Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Progression and Outcome of Patients in a Canadian Dementia Clinic

Abstract: Five hundred and fifty-three patients were referred to a Canadian dementia clinic for standardized evaluation. The majority (83.5%) had a dementia with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) accounting for 89% of dementias. Patients with probable AD who were followed for five years had variable rates of progression, increased mortality (37.1%, 2.5 times the expected rate) and a high rate of institutionalization (79%). Simple demographic (age) and social factors (marital status) were strong predictors for institutionalization. It was extremely difficult at presentation to predict the rate of progression. The prevalence of AD in autopsied cases was 62.5%. Clinic patients were younger, had milder dementias, and were more likely to have AD than patients identified in the course of a contemporaneous population-based dementia prevalence study.
Fat distribution, menopausal age, and breast cancer risk: a shared preconceptional, maternal/oocyte‐mediated link?

To theEditor: We read with great interest the study by Olson et al. [2001]. We were especially interested in their separate analysis of preand postmenopausal women as suggested by den Tonkelaar [1990], and the detection of a major additive genetic component of abdominal fat limited to postmenopausal women only. We think that their results and interpretation raise some interesting questions, especially since after our paper of 1990, a major additive genetic contribution to age at natural menopause (h470%) was found [de Bruin, 2001]. Olson et al. [2001, pp. 468, 470] point to several nongenetic mechanisms on how fat distribution and menopause may be related. For us, however, one crucial distinction between preand postmenopausal women has become clear: the age at menopause is known among postmenopausal women, while premenopausal women represent a mix that will have normal but also rather late menopausal ages, though the phenotype of their actual age at natural menopause cannot (yet) be classified. This component of their (future) age at menopause logically cannot be detected in analysis among premenopausal women [van Noord et al., 1999]. Olson et al. [2001] do not consider this point, but go into great detail about lack of power and other factors to explain their observed differences between preand postmenopausal women. We put forward the hypothesis that the gene claimed by Olson et al. [2001] to affect the waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) could be the same heritable factor or closely linked to a gene that determines age at natural menopause, which would be an alternative explanation as to why no genetic model fit the WHR data among premenopausal women, while it can and has in the subset of postmenopausal women. Given the amount of analysis the authors already performed and their huge number of mothers, daughters, sibs, and even granddaughter and niece sets [Table 1
Momordica charantia Ameliorates Insulin Resistance and Dyslipidemia with Altered Hepatic Glucose Production and Fatty Acid Synthesis and AMPK Phosphorylation in High‐fat‐fed Mice

Momordica charantia Linn. (Cucurbitaceae) fruit is commonly known as bitter melon. C57BL/6J mice were firstly divided randomly into two groups: the control (CON) group was fed with a low‐fat diet, whereas the experimental group was fed a 45% high‐fat (HF) diet for 8 weeks. Afterwards, the CON group was treated with vehicle, whereas the HF group was subdivided into five groups and still on HF diet and was given orally M. charantia extract (MCE) or rosiglitazone (Rosi) or not for 4 weeks. M. charantia decreased the weights of visceral fat and caused glucose lowering. AMP‐activated protein kinase (AMPK) is a major cellular regulator of lipid and glucose metabolism. MCE significantly increases the hepatic protein contents of AMPK phosphorylation by 126.2–297.3% and reduces expression of phosphenolpyruvate carboxykinase (PEPCK) and glucose production. Most importantly, MCE decreased expression of hepatic 11beta hydroxysteroid dehydroxygenase (11beta‐HSD1) gene, which contributed in attenuating diabetic state. Furthermore, MCE lowered serum triglycerides (TGs) by inhibition of hepatic fatty acid synthesis by dampening sterol response element binding protein 1c and fatty acid synthase mRNA leading to reduction in TGs synthesis. This study demonstrates M. charantia ameliorates diabetic and hyperlipidemic state in HF‐fed mice occurred by regulation of hepatic PEPCK, 11beta‐HSD1 and AMPK phosphorylation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Finitely representable databases (extended abstract)

We study classes of infinite but finitely representable databases based on constraints, motivated by new database applications such as geographical databases. The mathematical framework is based on classical decidable first-order theories. We investigate the theory of finitely representable models and prove that it differs strongly from both classical model theory and finite model theory. In particular, we show that most of the well known theorems of either one fail (compactness, completeness, locality, 0/1 laws, etc.). An immediate consequence is the lack of tools to consider the definability of queries in the relational calculus over finitely representable databases. We illustrate this very challenging problem through some classical examples.
A New Method to Reconstruct Recombination Events at a Genomic Scale

Recombination is one of the main forces shaping genome diversity, but the information it generates is often overlooked. A recombination event creates a junction between two parental sequences that may be transmitted to the subsequent generations. Just like mutations, these junctions carry evidence of the shared past of the sequences. We present the IRiS algorithm, which detects past recombination events from extant sequences and specifies the place of each recombination and which are the recombinants sequences. We have validated and calibrated IRiS for the human genome using coalescent simulations replicating standard human demographic history and a variable recombination rate model, and we have fine-tuned IRiS parameters to simultaneously optimize for false discovery rate, sensitivity, and accuracy in placing the recombination events in the sequence. Newer recombinations overwrite traces of past ones and our results indicate more recent recombinations are detected by IRiS with greater sensitivity. IRiS analysis of the MS32 region, previously studied using sperm typing, showed good concordance with estimated recombination rates. We also applied IRiS to haplotypes for 18 X-chromosome regions in HapMap Phase 3 populations. Recombination events detected for each individual were recoded as binary allelic states and combined into recotypes. Principal component analysis and multidimensional scaling based on recotypes reproduced the relationships between the eleven HapMap Phase III populations that can be expected from known human population history, thus further validating IRiS. We believe that our new method will contribute to the study of the distribution of recombination events across the genomes and, for the first time, it will allow the use of recombination as genetic marker to study human genetic variation.
Performance analysis of cellular mobile systems with successive co-channel interference cancellation

This paper presents an analytical framework for the performance evaluation of cellular mobile radio systems equipped with smart antenna systems. In particular, the paper focuses on low-complexity systems which are able to successively suppress the strongest active interferers. The desired user fading statistics is assumed to be flat Rayleigh, Rician, or Nakagami, whereas the interfering signals are assumed to be independent and subject to slow flat Rayleigh fading. The paper starts by presenting generic closed-form expressions for the the carrier-to-interference ratio probability density function after interference cancellation. Based on that, exact closed-form expressions for the outage probability and average error rate formulas are derived. Finally, a comparison with a practical cancellation scheme and the impact of some practical considerations on the performance of successive interference cancellation are investigated. More specifically, the effect of traffic loading, the overall spectral efficiency gain, and the impact of time delay are studied.
Visual Rating of Age-Related White Matter Changes on Magnetic Resonance Imaging: Scale Comparison, Interrater Agreement, and Correlations With Quantitative Measurements

Background and Purpose— To provide further insight into the MRI assessment of age-related white matter changes (ARWMCs) with visual rating scales, 3 raters with different levels of experience tested the interrater agreement and comparability of 3 widely used rating scales in a cross-sectional and follow-up setting. Furthermore, the correlation between visual ratings and quantitative volumetric measurement was assessed. Methods— Three raters from different sites using 3 established rating scales (Manolio, Fazekas and Schmidt, Scheltens) evaluated 74 baseline and follow-up scans from 5 European centers. One investigator also rated baseline scans in a set of 255 participants of the Austrian Stroke Prevention Study (ASPS) and measured the volume of ARWMCs. Results— The interrater agreement for the baseline investigation was fair to good for all scales (&kgr; values, 0.59 to 0.78). On the follow-up scans, all 3 raters depicted significant ARWMC progression; however, the direct interrater agreement for this task was poor (&kgr;, 0.19 to 0.39). Comparison of the interrater reliability between the 3 scales revealed a statistical significant difference between the scale of Manolio and that of Fazekas and Schmidt for the baseline investigation (z value, −2.9676;P =0.003), demonstrating better interrater agreement for the Fazekas and Schmidt scale. The rating results obtained with all 3 scales were highly correlated with each other (Spearman rank correlation, 0.712 to 0.806;P ≤0.01), and there was significant agreement between all 3 visual rating scales and the quantitative volumetric measurement of ARWMC (Kendall W, 0.37, 0.48, and 0.57;P <0.001). Conclusions— Our data demonstrate that the 3 rating scales studied reflect the actual volume of ARWMCs well. The 2 scales that provide more detailed information on ARWMCs seemed preferential compared with the 1 that yields more global information. The visual assessment of ARWMC progression remains problematic and may require modifications or extensions of existing rating scales.
Title Fuzzy EMG classification for prosthesis control

This paper proposes a fuzzy approach to classify single-site electromyograph (EMG) signals for multifunctional prosthesis control. While the classification problem is the focus of this paper, the ultimate goal is to improve myoelectric system control performance, and classification is an essential step in the control. Time segmented features are fed to a fuzzy system for training and classification. In order to obtain acceptable training speed and realistic fuzzy system structure, these features are clustered without supervision using the Basic Isodata algorithm at the beginning of the training phase, and the clustering results are used in initializing the fuzzy system parameters. Afterwards, fuzzy rules in the system are trained with the back-propagation algorithm. The fuzzy approach was compared with an artificial neural network (ANN) method on four subjects, and very similar classification results were obtained. It is superior to the latter in at least three points: slightly higher recognition rate; insensitivity to overtraining; and consistent outputs demonstrating higher reliability. Some potential advantages of the fuzzy approach over the ANN approach are also discussed.
Evaluating the reliability of different preprocessing steps to estimate graph theoretical measures in resting state fMRI data

With resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) there are a variety of post-processing methods that can be used to quantify the human brain connectome. However, there is also a choice of which preprocessing steps will be used prior to calculating the functional connectivity of the brain. In this manuscript, we have tested seven different preprocessing schemes and assessed the reliability between and reproducibility within the various strategies by means of graph theoretical measures. Different preprocessing schemes were tested on a publicly available dataset, which includes rs-fMRI data of healthy controls. The brain was parcellated into 190 nodes and four graph theoretical (GT) measures were calculated; global efficiency (GEFF), characteristic path length (CPL), average clustering coefficient (ACC), and average local efficiency (ALE). Our findings indicate that results can significantly differ based on which preprocessing steps are selected. We also found dependence between motion and GT measurements in most preprocessing strategies. We conclude that by using censoring based on outliers within the functional time-series as a processing, results indicate an increase in reliability of GT measurements with a reduction of the dependency of head motion.
Outcome measures for antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody-associated vasculitis

Purpose of reviewTo describe the design and validation of current outcome measures for antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody-associated vasculitis, and provide insight into ongoing outcome measure development for future randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Recent findingsSubstantial evidence now supports that patient-reported outcomes (PROs) capture unique disease components not represented in current physician-based measures. Further incorporation of formal disease assessment in the setting of RCT will both improve disease assessment in terms of adding new important disease domains and could improve psychometric properties of outcome measures and, therefore, increase trial efficiency. SummaryOptimal outcome measures for AAV promote identification of therapeutic agents that treat all important disease manifestations.
A Critical Study of Bini and Yoruba Value Systems of Nigeria in Change: Culture, Religion, and the Self

This study makes the point that foreigners who have come in contact with Africans, whether as missionary, teacher, colonial administrator, or trader have often underestimated the extent to which the African cultural ethos rules the African mind. Modernizing efforts in Africa are based on assumptions which seek rapid transformations into the ways of another cultural ethos. These efforts, which abound in religious, developmental and political practices, have often met with difficulties. An examination into the content, structure and symbolic notions of the African ethos should unearth those aspects which are in conflict with, and those which are in favour of modernizing tendencies. This orientation sheds light on the problems that inhibit stability and development in Africa.
Higher Dimensional Modal Logic

Higher dimensional automata (HDA) are a model of concurrency that can express most of the traditional partial order models like Mazurkiewicz traces, pomsets, event structures, or Petri nets. Modal logics, interpreted over Kripke structures, are the logics for reasoning about sequential behavior and interleaved concurrency. Modal logic is a well behaved subset of first-order logic; many variants of modal logic are decidable. However, there are no modal-like logics for the more expressive HDA models. In this paper we introduce and investigate a modal logic over HDAs which incorporates two modalities for reasoning about “during” and “after”. We prove that this general higher dimensional modal logic (HDML) is decidable and we define an axiomatic system for it. We also show how, when the HDA model is restricted to Kripke structures, a syntactic restriction of HDML becomes the standard modal logic. Then we isolate the class of HDAs that encode Mazurkiewicz traces and show how HDML, with natural definitions of corresponding Until operators, can be restricted to LTrL (the linear time temporal logic over Mazurkiewicz traces) or the branching time ISTL. We also study the expressiveness of the basic HDML language wrt. bisimulations and conclude that HDML captures the split-bisimulation.
A Design and Implementation for Effective Computer-Generated Route Maps

A route map depicting a path from one location to another is a powerful tool for visualizing and communicating directions. However, it can be difficult for a computer to automatically render route maps that meet the four design goals of effective route maps: readability, clarity, completeness, and convenience. Achieving all of these goals requires trade-offs. We survey the cartography, graphic design, and psychology literature for insight about these trade-offs. We then analyze several common route-mapping styles to demonstrate the variables in map design: what information is included, the precision of that information, and the rendering style. This analysis illustrates that hand-drawn route maps are particularly effective. Finally, we describe in detail a design and implementation for computer-generated maps that mimics the style of hand-drawn route maps.
DETERMINATION OF ARSENIC IN HELIANTHUS ANNUUS L. BY HYDRIDE GENERATION ATOMIC ABSORPTION SPECTROMETRY

This study represents new research on the sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) including new data on arsenic contents in Ergene River Basin. In this study, the concentrations of arsenic in soil and sunflower plant have been investigated. The area has suffered significant pollution as a result of industrial and agricultural activities in Turkey. Sunflower are produced in this area that approximately %70 in Turkey. Arsenic concentrations in H.annuus L. plants collected from different regions in Turkey were determined by hydride-generation atomic absorption spectrometry (HGAAS) after microwave-assisted acid digestion of samples. The accuracy of the techniques was evaluated by using certified reference materials; NIMGBW07404 (GSS-4) for soil and WEPAL-IPE-168 for sunflower plant. The precision of the technique, expressed as relative standard deviation, was less than 8% for HGAAS. Concentrations of total arsenic in root, seed, and soil collected from different regions were in the range of 0.01–2.82 mg kg −1 for H. annuus L. growing in Turkey in 2010 and 2011.
Molecular Generation with Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs)

The potential number of drug like small molecules is estimated to be between 10^23 and 10^60 while current databases of known compounds are orders of magnitude smaller with approximately 10^8 compounds. This discrepancy has led to an interest in generating virtual libraries using hand crafted chemical rules and fragment based methods to cover a larger area of chemical space and generate chemical libraries for use in in silico drug discovery endeavors. Here it is explored to what extent a recurrent neural network with long short term memory cells can figure out sensible chemical rules and generate synthesizable molecules by being trained on existing compounds encoded as SMILES. The networks can to a high extent generate novel, but chemically sensible molecules. The properties of the molecules are tuned by training on two different datasets consisting of fragment like molecules and drug like molecules. The produced molecules and the training databases have very similar distributions of molar weight, predicted logP, number of hydrogen bond acceptors and donors, number of rotatable bonds and topological polar surface area when compared to their respective training sets. The compounds are for the most cases synthesizable as assessed with SA score and Wiley ChemPlanner.
Self-organized patterns and traffic flow in Colonies of organisms: from bacteria and social insects to vertebrates

Flocks of birds and schools of fish are familiar examples of spatial patterns formed by living organisms. In contrast to the patterns on the skins of, say, zebras and giraffes, the patterns of our interest are transient although different patterns change over different timescales. The aesthetic beauty of these patterns has attracted the attention of poets and philosophers for centuries. Scientists from various disciplines, however, are in search of common underlying principles that give rise to the transient patterns in colonies of organisms. Such patterns are observed not only in colonies of organisms as simple as single-cell bacteria, but also in social insects like ants and termites. They are also observed in colonies of vertebrates as complex as birds and fish, and in human societies. In recent years, physicists have utilized the framework of statistical physics to understand these patterns. In this article, we present an overview emphasizing the common trends that rely on theoretical modeling of these systems using the so-called agent-based Lagrangian approach.
Recent Advances and Developments in Neural Repair and Regeneration for Hand Surgery

End-to-end suture of nerves and autologous nerve grafts are the ‘gold standard’ for repair and reconstruction of peripheral nerves. However, techniques such as sutureless nerve repair with tissue glues, end-to-side nerve repair and allografts exist as alternatives. Biological and synthetic nerve conduits have had some success in early clinical studies on reconstruction of nerve defects in the hand. The effectiveness of nerve regeneration could potentially be increased by using these nerve conduits as scaffolds for delivery of Schwann cells, stem cells, neurotrophic and neurotropic factors or extracellular matrix proteins. There has been extensive in vitro and in vivo research conducted on these techniques. The clinical applicability and efficacy of these techniques needs to be investigated fully.
Genetic Diversity of the Cryptococcus Species Complex Suggests that Cryptococcus gattii Deserves to Have Varieties

The Cryptococcus species complex contains two sibling taxa, Cryptococcus neoformans and Cryptococcus gattii. Both species are basidiomycetous yeasts and major pathogens of humans and other mammals. Genotyping methods have identified major haploid molecular types of C. neoformans (VNI, VNII, VNB and VNIV) and of C. gattii (VGI, VGII, VGIII and VGIV). To investigate the phylogenetic relationships among these haploid genotypes, we selected 73 strains from 2000 globally collected isolates investigated in our previous typing studies, representing each of these genotypes and carried out multigene sequence analyses using four genetically unlinked nuclear loci, ACT1, IDE, PLB1 and URA5. The separate or combined sequence analyses of all four loci revealed seven clades with significant support for each molecular type. However, three strains of each species revealed some incongruence between the original molecular type and the sequence-based type obtained here. The topology of the individual gene trees was identical for each clade of C. neoformans but incongruent for the clades of C. gattii indicating recent recombination events within C. gattii. There was strong evidence of recombination in the global VGII population. Both parsimony and likelihood analyses supported three major clades of C. neoformans (VNI/VNB, VNII and VNIV) and four major clades of C. gattii (VGI, VGII, VGIII and VGIV). The sequence variation between VGI, VGIII and VGIV was similar to that between VNI/VNB and VNII. MATa was for the first time identified for VGIV. The VNIV and VGII clades are basal to the C. neoformans or the C. gattii clade, respectively. Divergence times among the seven haploid monophyletic lineages in the Cryptococcus species complex were estimated by applying the hypothesis of the molecular clock. The genetic variation found among all of these haploid monophyletic lineages indicates that they warrant varietal status.