Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Grading of chemotherapy-induced peripheral neurotoxicity using the Total Neuropathy Scale

The authors compared clinically based neurotoxicity scales with the Total Neuropathy Scale, with the aim of improving the grading of the severity of chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN). The severity of CIPN was evaluated in a series of 60 women treated with cisplatin- and paclitaxel-based chemotherapy. A reduced version of TNS (TNSr) was also compared. The authors concluded that the TNS and TNSr can be used to assess the severity of CIPN effectively, and the results of this evaluation can be reliably correlated with the oncologic grading of sensory peripheral neurotoxicity.
Unilateral acoustic tumors: How often do they recur after translabyrinthine removal?

Unilateral acoustic tumors rarely recur after total translabyrinthine removal. Review of the patient records of the House Ear Clinic revealed five recurrent tumors, for an approximate incidence of 0.3%. A questionnaire was mailed to 857 patients who were at least 9 years postoperative and failed to find any additional recurrent tumors. No preoperative or intraoperative factors were identified to predict recurrence. The average time interval from initial removal to recurrence was approximately 10 years. Flow cytometric analysis did not reveal any fundamental differences between the recurrent acoustic tumor group and a larger group of 112 acoustic tumors.
Risk Factors for Violence in Stalking Perpetration : A Meta-Analysis

Meta-analysis has emerged as the procedure of choice for empirically identifying the general determinants of crime. In 2004, Rosenfeld conducted the first meta-analysis of violence in stalking situations. In this study, we provide an updated quantitative analysis of the violent stalking literature. Working with a sample of 5,114 participants, our findings indicate that approximately 35% (n = 1,059) of stalkers were violent and that almost 29% (n = 604) of stalking victims were injured by their stalkers. Eight significant risk factors were found to be related to stalking violence: prior intimate partner, threats, presence of psychosis, presence of personality disorder, substance abuse, criminal history, violence history, and stalker gender. Implications for risk assessment in stalking and future research directions are discussed.
Stac3 Is Required for Myotube Formation and Myogenic Differentiation in Vertebrate Skeletal Muscle*

Background: Stac3, an uncharacterised gene, was identified by its high expression levels in vertebrate muscle. Results: Knockdown of stac3 inhibited zebrafish myofibrillar protein assembly and differentiation in C2C12 cells by perturbing Akt signaling and cell cycle exit. Conclusion: Stac3 is a novel regulator of myogenic differentiation. Significance: Identifying new genes controlling myogenic differentiation will allow greater understanding of processes leading to muscular diseases. Stac3 was identified as a nutritionally regulated gene from an Atlantic salmon subtractive hybridization library with highest expression in skeletal muscle. Salmon Stac3 mRNA was highly correlated with myogenin and myoD1a expression during differentiation of a salmon primary myogenic culture and was regulated by amino acid availability. In zebrafish embryos, stac3 was initially expressed in myotomal adaxial cells and in fast muscle fibers post-segmentation. Morpholino knockdown resulted in defects in myofibrillar protein assembly, particularly in slow muscle fibers, and decreased levels of the hedgehog receptor patched. The function of Stac3 was further characterized in vitro using the mammalian C2C12 myogenic cell line. Stac3 mRNA expression increased during the differentiation of the C2C12 myogenic cell line. Knockdown of Stac3 by RNAi inhibited myotube formation, and microarray analysis revealed that transcripts involved in cell cycle, focal adhesion, cytoskeleton, and the pro-myogenic factors Igfbp-5 and Igf2 were down-regulated. RNAi-treated cells had suppressed Akt signaling and exogenous insulin-like growth factor (Igf) 2 was unable to rescue the phenotype, however, Igf/Akt signaling was not blocked. Overexpression of Stac3, which results in increased levels of Igfbp-5 mRNA, did not lead to increased differentiation. In synchronized cells, Stac3 mRNA was most abundant during the G1 phase of the cell cycle. RNAi-treated cells were smaller, had higher proliferation rates and a decreased proportion of cells in G1 phase when compared with controls, suggesting a role in the G1 phase checkpoint. These results identify Stac3 as a new gene required for myogenic differentiation and myofibrillar protein assembly in vertebrates.
A cephalometric comparative study of class II correction with Sabbagh Universal Spring (SUS2) and Forsus FRD appliances

Objective The purpose of this clinical prospective study was to compare the dentofacial changes produced by the Sabbagh Universal Spring (SUS2) and Forsus FRD appliances in late adolescent patients with Class II malocclusion, and quantify them in comparison with an untreated group. Method: The study was carried out on 59 patients with skeletal and dental Class II malocclusion due to retrognatic mandible. Among these, 20 were treated with SUS2, 20 were treated with FRD, and no treatment was done to 19 subjects as the control group. 36 cephalometric landmarks were identified on each lateral cephalometric radiograph. Results: The effects of both appliances were dentoalveolar and no significant vertical and sagittal skeletal effect on maxilla and mandible was achieved. The retrusion and extrusion of the maxillary incisors as well as the protrusion and intrusion of mandibular incisors were found to be statistically significant in both treatment groups. Soft tissue profile improvement was limited in both treatment groups. Conclusions: Both appliances corrected Class II discrepancies through dentoalveolar changes; however lower incisor proclination was more prominent with the Forsus FRD.
A Logistic Regression Model for Estimating Transport Accident Deaths Using Verbal Autopsy Data

This study aimed to create an appropriate model using verbal autopsy (VA) data to estimate transport accident deaths from vital registration data in Thailand. A sample of 9644 VA deaths was obtained from the Thai Ministry of Public Health. VA assessed transport accidents accounted for 546 deaths (5.7% of sample). Logistic regression was used to model transport accident deaths classified by 9 provinces, 16 gender–age groups, 14 combinations of vital reported cause groups, and place of death (in or outside hospital). The receiver operating characteristic curve was used to match the number of reported transport accident deaths to the number predicted by the model with sensitivity 73.8% and false positive rate 1.6%. The estimated transport accident deaths ranged from 1.68 to 2.65 times higher than the vital registration data reported according to gender–age groups.
Nice Point Sets Can Have Nasty Delaunay Triangulations 



Abstract. We consider the complexity of Delaunay triangulations of sets of points in R3 under certain practical geometric constraints. The spread of a set of points is the ratio between the longest and shortest pairwise distances. We show that in the worst case, the Delaunay triangulation of n points in R3 with spread Δ has complexity Ω(min{ Δ3, nΔ, n2 }) and O(min{ Δ4, n2 }). For the case $\Delta = \Theta(\sqrt{n})$ , our lower bound construction consists of a grid-like sample of a right circular cylinder with constant height and radius. We also construct a family of smooth connected surfaces such that the Delaunay triangulation of any good point sample has near-quadratic complexity.
Multilingual bottle-neck feature learning from untranscribed speech

We propose to learn a low-dimensional feature representation for multiple languages without access to their manual transcription. The multilingual features are extracted from a shared bottleneck layer of a multi-task learning deep neural network which is trained using un-supervised phoneme-like labels. The unsupervised phoneme-like labels are obtained from language-dependent Dirichlet process Gaussian mixture models (DPGMMs). Vocal tract length normalization (VTLN) is applied to mel-frequency cepstral coefficients to reduce talker variation when DPGMMs are trained. The proposed features are evaluated using the ABX phoneme discriminability test in the Zero Resource Speech Challenge 2017. In the experiments, we show that the proposed features perform well across different languages, and they consistently outperform our previously proposed DPGMM posteriorgrams which topped the performance in the same challenge in 2015.
Design of embedded web server based on NIOS-II soft core processor

An embedded processor inside an FPGA has a lot of benefits. Application specific peripherals can be chosen based on the requirement. The system can be made more fruitful and powerful by adding peripherals, peripheral controllers, memories, memory controllers and busses. Soft core processor is the HDL model of a processor designed over an FPGA. Nios-II is the second generation of the soft-core processor from Altera. It is a 32-bit general purpose embedded RISC processor. With its reconfigurable nature, Nios-II provides a solution to the interoperability and resource wastage by various microcontrollers. It is a processor meant to be configured by the customer or designer, as per his requirement. In this paper, the design of, an embedded web server is described based on Altera Nios-II soft core processor. This web server is the most important functional unit to get access on an embedded system with help of any web browser. It proves to be a good solution over the traditional heavyweight servers that are bulky and support only certain platform. This web server has reduced cost, complexity and size and features high speed. Altera's DE2-115 development and education board, which contains the Cyclone IV EP4CE115F29 FPGA, is used as the platform for our design.
Semantic representation and naming in children with specific language impairment.

BACKGROUND children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) show lexical deficits as the first noticeable sign of such disorder, characterized as difficulties in lexical access during naming and speech tests. Studies that compare picture naming and drawings seem perfect to clarify lexical deficits. AIM to compare the performance of children with normal language development (NLD) to that of children with SLI in naming, drawing and definition tasks, aiming to explore the the quality of semantic representation of the lexicon. METHOD Two groups were involved in this study: the Control Group (CG), with no language disorders, composed by 40 subjects, and the Research Group (RG), with 20 subjects, all diagnosed with SLI, aging from five to seven years. Tasks of naming, picture drawing and definition were performed, using 20 different pictures. In the naming task, the types of errors were analyzed and sorted as follows: semantic, phonological, none specified and others. The analysis of the drawing and definition tasks was based only on the correct answers, semantic and none specified errors. RESULTS children of the RG presented a greater number of semantic errors in the picture naming task when compared to the CG. Besides that, definitions presented by the RG seemed more simple and incomplete even when the child was capable of naming the picture correctly. Drawings of correctly named objects were better than those that were named incorrectly. CONCLUSIONS it was possible to discriminate within SLI children those that present greater lexical deficits. It was also possible to explore the possible reasons for failures in naming tasks.
Modifications in the Biophysical Properties of Connexin43 Channels by a Peptide of the Cytoplasmic Loop Region

Connexin43 (Cx43) channels reside in at least 3 states: closed, open, or residual. It is hypothesized that the residual state results from the interaction of an intracellular “gating element” with structures at the vestibule of the pore. Recently, we showed in vitro that there is an intramolecular interaction of the carboxyl-terminal domain (referred to as “CT”) with a region in the cytoplasmic loop of Cx43 (amino acids 119 to 144; referred to as “L2”). Here, we assessed whether the L2 region was able to interact with the gating particle in a functional channel. Cx43 channels were recorded in the presence of a peptide corresponding to the L2 region, delivered via the patch pipette. This manipulation did not modify unitary conductance, but decreased the frequency of transitions into the residual state, prolonged open time, and altered the voltage dependence of the channel in a manner analogous to that observed after truncation of the CT domain. The latter correlated with the ability of the peptide to bind to the CT domain, as determined by mirror resonance spectroscopy. Overall, we propose that the L2 acts as a “receptor” that interacts with a flexible intracellular gating element during channel gating. The full text of this article is available online at http://circres.ahajournals. org.
One Size Does Not Fit All: A Game-Theoretic Approach for Dynamically and Effectively Screening for Threats

An effective way of preventing attacks in secure areas is to screen for threats (people, objects) before entry, e.g., screening of airport passengers. However, screening every entity at the same level may be both ineffective and undesirable. The challenge then is to find a dynamic approach for randomized screening, allowing for more effective use of limited screening resources, leading to improved security. We address this challenge with the following contributions: (1) a threat screening game (TSG) model for general screening domains; (2) an NP-hardness proof for computing the optimal strategy of TSGs; (3) a scheme for decomposing TSGs into subgames to improve scalability; (4) a novel algorithm that exploits a compact game representation to efficiently solve TSGs, providing the optimal solution under certain conditions; and (5) an empirical comparison of our proposed algorithm against the current state-of-the-art optimal approach for large-scale game-theoretic resource allocation problems.
Analytical Expression of the Magnetic Field Created by Tile Permanent Magnets Tangentially Magnetized and Radials Current in Massive Disks

In this paper, we present new expressions for calculating the magnetic field produced by either tile permanent magnets tangentially magnetized or by radial currents in massive disks. These expressions are fully analytical, that is, we do not use any special functions for calculating them. In addition, they are three-dimensional and can be used for calculating the magnetic field for all regular points in space. The expressions commonly used for calculating the magnetic field produced by radial currents in massive disks are often based on elliptic integrals or semi-analytical forms. We propose in this paper an alternative analytical method that can also be used for tile permanent magnets. Indeed, by using the analogy between the coulombian model and the amperian current model, radial currents in massive disks can be represented by using the fictitious magnetic pole densities that are located on two faces of a tile permanent magnet tangentially magnetized. The two representations are equivalent and thus, the shape of magnetic field produced is the same for all points in space, with a smaller value in the case of it is produced by radial currents in massive disks. Such expressions can be used for realizing easily parametric studies.
BER Analysis for Asymmetric OFDM Systems

To alleviate the high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) and sensitivity to carrier frequency offset (CFO) problems, an asymmetric OFDM (A-OFDM) system has been recently proposed. In this paper, the theoretical bit error rate (BER) analysis of the A-OFDM systems is presented. Various modulation methods, i.e., BPSK and M-ray QAM, and equalization techniques, i.e., zero forcing (ZF) and minimum mean square error (MMSE) criteria are considered. Our analysis shows that the BER performance of the A-OFDM system bridges that of conventional OFDM and single carrier systems. Certain advanced equalizers, such as MMSE equalizer, are found to significantly improve the BER performance of the A-OFDM systems. The analysis approach is generally applicable to most modulation schemes and can be extended to any preceded OFDM systems.
Asymmetric changes in somatosensory evoked potentials correlate with limb apraxia in corticobasal degeneration

To clarify the underlying mechanism of limb apraxia in corticobasal degeneration (CBD), we investigated somatosensory evoked potentials in 5 patients with CBD, as compared with 12 age‐matched control subjects. All patients presented with asymmetric limb apraxia, particularly of limb‐kinetic type. N20 latencies were significantly prolonged following median nerve stimulation on the more apraxic side, but not on the less apraxic side. These results suggest that limb apraxia in CBD may, at least in part, be due to a disorder of somatosensory information processing involving the parietal cortex.
Self-Control and Aggression

Psychological science has largely neglected the role of self-control in studying aggression. Fortunately, the past half decade has witnessed a surge of research on this long-neglected topic, including two self-control-informed integrative theories of aggression. Robust experimental evidence demonstrates that self-control failures frequently predict aggression and, conversely, that bolstering self-control decreases aggression. Research on rumination also suggests that maladaptive anger regulation decreases self-control and, consequently, increases aggression. Advances from social-affective and cognitive neuroscience suggest that the neural mechanisms involved in emotion regulation and cognitive control mediate the relationship between deficient self-control and aggression.
Toward Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Methods: An Introduction

Both the qualitative and quantitative paradigms have weaknesses which, to a certain extent, are compensated for by the strengths of the other. As indicated in this article, the strengths of quantitative methods are that they produce factual, reliable outcome data that are usually generalizable to some larger population. The strengths of qualitative methods are that they generate rich, detailed, valid process data that usually leave the study participants' perspectives in tact. This article discusses how qualitative and quantitative methods can be combined and it introduces the articles included in this issue.
Measuring Escherichia coli Gene Expression during Human Urinary Tract Infections

Extraintestinal Escherichia coli (E. coli) evolved by acquisition of pathogenicity islands, phage, plasmids, and DNA segments by horizontal gene transfer. Strains are heterogeneous but virulent uropathogenic isolates more often have specific fimbriae, toxins, and iron receptors than commensal strains. One may ask whether it is the virulence factors alone that are required to establish infection. While these virulence factors clearly contribute strongly to pathogenesis, bacteria must survive by metabolizing nutrients available to them. By constructing mutants in all major metabolic pathways and co-challenging mice transurethrally with each mutant and the wild type strain, we identified which major metabolic pathways are required to infect the urinary tract. We must also ask what else is E. coli doing in vivo? To answer this question, we examined the transcriptome of E. coli CFT073 in the murine model of urinary tract infection (UTI) as well as for E. coli strains collected and analyzed directly from the urine of patients attending either a urology clinic or a university health clinic for symptoms of UTI. Using microarrays and RNA-seq, we measured in vivo gene expression for these uropathogenic E. coli strains, identifying genes upregulated during murine and human UTI. Our findings allow us to propose a new definition of bacterial virulence.
Comparisonofdeep-sea sedimentmicrobial communities in the EasternMediterranean

Comparisonofdeep-sea sedimentmicrobial communities in the EasternMediterranean Sander K. Heijs, Anniet M. Laverman, Larry J. Forney, Pablo R. Hardoim & Jan Dirk van Elsas Department of Microbial Ecology, Center for Ecological and Evolutionary Studies, University of Groningen, AA Haren, The Netherlands; and Department of Earth Sciences–Geochemistry, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Potentiella mätmetoder för att uppskatta kvävegödslingsvärdet hos organiska gödselmedel

This study evaluated potential methods to estimate the nitrogen fertilization value of a broad spectrum of different organic fertilizers. Ryegrass pot experi-ments were used to determine the nitrogen fertilization effect of 15 different fertilizers. These included different kinds of manure, different powders made from offal, rapeseed cake, lucerne pellets, sewage sludge, biogas residue, vi-nasse and mussel compost. Incubation studies showed that previously degraded materials such as manure, compost and biogas residue had low net nitrogen mineralization after addition to soil, whereas net mineralization was high from undegraded materials such as pelleted plant or meat products. The short-term nitrogen fertilizer value of degraded materials was therefore rather well characterized by their ammonium content, whereas the undegraded fertilizer materials required a different method. Warm water-extractable nitrogen proved to be unsatisfactory as a method for extracting readily mineralizable nitrogen, especially from animal products. Amino acid nitrogen and crude fibre analysis were also unsatisfactory for describing readily degradable or more persistent organic material. However, the carbon/nitrogen ratio very accurately reflected the short-term plant-available nitrogen content. Measurements of near infrared reflectance (NIR) proved to have the potential to be a quick and cheap method to estimate the fertilizer value of the nitrogen in fertilizers. However, developing a satisfactory model for NIR measurements would require more extensive material than the 15 fertilizers examined here. Nevertheless, it should be possible to use the carbon/nitrogen ratio already, through its negative linear relationship with the proportion of total fertilizer nitrogen with short-term fertilizer effect. A ratio of around two indicates that approximately 80% of the nitrogen is as available as mineral fertilizer nitrogen, while a ratio above 15 means that scarcely any short-term nitrogen fertilization effect will be obtained from that fertilizer.
Diminished Surface Clustering and Increased Perinuclear Accumulation of Large Conductance Ca2+-activated K+ Channel in Mouse Myometrium with Pregnancy*

Large conductance Ca2+-activated K+ channels play a critical role in regulating myometrium contractility. Their current density, mRNA, and total protein are greatly diminished in myometrium of late pregnant rats versus nonpregnant animals. Opposite to rats, in mice, channel mRNA and total protein increase in late pregnancy, but current density decreases as in rats. Here, we investigated the mechanism of these differences. Real time PCR and Western blots demonstrate that, in late pregnancy, channel transcript quantities and total protein were diminished in rats but up-regulated in mice. High resolution confocal microscopy of single myocytes showed that, in nonpregnant mice, channels were expressed in clusters at the surface membrane. In late pregnancy, although there was an overall increase in channel protein, its majority was accumulated in perinuclear organelles, and channel clustering practically disappeared from the surface membrane. This contrasts with rat myometrium, where there is a reduction of channel transcripts and overall protein levels including the surface membrane. We conclude that large conductance Ca2+-activated K+ channel surface expression is reduced in both rat and mouse late pregnant myometrium. However, in rats, the main mechanism for the reduced channel expression at the cell surface is a diminished transcription, whereas in mice, it is an altered traffic to the surface.