Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Personality Profile of Parents of Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Objectives. The present study was carried out aiming to identify the personality profile of parents of children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Methods. This study is of a descriptive, analytic, cross-sectional type in which parents of 6–12-year-old children with ADHD who were referred to the Bozorgmehr Psychiatric Clinic, affiliated with Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, were enrolled. ADHD was diagnosed according to the criteria of DSM-IV-TR and a quasi-structured diagnostic interview (K-SADS-PL). The personality profile of the parents was assessed with the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III (MCMI-III). Results. According to the findings of this study, the most common personality problems based on the assessment scales in the MCMI-III belonged to the clinical patterns of depressive personality in 43 persons (25.3%), histrionic personality in 34 persons (20%), and compulsive personality in 29 persons (17.1%). According to discriminant analysis, four scales of somatoform, sadistic, dependence, and though disorder were direct and antisocial scale was reverse significant predictors of membership in the women group. Conclusion. According to the findings of this pilot study, personality disorders are prevalent in parents of ADHD children and mothers suffer from personality disorders more than fathers.
Pre-Columbian agricultural landscapes, ecosystem engineers, and self-organized patchiness in Amazonia

The scale and nature of pre-Columbian human impacts in Amazonia are currently hotly debated. Whereas pre-Columbian people dramatically changed the distribution and abundance of species and habitats in some parts of Amazonia, their impact in other parts is less clear. Pioneer research asked whether their effects reached even further, changing how ecosystems function, but few in-depth studies have examined mechanisms underpinning the resilience of these modifications. Combining archeology, archeobotany, paleoecology, soil science, ecology, and aerial imagery, we show that pre-Columbian farmers of the Guianas coast constructed large raised-field complexes, growing on them crops including maize, manioc, and squash. Farmers created physical and biogeochemical heterogeneity in flat, marshy environments by constructing raised fields. When these fields were later abandoned, the mosaic of well-drained islands in the flooded matrix set in motion self-organizing processes driven by ecosystem engineers (ants, termites, earthworms, and woody plants) that occur preferentially on abandoned raised fields. Today, feedbacks generated by these ecosystem engineers maintain the human-initiated concentration of resources in these structures. Engineer organisms transport materials to abandoned raised fields and modify the structure and composition of their soils, reducing erodibility. The profound alteration of ecosystem functioning in these landscapes coconstructed by humans and nature has important implications for understanding Amazonian history and biodiversity. Furthermore, these landscapes show how sustainability of food-production systems can be enhanced by engineering into them fallows that maintain ecosystem services and biodiversity. Like anthropogenic dark earths in forested Amazonia, these self-organizing ecosystems illustrate the ecological complexity of the legacy of pre-Columbian land use.
JUNCTIONAL COMPLEXES IN VARIOUS EPITHELIA

The epithelia of a number of glands and cavitary organs of the rat and guinea pig have been surveyed, and in all cases investigated, a characteristic tripartite junctional complex has been found between adjacent cells. Although the complex differs in precise arrangement from one organ to another, it has been regularly encountered in the mucosal epithelia of the stomach, intestine, gall bladder, uterus, and oviduct; in the glandular epithelia of the liver, pancreas, parotid, stomach, and thyroid; in the epithelia of pancreatic, hepatic, and salivary ducts; and finally, between the epithelial cells of the nephron (proximal and distal convolution, collecting ducts). The elements of the complex, identified as zonula occludens (tight junction), zonula adhaerens (intermediary junction), and macula adhaerens (desmosome), occupy a juxtaluminal position and succeed each other in the order given in an apical-basal direction. The zonula occludens (tight junction) is characterized by fusion of the adjacent cell membranes resulting in obliteration of the intercellular space over variable distances. Within the obliterated zone, the dense outer leaflets of the adjoining cell membranes converge to form a single intermediate line. A diffuse band of dense cytoplasmic material is often associated with this junction, but its development varies from one epithelium to another. The zonula adhaerens (intermediate junction) is characterized by the presence of an intercellular space (∼200 A) occupied by homogeneous, apparently amorphous material of low density; by strict parallelism of the adjoining cell membranes over distances of 0.2 to 0.5 µ; and by conspicuous bands of dense material located in the subjacent cytoplasmic matrix. The desmosome or macula adhaerens is also characterized by the presence of an intercellular space (∼240 A) which, in this case, contains a central disc of dense material; by discrete cytoplasmic plaques disposed parallel to the inner leaflet of each cell membrane; and by the presence of bundles of cytoplasmic fibrils converging on the plaques. The zonula occludens appears to form a continuous belt-like attachment, whereas the desmosome is a discontinuous, button-like structure. The zomula adhaerens is continuous in most epithelia but discontinuous in some. Observations made during experimental hemoglobinuria in rats showed that the hemoglobin, which undergoes enough concentration in the nephron lumina to act as an electron-opaque mass tracer, does not penetrate the intercellular spaces beyond the zonula occludens. Similar observations were made in pancreatic acini and ducts where discharged zymogen served as a mass tracer. Hence the tight junction is impervious to concentrated protein solutions and appears to function as a diffusion barrier or "seal. " The desmosome and probably also the zonula adhaerens may represent intercellular attachment devices.
Rapid and Quantitative Detection of Hepatitis A Virus from Green Onion and Strawberry Rinses by Use of Real-Time Reverse Transcription-PCR

ABSTRACT In this study, an immunomagnetic capture method and a real-time reverse transcription-PCR assay were used to quantify hepatitis A virus (HAV) in green onion and strawberry rinses. This combined protocol detected as low as 0.5 PFU HAV in produce rinses and concentrated HAV levels up to 20-fold.
What enhances the development of emotion understanding in young children? A longitudinal study of interpersonal predictors.

We studied potential determinants of the development of children's emotion understanding (EU) from age 4 to 6 in a Norwegian community sample (N = 974) using the Test of Emotion Comprehension. Interpersonal predictors included the accuracy of parental mentalization, parental emotional availability, and teacher-reported child social skills. Intrapersonal child factors were child gender and verbal skills. Overall, children's EU increased significantly over time. After adjusting for child gender, age-4 EU, and parental socio-economic status, greater child verbal and social skills and greater parental mentalization each uniquely predicted growth in EU. Results are discussed in terms of theory and research on children's EU and parents' emotion socialization.
Effects of Limb-Length Discrepancy on Gait Economy and Lower-Extremity Muscle Activity in Older Adults

Background: The amount of limb-length discrepancy necessary to adversely affect gait parameters in older adults is unknown, with information being largely anecdotal. This investigation was conducted to determine the effects of limb-length discrepancy on gait economy and lower-extremity muscle activity in older adults. Methods: Forty‐four men and women ranging in age from fifty-five to eighty-six years with no evidence of limb-length discrepancy of >1 cm participated in the study. Subjects walked on a treadmill at a self‐selected normal walking pace with artificial limb-length discrepancies of 0, 2, 3, and 4 cm applied in a randomly selected order. Indirect calorimetry was used to measure oxygen consumption and minute ventilation. Electromyography was used to measure muscle activity of the right and left quadriceps femoris, plantar flexors, gluteus maximus, and gluteus medius. Heart rate, the rating of perceived exertion, and frequency of gait compensation patterns were also measured. Results: There was a significant increase in oxygen consumption and the rating of perceived exertion with 2, 3, and 4-cm artificial limb-length discrepancies; a significant increase in heart rate, minute ventilation, and quadriceps activity in the longer limb with 3 and 4-cm artificial limb-length discrepancies; and a significant increase in plantar flexor activity in the shorter limb with a 4-cm artificial limb-length discrepancy compared with the same parameters with no artificial limb-length discrepancy. Conclusions: Both oxygen consumption and the rating of perceived exertion were greater with a 2-cm artificial limb-length discrepancy than they were with no artificial limb-length discrepancy. There appears to be a breakpoint between 2 and 3 cm of artificial limb-length discrepancy in older adults with regard to the effects on most other physiological parameters. A 3-cm artificial limb-length discrepancy is likely to induce significant quadriceps fatigue in the longer limb. Elderly patients with substantial pulmonary, cardiac, or neuromuscular disease may have difficulty walking with a limb-length discrepancy as small as 2 cm.
Subepidermal moisture detection of heel pressure injury: The pressure ulcer detection study outcomes

We examined subepidermal moisture (SEM) and visual skin assessment of heel pressure injury (PrI) among 417 nursing home residents in 19 facilities over 16 weeks. Participants were older (mean age 77 years), 58% were female, over half were ethnic minorities (29% African American, 12% Asian American, 21% Hispanic), and at risk for PrI (mean Braden Scale Risk score = 15.6). Blinded concurrent visual assessments and SEM measurements were obtained at heels weekly. Visual skin damage was categorised as normal, erythema, stage 1 PrI, deep tissue injury (DTI) or stage 2 or greater PrI. PrI incidence was 76%. Off‐loading occurred with pillows (76% of residents) rather than heel boots (21%) and often for those with DTI (91%). Subepidermal moisture was measured with a device where higher readings indicate greater moisture (range: 0‐70 tissue dielectric constant), with normal skin values significantly different from values in the presence of skin damage. Subepidermal moisture was associated with concurrent damage and damage 1 week later in generalised multinomial logistic models adjusting for age, diabetes and function. Subepidermal moisture detected DTI and differentiated those that resolved, remained and deteriorated over 16 weeks. Subepidermal moisture may be an objective method for detecting PrI.
Black holes with scalar hair and asymptotics in N = 8 supergravity

We consider = 8 gauged supergravity in D = 4 and D = 5. We show one can weaken the boundary conditions on the metric and on all scalars with m2 < − (D − 1)2/4 + 1 while preserving the asymptotic anti-de Sitter (AdS) symmetries. Each scalar admits a one-parameter family of AdS-invariant boundary conditions for which the metric falls off slower than usual. The generators of the asymptotic symmetries are finite, but generically acquire a contribution from the scalars. For a large class of boundary conditions we numerically find a one-parameter family of black holes with scalar hair. These solutions exist above a certain critical mass and are disconnected from the Schwarschild-AdS black hole, which is a solution for all boundary conditions. We show the Schwarschild-AdS black hole has larger entropy than a hairy black hole of the same mass. The hairy black holes lift to inhomogeneous black brane solutions in ten or eleven dimensions. We briefly discuss how generalized AdS-invariant boundary conditions can be incorporated in the AdS/CFT correspondence.
Caspase-mediated Cleavage of the Ubiquitin-protein Ligase Nedd4 during Apoptosis*

The onset of apoptosis is coupled to the proteolytic activation of a family of cysteine proteases, termed caspases. These proteases cleave their target proteins after an aspartate residue. Following caspase activation during apoptosis, a number of specific proteins have been shown to be cleaved. Here we show that Nedd4, a ubiquitin-protein ligase containing multiple WW domains and a calcium/lipid-binding domain, is also cleaved during apoptosis induced by a variety of stimuli including Fas-ligation, γ-radiation, tumor necrosis factor-α, C-8 ceramide, and etoposide treatment. Extracts from apoptotic cells also generated cleavage patterns similar to that seen in vivo, and this cleavage was inhibited by an inhibitor of caspase-3-like proteases. In vitro, Nedd4 was cleaved by a number of caspases, including caspase-1, -3, -6, and -7. By site-directed mutagenesis, one of the in vitro caspase cleavage sites in mouse Nedd4 was mapped to a DQPD237↓ sequence, which is conserved between mouse, rat, and human proteins. This is the first report demonstrating that an enzyme of the ubiquitin pathway is cleaved by caspases during apoptosis.
Determination of Ignitable Liquids in Fire Debris: Direct Analysis by Electronic Nose

Arsonists usually use an accelerant in order to start or accelerate a fire. The most widely used analytical method to determine the presence of such accelerants consists of a pre-concentration step of the ignitable liquid residues followed by chromatographic analysis. A rapid analytical method based on headspace-mass spectrometry electronic nose (E-Nose) has been developed for the analysis of Ignitable Liquid Residues (ILRs). The working conditions for the E-Nose analytical procedure were optimized by studying different fire debris samples. The optimized experimental variables were related to headspace generation, specifically, incubation temperature and incubation time. The optimal conditions were 115 °C and 10 min for these two parameters. Chemometric tools such as hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) were applied to the MS data (45–200 m/z) to establish the most suitable spectroscopic signals for the discrimination of several ignitable liquids. The optimized method was applied to a set of fire debris samples. In order to simulate post-burn samples several ignitable liquids (gasoline, diesel, citronella, kerosene, paraffin) were used to ignite different substrates (wood, cotton, cork, paper and paperboard). A full discrimination was obtained on using discriminant analysis. This method reported here can be considered as a green technique for fire debris analyses.
Carrageenan Primes Leukocytes To Enhance Lipopolysaccharide-Induced Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha Production

ABSTRACT We have previously reported that pretreatment with carrageenan (CAR) enhances lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) production in and lethality for mice. Whole blood cultured in vitro was used to show that CAR pretreatment results in about a 200-fold increase in LPS-induced TNF-α production. CAR by itself did not induce TNF-α production. However, CAR-treated cultured medium sensitized whole blood to make more LPS-induced TNF than did saline-treated cultured medium in vitro. It was also demonstrated that CAR pretreatment increases TNF-α mRNA levels of both blood cells and peritoneal exudate cells, but not of bone marrow cells. Immunoelectron microscopic analysis revealed that polymorphonuclear leukocytes and macrophages are TNF-α-producing cells in CAR-treated mice. In CAR-treated mice, TNF-α was seen early after LPS injection in leukocytes in hepatic sinusoids and on the surfaces of endothelial cells. TNF-α was also detected late after LPS injection in hepatocytes which become edematous. These results suggest that CAR primes leukocytes to produce TNF-α in response to LPS and that they play an important role in the pathogenesis of liver injury.
GMM and ARVM cooperation and competition for text-independent speaker recognition on telephone speech

In order to improve the performances of speaker recognition on telephone speech, the authors investigate the ability to cooperate of two different modelling approaches: the GMM and the ARVM. For the cooperation and competition of the GMM and ARVM modelization, they used normalized measures. They develop two approaches for these cooperation and competition: a global approach and an analytical approach. They investigate experiments on whole sentences or selected phonetic segments. These approaches allow one to obtain performances improvements for both cooperation and competition, and good results on 168 speakers of the NTIMIT database (GMM: 61.7%, ARVM: 78.1%, cooperation: 79.9% and competition: 82.6%).
Spatio-temporal Representations of Uncertainty in Spiking Neural Networks

It has been long argued that, because of inherent ambiguity and noise, the brain needs to represent uncertainty in the form of probability distributions. The neural encoding of such distributions remains however highly controversial. Here we present a novel circuit model for representing multidimensional real-valued distributions using a spike based spatio-temporal code. Our model combines the computational advantages of the currently competing models for probabilistic codes and exhibits realistic neural responses along a variety of classic measures. Furthermore, the model highlights the challenges associated with interpreting neural activity in relation to behavioral uncertainty and points to alternative population-level approaches for the experimental validation of distributed representations.
Position Tracking During Human Walking Using an Integrated Wearable Sensing System

Progress has been made enabling expensive, high-end inertial measurement units (IMUs) to be used as tracking sensors. However, the cost of these IMUs is prohibitive to their widespread use, and hence the potential of low-cost IMUs is investigated in this study. A wearable low-cost sensing system consisting of IMUs and ultrasound sensors was developed. Core to this system is an extended Kalman filter (EKF), which provides both zero-velocity updates (ZUPTs) and Heuristic Drift Reduction (HDR). The IMU data was combined with ultrasound range measurements to improve accuracy. When a map of the environment was available, a particle filter was used to impose constraints on the possible user motions. The system was therefore composed of three subsystems: IMUs, ultrasound sensors, and a particle filter. A Vicon motion capture system was used to provide ground truth information, enabling validation of the sensing system. Using only the IMU, the system showed loop misclosure errors of 1% with a maximum error of 4–5% during walking. The addition of the ultrasound sensors resulted in a 15% reduction in the total accumulated error. Lastly, the particle filter was capable of providing noticeable corrections, which could keep the tracking error below 2% after the first few steps.
High-Resolution Bistatic ISAR Imaging Based on Two-Dimensional Compressed Sensing

The theory of compressed sensing (CS) states that an unknown sparse signal can be accurately recovered from a limited number of measurements by solving a sparsity-constrained optimization problem. In this paper, we present a new framework of high-resolution bistatic inverse synthetic aperture radar (Bi-ISAR) imaging based on CS. A phase-preserved CS approach for high-range resolution imaging is proposed. The phase of a Bi-ISAR signal can be extracted by constructing a phase-preserved Fourier basis, which is crucial to azimuth processing of Bi-ISAR imaging. After performing CS reconstruction in range, we present an improved version of CS-based cross-range imaging by combining modified Fourier basis and weighting with CS optimization. Simulated data are used to test the robustness of the Bi-ISAR imaging framework with two-dimensional (2-D) CS method. The results show that the framework is capable of accurate reconstruction of Bi-ISAR image in both range and cross-range.
Isolation and Functional Characterization of the Novel Clostridium botulinum Neurotoxin A8 Subtype

Botulism is a severe neurological disease caused by the complex family of botulinum neurotoxins (BoNT). Based on the different serotypes known today, a classification of serotype variants termed subtypes has been proposed according to sequence diversity and immunological properties. However, the relevance of BoNT subtypes is currently not well understood. Here we describe the isolation of a novel Clostridium botulinum strain from a food-borne botulism outbreak near Chemnitz, Germany. Comparison of its botulinum neurotoxin gene sequence with published sequences identified it to be a novel subtype within the BoNT/A serotype designated BoNT/A8. The neurotoxin gene is located within an ha-orfX+ cluster and showed highest homology to BoNT/A1, A2, A5, and A6. Unexpectedly, we found an arginine insertion located in the HC domain of the heavy chain, which is unique compared to all other BoNT/A subtypes known so far. Functional characterization revealed that the binding characteristics to its main neuronal protein receptor SV2C seemed unaffected, whereas binding to membrane-incorporated gangliosides was reduced in comparison to BoNT/A1. Moreover, we found significantly lower enzymatic activity of the natural, full-length neurotoxin and the recombinant light chain of BoNT/A8 compared to BoNT/A1 in different endopeptidase assays. Both reduced ganglioside binding and enzymatic activity may contribute to the considerably lower biological activity of BoNT/A8 as measured in a mouse phrenic nerve hemidiaphragm assay. Despite its reduced activity the novel BoNT/A8 subtype caused severe botulism in a 63-year-old male. To our knowledge, this is the first description and a comprehensive characterization of a novel BoNT/A subtype which combines genetic information on the neurotoxin gene cluster with an in-depth functional analysis using different technical approaches. Our results show that subtyping of BoNT is highly relevant and that understanding of the detailed toxin function might pave the way for the development of novel therapeutics and tailor-made antitoxins.
Three Very Simple Games and What it Takes to Solve Them

We study experimentally the nature of dominance violations in three minimalist dominance-solvable guessing games. Only about a third of our subjects report reasoning consistent with dominance; they all make dominant choices and almost all expect others to do so. Nearly two-thirds of subjects report reasoning inconsistent with dominance, yet a quarter of them actually make dominant choices and half of those expect others to do so. Reasoning errors are more likely for subjects with lower working memory, intrinsic motivation and premeditation attitude. Dominance-incompatible reasoning arises mainly from subjects misrepresenting the strategic nature (payoff structure) of the guessing games.