Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Clinical Characteristics and Natural History of Freeman-Sheldon Syndrome

OBJECTIVE. Freeman-Sheldon syndrome (FSS) is a rare, multiple congenital contracture syndrome that is nonetheless relatively well-known, because affected children have a striking appearance: it was historically called “whistling-face syndrome” because of involvement of the facial muscles. FSS is often confused with other congenital contracture syndromes and, as a result, the clinical characteristics and natural history are poorly understood. The objective of this study was to analyze the presentation, natural history, and outcome of a cohort of individuals ascertained using strict diagnostic criteria for FSS. METHODS. Data from questionnaires, medical charts, examination, and photographs were analyzed to describe the physical features, therapeutic interventions, and functional outcomes in 73 individuals referred with the diagnosis of FSS. RESULTS. Only 32 referred cases (∼40%) met diagnostic criteria for FSS. In addition to contractures, common features in these cases included severe scoliosis (85%), strabismus (42%), and hearing loss (30%). Most infants required supplementary feedings via a nasogastric (45%) or gastrostomy tube (17%). Children walked by an average age of 19 months, but ∼80% required ambulation-assist devices. An average of ∼10 surgeries was performed on each child, and anesthetic and/or surgical complications were reported in 50% of individuals. All individuals were cognitively normal. CONCLUSIONS. The clinical characteristics and natural history of FSS distinguish it from other forms of arthrogryposis, yet FSS is frequently misdiagnosed. Children with FSS require considerable nutritional, surgical, and rehabilitative intervention. Such intensive therapeutic demands differ substantially from most other congenital contracture syndromes. These findings underscore the necessity of making an accurate diagnosis.
Vascular expression of the αvβ3-integrin in lung and other organs

The expression of the αvβ3-integrin in nonproliferating vascular beds remains unclear. To determine possible organ-specific differences, we compared αvβ3-integrin expression in the lung and other organs. Paraffin-embedded tissue sections of lung, liver, brain, muscle and skin obtained from rats were processed for immunohistochemistry with a monoclonal (LM609) and a polyclonal antibody (AB1903) against the αvβ3-integrin. Immunogold electron microscopy was used to localize αvβ3-integrin in rat lung microvasculature. With the use of custom-designed primers, lung sections were subjected to in situ PCR in a thermal cycler to amplify αvor β3 mRNA. To confirm specific amplification, PCR products were further hybridized in situ with an αv or β3 cDNA probe. In the lung, the αvβ3-integrin protein as well as αv and β3 mRNAs was extensively evident in the endothelium of extra-alveolar and alveolar microvessels, in vascular smooth muscle, and in large bronchial epithelium but not in the epithelium of alveolar ducts or.
Effect of Posture on Blood and Intraocular Pressures in Multiple System Atrophy, Pure Autonomic Failure, and Baroreflex Failure

Background—Intraocular pressure (IOP) may be partially under systemic vascular control. This study examined whether a correlation exists between blood and intraocular pressures in patients with autonomic dysfunction. Methods and Results—Eleven patients with 3 types of confirmed autonomic dysfunction (multiple system atrophy, pure autonomic failure, and baroreflex failure) were compared with age- and gender-matched controls and had IOP, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, heart rates, and calculated mean arterial pressures (MAP) and mean ocular perfusion pressures (MOPP) measured in the supine, sitting, and standing positions. Data were analyzed with a general linear model repeated-measures ANOVA. All pressures for patients showed a dramatic decline (P <0.001) from supine to standing (MAP −31±14 mm Hg; IOP −6±3 mm Hg; MOPP −25±14 mm Hg) compared with controls (MAP +4±7 mm Hg; IOP −1±2 mm Hg; MOPP +6±7 mm Hg). There was no significant change in heart rate from supine to standing for patients compared with controls (P =0.648). Within both the multiple system atrophy (n=5) and pure autonomic failure (n=4) groups, all initial pressures were similar to control pressures in the supine position, whereas patients with baroreflex failure (n=2) had higher mean pressures than respective controls in the supine position. Conclusions—In autonomic dysfunction, a large decrease in MAP correlated with a large decrease in IOP. These data suggest that the autonomic nervous system, perhaps through an influence on systemic blood pressure, has a significant role in IOP regulation.
A Microphone Array System for Automatic Fall Detection

More than a third of elderly fall each year in the United States. It has been shown that the longer the lie on the floor, the poorer is the outcome of the medical intervention. To reduce delay of the medical intervention, we have developed an acoustic fall detection system (acoustic-FADE) that automatically detects a fall and reports it promptly to the caregiver. Acoustic-FADE consists of a circular microphone array that captures the sounds in a room. When a sound is detected, acoustic-FADE locates the source, enhances the signal, and classifies it as “fall” or “nonfall. ” The sound source is located using the steered response power with phase transform technique, which has been shown to be robust under noisy environments and resilient to reverberation effects. Signal enhancement is performed by the beamforming technique based on the estimated sound source location. Height information is used to increase the specificity. The mel-frequency cepstral coefficient features computed from the enhanced signal are utilized in the classification process. We have evaluated the performance of acoustic-FADE using simulated fall and nonfall sounds performed by three stunt actors trained to behave like elderly under different environmental conditions. Using a dataset consisting of 120 falls and 120 nonfalls, the acoustic-FADE achieves 100% sensitivity at a specificity of 97%.
Multisensory Spatial Mechanisms of the Bodily Self and Social Cognition - A Commentary on Vittorio Gallese and Valentina Cuccio

This commentary aims to find the right description of the pre-reflective brain mechanisms underlying our phenomenal experience of being a subject bound to a physical body (bodily self) and basic cognitive, perceptual, and subjective aspects related to interaction with other individuals (social cognition). I will focus on the proposal by Gallese and Cuccio that embodied simulation, in terms of motor resonance, is the primary brain mechanism underlying the pre-reflective aspects of social cognition and the bodily self. I will argue that this proposal is too narrow to serve a unified theory of the neurobiological mechanisms of both target phenomena. I support this criticism with theoretical considerations and empirical evidence suggesting that multisensory spatial processing, which is distinct from but a pre-requisite of motor resonance, substantially contributes to the bodily self and social cognition. My commentary is structured in three sections. The first section addresses social cognition and compares embodied simulation to an alternative account, namely the attention schema theory. According to this theory we pre-reflectively empathize with others by predicting their current state of attention which involves predicting the spatial focus of attention. Thereby we derive a representational model of their state of mind. On this account, spatial coding of attention, rather than motor resonance, is the primary mechanism underlying social cognition. I take this as a theoretical alternative complementing motor resonance mechanisms. The second section focuses on the bodily self. Comparison of the brain net- works of the bodily self and social cognition reveals strong overlap, suggesting that both phenomena depend on shared multisensory and sensorimotor mechanisms. I will review recent empirical data about altered states of the bodily self in terms of self-location and the first-person perspective. These spatial aspects of the bodily self are encoded in brain regions distinct from the brain network of em- bodied simulation. I argue that while motor resonance might contribute to body ownership and agency, it does not account for spatial aspects of the bodily self. Thus, embodied simulation appears to be a necessary but insufficiently “primary” brain mechanism of the bodily self and social cognition. The third section discusses the contributions of the vestibular system, i.e., the sensory system encoding head motion and gravity, to the bodily self and social cognition. Vestibular cortical processing seems relevant to both processes, be- cause it directly encodes the world-centered direction of gravity and allows us to distinguish between motions of the own body and motions of other individuals and the external world. Furthermore, the vestibular cortical network largely overlaps with those neural networks relevant to the bodily self and social cognition. Thus, the vestibular system may play a crucial role in multisensory spatial coding relating the bodily self to other individuals in the external world.
On the inductive bias of dropout

Dropout is a simple but effective technique for learning in neural networks and other settings. A sound theoretical understanding of dropout is needed to determine when dropout should be applied and how to use it most effectively. In this paper we continue the exploration of dropout as a regularizer pioneered by Wager, et.al. We focus on linear classification where a convex proxy to the misclassification loss (i.e. the logistic loss used in logistic regression) is minimized. We show: (a) when the dropout-regularized criterion has a unique minimizer, (b) when the dropout-regularization penalty goes to infinity with the weights, and when it remains bounded, (c) that the dropout regularization can be non-monotonic as individual weights increase from 0, and (d) that the dropout regularization penalty may not be convex. This last point is particularly surprising because the combination of dropout regularization with any convex loss proxy is always a convex function. In order to contrast dropout regularization with $L_2$ regularization, we formalize the notion of when different sources are more compatible with different regularizers. We then exhibit distributions that are provably more compatible with dropout regularization than $L_2$ regularization, and vice versa. These sources provide additional insight into how the inductive biases of dropout and $L_2$ regularization differ. We provide some similar results for $L_1$ regularization.
Mechanical and water vapor permeability properties of biodegradables films based on methylcellulose, glucomannan, pectin and gelatin

Mimic biological structures such as the cell wall of plant tissues may be an alternative to obtain biodegradable films with improved mechanical and water vapor barrier properties. This study aims to evaluate the mechanical properties and water vapor permeability (WVP) of films produced by using the solvent-casting technique from blended methylcellulose, glucomannan, pectin and gelatin. First, films from polysaccharides at pH 4 were produced. The film with the best mechanical performance (tensile strength = 72.63 MPa; elongation = 9.85%) was obtained from methylcellulose-glucomannan-pectin at ratio 1:4:1, respectively. Then, gelatin was added to this polysaccharide blend and the pH was adjusted to 4, 5 and 6. Results showed significant improvement in WVP when films were made at pH 5 and at polysaccharides/gelatin ratio of 90/10 and 10/90, reaching 0.094 and 0.118 g.mm/h.m2. kPa as values, respectively. Films with the best mechanical properties were obtained from the blend of polysaccharides, whereas WVP was improved from the blend of polysaccharides and gelatin at pH 5.
Current Control of Grid-Connected Boost Inverter With Zero Steady-State Error

This paper proposes a current control strategy with zero steady-state tracking error for grid-connected boost inverters. Two boost converters are controlled separately to achieve both output current tracking and balanced output voltages. Based on cascading control and feedback linearization, the inner- and outer-loop controllers are as the combination of the inversion of boost converter model and the output error compensation. After the boost converter model is linearized, proportional and resonant controllers are derived from the internal model principle to achieve zero tracking error. Experimental results confirm that the proposed control achieves good current tracking to meet stringent grid-connection harmonics standards.
Sneezing in response to light

MANY INDIVIDUALS have noticed in themselves a tendency to sneeze when suddenly exposed to bright light. Mention of this reflex which we shall hereafter refer to as the “photic sneeze reflex” is made now and then in medical texts and journals, but it has been given little intensive study. Watson1 states that it “occurs most frequently when there is a morbid sensitiveness of those parts supplied by the fifth pair, as for instance in catarrhal affections of the conjunctiva in scrofulous children, especially in the case of scrofulous keratitis; the photophobia in these cases being due to morbid hyperesthesia of the ciliary branches of the fifth pair centrally reflected to the retina. ” Adler2 notes, “It is not uncommon for patients to complain that they always sneeze when they first go out of doors into bright sunlight, and I have occasionally seen patients who sneezed every time an ophthalmoscopic light was turned on the eye. ” The photic sneeze reflex has also been noted by Birch,3 SBdan,4 Shilkret,5 and others. In 1954 S6dan4 devoted a paper to the photic sneeze reflex. His attention was drawn to the phenomenon in his ophthalmological practice when he noted that certain patients would sneeze in response to the beam of his ophthalmoscope. He described 6 cases, among whom he noted sneezing in response to ophthalmoscopy, the sun, flash photography, and Wood’s ultraviolet light. He made mention of a feature familiar in the present study-namely, that the sneezing occurs at the beginning of exposure of the retina to bright light, but does not persist with continued exposure or when the exposure is soon repeated. In other words, the stimulating light must follow a period of relative darkness and it soon produces a refractory stage to further photic sneezing. S6dan considered the reflex to be uncommon, for he could find almost nothing about it in the literature. The present study, on the other hand, shows that it is by no means uncommon. SBdan noted that the patients in 2 of his 6 cases were brothers, 1 of whom showed vasomotor instability. All but l of the 6 were male. The question of familial and sex incidence is pursued further herein.
Systemic Risk in IT Portfolios - An Integrated Quantification Approach

Recent trends in digitalization combined with continuous innovation pressure lead to an increasing number of IT project, which nowadays are accomplished within huge IT project portfolios. Even though numerous IT project and portfolio evaluation and planning approaches have been developed and applied in companies all over the world, about 25% of IT projects still fail, which may result in a global value destruction of approximately 900 billion USD. With one main reason been detected in the lack of transparency regarding dependencies within IT portfolios, this paper draws on graph theory to provide a rigor consideration of the systemic risk that is based on different kinds of direct and indirect dependencies within IT portfolios. Based on this assessment, it provides an integrated novel, and quantitative approach for IT portfolio evaluation that strives to mitigate IT project failures, as it helps decision makers to evaluate their IT portfolios more adequately.
Statistical Natural Language Processing Final Project Sentiment Classification in Twitter : A Comparison between Domain Adaptation and Distant Supervision

In this paper we study empirically the accuracy of various NLP methods to classify Twitter sentiment. We first try the more traditional approach of using labeled movie reviews as a training set and then attempt a less conventional technique of using emoticons in Tweets as noisy labels of the sentiment. We compare the advantages and disadvantages of each approach and determine whether certain modifications to the pre-processing of reviews or Tweets has any significant improvement on accuracy. The methods we implement are Bag of Words, Maximum Entropy, Perceptron, Averaged Perceptron and Bootstrapping our training set. At the end of the paper we provide a summary of the best and worst performing methods as well as discussion of the techniques used.
Inviting free-riders or appealing to prosocial behavior? game-theoretical reflections on communicating herd immunity in vaccine advocacy.

OBJECTIVE Vaccination yields a direct effect by reducing infection, but also has the indirect effect of herd immunity: If many individuals are vaccinated, the immune population will protect unvaccinated individuals (social benefit). However, due to a vaccination's costs and risks, individual incentives to free-ride on others' protection also increase with the number of individuals who are already vaccinated (individual benefit). The objective was to assess the consequences of communicating the social and/or individual benefits of herd immunity on vaccination intentions. We assume that if social benefits are salient, vaccination intentions increase (prosocial behavior), whereas salience of individual benefits might decrease vaccination intentions (free-riding). METHODS In an online-experiment (N = 342) the definition of herd immunity was provided with one sentence summarizing the gist of the message, either making the individual or social benefit salient or both. A control group received no information about herd immunity. As a moderator, we tested the costs of vaccination (effort in obtaining the vaccine). The dependent measure was intention to vaccinate. RESULTS When a message emphasized individual benefit, vaccination intentions decreased (free-riding). Communication of social benefit reduced free-riding and increased vaccination intentions when costs to vaccinate were low. CONCLUSIONS Communicating the social benefit of vaccination may prevent free-riding and should thus be explicitly communicated if individual decisions are meant to consider public health benefits. Especially when vaccination is not the individually (but instead collectively) optimal solution, vaccinations should be easily accessible in order to reach high coverage.
Identification of a 42-kilodalton phosphotyrosyl protein as a serine(threonine) protein kinase by renaturation

We have surveyed fibroblast lysates for protein kinases that might be involved in mitogenesis. The assay we have used exploits the ability of blotted, sodium dodecyl sulfate-denatured proteins to regain enzymatic activity after guanidine treatment. About 20 electrophoretically distinct protein kinases could be detected by this method in lysates from NIH 3T3 cells. One of the kinases, a 42-kilodalton serine(threonine) kinase (PK42), was found to possess two- to fourfold-higher in vitro activity when isolated from serum-stimulated cells than when isolated from serum-starved cells. This kinase comigrated on sodium dodecyl sulfate-gels with a protein (p42) whose phosphotyrosine content increased in response to serum stimulation. The time courses of p42 tyrosine phosphorylation and PK42 activation were similar, reaching maximal levels within 10 min and returning to basal levels within 5 h. Both p42 tyrosine phosphorylation and PK42 activation were stimulated by low concentrations of phorbol esters, and the responses of p42 and PK42 to TPA were abolished by chronic 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA) treatment. Chronic TPA treatment had less effect on serum-induced p42 tyrosine phosphorylation and PK42 activation. PK42 and p42 bound to DEAE-cellulose, and both eluted at a salt concentration of 250 mM. Thus, PK42 and p42 comigrate and cochromatograph, and the kinase activity of PK42 correlates with the tyrosine phosphorylation of p42. These findings suggest that PK42 and p42 are related or identical, that PK42 is activated by tyrosine phosphorylation, and that this tyrosine phosphorylation can be regulated by protein kinase C.
The Theory of Facilitated Behavior : Taking Into Account The Influence of TDM Measures on Mode Choice Behavior

This paper presents the proposed theory of facilitated behavior, which is the extension of the theory of planned behavior. The theory adds a new construct within the original theory, in order to take into account the influence of the conditions that facilitate or hinder a person to behave. Consistent with the previous theories of behavioral intention, this theory also hypothesized that the intention is a strong predictor of a behavior. In the transportation field, this theory is intended to account for the influence of TDM measures on transportation mode choice behavior. TDM measures are essentially an action taken to facilitate or otherwise hinder a person’s behavior in using a mode of transportation, with the aim of influencing the behavior of a person to switch from using private vehicles to using public transports. In general, this theory provides new insights that are useful for transportation planners and policy makers in transportation.
GEOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF SOLUTIONS TO THE ANISOTROPIC p-LAPLACE EQUATION IN DIMENSION TWO

We consider solutions to the equation div(jAru¢ruj (pi2)=2 Aru) = 0 with 1 < p < +1 , A = A(x) a uniformly elliptic and Lipschitz continuous symmetric matrix, in dimension two. We study the properties of critical points and level lines of such solutions and we apply our results to obtain generalizations of a strong comparison principle due to Manfredi and of a univalence theorem by Rado.
Moving Beyond Prozac, DSM, and the New Psychiatry: The Birth of Postpsychiatry

"Moving Beyond Prozac, DSM, and the New Psychiatry" offers an analysis and critique of contemporary psychiatric practice from a variety of critical perspectives, ranging from Michel Foucault to Donna Haraway. This contribution to the burgeoning field of medical humanities contends that psychiatry's move away from a theory-based model (one favoring psychoanalysis and other talk therapies) to a more scientific model (based on new breakthroughs in neuroscience and pharmacology) has been detrimental to both the profession and its clients. This shift towards a science-based model includes the codification of the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders to the status of standard scientific reference, enabling mental-health practitioners to assign tidy classifications for any mental disturbance or deviation. Psychiatrist and cultural studies scholar Bradley Lewis argues for "postpsychiatry," a new psychiatric practice informed by the insights of poststructuralist theory.