Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A review of ropinirole prolonged release in Parkinson’s disease

Ropinirole prolonged release is a once-daily, 24-hour formulation of ropinirole, a non-ergot dopamine agonist. It is approved as monotherapy and as an adjunct to levodopa in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Several potential advantages of ropinirole prolonged release compared to the immediate release formulation include maintaining more consistent dopaminergic activity with steadier plasma levels, increased tolerability, greater compliance from a simpler once-daily dosing regimen and ease in dose titration. In a randomized, double-blind, non-inferiority, crossover study, ropinirole prolonged release was shown to have comparable efficacy and tolerability to immediate release ropinirole in early PD patients, with significantly greater compliance. Subjects were converted overnight between ropinirole formulations without loss of efficacy and with good tolerability. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in advanced PD, daily “off” time was reduced by an average of 2.1 hours with ropinirole prolonged release compared to 0.4 hours with placebo. Patients on ropinirole prolonged release were also more likely to require less daily levodopa. Ropinirole prolonged release is well tolerated with a similar adverse effect profile to other non-ergot dopamine agonists. The most common adverse effects include dyskinesia, nausea, dizziness, hallucinations, somnolence, abdominal pain or discomfort and orthostatic hypotension. Ropinirole prolonged release is a safe and effective treatment option for both early and advanced PD. This manuscript briefly reviews the current pharmacological treatment options for PD and provides a more detailed review of the currently available data regarding ropinirole prolonged release as a treatment option for PD.
ElaC Encodes a Novel Binuclear Zinc Phosphodiesterase*

ElaC is a widespread gene found in eubacteria, archaebacteria, and mammals with a highly conserved sequence. Two human ElaC variants were recently associated with cancer (Tavtigian, S. V., Simard, J., Teng, D. H., Abtin, V., Baumgard, M., Beck, A., Camp, N. J., Carillo, A. R., Chen, Y., Dayananth, P., Desrochers, M., Dumont, M., Farnham, J. M., Frank, D., Frye, C., Ghaffari, S., Gupte, J. S., Hu, R., Iliev, D., Janecki, T., Kort, E. N., Laity, K. E., Leavitt, A., Leblanc, G., McArthur-Morrison, J., Pederson, A., Penn, B., Peterson, K. T., Reid, J. E., Richards, S., Schroeder, M., Smith, R., Snyder, S. C., Swedlund, B., Swensen, J., Thomas, A., Tranchant, M., Woodland, A. M., Labrie, F., Skolnick, M. H., Neuhausen, S., Rommens, J., and Cannon-Albright, L. A. (2001) Nat. Genet. 27, 172–180; Yanaihara, N. , Kohno, T. , Takakura, S. , Takei, K. , Otsuka, A. , Sunaga, N. , Takahashi, M. , Yamazaki, M. , Tashiro, H. , Fukuzumi, Y. , Fujimori, Y. , Hagiwara, K. , Tanaka, T. , and Yokota, J. (2001)Genomics 72, 169–179). Analysis of the primary sequence indicates homology to an arylsulfatase and predicts a metallo-β-lactamase fold. At present, no ElaC gene product has been investigated. We cloned the Escherichia coli ElaC gene and purified the recombinant gene product. An enzymatic analysis showed that ElaC does not encode an arylsulfatase but rather encodes a phosphodiesterase that hydrolyzes bis(p-nitrophenyl)phosphate with ak cat of 59 s−1 and K′ of 4 mm. Kinetic analysis of the dimeric enzyme revealed positive cooperativity for the substrate bis(p-nitrophenyl)phosphate with a Hill coefficient of 1.6, whereas hydrolysis of the substrate thymidine-5′-p-nitrophenyl phosphate followed Michaelis-Menten kinetics. Furthermore, the enzyme is capable of binding two zinc or two iron ions. However, it displays phosphodiesterase activity only in the zinc form. The metal environment characterized by zinc K-edge x-ray absorption spectroscopy was modeled with two histidine residues, one carboxylate group, and 1.5 oxygen atoms. This corresponds to the coordination found in other metallo-β-lactamase domain proteins. Phosphodiesterase activity is strongly dependent on the presence of zinc. These results identify the currently unassigned gene product ElaC to be a novel binuclear zinc phosphodiesterase.
γ-Glutamyltransferase and Breast Cancer Risk Beyond Alcohol Consumption and Other Life Style Factors – A Pooled Cohort Analysis

Objective Elevated γ-Glutamyltransferase serum levels are associated with increased risk of overall cancer incidence and several site-specific malignancies. In the present prospective study we report on the associations of serum γ-Glutamyltransferase with the risk of breast cancer in a pooled population-based cohort considering established life style risk factors. Methods Two cohorts were included in the present study, i.e. the Vorarlberg (n = 97,268) and the Malmoe cohort (n = 9,790). Cox proportional hazards regression models were fitted to estimate HRs for risk of breast cancer. Results In multivariate analysis adjusted for age, body mass index and smoking status, women with γ-Glutamyltransferase levels in the top quartile were at significantly higher risk for breast cancer compared to women in the lowest quartile (HR 1.21, 95% CI 1.09 to 1.35; p = 0.005). In the subgroup analysis of the Malmoe cohort, γ-Glutamyltransferase remained an independent risk factor for breast cancer when additionally considering alcohol intake. A statistically significant increase in risk was seen in women with γ-Glutamyltransferase-levels in the top versus lowest quartile in a multivariate model adjusted for age, body mass index, smoking status, physical activity, parity, oral contraceptive-use and alcohol consumption (HR 1.37, 95% CI 1.11–1.69, p = 0.006). Conclusion Our findings identified γ-Glutamyltransferase as an independent risk factor for breast cancer beyond the consumption of alcohol and other life style risk factors.
The UPC Participation at the Metrics MATR Challenge 2008

An articulating plate assembly for retaining sheets of roofing material on a roof surface includes a plate defining (i) a generally hemispherically-shaped recess in a central portion of a first surface thereof, and (ii) an aperture disposed in the recess and extending through the plate, and a fastener having (i) a shank portion configured to pass through the aperture and to engage the roof surface, and (ii) a head portion having an underside of a curved configuration generally complementary to the recess.
Asymmetrical ventricular enlargement in Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease (PD) typically manifests with asymmetric motor symptom onset. Ventricular enlargement, a nonspecific measure of brain atrophy, has been associated with cognitive decline in PD, but not with motor symptom asymmetry. Asymmetrical ventricular enlargement on magnetic resonance images was explored in a monozygotic twin pair discordant for PD and in nine healthy monozygotic twin pairs. The left–right lateral ventricular volumetric difference of the PD‐twin was greater than that of his twin and all other healthy twins, with the larger ventricle observed contralateral to the more symptomatic side. Moreover, the lateral ventricle asymmetry difference between twin pairs was significantly higher for the discordant PD‐twin pair than for the healthy twin pairs. This is the first report to suggest the presence of asymmetrical ventricular enlargement in PD, findings that may be worthy of further study. © 2007 Movement Disorder Society
BubbleView: an alternative to eye-tracking for crowdsourcing image importance

We present BubbleView, a methodology to replace eye-tracking with mouse clicks. Participants are presented with a series of blurred images and click to reveal "bubbles" - small, circular areas of the image at original resolution, similar to having a confined area of focus like the eye fovea. We evaluated BubbleView on a variety of image types: information visualizations, natural images, static webpages, and graphic designs, and compared the clicks to eye fixations collected with eye-trackers in controlled lab settings. We found that BubbleView can be used to successfully approximate eye fixations on different images, and that the regions where people click using BubbleView can also be used to rank image and design elements by importance. BubbleView is designed to measure which information people consciously choose to examine, and works best for defined tasks such as describing the content of an information visualization or measuring image importance. Compared to related methodologies based on a moving-window approach, BubbleView provides more reliable and less noisy data.
Investigation on Learning Parameters of Self-Organizing Maps

In the paper, the influence of learning parameters on self-organizing map (SOM) is analyzed, when both numerical data and text documents are investigated. Three neighboring functions (bubble, Gaussian, and heuristic) and four learning rates (linear, inverse-of-time, power series, and heuristic) have been investigated. The learning rates are changed according to epochs or iterations. The quality of self-organizing map is measured not only by quantization error, but also by two other measures, which are suitable when the classified data are analyzed.
PNP: Fast Path Ensemble Method for Movie Design

How can we design a product or movie that will attract, for example, the interest of Pennsylvania adolescents or liberal newspaper critics? What should be the genre of that movie and who should be in the cast? In this work, we seek to identify how we can design new movies with features tailored to a specific user population. We formulate the movie design as an optimization problem over the inference of user-feature scores and selection of the features that maximize the number of attracted users. Our approach, PNP, is based on a heterogeneous, tripartite graph of users, movies, and features (e.g. actors, directors, genres), where users rate movies and features contribute to movies. We learn the preferences by leveraging user similarities defined through different types of relations, and show that our method outperforms state-of-the-art approaches, including matrix factorization and other heterogeneous graph-based analysis. We evaluate PNP on publicly available real-world data and show that it is highly scalable and effectively provides movie designs oriented towards different groups of users, including men, women, and adolescents.
Flipping the Classroom to Address Cognitive Obstacles

Jenna Tague received her B.S. degree in Mathematics from Bucknell University and her M.S. in Mathematics from Colorado State University. She is currently a doctoral student in mathematics education at The Ohio State University. She works with Greg Baker in the mathematics department on instructional technology in a differential equations course for engineering students. Research interests include mathematical literacy for engineers and instructional technology.
Determination of 25-hydroxyvitamin D in serum by HPLC and immunoassay.

Vitamin D status is usually assessed by measuring the serum concentration of 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D]. Its measurement is important as a clinical indicator of nutritional vitamin D deficiency, which is one of the causes of osteoporosis (1). Vitamin D exists in two forms: cholecalciferol (vitamin D3) and ergocalciferol (vitamin D2). Vitamin D2 is further metabolized to 25(OH)D2. Vitamin D3 is formed in the skin from its precursor 7-dehydrocholesterol after ultraviolet irradiation or is absorbed from the diet (2). It is further hydroxylated in the liver to 25(OH)D3 as the first step of its conversion in the kidney to 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3, which is the biologically active form. 25(OH)D3 is the main circulating form of vitamin D. Clinically it is important to measure both forms of 25-hydroxyvitamin D to monitor the effect of vitamin D2 supplementation on total vitamin D status. The first routine methods for measurement of 25(OH)D concentrations in human plasma were based on competitive protein binding and used vitamin D-binding protein and a tritium-labeled tracer (3). These methods were replaced by a simpler, rapid RIA (4), and a radioiodinated tracer was incorporated into the RIA in 1993 (5). This assay principle is the basis of several commercially available methods. Quantitative HPLC assays have been developed based on ultraviolet detection and normal-phase separation (6), combined use of normal- and reversed-phase separations (7), or reversed-phase separation alone(8). Recently, reversed-phase HPLC methods for 25(OH)D3 in human plasma have been developed with normal-phase prepurification of the sample (9) or liquid extraction only (10). Earlier HPLC methods for 25(OH)D3 in serum were designed mainly for research purposes and were therefore too complicated for routine use. The present method was designed to be easy to use, sensitive, and rapid with …
Association of FCGR2A rs1801274 polymorphism with susceptibility to autoimmune diseases: A meta-analysis

Objectives The aim of this meta-analysis was to estimate the association between the FCGR2A rs1801274 polymorphism and the susceptibility to autoimmune diseases more precisely. Methods A meta-analysis was conducted on the association between the FCGR2A gene variants and ADs by allelic contrast, homozygote contrast, the recessive model, and the dominant model. Results A total of 17 studies with 30 comparisons in different populations and genotype-methods were available for this meta-analysis, including 10 Kawasaki disease (KD), 7 Ulcerative colitis (UC), 6 Crohn's disease (CD), 3 Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), 2 Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), 1 Autoimmune thyroid disease (ATD) and 1 diabetes mellitus type 1 (T1D). A significant association between FCGR2A rs1801274 polymorphism were found in KD (OR = 1.409, P < 0.001) and UC (OR = 1.237, P < 0.001). A overall meta-analysis increased risk of AD significant association between FCGR2A rs1801274 gene polymorphism and ADs under allelic (OR = 1.378, P=0.000), homozygous (OR: 1.866, P=0.001), dominant (OR = 1.667, P = 0.000) and recessive (OR = 1.434, P=0.000) in Asian population. Meanwhile, a decreased risk of AD was detected in the allelic (OR= 0.882, P = 0.011), homozygous (OR = 0.777, P = 0.013), dominant (OR = 0.850, P = 0.032) and recessive (OR = 0.840, P = 0.048) in African-American population. Conclusions This meta-analysis demonstrates that the FCGR2A rs1801274 G-allele confers susceptibility to KD and UC. Data also suggests that the FCGR2A rs1801274 polymorphism may be associated with the susceptibility of multiple ADs in Asian and African-American populations.
The Effects of Foot Rehabilitation on Weight-Bearing and Gait Velocity in Children with Pervasive Developmental Disorder

Objective: In this study, children with pervasive developmental disorder received foot rehabilitation three times a week for 12 weeks, in order to compare and analyze their gait patterns, feet shapes and balance in comparison to normal children whose daily life was controlled. The purpose was to provide basic data related to foot rehabilitation for children with pervasive developmental disorder by investigating gait stability and kinematic change and, ultimately, help create a clinical intervention program to improve gait of children with pervasive developmental disorder. Design: Cross-sectional study.Methods: The subjects were 10 normal children (normal group) with no particular disorder and 10 children with pervasive disorders (PDD group). For the study, at S sport clinic, foot pressures at static phase and gait phrase of the subjects were measured by using a foot pressure measurement device (Gaitview AFA-50,korea) and growth index (height, weight, BMI) was measured based on impedance measurement method (Inbody, J10). The foot rehabilitation exercise was performed three times a week for 12 weeks, for 1 hour and 20 minutes per session. The data was processed by using SPSS 22.0 ver.The non-parametric statistical method Kruskal-Wallis Test was used for each group and variable in this study. As a posttest, the difference between the groups was analyzed by using Mann-Whitney U Test. Also, the statistical significance level was set at ⍺=. 05.Results: There was a significant difference in the ratio between the two feet of children with developmental disorders, with 4.45±4.56 % decrease, and also in the that of normal children, with 3.66±5.64% decrease. Also, there was a significant difference between the two groups. The gait velocity of children ofdevelopmental disorders decreased by 0.27 ± 0.27, with a significant difference, while that of normal children increased by 0.11±0.14. Also, there was a significant difference between the groups (p<.05). Conclusions: In this study, the foot rehabilitation exercise had an effect on improving balance in the plantar pressure ratio of children with pervasive developmental disorders as well as gait velocity. The findings suggest the foot rehabilitation exercise improves gait velocity by improving overall physical stability and, thereby, physical control.
Efficient Optimal Algorithm of Task Scheduling in Cloud Computing Environment

Cloud computing is an emerging technology in distributed computing which facilitates pay per model as per user demand and requirement.Cloud consist of a collection of virtual machine which includes both computational and storage facility. The primary aim of cloud computing is to provide efficient access to remote and geographically distributed resources. Cloud is developing day by day and faces many challenges, one of them is scheduling. Scheduling refers to a set of policies to control the order of work to be performed by a computer system. A good scheduler adapts its scheduling strategy according to the changing environment and the type of task. In this research paper we presented a Generalized Priority algorithm for efficient execution of task and comparison with FCFS and Round Robin Scheduling. Algorithm should be tested in cloud Sim toolkit and result shows that it gives better performance compared to other traditional scheduling algorithm.
Comparing model checking and static program analysis: A case study in error detection approaches

Static program analysis and model checking are two different techniques in bug detection that perform error checking statically, without running the program. In general, static program analysis determines run-time properties of programs by examining the code structure while model checking needs to explore the relevant states of the computation. This paper reports on a comparison of such approaches via an empirical evaluation of tools that implement these techniques: CBMC – a bounded model checker and Parfait – a static program analysis tool. These tools are run over code repositories with known, marked in the code bugs. We indicate the performance of these tools and report on statistics of found and missed bugs. Our results illustrate the relative strengths of each approach.
Syntactic structural assignment in Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children with specific language impairment.

PURPOSE In this study, the authors examined the comprehension of sentences with predicates and reflexives that are linked to a nonadjacent noun as a test of the hierarchical ordering deficit (HOD) hypothesis. That hypothesis and more modern versions posit that children with specific language impairment (SLI) have difficulty in establishing nonadjacent (hierarchical) relations among elements of a sentence. The authors also tested whether additional working memory demands in constructions containing reflexives affected the extent to which children with SLI incorrectly structure sentences as indicated by their picture-pointing comprehension responses. METHOD Sixteen Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children (8;4-10;6 [years;months]) with SLI and 16 children with typical language development (TLD) matched for age (± 3 months), gender, and socioeconomic status participated in 2 experiments (predicate and reflexive interpretation). In the reflexive experiment, the authors also manipulated working memory demands. Each experiment involved a 4-choice picture selection sentence comprehension task. RESULTS Children with SLI were significantly less accurate on all conditions. Both groups made more hierarchical syntactic construction errors in the long working memory condition than in the short working memory condition. CONCLUSION The HOD hypothesis was not confirmed. For both groups, syntactic factors (structural assignment) were more vulnerable than lexical factors (prepositions) to working memory effects in sentence miscomprehension.
A new multicast authentication protocol using erasure code functions and signcryption techniques

Multicast authentication is a challenging problem, since it requires the verification of the sender by a large number of recipients. In literature, there are many solutions to solve this problem. Some of these solutions suffer from high communication and computation overheads, others suffer from packet loss and pollution attacks. The proposed solutions are divided into two approaches: the first is to design more efficient signature schemes and the second is to amortize the cost of signature over several packets. Other solutions are based on signcryption techniques which aim to simultaneously achieve the basic goals of encryption and signature schemes, namely confidentiality, authentication and non-repudiation. Although, the use of signcryption techniques enhances communication and computation overheads, this solution suffers from the inability to resist packet loss. This is due to the fact that all the block of packets must be received by the designated recipients before performing authentication. In the present paper, we propose a protocol that is based on the idea of amortizing the signcrypted text over several packets. The new protocol uses signcryption technique to provide both authenticity and confidentiality, and to resist pollution attack. In order to resist packet loss, the proposed protocol uses erasure code functions. The proposed protocol is compared to other authentication protocols. The comparison shows that the proposed protocol can resist packet loss and pollution attacks with low communication and computation overheads, which make it suitable for real-time applications.
Sequencing and comparative analyses of the genomes of zoysiagrasses

Zoysia is a warm-season turfgrass, which comprises 11 allotetraploid species (2n = 4x = 40), each possessing different morphological and physiological traits. To characterize the genetic systems of Zoysia plants and to analyse their structural and functional differences in individual species and accessions, we sequenced the genomes of Zoysia species using HiSeq and MiSeq platforms. As a reference sequence of Zoysia species, we generated a high-quality draft sequence of the genome of Z. japonica accession ‘Nagirizaki’ (334 Mb) in which 59,271 protein-coding genes were predicted. In parallel, draft genome sequences of Z. matrella ‘Wakaba’ and Z. pacifica ‘Zanpa’ were also generated for comparative analyses. To investigate the genetic diversity among the Zoysia species, genome sequence reads of three additional accessions, Z. japonica ‘Kyoto’, Z. japonica ‘Miyagi’ and Z. matrella ‘Chiba Fair Green’, were accumulated, and aligned against the reference genome of ‘Nagirizaki’ along with those from ‘Wakaba’ and ‘Zanpa’. As a result, we detected 7,424,163 single-nucleotide polymorphisms and 852,488 short indels among these species. The information obtained in this study will be valuable for basic studies on zoysiagrass evolution and genetics as well as for the breeding of zoysiagrasses, and is made available in the ‘Zoysia Genome Database’ at http://zoysia.kazusa. or.jp.