems characterized by multiple trophic levels existed from the earliest Early Triassic onwards. However, a major change in the taxonomic composition of predatory guilds occurred less than two million years after the end-Permian extinction event, in which a transition from fish/amphibian to fish/reptile-dominated higher trophic levels within ecosystems became apparent.
NUMERICAL TECHNIQUES FOR MULTI-SCALE DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS WITH STOCHASTIC EFFECTS ⁄

Numerical schemes are presented for dynamical systems with multiple time-scales. Two classes of mehtods are discussed, depending on the time interval which the evolution of the slow variables in the system is sought. On rather short time intervals, the slow variables satisfy ordinary differential equations. On longer time intervals, however, fluctuations become important, and stochastic differential equations are obtained. In both cases, the numerical methods compute the evolution of the slow variables without having to derive explicitly the effective equations beforehand; rather, the coefficients entering these equations are obtained on the fly using simulations of appropriate auxiliary systems.
The Effects of Text with Melody on Text Recall for Young EFL Learners: Measuring Response Time

Song has been known to have positive effects not only as a memory aid but also as a learning facilitator. The current study aims to investigate whether the format of songs will facilitate the text recall in comparison to the format of spoken in trials of immediate and delayed text recall and whether their representations are different between L1 and L2 or not. As a result, the sung text showed positive effects not only as an immediate memory aid but also as a retention of the texts in delayed time too. Although the accuracy were higher in song condition, the responding time took longer to recall the text in song condition rather than in the spoken format. These findings from the response time can serve as empirical evidence that songs are a form of text integrated with melody, so a longer time was required to recall the integrated chunk. Nonetheless the integrated unit of text and melody boosted the accuracy in recalling texts. With regard to the representations between L1 and L2, although the effects of songs in L2 were not as salient as demonstrated in L1, they showed the similar tendency between L1 and L2.
Segmentation-Based MR Attenuation Correction Including Bones Also Affects Quantitation in Brain Studies: An Initial Result of 18F-FP-CIT PET/MR for Patients with Parkinsonism

Attenuation correction (AC) with an ultrashort echo time (UTE) sequence has recently been used in combination with segmentation for cortical bone identification for brain PET/MR studies. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the quantification of 18F-fluoropropyl-carbomethoxyiodophenylnortropane (18F-FP-CIT) binding in brain PET/MR, particularly focusing on effects of UTE-based AC including bone segmentation. Methods: Sixteen patients with initially suspected parkinsonism were prospectively enrolled. An emission scan was acquired 110 min after 18F-FP-CIT injection on a dedicated PET/MR scanner, immediately followed by another emission scan using a PET/CT scanner 120 min after the injection. A UTE-based attenuation map was used to classify the voxels into 3 tissues: bone, soft tissue, and air. All PET images were spatially normalized, and a specific-to-nonspecific dopamine transporter (DAT) binding ratio (BR) was calculated using statistical probabilistic anatomic mapping. The level of agreement was assessed with intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). Voxelwise comparison between PET images acquired from PET/MR and PET/CT was performed. We compared non–attenuation-corrected images to analyze UTE-based AC effects on DAT quantification. Results: BR in the putamen obtained from PET/MR and PET/CT showed low interequipment variability, whereas BR in the caudate nucleus showed significant variability (ICC = 0.967 and 0.682 for putamen and caudate nucleus, respectively). BR in the caudate nucleus was significantly underestimated by PET/MR, compared with PET/CT (mean difference of BR = 0.66, P < 0.0001). Voxelwise analysis revealed that PET/MR showed significantly low BR in the periventricular regions, which was caused by a misclassification of the ventricle as air on the attenuation map. We also compared non-AC images, revealing low interequipment variability even in the caudate nucleus (ICC = 0.937 and 0.832 for putamen and caudate nucleus, respectively). Conclusion: Our data demonstrate spatial bias of the DAT BR on 18F-FP-CIT PET/MR. Voxelwise analysis and comparison to non-AC images identified the misclassification of ventricle as air to be the cause of bias. To obtain reliable quantification for brain PET/MR studies including 18F-FP-CIT PET, alternative and more reliable segmentation strategies are required.
Basel III and CEO compensation in banks: Pay structures as a regulatory signal

This paper proposes a new regulatory approach that implements capital requirements contingent on managerial compensation. We argue that excessive risk taking in the financial sector originates from the shareholder moral hazard created by government guarantees rather than from corporate governance failures within banks. The idea of the proposed regulation is to utilize the compensation scheme to drive a wedge between the interests of top management and shareholders to counteract shareholder risk-shifting incentives. The decisive advantage of this approach compared to existing regulation is that the regulator does not need to be able to properly measure the bank investment risk, which has been shown to be a difficult task during the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
Age-dependent inhibition of ectopic calcification: a possible role for fetuin-A and osteopontin in patients with juvenile dermatomyositis with calcinosis.

OBJECTIVES To assess if age and/or age-dependent variations in the levels of two major calcification regulatory proteins, fetuin-A and osteopontin, could be associated with an increased risk of calcinosis in children with juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM). METHODS The frequency of calcinosis was derived from a national UK database of 212 cases of JDM. Serum fetuin-A and plasma osteopontin levels were determined using ELISA in 15 JDM patients with calcinosis and 15 JDM patients without calcinosis. Healthy controls were 19 age-matched children, 24 adolescents and 13 adults. Sixteen patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) were additional paediatric disease controls. RESULTS Of the 212 JDM cases 10% had calcinosis. Calcinosis patients had younger age of disease onset than those without calcinosis (mean age of 5.3 yrs vs 7.1 yrs, respectively, P = 0.016). No significant difference in fetuin-A or osteopontin could be detected between the two JDM groups. Fetuin-A levels in all groups of children and the adolescent group were much lower than described previously in adults, and there was a significant positive correlation between age and fetuin-A level, and also between osteopontin levels in plasma and serum fetuin-A. CONCLUSIONS Children who develop JDM at an younger age may have increased risk of developing calcinosis. Physiologically low levels of fetuin-A in young children combined with an additional negative acute-phase effect on fetuin-A due to chronic inflammation could explain in part the propensity to develop ectopic calcification observed in JDM patients, and why calcinosis is less frequent in adults with dermatomyositis.
Balancing performance measures for information security management: A balanced scorecard framework

Purpose – To provide useful references for manufacturing industry which guide the linkage of business strategies and performance indicators for information security projects.Design/methodology/approach – This study uses balanced scorecard (BSC) framework to set up performance index for information security management in organizations. Moreover, BSC used is to strengthen the linkage between foundational performance indicators and progressive business strategy theme.Findings – The general model of information security management builds the strategy map with 12 strategy themes and 35 key performance indicators are established. The development of strategy map also express how to link strategy themes to key performance indicators.Research limitations/implications – The investigation of listed manufacturing companies in Taiwan may limit the application elsewhere.Practical implications – Traditional performance measurement system like return on investment, sales growth is not enough to describe and manage intang.
Acoustic unit discovery and pronunciation generation from a grapheme-based lexicon

We present a framework for discovering acoustic units and generating an associated pronunciation lexicon from an initial grapheme-based recognition system. Our approach consists of two distinct contributions. First, context-dependent grapheme models are clustered using a spectral clustering approach to create a set of phone-like acoustic units. Next, we transform the pronunciation lexicon using a statistical machine translation-based approach. Pronunciation hypotheses generated from a decoding of the training set are used to create a phrase-based translation table. We propose a novel method for scoring the phrase-based rules that significantly improves the output of the transformation process. Results on an English language dataset demonstrate the combined methods provide a 13% relative reduction in word error rate compared to a baseline grapheme-based system. Our approach could potentially be applied to low-resource languages without existing lexicons, such as in the Babel project.
Global Steady-State Controllability of One-Dimensional Semilinear Heat Equations

We investigate the problem of exact boundary controllability of semilinear one-dimensional heat equations. We prove that it is possible to move from any steady-state to any other by means of a boundary control, provided that both are in the same connected component of the set of steady-states. The proof is based on an effective feedback stabilization procedure, which is implemented.
Seasonal variation of peroxyacetylnitrate (PAN) in coastal Antarctica measured with a new instrument for the detection of sub-part per trillion mixing ratios of PAN

An automated gas chromatograph with sam- ple pre-concentration for the measurement of peroxyacetyl- nitrate (PAN) was constructed with a minimum detection limit below 1 pptv. This instrument was deployed at the British Antarctic Survey's Halley Research Station, Antarc- tica (75.6 S, 26.6 W) as part of the CHABLIS (Chem- istry of the Antarctic Boundary Layer and the Interface with Snow) campaign. Hourly measurements were carried out between July 2004 and February 2005 with observed max- imum and minimum mixing ratios of 52.3 and<0.6 pptv, re- spectively with a mean PAN mixing ratio for the measure- ment period of 9.2 pptv (standard deviation: 6.2 pptv). The changes in PAN mixing ratios typically occurred over peri- ods of several days to a week and showed a strong similar- ity to the variation in alkenes. The mixing ratio of PAN at Halley has a possible seasonal cycle with a winter maximum and summer minimum, though the cycle is incomplete and the data are very variable. Calculations indicate that gross local PAN production is approximately 1 pptv d 1 in spring and 0.6 pptv d 1 in summer. Net loss of PAN transported to Halley in the summer is a small gas-phase source of NOx and net production of PAN in the spring is a very small NOx sink.
Introduction to Secure PRNGs

Pseudo-Random Number Generators (PRNGs) are required for generating secret keys in cryptographic algorithms, generating sequences of packet in Network simulations (workload generators) and other applications in various fields. In this paper we will discuss a list of some requirements for generating a reliable random sequence and then will present some PRNG methods which are based on combinational chaotic logistic map. In the final section after a brief introduction to two statistical test packets, TestU01 and NIST suite tests, the PRNG methods which are presented in the fourth section will be appraised under these test packets and the results will be reported.