Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Automated Tracking of Facial Features in Patients with Facial Neuromuscular Dysfunction

Facial neuromuscular dysfunction severely impacts adaptive and expressive behavior and emotional health. Appropriate treatment is aided by quantitative and efficient assessment of facial motion impairment. We validated a newly developed method of quantifying facial motion, automated face analysis (AFA), by comparing it with an established manual marking method, the Maximal Static Response Assay (MSRA). In the AFA, motion of facial features is tracked automatically by computer vision without the need for placement of physical markers or restrictions of rigid head motion. Nine patients (seven women and two men) with a mean age of 39.3 years and various facial nerve disorders (five with Bell's palsy, three with trauma, and one with tumor resection) participated. The patients were videotaped while performing voluntary facial action tasks (brow raise, eye closure, and smile). For comparison with MSRA, physical markers were placed on facial landmarks. Image sequences were digitized into 640 × 480 × 24‐bit pixel arrays at 30 frames per second (1 pixel ≅ 0.3 mm). As defined for the MSRA, the coordinates of the center of each marker were manually recorded in the initial and final digitized frames, which correspond to repose and maximal response. For the AFA, these points were tracked automatically in the image sequence. Pearson correlation coefficients were used to evaluate consistency of measurement between manual (the MSRA) and automated (the AFA) tracking methods, and paired t tests were used to assess the mean difference between methods for feature tracking. Feature measures were highly consistent between methods, Pearson's r = 0.96 or higher, p < 0.001 for each of the action tasks. The mean differences between the methods were small; the mean error between methods was comparable to the error within the manual method (less than 1 pixel). The AFA demonstrated strong concurrent validity with the MSRA for pixel‐wise displacement. Tracking was fully automated and provided motion vectors, which may be useful in guiding surgical and rehabilitative approaches to restoring facial function in patients with facial neuromuscular disorders. (Plast. Reconstr. Surg. 107: 1124, 2001.)
DFT-based hybrid antenna selection schemes for spatially correlated MIMO channels

We address the antenna subset selection problem in spatially correlated MIMO channels. To reduce the severe performance degradation of the traditional antenna selection scheme in correlated channels, we propose to embed DFT operations in the RF chains. The resulting system shows a significant advantage both for diversity schemes and for the capacity of spatial multiplexing, while requiring only a minor hardware overhead.
A soft frequent pattern mining approach for textual topic detection

Textual topic detection methods that work by clustering terms according to their cooccurrence patterns are called feature-pivot methods. Typically, the similarity measure that is used for such clustering methods takes into account the cooccurrence patterns of only pairs of items. In this work, we argue that examining the simultaneous cooccurrence patterns of a larger number of terms, is a better option when the corpus contains a set of closely related fine-grained topics. To this end, we treat the topic detection problem as a Frequent Pattern Mining problem and propose a novel algorithm for "soft" Frequent Pattern Mining. We test the proposed approach using three annotated datasets collected from Twitter and compare it to a set of algorithms that includes a graph-based feature-pivot approach that takes into account only cooccurrence patterns, a standard Frequent Pattern Mining algorithm and Latent Dirichlet Allocation. The results indicate that SFPM is performing better than the other tested methods and show a clear improvement over the standard FPM approach.
Seroprevalence of Human Immunodeficiency Virus, Hepatitis B Virus, Hepatitis C Virus, and Treponema pallidum Infections among Blood Donors on Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea

Background Regular screening of transfusion-transmissible infections (TTIs), such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B and hepatitis C virus (HBV and HCV, respectively), and Treponema pallidum, in blood donors is essential to guaranteeing clinical transfusion safety. This study aimed to determine the seroprevalence of four TTIs among blood donors on Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea (EG). Methods A retrospective survey of blood donors from January 2011 to April 2013 was conducted to assess the presence of HIV, HBV, HCV and T. pallidum. The medical records were analyzed to verify the seroprevalence of these TTIs among blood donations stratified by gender, age and geographical region. Results Of the total 2937 consecutive blood donors, 1098 (37.39%) had a minimum of one TTI and 185 (6.29%) harbored co-infections. The general seroprevalence of HIV, HBV, HCV and T. pallidum were 7.83%, 10.01%, 3.71% and 21.51%, respectively. The most frequent TTI co-infections were HBV-T. pallidum 60 (2.04%) and HIV-T. pallidum 46 (1.57%). The seroprevalence of HIV, HBV, HCV and T. pallidum were highest among blood donors 38 to 47 years, 18 to 27 years and ≥ 48 years age, respectively (P<0.05). The seroprevalence of TTIs varied according to the population from which the blood was collected on Bioko Island. Conclusions Our results firstly provide a comprehensive overview of TTIs among blood donors on Bioko Island. Strict screening of blood donors and improved hematological examinations using standard operating procedures are recommended.
Enhancement of cellulose saccharification kinetics using an ionic liquid pretreatment step

Hydrolysis of cellulose to glucose in aqueous media catalyzed by the cellulase enzyme system suffers from slow reaction rates due in large part to the highly crystalline structure of cellulose and inaccessibility of enzyme adsorption sites. In this study, an attempt was made to disrupt the cellulose structure using the ionic liquid (IL), 1‐n‐butyl‐3‐methylimidazolium chloride, in a cellulose regeneration strategy which accelerated the subsequent hydrolysis reaction. ILs are a new class of non‐volatile solvents that exhibit unique solvating properties. They can be tuned to dissolve a wide variety of compounds including cellulose. Because of their extremely low volatility, ILs are expected to have minimal environmental impact on air quality compared to most other volatile solvent systems. The initial enzymatic hydrolysis rates were approximately 50‐fold higher for regenerated cellulose as compared to untreated cellulose (Avicel PH‐101) as measured by a soluble reducing sugar assay. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Socioeconomic differences in food purchasing behaviour and suggested implications for diet-related health promotion.

BACKGROUND The relationship between socioeconomic position (SEP) and diet has been examined mainly on the basis of food and nutrient intake. As a complement to this work, we focused on the socioeconomic patterning of food purchasing, as many educational dietary messages emphasize behaviours such as food choice when shopping. Also, the type of food people buy influences the quality of their nutrient intake. METHODS A probability sample of households in Brisbane City, Australia (n = 1003, 66.4% response rate). Data were collected using face-to-face interviews. SEP was measured using education, occupation and household income. Food purchasing was examined on the basis of grocery items (including meat and chicken) and fruit and vegetables. RESULTS Significant associations were found between each socioeconomic indicator and food purchasing. Persons from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds were less likely to purchase grocery foods that were comparatively high in fibre and low in fat, salt and sugar. The least educated, those employed in blue-collar (manual) occupations and residents of low income households purchased fewer types of fruit and vegetables, and less regularly, than their higher status counterparts. CONCLUSIONS Health promotion efforts aimed at narrowing socioeconomic differences in food purchasing need to be designed and implemented with an understanding of, and a sensitivity to, the barriers to nutritional improvement that difficult life circumstances can impose.
ANTIBIOTIC SUSCEPTIBILITY PATTERN OF BACTERIAL ISOLATES FROM PATIENTS ADMITTED TO A TERTIARY CARE HOSPITAL IN LAHORE

Objective: To determine the antimicrobial sensitivity pattern of bacterial isolates from patients admitted in a tertiary care hospital of Lahore. Methodology: The study was carried out in Department of Pathology, Postgraduate Medical Institute, Lahore from January 2010 to June 2010. The samples from the hospital were sent to microbiology laboratory for bacteriological examination. They were cultured onto Blood and MacConkey agar plates; organisms were identified by their colonial morphology, Gram Staining and appropriate biochemical tests using standard recommended protocol. Antimicrobial susceptibility pattern of the bacterial isolates recovered from different clinical specimens against penicillins, cephalosporins, fluoroquinolones, carbapenems, aminoglycosides and trimethoprim sulphmethoxazole was determined using modified Kirby Bauer method. Results: Among the 925 different clinical samples, 379 organisms were isolated. Escherichia coli and Klebsiella species were the most prevalent isolates followed by Pseudomonas and Staphylococcus spp. High degree of resistance was observed among gram negative organisms to all groups of antibiotics. Resistance to amikacin ranged from 12 – 18% among different species of Gram negative isolates whereas the range of carbapenem resistance was 1.4 – 9.5%. The percentage of oxacillin resistance among staphylococcal isolates was 33.1%, but all were sensitive to vancomycin. Conclusion: High frequency of resistance observed in the present study indicates that antibiotic resistance among nosocomial isolates is a serious problem. There is a continuous need of surveillance of sensitivity patterns of antimicrobial agents in our set up to know about the trend of this problem.
Profile of Communication Disorders in HIV-Infected Individuals: A Preliminary Study

Communication is the very essence of life for humans. This is made possible by the highly complex neurophysiological mechanisms governing humans. Any disturbance to this system can result in impairments of communication. HIV infection is one such disease. In India, the management of such individuals is usually restricted to life sustenance. Little importance is given to their communication problems, which play a vital role in day-to-day functioning. It is with this background that this study was conducted. Eight HIV-infected individuals participated in the study. They were subjected to assessment procedures that included the following tests: Western Aphasia Battery, Frenchay Dysarthria Assessment, Standard Articulation test, Fluency test, and subjective assessment of vocal parameters by a speech language pathologist. The results of the study reveal that individuals with HIV-1 infection show a varied picture of affected parameters of voice, swallowing, and oral motor functioning
Structure, internal motions and association–dissociation kinetics of the i-motif dimer of d(5mCCTCACTCC)

At slightly acidic pH, the association of two d(5mCCTCACTCC) strands results in the formation of an i-motif dimer. Using NMR methods, we investigated the structure of [d(5mCCTCACTCC)]2, the internal motion of the base pairs stacked in the i-motif core, the dimer formation and dissociation kinetics versus pH. The excellent resolution of the 1H and 31P spectra provided the determination of dihedral angles, which together with a large set of distance restraints, improve substantially the definition of the sugar-phosphate backbone by comparison with previous NMR studies of i-motif structures. [d(5mCCTCACTCC)]2 is built by intercalation of two symmetrical hairpins held together by six symmetrical C•C+ pairs and by pair T7•T7. The hairpin loops that are formed by a single residue, A5, cross the narrow grooves on the same side of the i-motif core. The base pair intercalation order is C9•C9+/5mC1•5mC1+/C8•C8+/C2•C2+/T7.T7/C6•C6+/C4•C4+. The T3 bases are flipped out in the wide grooves. The core of the structure includes four long-lived pairs whose lifetimes at 15°C range from 100 s (C8•C8+) to 0.18 s (T7•T7). The formation rate and the lifetime of [d(5mCCTCACTCC)]2 were measured between pH 6.8 and 4.8. The dimer formation rate is three to four magnitude orders slower than that of a B-DNA duplex. It depends on pH, as it must occur for a bimolecular process involving non cooperative association of neutral and protonated residues. In the range of pH investigated, the dimer lifetime, 500 s at 0°C, pH 6.8, varies approximately as 10−pH.
Herschel : the first science highlights Special feature L etter to the E ditor Herschel-PACS observation of the 10 Myr old T Tauri disk TW Hya Constraining the disk gas mass

Planets are formed in disks around young stars. With an age of ∼10 Myr, TW Hya is one of the nearest T Tauri stars that is still surrounded by a relatively massive disk. In addition a large number of molecules has been found in the TW Hya disk, making TW Hya the perfect test case in a large survey of disks with Herschel–PACS to directly study their gaseous component. We aim to constrain the gas and dust mass of the circumstellar disk around TW Hya. We observed the fine-structure lines of [O i] and [C ii] as part of the open-time large program GASPS. We complement this with continuum data and ground-based 12 CO 3–2 and 13CO 3–2 observations. We simultaneously model the continuum and the line fluxes with the 3D Monte-Carlo code MCFOST and the thermo-chemical code ProDiMo to derive the gas and dust masses. We detect the [O i] line at 63 μm. The other lines that were observed, [O i] at 145 μm and [C ii] at 157 μm, are not detected. No extended emission has been found. Preliminary modeling of the photometric and line data assuming [12CO]/[13CO] = 69 suggests a dust mass for grains with radius <1 mm of ∼1.9 × 10−4 M (total solid mass of 3 × 10−3 M ) and a gas mass of (0.5–5) ×10−3 M . The gas-to-dust mass may be lower than the standard interstellar value of 100.
Monitoring the use of lipid-lowering medication among persons with newly diagnosed diabetes: a nationwide register-based study

Objectives To develop a register-based monitoring system to provide information on the use of lipid-lowering medication among persons with diabetes in different patient groups and by socioeconomic position. Design Longitudinal and register-based, before and after diabetes diagnosis. Setting Finnish population. Participants A total of 121 053 persons aged 30–79 years with a new diagnosis of diabetes during 2000–2006. The annual cohorts were divided at the time of diabetes diagnosis by coronary heart disease (CHD) status. Primary and secondary outcome measures Lipid-lowering medication purchases after diabetes diagnosis and prior to the diagnosis. Results According to the health insurance reimbursement data the use of lipid-lowering medication advanced rapidly among people with diabetes in the early 2000s in Finland. Of the patients diagnosed with diabetes in 2000 only one-fourth used lipid-lowering medication in 6–12 months after their diagnosis. For those diagnosed in 2006, the utilization rate was 46%. Among those with a history of CHD the use of medication was markedly higher; 51–58% in 2000 and 77–79% in 2006. Taking into account the increasing trend and measuring the independent effect of the diagnosis of diabetes on lipid-lowering medication, setting the diagnosis increased the use by 10–50%. Despite increasing overall utilisation rates, socioeconomic difference in the use of lipid-lowering medication remained throughout the study period. In particular, the lowest income quintile differed from other income groups and in 2006 its use of lipid-lowering medication remained approximately 10% points lower compared with the overall level. Conclusions The lipid-lowering medication is being applied in an increasing population of new diabetes cases; however, modelling the independent effect of the diagnosis of diabetes on lipid-lowering medication shows that the diagnosis increased use, but did not abolish socioeconomic differences.
A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial of oxcarbazepine in the treatment of bipolar disorder in children and adolescents.

OBJECTIVE This multicenter trial examined the efficacy and safety of oxcarbazepine in the treatment of bipolar disorder in children and adolescents. METHOD A total of 116 outpatients 7 to 18 years of age with bipolar I disorder, manic or mixed, were recruited at 20 centers in the United States and randomly assigned to receive 7 weeks of double-blinded, flexibly dosed treatment with oxcarbazepine (maximum dose 900-2400 mg/day) or placebo. The primary efficacy measure was the mean change from baseline to endpoint in the Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS), using the last-observation-carried-forward method. RESULTS Oxcarbazepine (mean dose=1515 mg/day) did not significantly improve YMRS scores at endpoint compared with placebo [adjusted mean change: oxcarbazepine, -10.90 (N=55); placebo, -9.79 (N=55)]. Dizziness, nausea, somnolence, diplopia, fatigue, and rash were each reported in at least 5% of the patients in the oxcarbazepine group with an incidence at least twice that of the placebo group. The majority of adverse events were mild to moderate and occurred during the titration period. Eleven patients (19%) in the oxcarbazepine group discontinued the study because of adverse events, compared with two (4%) in the placebo group. CONCLUSIONS Oxcarbazepine is not significantly superior to placebo in the treatment of bipolar disorder in youths. While the overall adverse event profile was similar to that reported for patients with epilepsy, the incidence of psychiatric adverse events for both the oxcarbazepine and placebo groups was higher than that reported for the epilepsy population.
Complex cell pooling and the statistics of natural images

In previous work, we presented a statistical model of natural images that produced outputs similar to receptive fields of complex cells in primary visual cortex. However, a weakness of that model was that the structure of the pooling was assumed a priori and not learned from the statistical properties of natural images. Here, we present an extended model in which the pooling nonlinearity and the size of the subspaces are optimized rather than fixed, so we make much fewer assumptions about the pooling. Results on natural images indicate that the best probabilistic representation is formed when the size of the subspaces is relatively large, and that the likelihood is considerably higher than for a simple linear model with no pooling. Further, we show that the optimal nonlinearity for the pooling is squaring. We also highlight the importance of contrast gain control for the performance of the model. Our model is novel in that it is the first to analyze optimal subspace size and how this size is influenced by contrast normalization.
Comparison of two‐photon excitation laser scanning microscopy with UV‐confocal laser scanning microscopy in three‐dimensional calcium imaging using the fluorescence indicator Indo‐1

Two‐photon excitation laser scanning fluorescence microscopy (2p‐LSM) was compared with UV‐excitation confocal laser scanning fluorescence microscopy (UV‐CLSM) in terms of three‐dimensional (3‐D) calcium imaging of living cells in culture. Indo‐1 was used as a calcium indicator. Since the excitation volume is more limited and excitation wavelengths are longer in 2p‐LSM than in UV‐CLSM, 2p‐LSM exhibited several advantages over UV‐CLSM: (1) a lower level of background signal by a factor of 6–17, which enhances the contrast by a factor of 6–21; (2) a lower rate of photobleaching by a factor of 2–4; (3) slightly lower phototoxicity. When 3‐D images were repeatedly acquired, the calcium concentration determined by UV‐CLSM depended strongly on the number of data acquisitions and the nuclear regions falsely exhibited low calcium concentrations, probably due to an interplay of different levels of photobleaching of Indo‐1 and autofluorescence, while the calcium concentration evaluated by 2p‐LSM was stable and homogeneous throughout the cytoplasm. The spatial resolution of 2p‐LSM was worse by 10% in the focal plane and by 30% along the optical axis due to the longer excitation wavelength. This disadvantage can be overcome by the addition of a confocal pinhole (two‐photon excitation confocal laser scanning fluorescence microscopy), which made the resolution similar to that in UV‐CLSM. These results indicate that 2p‐LSM is preferable for repeated 3‐D reconstruction of calcium concentration in living cells. In UV‐CLSM, 0.18‐mW laser power with a 2. φ pinhole (in normalized optical coordinate) gives better signal‐to‐noise ratio, contrast and resolution than 0.09‐mW laser power with a 4.9‐φ pinhole. However, since the damage to cells and the rate of photobleaching is substantially greater under the former condition, it is not suitable for repeated acquisition of 3‐D images.
Tissue-Specific Floral Transcriptome Analysis of the Sexually Deceptive Orchid Chiloglottis trapeziformis Provides Insights into the Biosynthesis and Regulation of Its Unique UV-B Dependent Floral Volatile, Chiloglottone 1

The Australian sexually deceptive orchid, Chiloglottis trapeziformis, employs a unique UV-B-dependent floral volatile, chiloglottone 1, for specific male wasp pollinator attraction. Chiloglottone 1 and related variants (2,5-dialkylcyclohexane-1,3-diones), represent a unique class of specialized metabolites presumed to be the product of cyclization between two fatty acid (FA) precursors. However, the genes involved in the biosynthesis of precursors, intermediates, and transcriptional regulation remains to be discovered. Chiloglottone 1 production occurs in the aggregation of calli (callus) on the labellum under continuous UV-B light. Therefore, deep sequencing, transcriptome assembly, and differential expression (DE) analysis were performed across different tissue types and UV-B treatments. Transcripts expressed in the callus and labellum (∼23,000 transcripts) were highly specialized and enriched for a diversity of known and novel metabolic pathways. DE analysis between chiloglottone-emitting callus versus the remainder of the labellum showed strong coordinated induction of entire FA biosynthesis and β-oxidation pathways including genes encoding Ketoacyl-ACP Synthase, Acyl-CoA Oxidase, and Multifunctional Protein. Phylogenetic analysis revealed potential gene duplicates with tissue-specific differential regulation including two Acyl-ACP Thioesterase B and a Ketoacyl-ACP Synthase genes. UV-B treatment induced the activation of UVR8-mediated signaling and large-scale transcriptome changes in both tissues, however, neither FA biosynthesis/β-oxidation nor other lipid metabolic pathways showed clear indications of concerted DE. Gene co-expression network analysis identified three callus-specific modules enriched with various lipid metabolism categories. These networks also highlight promising candidates involved in the cyclization of chiloglottone 1 intermediates (e.g., Bet v I and dimeric α,β barrel proteins) and orchestrating regulation of precursor pathways (e.g., AP2/ERF) given a strong co-regulation with FA biosynthesis/β-oxidation genes. Possible alternative biosynthetic routes for precursors (e.g., aldehyde dehydrogenases) were also indicated. Our comprehensive study constitutes the first step toward understanding the biosynthetic pathways involved in chiloglottone 1 production in Chiloglottis trapeziformis – supporting the roles of FA metabolism in planta, gene duplication as a potential source of new genes, and co-regulation of novel pathway genes in a tissue-specific manner. This study also provides a new and valuable resource for future discovery and comparative studies in plant specialized metabolism of other orchids and non-model plants.