Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
S-100B Concentration Is Not Related to Neurocognitive Performance in the First Month after Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

The serum concentration of S-100B is reported to reflect the severity of brain damage. The purpose of this study was to determine whether elevated serum S-100B concentrations were related to neuropsychological test performance of patients in the subacute phase of recovery from mild traumatic brain injury (TBI). S-100B concentrations were measured in blood samples taken within 6 h after TBI. Serum S-100B was estimated using an immunoluminometric assay. Cognitive speed and memory were assessed with neuropsychological tests at a median of 13 days (range 7–21 days) after injury. The two groups, formed on a median split of initial serum S-100B concentrations (> or <0.22 µg/l) did not differ in age or education. The neuropsychological performance of the TBI patients was also compared with that of a healthy control group. Cognitive speed and memory performance of mild TBI patients were inferior compared to those of healthy subjects. There were no significant differences within the TBI group when serum S-100B concentration was taken into consideration. The findings suggest that serum S-100B levels after mild TBI are not predictive of neuropsychological performance in the subacute stage of recovery.
Chaining , Referral , Subscription , Leasing : New Mechanisms in Distributed Query Optimization

This work outlines a exible framework for optimizing and deploying distributed queries in wide area networks. The database eld has developed very powerful techniques for nding eÆcient execution plans for declaratively speci ed queries. However, applying these optimization techniques in the setting of distributed information management requires centralized knowledge of the entire network and assumes passive behavior from the data sources. The reality of the Web is di erent. Future distributed query optimizers must handle (in fact, exploit! ) a rich variety of information ow mechanisms like chaining, referral, proxying, brokering, publish-subscribe, leasing, etc. We look to mobile agent technologies for the combination of exibility and precision needed for handling these mechanisms. Our language-based approach uses a mobile process calculus based on the pi-calculus in combination with a powerful query-plan language. The salient characteristic of the language is that messaging, migration, and database operations all live in the same semantic space and interact, creating new opportunities for optimization.
Morphology and physiology of the geniculocortical synapse in the cat: the question of parallel input to the striate cortex.

Xhv . hysiological studies of the neural circuitry of the visual cortex have so far analyzed only the initial action of visual afferents to the cortex. These studies have, moreover, been limited to the cat. The present review is correspondingly limited in scope and attempts: (1) to summarize present understanding of the morphology and physiology of the termination in the cat's striate cortex of afferent fibers from the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN); (2) to summarize recent physiological work which indicates that these afferent fibers comprise several functionally distinct, parallel-running subgroups; and (3) to formulate questions about the terminations of geniculocortical afferents raised by the functional subgrouping of afferents.
Interactions between HIV Infection and Sepsis among Critically Ill Patients : A Systematic Review

The epidemiology of critically ill human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients admitted to intensive care units (ICU) dramatically changes since the advent of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). Currently, non-Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) illnesses are responsible for the majority of admission on ICU, contrasting with pre-HAART era, where AIDS as well as opportunistic infections (OI) dominated. In this context, sepsis has emerged as a leading condition mandating hospitalization and being associated with worse prognosis. However, data with respect to prevalence of sepsis, causative OI, outcome, and the influence of HAART on sepsis are scanty on literature. Three databases were searched for publications reporting the prevalence of HIV-associated sepsis in post-HAART era. Thirty-three studies were included for review. The prevalence of sepsis ranged from 2%-62%. Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia was the most common OI. Sepsis was much prevalent and associated with higher mortality in HIV group. HAART did not influence sepsis outcomes. Our findings show that HIV increased the risk of sepsis and contributes to a higher mortality in HIV critically ill patients. Further studies are urgently needed to assess the optimal management strategies of HIV-associated sepsis.
Epidemiological study of Guillain-Barré syndrome in south east England

OBJECTIVES To determine the incidence, treatment, and outcome of Guillain-Barré syndrome in south east England. METHODS Patients presenting with confirmed Guillain-Barré syndrome between 1 July 1993 and 30 June 1994 were recruited via a voluntary reporting scheme coordinated by the British Neurological Surveillance Unit, hospital activity data collected from acute admitting hospitals within the South East and South West Thames Regional Health Authorities, death certificates, and a contemporary research study of Guillain-Barré syndrome and Campylobacter jejuni infection. All patients were followed up for one year to determine outcome. RESULTS Seventy nine patients were recruited, 35 (44%) male, 44 (56%) female, including three children (two boys, one girl). The crude (95% confidence interval (95% CI)) annual incidence was 1.2 (0.9–1.4) cases/100 000 population and 1.5 (1.3–1.8)/100 000 when adjusted for undetected cases. Twenty (25%) patients required ventilation for an average (SD) of 42 (64) days. Thirty six (46%) patients received intravenous human immunoglobulin, five (6%) received plasma exchange, 11 (14%) both treatments, three (4%) steroids, and 25 (32%) no immunomodulatory treatment. One year later, six patients (8%) had died, all of whom were older than 60, three (4%) remained bedbound or ventilator dependent, seven (9%) were unable to walk unaided, 14 (17%) were unable to run, and 49 (62%) had made a complete or almost complete recovery. Increasing age was significantly associated with a poorer outcome at one year. CONCLUSIONS Despite the frequent use of modern immunomodulatory treatments Guillain-Barré syndrome still carries considerable morbidity and mortality.
Dense saliency-based spatiotemporal feature points for action recognition

Several spatiotemporal feature point detectors have been used in video analysis for action recognition. Feature points are detected using a number of measures, namely saliency, cornerness, periodicity, motion activity etc. Each of these measures is usually intensity-based and provides a different trade-off between density and informativeness. In this paper, we use saliency for feature point detection in videos and incorporate color and motion apart from intensity. Our method uses a multi-scale volumetric representation of the video and involves spatiotemporal operations at the voxel level. Saliency is computed by a global minimization process constrained by pure volumetric constraints, each of them being related to an informative visual aspect, namely spatial proximity, scale and feature similarity (intensity, color, motion). Points are selected as the extrema of the saliency response and prove to balance well between density and informativeness. We provide an intuitive view of the detected points and visual comparisons against state-of-the-art space-time detectors. Our detector outperforms them on the KTH dataset using nearest-neighbor classifiers and ranks among the top using different classification frameworks. Statistics and comparisons are also performed on the more difficult Hollywood human actions (HOHA) dataset increasing the performance compared to current published results.
The Molecular Pathogenicity of Fusarium Keratitis: A Fungal Transcriptional Regulator Promotes Hyphal Penetration of the Cornea

Purpose: The pathogenic mechanisms of fungal infection during human keratomycosis were investigated in an ex vivo corneal model that used strains of Fusarium oxysporum differing in the production of a fungal transcription factor. Methods: A pacC− loss-of-function mutant and a pacCc dominant-activating mutant were constructed from a wild-type isolate of F. oxysporum, and the 3 strains were characterized by in vitro growth kinetics. Twenty-seven human donor corneas maintained in tissue culture were superficially scarified and topically inoculated with the wild-type, the pacC− loss-of-function mutant, or the pacCc dominant-activating strains. Relative hyphal invasion into the stroma was compared histopathologically in corneal sections. Results: F. oxysporum strains demonstrated comparable exponential growth rates in vitro. Wild-type F. oxysporum invaded into the corneal tissue within 1 day and penetrated through the anterior stroma during the next 4 days. The pacC− loss-of-function mutant invaded explanted corneas significantly less than the wild-type strain on day 1 (P < 0.0001) and on day 3 (P = 0.0003). The pacCc dominant-activating strain adhered and penetrated explanted corneas similar to the wild-type strain. Conclusions: The PacC pathway regulating the transcription of fungal genes allows fungal adaptation to the ocular surface and enables invasion of the injured cornea by F. oxysporum.
Validation of a Full-Chip Simulation Model for Supply Noise and Delay Dependence on Average Voltage Drop With On-Chip Delay Measurement

Power integrity is a crucial design issue for nano-meter technologies because of decreased supply voltage and increased current. We focused on gate delay variation caused by power/ground noise, and developed a full-chip simulation current model with capacitance and a variable resistor to accurately model current dependency on voltage drop. Measurement results for 90-nm technology are well reproduced in simulation. The error of average supply voltage is 0.9% in average. Measurement results also demonstrate that gate delay depends on average voltage drop.
Adsorption Kinetics of Cryptosporidium parvum to Soils

Vegetative Filter Strips (VFS) have long been used to control the movement of pollutants, thus preventing them from reaching receiving waters. Previous studies have shown a reduction in pathogen transport through a VFS, but little is known about the reduction mechanisms. In this study, Cryptosporidium parvum (C. parvum) has been investigated for adsorption properties with individual soil particles: sand, silt and clay. Clay and silt were incubated individually as well as with C. parvum oocysts and counted in a Coulter Counter. Sampling times started at zero time and were taken at various intervals ending at 210 minutes. The sand was too large to fit through the 100 µm aperture, so results were generated using fluorescent and differential interference contrast microscopy. Photomicrographs were also taken of the combined incubations of oocysts with clay and silt to validate results from the Coulter Counter. Our results indicate that oocysts primarily adhere to or become entrapped within aggregating clay particles and do not adhere substantially to either silt or sand.
Incidence, Manifestations, and Predictors of Worsening White Matter on Serial Cranial Magnetic Resonance Imaging in the Elderly: The Cardiovascular Health Study

Background and Purpose— Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans in the elderly commonly show white matter findings that may raise concerns. We sought to document incidence, manifestations, and predictors of worsening white matter grade on serial imaging. Methods— The Cardiovascular Health Study is a population-based, longitudinal study of 5888 people aged 65 years and older, of whom 1919 have had extensive initial and follow-up evaluations, including 2 MRI scans separated by 5 years. Scans were read without clinical information in standard side-by-side fashion to determine worsening white matter grade. Results— Worsening was evident in 538 participants (28%), mostly (85%) by 1 grade. Although similar at initial scan, participants with worsening white matter grade, compared with those without, experienced greater decline on modified Mini-Mental State examination and Digit-Symbol Substitution test (both P≤0.001) after controlling for potential confounding factors, including occurrence of transient ischemic attack or stroke between scans. Independent predictors of worsening white matter grade included cigarette smoking before initial scan and infarct on initial scan. Otherwise, predictors differed according to white matter grade on initial scan. For low initial grade, increased age, increased diastolic blood pressure, increased high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and decreased low-density lipoprotein cholesterol were associated with increased risk of worsening. For high initial grade, any cardiovascular disease and low ankle–arm index were associated with decreased risk of worsening, whereas use of diuretics and statins were associated with increased risk. Conclusion— Worsening white matter grade on serial MRI scans in elderly is common, is associated with cognitive decline, and has complex relations with cardiovascular risk factors.
The influence of attribute cutoffs on consumers' choices of a functional food

Non-compensatory preferences are investigated by incorporating attribute cutoffs into models of consumer choices for food with health-related attributes (omega-3 content) that may be associated with genetic modification. We find empirical evidence that some individuals tend to use attribute cutoffs in decision-making, that incorporating these into the modelling of consumer choices significantly improves model fit, that some respondents are willing to take a utility penalty rather than eliminate an alternative when a cutoff violation occurs and that there is considerable heterogeneity in willingness to violate cutoffs. The study also provides some support to the hypothesis that ignoring cutoff endogeneity in model estimation may generate biased estimates. , Oxford University Press.
Centroidal bases in graphs

We introduce the notion of a centroidal locating set of a graph G, that is, a set L of vertices such that all vertices in G are uniquely determined by their relative distances to the vertices of L. A centroidal locating set of G of minimum size is called a centroidal basis, and its size is the centroidal dimension CD ( G ) . This notion, which is related to previous concepts, gives a new way of identifying the vertices of a graph. The centroidal dimension of a graph G is lower‐ and upper‐bounded by the metric dimension and twice the location‐domination number of G, respectively. The latter two parameters are standard and well‐studied notions in the field of graph identification. We show that for any graph G with n vertices and maximum degree at least 2, ( 1 + o ( 1 ) ) ln ⁡ n ln ⁡ ln ⁡ n ≤ CD ( G ) ≤ n − 1 . We discuss the tightness of these bounds and in particular, we characterize the set of graphs reaching the upper bound. We then show that for graphs in which every pair of vertices is connected via a bounded number of paths, CD ( G ) = Ω ( | E ( G ) | ) , the bound being tight for paths and cycles. We finally investigate the computational complexity of determining CD ( G ) for an input graph G, showing that the problem is hard and cannot even be approximated efficiently up to a factor of o ( log ⁡ n ) . We also give an O ( n ln ⁡ n ) ‐approximation algorithm. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, Vol. 64(2), 96–108 2014
Revisiting Differentially Private Regression: Lessons From Learning Theory and their Consequences

Private regression has received attention from both database and security communities. Recent work by Fredrikson et al. (USENIX Security 2014) analyzed the functional mechanism (Zhang et al. VLDB 2012) for training linear regression models over medical data. Unfortunately, they found that model accuracy is already unacceptable with differential privacy when $\varepsilon = 5$. We address this issue, presenting an explicit connection between differential privacy and stable learning theory through which a substantially better privacy/utility tradeoff can be obtained. Perhaps more importantly, our theory reveals that the most basic mechanism in differential privacy, output perturbation, can be used to obtain a better tradeoff for all convex-Lipschitz-bounded learning tasks. Since output perturbation is simple to implement, it means that our approach is potentially widely applicable in practice. We go on to apply it on the same medical data as used by Fredrikson et al. Encouragingly, we achieve accurate models even for $\varepsilon = 0.1$. In the last part of this paper, we study the impact of our improved differentially private mechanisms on model inversion attacks, a privacy attack introduced by Fredrikson et al. We observe that the improved tradeoff makes the resulting differentially private model more susceptible to inversion attacks. We analyze this phenomenon formally.
Enhanced Performance with Brain Stimulation: Attentional Shift or Visual Cue?

The premotor theory of visual spatial attention proposes that the same brain activity that prepares for saccades to one part of the visual field also facilitates visual processing at that same region of the visual field. Strong support comes from improvements in performance by electrical stimulation of presaccadic areas, including the frontal eye field and superior colliculus (SC). Interpretations of these stimulation experiments are hampered by the possibility that stimulation might be producing an internal visual flash or phosphene that attracts attention as a real flash would. We tested this phosphene hypothesis in the SC by comparing the effect of interchanging real visual stimuli and electrical stimulation. We first presented a veridical visual cue at the time SC stimulation improved performance; if a phosphene improved performance at this time, a real cue should do so in the same manner, but it did not. We then changed the time of SC visual-motor stimulation to when we ordinarily presented the veridical visual cue, and failed to improve performance. Last, we shifted the site of SC stimulation from the visual-motor neurons of the SC intermediate layers to the visual neurons of the superficial layers to determine whether stimulating visual neurons produced a larger improvement in performance, but it did not. Our experiments provide evidence that a phosphene is not responsible for the shift of attention that follows SC stimulation. This added evidence of a direct shift of attention is consistent with a key role of the SC in the premotor theory of attention.
RING-H2-type E3 gene VpRH2 from Vitis pseudoreticulata improves resistance to powdery mildew by interacting with VpGRP2A

Grapevine is one of the world's most important fruit crops. European cultivated grape species have the best fruit quality but show almost no resistance to powdery mildew (PM). PM caused by Uncinula necator is a harmful disease that has a significant impact on the economic value of the grape crop. In this study, we examined a RING-H2-type ubiquitin ligase gene VpRH2 that is associated with significant PM-resistance of Chinese wild-growing grape Vitis pseudoreticulata accession Baihe-35-1. The expression of VpRH2 was clearly induced by U. necator inoculation compared with its homologous gene VvRH2 in a PM-susceptible grapevine V. vinifera cv. Thompson Seedless. Using a yeast two-hybrid assay we confirmed that VpRH2 interacted with VpGRP2A, a glycine-rich RNA-binding protein. The degradation of VpGRP2A was inhibited by treatment with the proteasome inhibitor MG132 while VpRH2 did not promote the degradation of VpGRP2A. Instead, the transcripts of VpRH2 were increased by over-expressing VpGRP2A while VpRH2 suppressed the expression of VpGRP2A. Furthermore, VpGRP2A was down-regulated in both Baihe-35-1 and Thompson Seedless after U. necator inoculation. Specifically, we generated VpRH2 overexpression transgenic lines in Thompson Seedless and found that the transgenic plants showed enhanced resistance to powdery mildew compared with the wild-type. In summary, our results indicate that VpRH2 interacts with VpGRP2A and plays a positive role in resistance to powdery mildew.
Morphology and properties of ternary polyamide 6/polyamide 66/elastomer blends

The aim of the work presented is to evaluate the mechanisms and phase interactions in ternary blends based on different polyamides and functionalised elastomers, and to establish a correlation between the morphology controlled by the specific binary interactions, and physical and technological properties, respectively. The properties of the ternary system polyamide 6/polyamide 66/ elastomer depend on the specific blend morphology which is determined mainly by the differences of the surface tension of the components. A phase-in-phase structure was observed by microscopic study (AFM) in the ternary polyamide 6/polyamide 66/elastomer blends with maleic anhydride grafted ethene-octene copolymer, and a “quasi” phase-in-phase structure in blends with maleic anhydride grafted ethene-propene-diene copolymer as the elastomer phase. An incorporation of polyamide inside of the elastomer particles was observed in the first case due to the difunctionality of polyamide 66. This type of morphology causes an increased elongation at break and toughness of these blends. In comparison to the binary polyamide based blends the ternary blends show an increased elastic modulus, elongation at break and yield stress as well as a high impact strength at low temperatures up to −20 °C. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A family of adaptive filter algorithms with decorrelating properties

Although the normalized least mean square (NLMS) algorithm is robust, it suffers from low convergence speed if driven by highly correlated input signals. One method presented to overcome this problem is the Ozeki/Umeda (1984) affine projection (AP) algorithm. The algorithm applies update directions that are orthogonal to the last P input vectors and thus allows decorrelation of an AR(P) input process, speeding up the convergence. This article presents a simple approach to show this property, which furthermore leads to the construction of new algorithms that can handle other kinds of correlations such as MA and ARMA processes. A statistical analysis is presented for this family of algorithms. Similar to the AP algorithm, these algorithms also suffer a possible increase in the noise energy caused by their pre-whitening filters.
Prognostic Importance of Monitoring Serum Amyloid a Protein (SAA) In Patients with Cerebral Infarction

∑ Serum amyloid A protein (SAA) is an acute-phase plasma protein, which increases in response to tissue damage. The aim of the study was to investigate SAA in the blood of patients with cerebral infarction. Sixty subjects were studied, including 45 patients with cerebral infarction and 15 controls. SAA was determined using ELISA method on days 1, 3, 7 and 14 after ischemic stroke onset. SAA was found to increase by day 3, which was followed by a decrease if no infectious complication occurred. The concentration of SAA was statistically significantly increased on days 1, 3, 7 and 14 (p < 0.05), however, the increase was greater in patients with severe clinical manifestations. A statistically significant SAA increase by day 14 was recorded in patients with an accompanying infectious process. The study showed the concentration of SAA to depend on the clinical severity of ischemic stroke. SAA was found to be a sensitive early indicator of possible infectious complications.