Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ionotropic and metabotropic glutamate receptors show unique postsynaptic, presynaptic, and glial localizations in the dorsal cochlear nucleus

The dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN) is a major brain center for integration of auditory information, and excitatory amino acid neurotransmission plays a central role in the processing of this information. In this study, the distribution of glutamate receptors was examined with preembedding immunocytochemistry, using 14 antibodies to ionotropic (GluR1, GluR2/3, GluR4, GluR5‐7, GluR6/7, KA2, NR1, NR2A/B, delta 1/2) and metabotropic (mGluR1α, mGluR2/3, mGluR5) glutamate receptor subtypes. Each of these antibodies produced a specific immunolabeling pattern, including a variety of postsynaptic, presynaptic, and glial localizations. Some antibodies showed widespread distribution patterns, notably the antibodies to the α‐amino‐3‐hydroxy‐5‐methyl‐4‐isoxazolepropionate (AMPA) receptor subunits, GluR2 and GluR3, and the N‐methyl‐D‐aspartate (NMDA) receptor subunit, NR1. In contrast, antibodies to other glutamate receptor subunits produced more restricted distribution patterns, especially that to GluR1, which stained the outer neuropil of the DCN, cartwheel cells, and a small population of presumptive interneurons associated with the dorsal acoustic stria, but produced little or no staining in fusiform cells or deep DCN neurons. Staining of the postsynaptic density and membrane of the granule cell‐parallel fiber/cartwheel cell spine synapse was most prevalent with delta 1/2 and mGluR1α antibodies. A unique pattern of staining was found with mGluR2/3 antibody—with staining concentrated in Golgi cells and unipolar brush cells of the middle to deep DCN. Distribution of some glutamate receptors in the DCN shows similarities to that of the cerebellum, where delta 2 and mGluR1α may modulate neurotransmission at parallel fiber synapses, while mGluR2 and/or mGluR3 may modulate mossy terminal function. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Orofacial Trauma Prevalence and Mouthguard Awareness in Basketball Players

Introduction. Basketball players are vulnerable to distinct orofacial traumas that are possibly related to the sport itself, together with the lack of preventive measures. The aim of this investigation was to study the prevalence of orofacial trauma in the competitors of Portuguese basketball and the use/awareness of the mouthguard. Methodology. It was ran a survey using Google Form, which was completed by 285 participants. SPSS Statistics 24.0 was used to analyze the data. It was found 274 lacerations of the soft tissue, 38 dental fractures, 28 cases of tooth mobility, 24 traumas in the temporomandibular joint, 4 maxillary fractures, 3 dental avulsions and 1 mandibular fracture. Results.There was no statistically significant differences comparing the risk of orofacial trauma between males and females, game-positions or international with non-international players. Approximately 98.6% (n=281) of the participants knew about the mouthguard and only 18 used it more than “frequently”. Discussion. Portuguese basketball community may be considered one at relative risk of orofacial trauma. It seems there are not a game position and/or gender that have a higher risk to orofacial trauma. Conclusion. There is still a very low use of the mouthguard despite the awareness of it and the high number of orofacial traumas documented.
Effect of microseparation on contact mechanics in metal‐on‐metal hip replacements—A finite element analysis

Abstract Some early failures of metal‐on‐metal (MoM) hip replacements associated with elevated wear have caused concerns for the use of this bearing combination. Simulator studies have shown that microseparation and its associated rim contact and edge loading may produce the most severe wear in MoM bearings. It is generally recognized that this high wear can be attributed to the high contact stress of the head on the rim of the cup. In this study, an improved finite element contact model that incorporates an elastic‐perfectly plastic material property for cobalt‐chrome alloy of the metal bearing was developed in an attempt to provide an accurate prediction of the stress and strain for the rim contact. The effects of the microseparation displacement (0.1−2 mm), cup inclination angle (25−65°) and cup rim radius (0.5−4 mm) on the contact stress/strain were investigated. The results show that a translational displacement >0.1 mm under a load >0.5 kN can produce a highly concentrated contact stress at the surface of the cup rim which can lead to plastic deformation. This study also suggests that the magnitude of translational displacement was the major factor that determined the severity of the contact conditions and level of stress and strain under microseparation conditions. Future studies will address the effect of surgical translational and rotational malposition and component design on the magnitude of microseparation, contact stress and strain and severity of wear. © 2014 The Authors. Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part B: Applied Biomaterials Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater, 103B: 1312–1319, 2015.
Blood lactate concentration and clearance in elite swimmers during competition.

PURPOSE Blood lactate concentration, [BLa], after swimming events might be influenced by demographic features and characteristics of the swim race, whereas active recovery enhances blood lactate removal. Our aims were to (1) examine how sex, age, race distance, and swim stroke influenced [BLa] after competitive swimming events and (2) develop a practical model based on recovery swim distance to optimize blood lactate removal. METHODS We retrospectively analyzed postrace [BLa] from 100 swimmers who competed in the finals at the Canadian Swim Championships. [BLa] was also assessed repeatedly during the active recovery. Generalized estimating equations were used to evaluate the relationship between postrace [BLa] with independent variables. RESULTS Postrace [BLa] was highest following 100-200 m events and lowest after 50 and 1500 m races. A sex effect for postrace [BLa] was observed only for freestyle events. There was a negligible effect of age on postrace [BLa]. A model was developed to estimate an expected change in [BLa] during active recovery (male = 0; female = 1): [BLa] change after active recovery = -3.374 + (1.162 × sex) + (0.789 × postrace [BLa]) + (0.003 × active recovery distance). CONCLUSIONS These findings indicate that swimmers competing at an elite standard display similar postrace [BLa] and that there is little effect of age on postrace [BLa] in competitive swimmers aged 14 to 29 y.
Distortion of auditory space during visually induced self-motion in depth

Perception of self-motion is based on the integration of multiple sensory inputs, in particular from the vestibular and visual systems. Our previous study demonstrated that vestibular linear acceleration information distorted auditory space perception (Teramoto et al., 2012). However, it is unclear whether this phenomenon is contingent on vestibular signals or whether it can be caused by inputs from other sensory modalities involved in self-motion perception. Here, we investigated whether visual linear self-motion information can also alter auditory space perception. Large-field visual motion was presented to induce self-motion perception with constant accelerations (Experiment 1) and a constant velocity (Experiment 2) either in a forward or backward direction. During participants' experience of self-motion, a short noise burst was delivered from one of the loudspeakers aligned parallel to the motion direction along a wall to the left of the listener. Participants indicated from which direction the sound was presented, forward or backward, relative to their coronal (i.e., frontal) plane. Results showed that the sound position aligned with the subjective coronal plane (SCP) was significantly displaced in the direction of self-motion, especially in the backward self-motion condition as compared with a no motion condition. These results suggest that self-motion information, irrespective of its origin, is crucial for auditory space perception.
The Web is not a PERSON, Berners-Lee is not an ORGANIZATION, and African-Americans are not LOCATIONS: An Analysis of the Performance of Named-Entity Recognition

Most work on evaluation of named-entity recognition has been done in the context of competitions, as a part of Information Extraction. There has been little work on any form of extrinsic evaluation, and how one tagger compares with another on the major classes: PERSON, ORGANIZATION, and LOCATION. We report on a comparison of three state-of-the-art named entity taggers: Stanford, LBJ, and IdentiFinder. The taggers were compared with respect to: 1) Agreement rate on the classification of entities by class, and 2) Percentage of ambiguous entities (belonging to more than one class) co-occurring in a document. We found that the agreement between the taggers ranged from 34% to 58%, depending on the class and that more than 40% of the globally ambiguous entities co-occur within the same document. We also propose a unit test based on the problems we encountered.
Lysosomal pH-inducible supramolecular dissociation of polyrotaxanes possessing acid-labile N-triphenylmethyl end groups and their therapeutic potential for Niemann-Pick type C disease

Abstract Niemann-Pick type C (NPC) disease is characterized by the accumulation of cholesterol in lysosomes. We have previously reported that biocleavable polyrotaxanes (PRXs) composed of β-cyclodextrins (β-CDs) threaded onto a linear polymer capped with bulky stopper molecules via intracellularly cleavable linkers show remarkable cholesterol reducing effects in NPC disease patient-derived fibroblasts owing to the stimuli-responsive intracellular dissociation of PRXs and subsequent β-CD release from the PRXs. Herein, we describe a series of novel acid-labile 2-(2-hydroxyethoxy)ethyl group-modified PRXs (HEE-PRXs) bearing terminal N-triphenylmethyl (N-Trt) groups as a cleavable component for the treatment of NPC disease. The N-Trt end groups of the HEE-PRXs underwent acidic pH-induced cleavage and led to the dissociation of their supramolecular structure. A kinetic study revealed that the number of HEE groups on the PRX did not affect the cleavage kinetics of the N-Trt end groups of the HEE-PRXs. The effect of the number of HEE groups of the HEE-PRXs, which was modified to impart water solubility to the PRXs, on cellular internalization efficiency, lysosomal localization efficiency, and cholesterol reduction ability in NPC disease-derived fibroblasts (NPC1 fibroblasts) was also investigated. The cellular uptake and lysosomal localization efficiency were almost equivalent for HEE-PRXs with different numbers of HEE groups. However, the cholesterol reducing ability of the HEE-PRXs in NPC1 fibroblasts was affected by the number of HEE groups, and HEE-PRXs with a high number of HEE groups were unable to reduce lysosomal cholesterol accumulation. This deficiency is most likely due to the cholesterol-solubilizing ability of HEE-modified β-CDs released from the HEE-PRXs. We conclude that the N-Trt group acts as a cleavable component to induce the lysosomal dissociation of HEE-PRXs, and acid-labile HEE-PRXs with an optimal number of HEE groups (4.1 to 5.4 HEE groups per single β-CD threaded onto the PRX) have great therapeutic potential for treating NPC disease.
Over-the-counter and Prescription Medications for Acne: A Cross-Sectional Survey in a Sample of University Students in Saudi Arabia

Introduction and Background: Acne is a very common dermatological condition found among the adolescent population in Saudi Arabia. Many patients with acne try various forms of self-medication, over the counter medicines (OTC), and prescription medicines for the same. Materials and Methods: This was a cross-sectional study among university students in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). A validated questionnaire was distributed to a convenience sample of university students to evaluate their knowledge and attitudes towards OTC (mainly) as well as prescription medicine for acne. Chi-square and multiple logistic regression tests were used for comparisons between groups. Results: Four hundred and twenty valid, completed questionnaires were obtained. A total of 220 (52.4%) used some type of OTC medications at least once, where as 108 (25.7%) used prescription medicines and 92 (21.9%) used both. The most common OTC medications used were cleansers by 250 participants (41.9%). Among prescription medicines, the most common were topical and oral antibiotics (11.4%). Bivariate and multivariate analysis showed that females are statistically more likely to use OTC medicines compared to males (Odds ratio: 1.7). Conclusion: The use of self-medications and OTC medications is common among university students in KSA. The most common OTC medicine used for acne was cleanser.
Multiscale CNNs for Brain Tumor Segmentation and Diagnosis

Early brain tumor detection and diagnosis are critical to clinics. Thus segmentation of focused tumor area needs to be accurate, efficient, and robust. In this paper, we propose an automatic brain tumor segmentation method based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs). Traditional CNNs focus only on local features and ignore global region features, which are both important for pixel classification and recognition. Besides, brain tumor can appear in any place of the brain and be any size and shape in patients. We design a three-stream framework named as multiscale CNNs which could automatically detect the optimum top-three scales of the image sizes and combine information from different scales of the regions around that pixel. Datasets provided by Multimodal Brain Tumor Image Segmentation Benchmark (BRATS) organized by MICCAI 2013 are utilized for both training and testing. The designed multiscale CNNs framework also combines multimodal features from T1, T1-enhanced, T2, and FLAIR MRI images. By comparison with traditional CNNs and the best two methods in BRATS 2012 and 2013, our framework shows advances in brain tumor segmentation accuracy and robustness.
Studies of offspring of parents with bipolar disorder

Children and adolescents who are the biological offspring of individuals with bipolar disorder (BD) (bipolar offspring) represent a population rich in potential for revealing important aspects in the development of BD. Multiple cross‐sectional assessments of psychopathology in bipolar offspring have confirmed high incidences of BD, as well as mood and behavioral disorders, and other psychopathology in this population. Longitudinal studies of offspring have begun to shed light on precursors of BD development. Other assessments of bipolar offspring have included dimensional reports of psychiatric and psychosocial functioning, temperament assessments, and descriptions of family environments and parenting styles. Neurobiological studies in bipolar offspring are just beginning to yield findings that may be related to the underlying neuropathophysiology of BD. The future holds promise for longitudinal studies of bipolar offspring incorporating all of these facets, including genetic analyses, to further elucidate the factors involved in the evolution of BD. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Comparing Open-Source Toolboxes for Processing and Analysis of Spike and Local Field Potentials Data

Analysis of spike and local field potential (LFP) data is an essential part of neuroscientific research. Today there exist many open-source toolboxes for spike and LFP data analysis implementing various functionality. Here we aim to provide a practical guidance for neuroscientists in the choice of an open-source toolbox best satisfying their needs. We overview major open-source toolboxes for spike and LFP data analysis as well as toolboxes with tools for connectivity analysis, dimensionality reduction and generalized linear modeling. We focus on comparing toolboxes functionality, statistical and visualization tools, documentation and support quality. To give a better insight, we compare and illustrate functionality of the toolboxes on open-access dataset or simulated data and make corresponding MATLAB scripts publicly available.
RISK FACTORS AND IMPACT OF CYTOMEGALOVIRUS DISEASE IN SIMULTANEOUS PANCREAS-KIDNEY TRANSPLANTATION

Background. The relevance of cytomegalovirus (CMV) in simultaneous pancreas kidney (SPK) transplant recipients in the modern era of immunosuppression and antiviral therapeutics is largely unquantified. We sought to determine the risk factors of CMV disease and its impact on SPK transplant outcomes in recipients all receiving a consistent regime of maintenance immunosuppression and CMV prophylaxis. Methods. This is a retrospective, single center study of 100 consecutive SPK transplant recipients. All received maintenance immunosuppression with mycophenolate mofetil, tacrolimus, and prednisone. CMV prophylaxis consisted of a short course of parenteral gancyclovir followed by oral gancyclovir. Recipients at high-risk (D+/R−) for CMV also received CMV hyperimmune globulin. Multivariate analysis of risk factors for CMV disease and risk factors for adverse outcomes in SPK transplantation were determined. The effect of duration of prophylaxis on timing and severity of CMV disease in high-risk (D+/R−) SPK transplant recipients was also evaluated. Results. The actual 1-year rate of CMV disease was 17.0% (12.0% noninvasive, 5.0% tissue invasive); and according to donor and recipient CMV serological status was: D−/R+: 0%; D−/R−: 2.8%; D+/R+: 25.6%; and D+/R−: 40.6%. Multivariate analysis showed transplantation of organs from a donor with positive CMV serology to be predictive of CMV disease with a relative risk of 63.37 (P =0.0052). In the high-risk (D+/R−) subgroup, the duration of prophylactic therapy delayed onset of CMV disease, but had minimal effect on severity. Invasive CMV disease was an independent predictor of mortality but did not decrease kidney or pancreas allograft survival. Conclusions. Outcomes of SPK transplantation have improved in the current era of modern immunosuppression, yet CMV remains an important pathogen. The serological status of the organ donor and the duration of CMV prophylaxis are predictive of who and when CMV disease may occur. Nevertheless, new strategies that reduce risk and severity of CMV disease are still needed.
A Decision-making Model for Corrective Maintenance of Offshore Wind Turbines Considering Uncertainties

Maintenance optimization has received special attention among the wind energy research community over the past two decades. This is mainly because of the high degree of uncertainties involved in the execution of operation and maintenance (O&M) activities throughout the lifecycle of wind farms. The increasing complexity in offshore maintenance execution demands applied research and brings forth a need to develop problem-specific maintenance decision-making models. In this paper, a mathematical model is proposed to assist wind farm stakeholders in making critical resource- related decisions for corrective maintenance at offshore wind farms (OWFs), considering uncertainties in turbine failure information.
Structure-Aware Stochastic Control for Transmission Scheduling

In this paper, we consider the problem of real-time transmission scheduling over time-varying channels. We first formulate this transmission scheduling problem as a Markov decision process and systematically unravel the structural properties (e.g., concavity in the state-value function and monotonicity in the optimal scheduling policy) exhibited by the optimal solutions. We then propose an online learning algorithm that preserves these structural properties and achieves ε-optimal solutions for an arbitrarily small ε. The advantages of the proposed online method are given as follows: 1) It does not require a priori knowledge of the traffic arrival and channel statistics, and 2) it adaptively approximates the state-value functions using piecewise linear functions and has low storage and computation complexity. We also extend the proposed low-complexity online learning solution to enable prioritized data transmission. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves significantly better utility (or delay)-energy tradeoffs compared to existing state-of-the-art online optimization methods.
Pathological insights of a woven coronary artery with optical coherence tomography.

A 78-year-old male was admitted to our centre because of III/IV CCS stable angina despite optimal medical treatment. Stress-induced myocardial ischaemia was demonstrated by SPECT in the inferior wall ( Panel A ), and a coronary angiography was performed. Severe coronary stenosis was observed in the first diagonal and in the circumflex. The right coronary artery (RCA) …
Estimation of Systolic and Diastolic Pressure using the Pulse Transit Time

In this paper, algorithm estimating the blood pressure was proposed using the pulse transit time (PTT) as a more convenient method of measuring the blood pressure. After measuring ECG and pressure pulse, and photoplethysmography, the PTT was calculated from the acquired signals. Thereafter, the system to indirectly measure the systolic pressure and the diastolic pressure was composed using the statistic method. In comparison between the blood pressure indirectly measured by proposed algorithm estimating the blood pressure and real blood pressure measured by conventional sphygmomanometer, the systolic pressure indicates the mean error of ±3.24mmHg and the standard deviation of 2.53mmHg, while the diastolic pressure indicates the satisfactory result, that is, the mean error of ±1.80mmHg and the standard deviation of 1.39mmHg. These results are satisfied with the regulation of ANSI/AAMI for certification of sphygmomanometer that real measurement error value should be within the mean error of ±5mmHg and the standard deviation of 8mmHg. These results are suggest the possibility of applying to portable and long time blood pressure monitoring system hereafter. Keywords—Blood pressure, Systolic, Diastolic, Pulse transit time.
Algorithms for image saliency via sparse representation and multi-scale inputs image retargeting

Saliency detection is an important yet challenging task in computer vision. In this report we investigate the use of sparse coding over redundant dictionary for saliency detection. We attempt to present a small fraction of the growing knowledge regarding sparse representation over redundant dictionary and discuss some potential usage of this powerful tool for saliency detection task. We propose a new algorithm for saliency detection based on the likelihood that an image patch can be encoded sparsely using a dictionary learned from other patches. experimental results based on saliency ground of truth of 1000 real images shows a superior performance of the new algorithm in comparison with other existing saliency algorithms. We also propose an image retargeting algorithm which is capable of combining the strength of the Shift-map framework and warping-based algorithms. The Shift-map algorithm experiences problems with extreme resizing ratio: important objects might be removed due to limited space in the output. We tackle this problem by introducing a stack of multi-scale inputs. This kind of input allows the Shift-map framework to produce output with great flexibility: regions can be removed or scaled in order to achieve the optimal and desired retargeted image. Experiments are conducted based on a benchmark image database to demonstrate potential power of this approach. ATTENTION: The Singapore Copyright Act applies to the use of this document. Nanyang Technological University Library