Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Delayed Influence of Spinal Cord Injury on the Amino Acids of NO• Metabolism in Rat Cerebral Cortex Is Attenuated by Thiamine

Severe spinal cord injuries (SCIs) result in chronic neuroinflammation in the brain, associated with the development of cognitive and behavioral impairments. Nitric oxide (NO•) is a gaseous messenger involved in neuronal signaling and inflammation, contributing to nitrosative stress under dysregulated production of reactive nitrogen species. In this work, biochemical changes induced in the cerebral cortex of rats 8 weeks after SCI are assessed by quantification of the levels of amino acids participating in the NO• and glutathione metabolism. The contribution of the injury-induced neurodegeneration is revealed by comparison of the SCI- and laminectomy (LE)-subjected animals. Effects of the operative interventions are assessed by comparison of the operated (LE/SCI) and non-operated animals. Lower ratios of citrulline (Cit) to arginine (Arg) or Cit to ornithine and a more profound decrease in the ratio of lysine to glycine distinguish SCI animals from those after LE. The data suggest decreased NO• production from both Arg and homoarginine in the cortex 8 weeks after SCI. Both LE and SCI groups show a strong decrease in the level of cortex glutathione. The neurotropic, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant actions of thiamine (vitamin B1) prompted us to study the thiamine effects on the SCI-induced changes in the NO• and glutathione metabolism. A thiamine injection (400 mg/kg intraperitoneally) within 24 h after SCI abrogates the changes in the cerebral cortex amino acids related to NO•. Thiamine-induced normalization of the brain glutathione levels after LE and SCI may involve increased supply of glutamate for glutathione biosynthesis. Thus, thiamine protects from sequelae of SCI on NO•-related amino acids and glutathione in cerebral cortex.
Amerindian Helicobacter pylori Strains Go Extinct, as European Strains Expand Their Host Range

We studied the diversity of bacteria and host in the H. pylori-human model. The human indigenous bacterium H. pylori diverged along with humans, into African, European, Asian and Amerindian groups. Of these, Amerindians have the least genetic diversity. Since niche diversity widens the sets of resources for colonizing species, we predicted that the Amerindian H. pylori strains would be the least diverse. We analyzed the multilocus sequence (7 housekeeping genes) of 131 strains: 19 cultured from Africans, 36 from Spanish, 11 from Koreans, 43 from Amerindians and 22 from South American Mestizos. We found that all strains that had been cultured from Africans were African strains (hpAfrica1), all from Spanish were European (hpEurope) and all from Koreans were hspEAsia but that Amerindians and Mestizos carried mixed strains: hspAmerind and hpEurope strains had been cultured from Amerindians and hpEurope and hpAfrica1 were cultured from Mestizos. The least genetically diverse H. pylori strains were hspAmerind. Strains hpEurope were the most diverse and showed remarkable multilocus sequence mosaicism (indicating recombination). The lower genetic structure in hpEurope strains is consistent with colonization of a diversity of hosts. If diversity is important for the success of H. pylori, then the low diversity of Amerindian strains might be linked to their apparent tendency to disappear. This suggests that Amerindian strains may lack the needed diversity to survive the diversity brought by non-Amerindian hosts.
A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of tumor necrosis factor-alpha blockade in severe persistent asthma.

RATIONALE The treatment effect of golimumab, a human monoclonal antibody against tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha, in severe persistent asthma is unknown. OBJECTIVES To assess the safety and efficacy of golimumab in a large population of patients with uncontrolled, severe persistent asthma. METHODS From 2004 to 2006, 309 patients with severe and uncontrolled asthma, despite high-dose inhaled corticosteroids and long-acting beta(2) agonists, were randomized 1:1:1:1 to monthly subcutaneous injections of placebo or golimumab (50, 100, or 200 mg) through Week 52. Coprimary endpoints were the change from baseline through Week 24 in prebronchodilator percent-predicted FEV(1) and the number of severe asthma exacerbations through Week 24. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS No significant differences were observed for the change in percent-predicted FEV1 (least squares mean: placebo, 2.44 [95% confidence interval (CI) -0.574 to 5.461]; combined 100-mg and 200-mg, 2.91 [0.696-5.116]) or severe exacerbations (mean +/- SD: placebo, 0.5 +/- 1.07 vs. combined 100-mg and 200-mg 0.5 +/- 0.97) through week 24. Through Week 24, 2.6% of patients treated with placebo vs. 19.5% of those treated with golimumab discontinued the study agent, and 1.3% and 7.8% discontinued study participation, respectively. An unfavorable risk-benefit profile led to early discontinuation of study-agent administration after the Week-24 database lock. Through Week 76, 20.5% of patients treated with placebo and 30.3% of patients treated with golimumab experienced serious adverse events, with serious infections occurring more frequently in golimumab-treated patients. One death and all eight malignancies occurred in the active groups. CONCLUSIONS Overall, treatment with golimumab did not demonstrate a favorable risk-benefit profile in this study population of patients with severe persistent asthma. Clinical trial registered with www.clinicaltrials. gov (NCT00207740).
An Experimental Technique for Estimating the ESR and Reactance Intrinsic Values of Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitors

This paper presents an experimental technique that allows the determination of the reactance and ESR intrinsic values of aluminum electrolytic capacitors. The equivalent circuit of an electrolytic capacitor comprises an equivalent series inductance (ESL), an equivalent series resistance (ESR) and a capacitance (C), whose values change with frequency. Therefore, the behavior of an electrolytic capacitor varies from approximately a simple capacitor for low frequencies, to a resistor at its resonance frequency, and finally to an inductor for frequencies higher than its resonance frequency. The knowledge of the resonance frequency of the electrolytic capacitors, as well as their equivalent circuit at the operating frequency becomes of paramount importance for designing purposes. The ESR is one of the most critical problems of static converters that operate near the resonance frequency of the electrolytic capacitors. An increased ESR value leads to a significant increase in the alternate component of the output voltage, requiring a constant action of the control system. To validate the proposed technique and to demonstrate its applicability some experimental and simulated results are presented
Efficient VLSI Layouts for Homogeneous Product Networks

In this paper, we develop generalized methods to layout homogeneous product networks with any number of dimensions, and analyze their VLSI complexity by deriving upper and lower bounds on the area and maximum wire length. In the literature, lower bounds are generally obtained by computing lower bounds on the bisection width or the crossing number of the network being laid out. In this paper, we define a new measure that we call "maximal congestion", that can be used to obtain both the bisection width and the crossing number, thereby unifying the two approaches. Upper bounds are traditionally obtained by constructing layouts based on separators or bifurcators. Both methods have the basic limitation that they are applicable only for graphs with bounded vertex degree. The separators approach generally yields good layouts when good separators can be found, but it is difficult to find a good separator for an arbitrary graph. The bifurcators approach is easier to apply, but it generally yields larger area and wire lengths. We show how to obtain "strong separators" as well as bifurcators for any homogeneous product network, as long as the factor graph has bounded vertex degree. We illustrate application of both methods to layout a number of interesting product networks. Furthermore, we introduce a new layout method for product networks based on the combination of collinear layouts. This method is more powerful than the two methods above because it is applicable even when the factor graph has unbounded vertex degree. It also yields smaller area than the earlier methods. In fact, our method has led to the optimal area for all of the homogeneous product networks we considered in this paper with one exception, which is very close to optimal. In regards to wire lengths, the results obtained by our method turned out to be the best of the three methods for all the examples we considered, again subject to one (and the same) exception. We give an extensive variety of such examples.
Exploring the complexity of the childhood trait–psychopathology association: Continuity, pathoplasty, and complication effects

Abstract Four different models have been generally proposed as plausible etiological explanations for the relation between personality and psychopathology, namely, the vulnerability, complication, pathoplasty, and spectrum or continuity model. The current study entails a joint investigation of the continuity, pathoplasty, and complication models to explain the nature of the associations between early maladaptive traits and psychopathology over time in 717 referred and community children (54.4% girls), aged from 8 to 14 years. Across a 2-year time span, maladaptive traits and psychopathology were measured at three different time points, thereby relying on comprehensive and age-specific dimensional operationalizations of both personality symptoms and psychopathology. The results demonstrate overall compelling evidence for the continuity model, finding more focused support for pathoplasty and complication effects for particular combinations of personality symptoms and psychopathology dimensions. As expected, the continuity associations were found to be more robust for those personality–psychopathology associations that are conceptually closer, such as the emotional instability/introversion–internalizing problems association and the disagreeableness–externalizing problems association. Continuity associations were also stronger when personality was considered from a maladaptive rather than from a general trait perspective. The implication of the findings for the treatment of psychopathology and personality symptoms are briefly discussed.
Ontology-based framework for context-aware mobile learning

Mobile learning is becoming an important research topic as people are increasingly connected through smart phones that combine telephony, computing, messaging, and multimedia. The process of designing, communicating and presenting learning resources for mobile learners poses new challenges to the research community. This is mainly due to the limited bandwidth of wireless networks, limited resource available on mobile devices, and the special requirements of mobile learners. In this paper, an attempt is made to solve some of these problems by proposing an ontology-based framework for context-aware mobile learning. The system consists mainly of a rule-based ontology and a search agent. The rule-based ontology component is driven by the learner profile to contextualize learning content accordingly. The goal is to extract from a source ontology a lightweight target ontology by firing a set of rules based on the learner profile. The extracted conceptual knowledge is then mapped to a set of learning objects that meet the technical requirements of the used mobile technology. The mapping is geared by a search agent that searches a set of distributed learning objects repositories for feasible lightweight learning objects.
Linguistic feature extraction using independent component analysis

Our aim is to find syntactic and semantic relationships of words based on the analysis of corpora. We propose the application of independent component analysis, which seems to have clear advantages over two classic methods: latent semantic analysis and self-organizing maps. Latent semantic analysis is a simple method for automatic generation of concepts that are useful, e.g., in encoding documents for information retrieval purposes. However, these concepts cannot easily be interpreted by humans. Self-organizing maps can be used to generate an explicit diagram which characterizes the relationships between words. The resulting map reflects syntactic categories in the overall organization and semantic categories in the local level. The self-organizing map does not, however, provide any explicit distinct categories for the words. Independent component analysis applied on word context data gives distinct features which reflect syntactic and semantic categories. Thus, independent component analysis gives features or categories that are both explicit and can easily be interpreted by humans. This result can be obtained without any human supervision or tagged corpora that would have some predetermined morphological, syntactic or semantic information.
Seizure outcome of epilepsy surgery in focal epilepsies associated with temporomesial glioneuronal tumors: lesionectomy compared with tailored resection.

OBJECT The authors retrospectively analyzed and compared seizure outcome in a series of 28 patients with temporomesial glioneuronal tumors associated with epilepsy who underwent 1 of 2 different epilepsy surgery procedures: lesionectomy or tailored resection. METHODS The 28 patients were divided into 2 groups, with 14 cases in each group. In Group A, surgery was limited to the tumor (lesionectomy), whereas Group B patients underwent tailored resection involving removal of the tumor and the epileptogenic zone as identified by a neurophysiological noninvasive presurgical study. RESULTS In Group A (10 male and 4 female patients) the interval between onset of seizures and surgery ranged from 1 to 33 years (mean 10.6 years). Patients' ages ranged from 3 to 61 years (mean 23.1 years). The epileptogenic lesion was on the left side in 6 patients and the right in 8 patients. Mean follow-up was 9.8 years (range 6.5-15 years). The Engel classification system, used to determine postoperative seizure outcome, showed 6 patients (42.8%) were Engel Class I and 8 (57.1%) were Engel Class II. In Group B (6 male and 8 female patients) the interval between onset of seizures and surgery ranged from 0.5 to 25 years (mean 8.6 years). Patients' ages ranged from 3 to 48 years (mean 22.3 years). The tumor and associated epileptogenic area was on the right side in 8 patients and the left in 6 patients. Mean follow-up duration was 3.5 years (range 1-6.5 years). Postoperative seizure outcome was Engel Class I in 13 patients (93%) and Engel Class II in 1 (7.1%). CONCLUSIONS The authors' results demonstrate a better seizure outcome for temporomesial glioneuronal tumors associated with epilepsy in patients who underwent tailored resection rather than simple lesionectomy (p = 0.005). For temporomesial glioneuronal tumors associated with epilepsy, performing a presurgical noninvasive neurophysiological study intended to identify the epileptogenic zone is necessary for planning a tailored surgery. Using this surgical strategy, the presence of temporomesial glioneuronal tumors constitutes a predictive factor of excellent seizure outcome, and therefore surgical treatment can be offered early to avoid both the consequences of uncontrolled seizures as well as the side effects of pharmacological therapy.
Viewing Olfactory Affective Responses Through the Sniff Prism: Effect of Perceptual Dimensions and Age on Olfactomotor Responses to Odors

Sniffing, which is the active sampling of olfactory information through the nasal cavity, is part of the olfactory percept. It is influenced by stimulus properties, affects how an odor is perceived, and is sufficient (without an odor being present) to activate the olfactory cortex. However, many aspects of the affective correlates of sniffing behavior remain unclear, in particular the modulation of volume and duration as a function of odor hedonics. The present study used a wide range of odorants with contrasted hedonic valence to test: (1) which psychophysical function best describes the relationship between sniffing characteristics and odor hedonics (e.g., linear, or polynomial); (2) whether sniffing characteristics are sensitive to more subtle variations in pleasantness than simple pleasant-unpleasant contrast; (3) how sensitive sniffing is to other perceptual dimensions of odors such as odor familiarity or edibility; and (4) whether the sniffing/hedonic valence relationship is valid in other populations than young adults, such as the elderly. Four experiments were conducted, using 16–48 odorants each, and recruiting a total of 102 participants, including a group of elderly people. Results of the four experiments were very consistent in showing that sniffing was sensitive to subtle variations in unpleasantness but not to subtle variations in pleasantness, and that, the more unpleasant the odor, the more limited the spontaneous sampling of olfactory information through the nasal cavity (smaller volume, shorter duration). This also applied, although to a lesser extent, to elderly participants. Relationships between sniffing and other perceptual dimensions (familiarity, edibility) were less clear. It was concluded that sniffing behavior might be involved in adaptive responses protecting the subject from possibly harmful substances.
Analysis and design of the google congestion control for web real-time communication (WebRTC)

Video conferencing applications require low latency and high bandwidth. Standard TCP is not suitable for video conferencing since its reliability and in order delivery mechanisms induce large latency. Recently the idea of using the delay gradient to infer congestion is appearing again and is gaining momentum. In this paper we present an algorithm that is based on estimating through a Kalman filter the end-to-end one way delay variation which is experienced by packets traveling from a sender to a destination. This estimate is compared to an adaptive threshold to dynamically throttle the sending rate. The control algorithm has been implemented over the RTP/RTCP protocol and is currently used in Google Hangouts and in the Chrome WebRTC stack. Experiments have been carried out to evaluate the algorithm performance in the case of variable link capacity, presence of heterogeneous or homogeneous concurrent traffic, and backward path traffic.
SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT AND USE OF HYPERTENSIVE MEDICATION AMONG ADULTS IN CHINA

Summary This study’s objectives were, first, to examine the association between social engagement and the odds of taking hypertensive medications and treatment among adults in China; and second, to explore the lifestyle and psychological mechanisms underlying this association. Data were from the WHO Study on Global AGEing and Adult Health (WHO-SAGE), a national survey of 11,046 participants aged 18 to 69 conducted in China in 2010. The key outcome was a dichotomous indicator of whether the respondent was taking hypertensive medication or other treatment. A series of logistic regression models were fitted to examine the research questions. Higher levels of social engagement were found to be associated with a lower odds of taking hypertensive medication or treatment, and the association was stronger for women than for men. Lifestyle factors (i.e. smoking and BMI) and perceived overall life satisfaction were significant covariates. Life satisfaction helped explain some of the social engagement benefit for both men and women and BMI only appeared to be a mediator for men. Being married was not significantly associated with lower odds of taking hypertensive medication or treatment in either men or women. Social engagement seems to be protective against hypertension for adult men and women in China, although causation could not be determined in this cross-sectional study. Psychosocial mechanisms are probably at work, but these vary by gender.
Kidney cell proliferation after unilateral nephrectomy as related to age.

Summary The effect of unilateral nephrectomy on the number of cortical kidney cells undergoing DNA synthesis and mitosis was measured by tritiated thymidine autoradiography in both weanling and adult rats. Among the unoperated control animals, the weanling rat group showed a base line labeling index of 0.59%, and the adult animals, one of 0.11%. The response to unilateral nephrectomy resulted in a peak value of 3.6% in the weanling animals and 1.2% in the adult animals, both occurring at 36 hr. Mitotic indices were 0.056% in the weanling control animals and 0.0062% in the adults, with a peak of 0.30% and 0.088%, respectively, at 36 hr. Separate counts of tubule and stromal cells in the cortex revealed that the maximum increase in % labeled cells occurred later in the stromal cells than in the tubule cells, the stromal cells not reaching a maximum until 57 hr after nephrectomy. The findings indicate that, although the relative proliferative activity is much lower in adult animals, a similar response, qualitatively, is obtained in both groups after unilateral nephrectomy.
Auras in generalized epilepsy

Objective: We studied the frequency of auras in generalized epilepsy (GE) using a detailed semistructured diagnostic interview. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, participants with GE were drawn from the Epilepsy Phenome/Genome Project (EPGP). Responses to the standardized diagnostic interview regarding tonic-clonic (grand mal) seizures were then examined. This questionnaire initially required participants to provide their own description of any subjective phenomena before their “grand mal seizures. ” Participants who provided answers to these questions were considered to have an aura. All participants were then systematically queried regarding a list of specific symptoms occurring before grand mal seizures, using structured (closed-ended) questions. Results: Seven hundred ninety-eight participants with GE were identified, of whom 530 reported grand mal seizures. Of these, 112 (21.3%) reported auras in response to the open-ended question. Analysis of responses to the closed-ended questions suggested that 341 participants (64.3%) experienced at least one form of aura. Conclusions: Auras typically associated with focal epilepsy were reported by a substantial proportion of EPGP subjects with GE. This finding may support existing theories of cortical and subcortical generators of GE with variable spread patterns. Differences between responses to the open-ended question and closed-ended questions may also reflect clinically relevant variation in patient responses to history-taking and surveys. Open-ended questions may underestimate the prevalence of specific types of auras and may be in part responsible for the underrecognition of auras in GE. In addition, structured questions may influence participants, possibly leading to a greater representation of symptoms.
Use of Buying Behavioural Characteristics as General Stereotypes in User Models

In the literature, long-term user models are used to provide personalized interactions in ecommerce web sites. The growing numbers of online users and massive number of different products, demand not only user models, but also well-organized product information in order to find the products that an individual may like. Although such knowledge engineering is a time consuming task, its reusability reduces this disadvantage. Although products are relatively easy to model using their attributes, due to the complexity of human nature, different types of information about users are required to capture their needs and preferences. In this paper we introduce a novel user model architecture, with the ability to store such user information in layers. We demonstrate the information reuse within a user model and highlight the importance of using buying behaviour characteristics to understand the user.