Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Toward Optimizing Electrode Configurations To Improve Myoelectric Pattern Recognition

Standard myoelectric control systems use carefully placed bipolar electrode pairs to provide independent myoelectric signals (MESs) for prosthesis control. Because myoelectric pattern recognition systems do not require isolated MESs, the two electrode poles used for each MES channel may be placed longitudinally along individual muscles or transversely across multiple muscles. In addition, each electrode pole can be combined with a number of additional poles to form multiple channels. However, practical issues limit the number of poles that can be used in clinical settings. In this study, we investigated classification error reduction and controllability improvements provided by a combination of transverse and longitudinal MES channels in two conditions: (1) a constant number of electrode poles, and (2) a constant number of MES channels. In both cases, we also investigated performance when the electrodes were slightly shifted from their original positions to evaluate sensitivity to electrode shift. We found that a combination of two transverse and two longitudinal electrode channels constructed from four poles significantly outperformed the individual performances of either two transverse or two longitudinal channels each constructed from four poles (p<0.01). Using eight poles, we found that the best channel subset was always comprised of a combination of transverse and longitudinal channels. These results are important because the number and arrangement of poles and channels is a practical consideration for successful clinical implementation of myoelectric pattern recognition control.
The influence of health-specific social network site use on the psychological well-being of cancer-affected people

OBJECTIVE We aimed to explore and examine how and in what ways the use of social network sites (SNSs) can improve health outcomes, specifically better psychological well-being, for cancer-affected people. METHODS Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with users of the Ovarian Cancer Australia Facebook page (OCA Facebook), the exemplar SNS used in this study. Twenty-five women affected by ovarian cancer who were users of OCA Facebook were interviewed. A multi-theory perspective was employed to interpret the data. RESULTS Most of the study participants used OCA Facebook daily. Some users were passive and only observed created content, while other users actively posted content and communicated with other members. Analysis showed that the use of this SNS enhanced social support for users, improved the users' experiences of social connectedness, and helped users learn and develop social presence, which ultimately improved their psychological well-being. DISCUSSION The strong theoretical underpinning of our research and empirically derived results led to a new understanding of the capacity of SNSs to improve psychological well-being. Our study provides evidence showing how the integration of these tools into existing health services can enhance patients' psychological well-being. This study also contributes to the body of knowledge on the implications of SNS use for improving the psychological well-being of cancer-affected people. CONCLUSION This research assessed the relationship between the use of SNSs, specifically OCA Facebook, and the psychological well-being of cancer-affected people. The study confirmed that using OCA Facebook can improve psychological well-being by demonstrating the potential value of SNSs as a support service in the healthcare industry.
Optimal throughput for covert communication over a classical-quantum channel

This paper considers the problem of communication over a memoryless classical-quantum wiretap channel subject to the constraint that the eavesdropper on the channel should not be able to learn with high confidence whether the legitimate parties are using the channel to communicate or not. Specifically, the relative entropy between the output quantum states at the eavesdropper when a codeword is transmitted and when no input is provided must be sufficiently small. Extending earlier works, this paper proves the “square-root law” for a broad class of classical-quantum channels: the maximum amount of information that can be reliably and covertly transmitted over n uses of such a channel scales like √n. The scaling constant is also determined.
Stearoyl-CoA Desaturase-1 (SCD1) Augments Saturated Fatty Acid-Induced Lipid Accumulation and Inhibits Apoptosis in Cardiac Myocytes

Mismatch between the uptake and utilization of long-chain fatty acids in the myocardium leads to abnormally high intracellular fatty acid concentration, which ultimately induces myocardial dysfunction. Stearoyl-Coenzyme A desaturase-1 (SCD1) is a rate-limiting enzyme that converts saturated fatty acids (SFAs) to monounsaturated fatty acids. Previous studies have shown that SCD1-deficinent mice are protected from insulin resistance and diet-induced obesity; however, the role of SCD1 in the heart remains to be determined. We examined the expression of SCD1 in obese rat hearts induced by a sucrose-rich diet for 3 months. We also examined the effect of SCD1 on myocardial energy metabolism and apoptotic cell death in neonatal rat cardiac myocytes in the presence of SFAs. Here we showed that the expression of SCD1 increases 3.6-fold without measurable change in the expression of lipogenic genes in the heart of rats fed a high-sucrose diet. Forced SCD1 expression augmented palmitic acid-induced lipid accumulation, but attenuated excess fatty acid oxidation and restored reduced glucose oxidation. Of importance, SCD1 substantially inhibited SFA-induced caspase 3 activation, ceramide synthesis, diacylglycerol synthesis, apoptotic cell death, and mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation. Experiments using SCD1 siRNA confirmed these observations. Furthermore, we showed that exposure of cardiac myocytes to glucose and insulin induced SCD1 expression. Our results indicate that SCD1 is highly regulated by a metabolic syndrome component in the heart, and such induction of SCD1 serves to alleviate SFA-induced adverse fatty acid catabolism, and eventually to prevent SFAs-induced apoptosis.
Molecular Typing of SalmonellaSerotypes Prevalent in Animals in England: Assessment of Methodology

ABSTRACT Salmonella enterica serotypes Derby, Mbandaka, Montevideo, Livingstone, and Senftenberg were among the 10 most prevalent serotypes isolated from farm animals in England and Wales in 1999. These serotypes are of potential zoonotic relevance; however, there is currently no “gold standard” fingerprinting method for them. A collection of isolates representing the former serotypes and serotype Gold Coast were analyzed using plasmid profiling, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), and ribotyping. The success of the molecular methods in identifying DNA polymorphisms was different for each serotype. Plasmid profiling was particularly useful for serotype Derby isolates, and it also provided a good level of discrimination for serotype Senftenberg. For most serotypes, we observed a number of nontypeable plasmid-free strains, which represents a limitation of this technique. Fingerprinting of genomic DNA by ribotyping and PFGE produced a significant variation in results, depending on the serotype of the strain. BothPstI/SphI ribotyping andXbaI-PFGE provided a similar degree of strain differentiation for serotype Derby and serotype Senftenberg, only marginally lower than that achieved by plasmid profiling. Ribotyping was less sensitive than PFGE when applied to serotype Mbandaka or serotype Montevideo. Serotype Gold Coast isolates were found to be nontypeable by XbaI-PFGE, and a significant proportion of them were found to be plasmid free. A similar situation applies to a number of serotype Livingstone isolates which were nontypeable by plasmid profiling and/or PFGE. In summary, the serotype of the isolates has a considerable influence in deciding the best typing strategy; a single method cannot be relied upon for discriminating between strains, and a combination of typing methods allows further discrimination.
Effects of Patterned Sapphire Substrates on Piezoelectric Field in Blue-Emitting InGaN Multiple Quantum Wells

The strain and piezoelectric fields in InGaN blue light-emitting diodes on a GaN layer, which is grown on a planar sapphire substrate or patterned sapphire substrates (PSSs), such as a microsized PSS and a nanosized PSS (NPSS), are investigated by micro-Raman spectroscopy and electroreflectance (ER) spectroscopy. The obtained piezoelectric field in InGaN multiple quantum wells (QWs) grown on the planar substrate is 0.83 MV/cm, and it is 0.70 MV/cm for the case of the NPSS. These results are attributed to the fact that the GaN layers on the PSSs have a smaller residual strain compared to that on the planar sapphire, and thus, strain reduction in the GaN layer can reduce the piezoelectric field in the InGaN QWs grown on top of it.
Psychosis and spirituality : exploring the new frontier

Part one - Foundations 1 - Introduction, Cognitive behaviour therapy for psychosis, Isabel Clarke 2 - The neurophysiology of religious experience, Peter Fenwick Part two - Spirituality revisited 3 - The polarities of consciousness, Natalie Tobert 4 - Missing Stories: psychosis, spirituality and the development of western religious hermeneutics, Neil Douglas-Klotz Part three - The Mystical face of psychosis the psychotic face of mysticism. The new continuum 5 - Sanity to supersanity to insanity: a personal journey, Peter K Chadwick 6 - Spiritual experience: healthy psychoticism? Gordon Claridge 7 - Psychopathology, psychosis and the kundalini: postmodern perspectives on unusual subjective experience, Richard House Part four - The discontinuity hypothesis and its philosophical implications 8 - Psychosis and spirituality: the discontinuity model, Isabel Clarke 9 - Construction and reality: reflections on philosophy and spiritual/psychotic experience, Chris Clarke Part five - Research 10 - Psychotic and spiritual experience: a case study comparison, Mike Jackson 11 - Are delusions on a continuum? The case of religious and delusional beliefs, Emmanuelle Peters Part six - Clinical implications 12 - The experience of fragmentation in psychosis: can mindfulness help? Nigel Mills 13 - Spirituality, psychosis and the development of 'normalising rationales', David Kingdon, Ron Siddle and Shanaya Rathod 14 - Endword, Isabel Clarke
From principles to practice: a spatial approach to systematic conservation planning in the deep sea

Increases in the demand and price for industrial metals, combined with advances in technological capabilities have now made deep-sea mining more feasible and economically viable. In order to balance economic interests with the conservation of abyssal plain ecosystems, it is becoming increasingly important to develop a systematic approach to spatial management and zoning of the deep sea. Here, we describe an expert-driven systematic conservation planning process applied to inform science-based recommendations to the International Seabed Authority for a system of deep-sea marine protected areas (MPAs) to safeguard biodiversity and ecosystem function in an abyssal Pacific region targeted for nodule mining (e.g. the Clarion–Clipperton fracture zone, CCZ). Our use of geospatial analysis and expert opinion in forming the recommendations allowed us to stratify the proposed network by biophysical gradients, maximize the number of biologically unique seamounts within each subregion, and minimize socioeconomic impacts. The resulting proposal for an MPA network (nine replicate 400 × 400 km MPAs) covers 24% (1 440 000 km2) of the total CCZ planning region and serves as example of swift and pre-emptive conservation planning across an unprecedented area in the deep sea. As pressure from resource extraction increases in the future, the scientific guiding principles outlined in this research can serve as a basis for collaborative international approaches to ocean management.
How Does Execution Information Help with Information-Retrieval Based Bug Localization?

Bug localization is challenging and time-consuming. Given a bug report, a developer may spend tremendous time comprehending the bug description together with code in order to locate bugs. To facilitate bug report comprehension, information retrieval (IR)-based bug localization techniques have been proposed to automatically search for and rank potential buggy code elements (i.e., classes or methods). However, these techniques do not leverage any dynamic execution information of buggy programs. In this paper, we perform the first systematic study on how dynamic execution information can help with static IR-based bug localization. More specifically, with the fixing patches and bug reports of 157 real bugs, we investigated the impact of various execution information (i.e. coverage, slicing, and spectrum) on three IR-based techniques: the baseline technique, BugLocator, and BLUiR. Our experiments demonstrate that both the coverage and slicing information of failed tests can effectively reduce the search space and improve IR-based techniques at both class and method levels. Using additional spectrum information can further improve bug localization at the method but not the class level. Some of our investigated ways of augmenting IR-based bug localization with execution information even outperform a state-of-the-art technique, which merges spectrum with an IR-based technique in a complicated way. Different from prior work, by investigating various easy-to-understand ways to combine execution information with IR-based techniques, this study shows for the first time that execution information can generally bring considerable improvement to IR-based bug localization.
Short-term effects of atorvastatin on C-reactive protein.

AIM To study the short-term effect of atorvastatin on C-reactive protein (CRP) in patients with or at risk for coronary heart disease. METHODS AND RESULTS One hundred and fifty-five randomly selected patients from the SWiss Intervention Trial for lowering CHolesterol (SWITCH) were assessed for high sensitivity CRP, total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol and triglycerides at baseline, and after 1 and 3 months of treatment with atorvastatin at various doses to reach pre-defined lipid target values. The median decrease of cholesterol was 28% after 1 month and 35% after 3 months. LDL-cholesterol was decreased by 37% and 45%, HDL-cholesterol was increased by 7% and 8%, respectively. Patients with a low CRP baseline concentration (lowest quartile <1.34 mg. l(-1)) displayed no significant change, whereas patients in the other quartiles showed a significant decrease, of 22% to 40% (P -value <0.05 to <0.001) at 1 month and of 32% to 36% after 3 months compared to baseline. The decrease in CRP lowering was thus fully established by 1 month and this response was independent of lipid and lipoprotein changes as well as atorvastatin doses. CONCLUSION Atorvastatin significantly decreases CRP concentrations after 4 weeks of therapy. These results may be important with respect to the early benefit of statin therapy.
Nonparametric Bounds for the Causal Effect in a Binary Instrumental-Variable Model

Instrumental variables can be used to make inferences about causal effects in the presence of unmeasured confounding. For a model in which the instrument, intermediate/treatment, and outcome variables are all binary, Balke and Pearl (1997, Journal of the American Statistical Association 92: 1172–1176) derived nonparametric bounds for the intervention probabilities and the average causal effect. We have implemented these bounds in two commands: bpbounds and bpboundsi. We have also implemented several extensions to these bounds. One of these extensions applies when the instrument and outcome are measured in one sample and the instrument and intermediate are measured in another sample. We have also implemented the bounds for an instrument with three categories, as is common in Mendelian randomization analyses in epidemiology and for the case where a monotonic effect of the instrument on the intermediate can be assumed. In each case, we calculate the instrumental-variable inequality constraints as a check for gross violations of the instrumental-variable conditions. The use of the commands is illustrated with a re-creation of the original Balke and Pearl analysis and with a Mendelian randomization analysis. We also give a simulated example to demonstrate that the instrumental-variable inequality constraints can both detect and fail to detect violations of the instrumental-variable conditions.
Impact of a total smoking ban in a high secure hospital

Aims and method To assess the impact of a total smoking ban in a high secure psychiatric hospital. Staff and patients were surveyed before and after implementation. Data were collected on untoward incidents, seclusions, nicotine replacement therapy and changes in psychotropic medication. Results Of the 298 patients in the hospital for the evaluation period, 72.8% were smokers before the ban. There were no significant differences in rates of seclusion before and after the ban and only one significant comparison ( P = 0.01) showed an increase in untoward incidents for smokers. There were no significant increases in the use of psychotropic medication after the ban. Clinical implications With adequate preparation, it is possible to implement a total smoking ban in a high secure psychiatric setting without serious negative consequences.
Angiopoietin-Like 4 Is Over-Expressed in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients: Association with Pathological Bone Resorption

Introduction Osteoclasts are responsible for the bone loss associated with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The secreted adipokine angiopoietin-like 4 (ANGPTL4) specifically increases osteoclast-mediated bone resorption. We have investigated expression of ANGPTL4 and its regulatory transcription factor, hypoxia-inducible factor-1 alpha (HIF-1α), in osteoclasts and other cells within rheumatoid synovium. We have also examined whether circulating levels of ANGPTL4 differ in RA patients compared with that in normal controls or patients with osteoarthritis (OA). Results Immunohistochemical analysis revealed that bone-apposing osteoclasts within the rheumatoid synovium express both ANGPTL4 and HIF-1α. ANGPTL4 was also strongly expressed in synovial lining cells, endothelial cells, stromal cells, CD68+ macrophages and plasma cells within RA synovium. Little ANGPTL4 was evident in normal synovial tissue. This reflected the over-expression of HIF-1α in rheumatoid versus normal synovial tissue. The concentration of ANGPTL4 was higher in both the serum and the synovial fluid of RA patients than in patients with OA or normal controls. High serum ANGPTL4 associated with elevated levels of the serum marker of bone resorption, receptor activator for nuclear factor κB ligand (RANKL). Conclusions Over-expression of ANGPTL4 in multiple cell types within the rheumatoid synovium potentially provides a local pool of ANGPTL4 to stimulate osteoclast-mediated bone resorption in RA. Additionally, correlation of high serum ANGPTL4 with circulating RANKL suggests that ANGPTL4 may represent a novel marker for bone destruction in RA.
Antiangiogenic effect of gemcitabine following metronomic administration in a pancreas cancer model

Gemcitabine shows a marked antitumor effect as a result of its cytotoxic action toward proliferative cells. In this article, we aim to investigate the potential antitumor and antiangiogenic effect of gemcitabine following a metronomic schedule that involves the regular administration of cytotoxic drugs at doses lower than standard treatment. In vitro results showed that human endothelial cells are more sensitive to gemcitabine (IC50 3 nmol/L) than pancreatic tumor cells (IC50 20 nmol/L). For in vivo studies, we used an orthotopic implantation model of human pancreatic carcinoma in nude mice. Gemcitabine was administered i.p. following a low-dose schedule (1 mg/kg/d for a month) and compared with the conventional schedule (100 mg/kg days 0, 3, 6, and 9 postimplantation). Metronomic treatment effect on established tumor was equivalent to standard administration. The measure of CD31 endothelial marked area allowed us to show an in vivo antiangiogenic effect of this drug that was further enhanced by using metronomic administration. This effect correlated with an induction of thrombospondin-1, a natural inhibitor of angiogenesis. Our results allow us to hypothesize that, in addition to a direct antiproliferative or cytotoxic antiendothelial cell effect, a secondary effect involving thrombospondin-1 induction might provide an explanation for the specificity of the effects of metronomic gemcitabine treatment. [Mol Cancer Ther 2008;7(3):638–47]
Applying Clustering and Phylogeny Analysis to Study Dinoflagellates Based on Sterol Composition

This study examined the sterol compositions of 102 dinoflagellates (including several previously unexamined species) using clustering techniques as a means of determining the relatedness of the organisms. In addition, dinoflagellate sterol-based relationships were compared statistically to dinoflagellate 18S rDNA-based phylogeny relationships using the Mantel test. Our results indicated that the examined dinoflagellates form six clusters based on sterol composition and that several, but not all, dinoflagellate genera that form discrete clusters in the 18S rDNA-based phylogeny share similar sterol compositions. This and other correspondences suggest that the sterol compositions of dinoflagellates are explained, to a certain extent, by the evolutionary history of this lineage.
Information for regulating action in sport: Metastability and emergence of tactical solutions under ecological constraints

The aims of this chapter are twofold. First, we show how experiments related to nonlinear dynamical systems theory can bring about insights on the interconnectedness of different information sources for action. These include the amount of information as emphasised in conventional models of cognition and action in sport and the nature of perceptual information typically emphasised in the ecological approach. The second aim was to show how, through examining the interconnectedness of these information sources, one can study the emergence of novel tactical solutions in sport; and design experiments where tactical/decisional creativity can be observed. Within this approach it is proposed that perceptual and affective information can be manipulated during practice so that the athlete's cognitive and action systems can be transposed to a meta-stable dynamical performance region where the creation of novel action information may reside.