Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Role of ankle foot orthoses in the outcome of clinical tests of balance

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of ankle foot orthoses (AFOs) on the outcome of balance assessment. Methods: Ten healthy subjects participated in clinical tests of balance with and without bilateral ankle foot orthoses (AFOs). The following clinical tests were performed: the Modified Clinical Test of Sensory Interaction on Balance (MCTSIB), the Limits of Stability (LOS) and the Functional Reach test. Results: A statistically significant effect of AFOs was seen in the outcomes of the MCTSIB test (p = 0.042), LOS test (p = 0.021) and Reach test (p = 0.003). Conclusions: The results indicate that the use of AFOs may impede the performance of clinical tests of balance. This outcome should be taken into consideration while performing balance evaluations with patient populations in the clinic. Implications for Rehabilitation Ankle foot orthoses (AFOs) are effective means of improving ambulation in patients. The use of AFOs may influence the outcome of clinical tests of balance. The role of AFOs should be taken into consideration while performing balance evaluations in the clinic.
CLIC1 Function Is Required for β-Amyloid-Induced Generation of Reactive Oxygen Species by Microglia

The Alzheimer's disease (AD) brain is characterized by plaques containing β-amyloid (Aβ) protein surrounded by astrocytes and reactive microglia. Activation of microglia by Aβ initiates production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) by the plasmalemmal NADPH oxidase; the resultant oxidative stress is thought to contribute to neurodegeneration in AD. We have previously shown that Aβ upregulates a chloride current mediated by the chloride intracellular channel 1 (CLIC1) protein in microglia. We now demonstrate that Aβ promotes the acute translocation of CLIC1 from the cytosol to the plasma membrane of microglia, where it mediates a chloride conductance. Both the Aβ induced Cl− conductance and ROS generation were prevented by pharmacological inhibition of CLIC1, by replacement of chloride with impermeant anions, by an anti-CLIC1 antibody and by suppression of CLIC1 expression using siRNA. Thus, the CLIC1-mediated Cl− conductance is required for Aβ-induced generation of neurotoxic ROS by microglia. Remarkably, CLIC1 activation is itself dependent on oxidation by ROS derived from the activated NADPH oxidase. We therefore propose that CLIC1 translocation from the cytosol to the plasma membrane, in response to redox modulation by NADPH oxidase-derived ROS, provides a feedforward mechanism that facilitates sustained microglial ROS generation by the NAPDH oxidase.
Evaluation of a Rapid Differentiation Test for Mycobacterium Tuberculosis from other Mycobacteria by Selective Inhibition with p-nitrobenzoic Acid using MGIT 960

Tuberculosis is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb) as well as Non-tubercular mycobacterium (NTM) with similar clinical presentation. Infections due to NTM are reported to have increased in the past few years. Growth of M.tb is inhibited by p-Nitrobenzoic acid (PNB), whereas, NTM are resistant. One hundred and nine isolates from various clinical samples were identified up to species level by their growth rate, pigmentation, and a battery of biochemical tests, including niacin accumulation, nitrate reduction, and heat-stable catalase (68°C) reactions. Para-nitrobenzoic acid (PNB) inhibition test was performed to differentiate between M.tb and NTM. PNB was added to the Lowenstein-Jensen (LJ) medium and BACTEC™ MIGIT (Mycobacteria Growth Indicator Tube)960 medium to a final concentration of 500 μg/ml. All the M.tb isolates, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv (standard strain), were inhibited by PNB on both LJ and MGIT 960. Of the NTM isolates, all were resistant to PNB on MGIT 960 and on LJ PNB, except one isolate of Mycobacterium marinum that was resistant to MGIT 960 PNB, but was susceptible to LJ PNB. The reporting time for M.tb ranged from 4-11 days (median 5.9 days) by MGIT 960 and for NTM it was 2-10 days with an average of 4.5 days. This study was carried out to establish the accuracy and efficiency of MGIT 960 PNB and to differentiate between M.tb and NTM.
In vitro screening system for hepatotoxicity: Comparison of bone‐marrow‐derived mesenchymal stem cells and Placenta‐derived stem cells

Stem cells have unique properties such as self‐renewal, plasticity to generate various cell types, and availability of cells of human origin. The characteristics are attentive in the toxicity screening against chemical toxicants. Placenta‐derived stem cells (PDSCs) have been spotlighted as a new cell source in stem cell research recently because they are characterized by their capacity to differentiate into multilineages. However, the use of PDSCs as an in vitro screening model for potential drug candidates has not yet been studied. Here, we analyzed the potentials for bone‐marrow‐derived mesenchymal stem (BM‐MSCs), which is a representative adult stem cells and PDSCs as an in vitro hepatotoxicity screening system, using well‐known hepatotoxicants. BM‐MSCs and PDSCs were analyzed to the potential for hepatogenic differentiation and were cultured with different concentrations of hepatotoxicants for time courses. The viability and ATP‐binding cassette (ABC) transporters were measured by the MTT assay and RT‐PCR, respectively. The sensitivities of PDSCs to hepatotoxicants are more sensitive than those of BM‐MSCs. The viability (IC50) to in PDSCs was less than that of BM‐MSCs after 48 and 72 h (P < 0.05) of CCl4 exposure. The toxicities of CCl4 were decreased by fourfold in hepatogenic differentiation inducing PDSCs compared to the undifferentiated cells. The alteration of ABCGs was observed in PDSCs during differentiation. These findings suggest that the naïve PDSCs expressing ABCGs can be used as a source for in vitro screening system as well as the expression patterns of ABCG1 and ABCG2 might be involved in the sensitivity of PDSCs to hepatotoxicants. J. Cell. Biochem. 112: 49–58, 2011. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Smooth control of Adaptive Media Playout to acquire IDMS in cluster-based applications

Many emerging multimedia applications enable independent groups (or clusters) of consumers to interact between them and share services within the context of simultaneous media content consumption. Owing to the semantic, spatial or temporal dependency among the involved media streams, concurrently synchronized playout points must be ensured so as not to spoil the user experience on such interaction. This paper presents the combination of an evolved Inter-Destination Multimedia Synchronization (IDMS) approach and a new designed Adaptive Media Playout (AMP) scheme that aims to smoothly adjust the playout timing of each one of the receivers in a specific cluster, if an asynchrony threshold between their playout states is exceeded. Simulation results prove the feasibility of such proposals, by employing several dynamic master selection policies, to maintain an overall synchronization status (within allowable limits) in each cluster, while minimizing the occurrence of long-term playout discontinuities (such as skips/pauses) which are subjectively more annoying to users than small variations in the media playout rate.
Dynamic Projection Mapping onto Deforming Non-Rigid Surface Using Deformable Dot Cluster Marker

Dynamic projection mapping for moving objects has attracted much attention in recent years. However, conventional approaches have faced some issues, such as the target objects being limited to rigid objects, and the limited moving speed of the targets. In this paper, we focus on dynamic projection mapping onto rapidly deforming non-rigid surfaces with a speed sufficiently high that a human does not perceive any misalignment between the target object and the projected images. In order to achieve such projection mapping, we need a high-speed technique for tracking non-rigid surfaces, which is still a challenging problem in the field of computer vision. We propose the Deformable Dot Cluster Marker (DDCM), a novel fiducial marker for high-speed tracking of non-rigid surfaces using a high-frame-rate camera. The DDCM has three performance advantages. First, it can be detected even when it is strongly deformed. Second, it realizes robust tracking even in the presence of external and self occlusions. Third, it allows millisecond-order computational speed. Using DDCM and a high-speed projector, we realized dynamic projection mapping onto a deformed sheet of paper and a T-shirt with a speed sufficiently high that the projected images appeared to be printed on the objects.
Extrinsic Calibration from Per-Sensor Egomotion

We show how to recover the 6-DOF transform between two sensors mounted rigidly on a moving body, a form of extrinsic calibration useful for data fusion. Our algorithm takes noisy, per-sensor incremental egomotion observations (i.e., incremental poses) as input and produces as output an estimate of the maximum-likelihood 6-DOF calibration relating the sensors and accompanying uncertainty. The 6-DOF transformation sought can be represented effectively as a unit dual quaternion with 8 parameters subject to two constraints. Noise is explicitly modeled (via the Lie algebra), yielding a constrained Fisher Information Matrix and CramerRao Lower Bound. The result is an analysis of motion degeneracy and a singularity-free optimization procedure. The method requires only that the sensors travel together along a motion path that is non-degenerate. It does not require that the sensors be synchronized, have overlapping fields of view, or observe common features. It does not require construction of a global reference frame or solving SLAM. In practice, from hand-held motion of RGB-D cameras, the method recovered inter-camera calibrations accurate to within ∼0.014m and ∼0.022 radians (about 1 cm and 1 degree).
Interannual Variability of Soil N and C Forms in Response to Snow—Cover duration and Pedoclimatic Conditions in Alpine Tundra, Northwest Italy

ABSTRACT In alpine tundra the influence of snow-cover duration (SCD) and pedoclimatic conditions on soil nutrient forms during the growing season has received little attention. The hypothesis that SCD influences the soil temperature, which in turn can affect the annual changes in topsoil nitrogen (N) and carbon (C) forms, was tested for five growing seasons at three study sites in the alpine tundra of the NW Italian Alps. Among the pedoclimatic conditions studied (soil temperature, soil moisture, and number of freeze/thaw cycles), the mean soil temperature of the growing season was inversely correlated with the SCD (p < 0.01), which ranged from 216 to 272 days. Independently from the soil characteristics (e.g., degree of evolution), the microbial carbon (Cmicr) of the growing season was inversely correlated with the SCD and the mean soil temperature of the snow-covered season, suggesting the consumption of soil resources made by the Cmicr under the snowpack. During the growing season ammonium (N-NH4+), dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and Cmicr were positively correlated with soil temperature and moisture. Path analysis shows that the interannual variability of topsoil N and C forms was significantly controlled by the pedoclimatic conditions recorded in both the snow-covered and the subsequent growing seasons, which in turn were influenced by SCD. Therefore, SCD played a fundamental role in terms of pedoclimatic conditions during the growing season, contributing to explaining the interannual variability of soil N and C forms, and may be a key factor for predicting the nutrient cycling in alpine tundra in the context of a changing climate.
Oral contraceptives and myocardial infarction: results of the MICA case-control study

Abstract Objectives:To determine the association between myocardial infarction and use of different types of oral contraception in young women. Design:Community based case-control study. Data from interviews and general practice records. Setting:England, Scotland, and Wales. Participants:Cases (n=448) were recruited from women aged between 16 and 44 who had suffered an incident myocardial infarction between 1 October 1993 and 16 October 1995. Controls (n=1728) were women without a diagnosis of myocardial infarction matched for age and general practice. Main outcome measures:Odds ratios for myocardial infarction in current users of all combined oral contraceptives stratified by their progestagen content compared with non-users; current users of third generation versus second generation oral contraceptives. Results:The adjusted odds ratio for myocardial infarction was 1.40 (95% confidence interval 0.78 to 2.52) for all combined oral contraceptive users, 1.10 (0.52 to 2.30) for second generation users, and 1.96 (0.87 to 4.39) for third generation users. Subgroup analysis by progestagen content did not show any significant difference from 1, and there was no effect of duration of use. The adjusted odds ratio for third generation users versus second generation users was 1.78 (0.66 to 4.83). 87% of cases were not exposed to an oral contraceptive, and 88% had clinical cardiovascular risk factors or were smokers, or both. Smoking was strongly associated with myocardial infarction: adjusted odds ratio 12.5 (7.29 to 21.5) for smoking 20 or more cigarettes a day. Conclusions:There was no significant association between the use of oral contraceptives and myocardial infarction. The modest and non-significant point estimates for this association have wide confidence intervals. There was no significant difference between second and third generation products.
N2 gas is an effective fertilizer for bioethanol production by Zymomonas mobilis

Significance Recently there has been a surge in ethanol biofuel production from cellulosic feedstocks, offering more environmental benefits than conventional ethanol production from food crops. However, cellulosic feedstocks are low in nitrogen, requiring that millions of dollars be spent on nitrogen supplements to grow the ethanol-producing microbes. Zymomonas mobilis is a bacterium that has long been viewed as a potential rival to Baker’s yeast as an ethanol producer. Contrary to published remarks, we discovered that Z. mobilis can use the most abundant gas in the atmosphere, N2, as a nitrogen source and does so without detriment to the high ethanol yield. Using N2-utilizing Z. mobilis could offset much of the monetary and environmental costs of current industrial nitrogen supplements. A nascent cellulosic ethanol industry is struggling to become cost-competitive against corn ethanol and gasoline. Millions of dollars are spent on nitrogen supplements to make up for the low nitrogen content of the cellulosic feedstock. Here we show for the first time to our knowledge that the ethanol-producing bacterium, Zymomonas mobilis, can use N2 gas in lieu of traditional nitrogen supplements. Despite being an electron-intensive process, N2 fixation by Z. mobilis did not divert electrons away from ethanol production, as the ethanol yield was greater than 97% of the theoretical maximum. In a defined medium, Z. mobilis produced ethanol 50% faster per cell and generated half the unwanted biomass when supplied N2 instead of ammonium. In a cellulosic feedstock-derived medium, Z. mobilis achieved a similar cell density and a slightly higher ethanol yield when supplied N2 instead of the industrial nitrogen supplement, corn steep liquor. We estimate that N2-utilizing Z. mobilis could save a cellulosic ethanol production facility more than $1 million/y.
NEUROSVM: An Architecture to Reduce the Effect of the Choice of Kernel on the Performance of SVM

In this paper we propose a new multilayer classifier architecture. The proposed hybrid architecture has two cascaded modules: feature extraction module and classification module. In the feature extraction module we use the multilayered perceptron (MLP) neural networks, although other tools such as radial basis function (RBF) networks can be used. In the classification module we use support vector machines (SVMs)---here also other tool such as MLP or RBF can be used. The feature extraction module has several sub-modules each of which is expected to extract features capturing the discriminating characteristics of different areas of the input space. The classification module classifies the data based on the extracted features. The resultant architecture with MLP in feature extraction module and SVM in classification module is called NEUROSVM. The NEUROSVM is tested on twelve benchmark data sets and the performance of the NEUROSVM is found to be better than both MLP and SVM. We also compare the performance of proposed architecture with that of two ensemble methods: majority voting and averaging. Here also the NEUROSVM is found to perform better than these two ensemble methods. Further we explore the use of MLP and RBF in the classification module of the proposed architecture. The most attractive feature of NEUROSVM is that it practically eliminates the severe dependency of SVM on the choice of kernel. This has been verified with respect to both linear and non-linear kernels. We have also demonstrated that for the feature extraction module, the full training of MLPs is not needed.
An efficient implementation of D-Flip-Flop using the GDI technique

A new implementation of efficient D-Flip-Flop (DFF) using Gate-Diffusion-Input (GDI) technique is presented. This DFF design allows reducing power-delay product and area of the circuit, while maintaining low complexity of logic design. Performance comparison with other DFF design techniques is presented, with respect to gate area, number of devices, delay and power dissipation, showing advantages and drawbacks of GDI DFF, as compared to other methods. A variety of circuits have been implemented in 0.35 /spl mu/m and 0.1 /spl mu/m technologies to compare the proposed GDI structure with existing alternatives, showing an up-to 45% reduction in power-delay product in GDI. Properties of implemented circuit are discussed and simulation results are reported.
Blind source-separation using second-order cyclostationary statistics

This paper studies the blind source separation (BSS) problem with the assumption that the source signals are cyclostationary. Identifiability and separability criteria based on second-order cyclostationary statistics (SOCS) alone are derived. The identifiability condition is used to define an appropriate contrast function. An iterative algorithm (ATH2) is derived to minimize this contrast function. This algorithm separates the sources even when they do not have distinct cycle frequencies.
Risk Factors for Community-Associated Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Infections in an Outbreak of Disease among Military Trainees in San Diego, California, in 2002

ABSTRACT An outbreak of community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) skin infections was observed in a population of U.S. military trainees in the summer of 2002. A questionnaire was developed and administered to 206 trainees, 22 of whom had MRSA infections. Factors associated with infection were described by multivariable logistic regression modeling and included having a roommate in training with a prior skin infection (odds ratio [OR] = 3.44) or having a family member or friend who worked in a health care setting (OR = 2.79). Previous antibiotic use, hospitalization, or health problems were not associated with MRSA infection. This outbreak of MRSA skin infections in an otherwise-healthy, well-defined, military population provided an opportunity to describe risk factors for CA-MRSA which may help focus prevention efforts in this and other communities.
Comparison of serum procalcitonin with Ranson, APACHE-II, Glasgow and Balthazar CT severity index scores in predicting severity of acute pancreatitis.

BACKGROUND/AIMS The aim of this study is to assess serum procalcitonin (PCT) for early prediction of severe acute pancreatitis compared with multiple scoring systems and biomarkers. METHODS Forty-four patients with acute pancreatitis confirmed by radiological evidences, laboratory assessments, and clinical manifestation were prospectively enrolled. All blood samples and image studies were obtained within 24 hours of admission. RESULTS Acute pancreatitis was graded as severe in 19 patients and mild in 25 patients according to the Atlanta criteria. Levels of serum PCT were significantly higher in severe acute pancreatitis (p=0.001). The accuracy of serum PCT as a predicting marker was 77.3%, which was similar to the acute physiology and chronic health examination (APACHE)-II score, worse than the Ranson score (93.2%) and better than the Balthazar CT index (65.9%). The most effective cut-off level of serum PCT was estimated at 1.77 ng/mL (AUC=0.797, 95% CI=0.658-0.935). In comparision to other simple biomarkers, serum PCT had more accurate value (77.3%) than C-reactive protein (68.2%), urea (75.0%) and lactic dehydrogenase (72.7%). Logistic regression analysis revealed that serum PCT has statistical significance in acute severe pancreatitis. Assessment of serum PCT levels and length of hospital stay by simple linear regression analysis revealed effective p-value with low R square level, which could make only possibilty for affection of serum PCT to admission duration (r2=0.127, p=0.021). CONCLUSIONS Serum PCT was a promising simple biomarker and had similar accuracy of APACHE-II scores as predicting severity of acute pancreatitis.
Efficiency of Base Excision Repair of Oxidative DNA Damage and Its Impact on the Risk of Colorectal Cancer in the Polish Population

DNA oxidative lesions are widely considered as a potential risk factor for colorectal cancer development. The aim of this work was to determine the role of the efficiency of base excision repair, both in lymphocytes and in epithelial tissue, in patients with CRC and healthy subjects. SNPs were identified within genes responsible for steps following glycosylase action in BER, and patients and healthy subjects were genotyped. A radioisotopic BER assay was used for assessing repair efficiency and TaqMan for genotyping. Decreased BER activity was observed in lymphocyte extract from CRC patients and in cancer tissue extract, compared to healthy subjects. In addition, polymorphisms of EXO1, LIG3, and PolB may modulate the risk of colorectal cancer by decreasing (PolB) or increasing (LIG3 and EXO1) the chance of malignant transformation.