Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Imaging Findings of an Epidermoid Cyst Undergoing Malignant Transformation

Malignant transformation of epidermoid cyst into squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is rare. We report the case of a 39-year-old woman presenting with dizziness and cerebellar ataxia. MR scan revealed a mass in the left cerebropontine angle compressing the brainstem and the cerebellum, with two main components, a cystic and a solid one. The cystic component displayed imaging findings consistent with an epidermoid cyst. The solid component showed dense calcifications, low signal intensity on T1W, T2W and DW images and peripheral nodular enhancement. MR spectroscopy detected high lipid/lactate peaks and choline/creatine ratio. Imaging findings raised suspicion for malignant transformation, which was confirmed by histopathologic examination revealing an SCC. MR imaging with intravenous administration of gadolinium, DW images and MR spectroscopy can play a critical role in the diagnosis of malignant transformation of an epidermoid cyst.
Transformation-invariant representation and NMF

Non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) is a method for the decomposition of multivariate data into strictly positive activations and basis vectors. Here, instead of using unstructured data vectors, we assume that something is known in advance about the type of transformations that either the input data or the basis vectors may undergo. This would be the case e.g. if we assume input vectors that are translationally shifted versions of each other, but it applies to any other transformations as well. The key idea is that we factorize the data into activations and basis vectors modulo the transformations. We show that this can be done by extending NMF in a natural way. The gained factorization thus provides a transformation-invariant and compact encoding that is optimal for the given transformation constraints.
Peer Assessment, Individual Performance, and Contribution to Group Processes

Drawing from game theoretical research, we explore the degree to which rater anonymity affects consequences of peer assessment with respect to individual effectiveness and contribution to group processes. Using longitudinal data collected in a kibbutz-owned manufacturing facility in Israel, we found peer assessment to be associated with a general improvement of supervisory ratings of subordinates over time. More important, this improvement was found to be significantly greater among individuals working in departments assigned to a nonanonymity assessment condition relative to those assigned to an anonymous condition. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
Cell proliferation and replacement following contusive spinal cord injury

After spinal cord injury (SCI), about 50% of the oligodendrocytes and astrocytes in the residual white matter at the injury site are lost by 24 h. However, chronically after SCI, the density of oligodendrocytes is normal. Previous studies have shown that the adult rat spinal cord contains a pool of proliferating glial progenitors whose progeny could help restore cell density after injury. To study proliferation in response to injury, we performed SCI on adult female rats at the T8 level, using a standardized contusion model. Animals received bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) injections during the first week after SCI, and were perfused within 2 h for acute studies, and at 6 weeks for chronic studies. The tissue was analyzed using immunohistochemical detection of BrdU and cell marker antigens. We demonstrate that cell proliferation in the residual white matter is increased at 1–7 days after SCI, peaking on day 3. Dividing cells include oligodendrocytes, astrocytes, microglia/macrophages, and a high proportion of NG2+ glial precursors. By 6 weeks, some cells that had been labeled 2–4 days after SCI were still present. Double immunohistochemistry showed that while very few of these cells expressed NG2 or the microglia/macrophage marker OX42, about 50% expressed CC1 or glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), markers of mature oligodendrocytes and astrocytes, respectively. The post‐injury environment represented by residual white matter is thus permissive to the differentiation of glial precursors. Cells that are stimulated to divide during the first week after SCI develop chronically into mature phenotypes that replace macroglia lost after injury. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Effect of Magnesium Sulphate on intraoperative hemodynamic responses in laparoscopic cholecystectomy

Background: Laryngoscopy and intubation are mandatory for patients undergoing general anesthesia. Direct laryngoscopy and intubation along withpneumoperitoneum with carbon dioxide (CO2) insufflation for laparoscopic surgery cause afferent sympatho-adrenal response, this causes increase in blood pressure (BP), heart rate (HR) and cardiac arrhythmias in some patients.Magnesiumsulphate has been recently shown to have a potential to prevent such harmful responses. Aim: To evaluate the efficacy of administration of magnesium sulphate to attenuate hemodynamic responses due to laryngoscopy, intubation and pneumoperitoneum during laparoscopic surgery. Methods: After taking informed consent, 60 patients were systematicallyrandomised into two groups of 30 each. Patients were kept NPO 8 hours prior and given Tablet Alprazolam 0.25mg and Omeprazole 20 mg at bed time day before surgery and morning of surgery.Group1 received Magnesium sulphate 50 mg/kg in 250 ml of isotonic 0.9%N.S intravenously over 15 to 20 minutes in the preoperative room and Group II ,Same volume of isotonic 0.9%N.S iv. over 15 to 20 minutes ,before shifting the patient immediately afterwards to the operation room. Results: Magnesium sulphate pretreatment in a dose of 50 mg/kg body weight intravenously before laryngoscopy and intubation effectively attenuates hemodynamic responses during intubation and pneumoperitoneum during laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Conclusion: Magnesium sulphate effectively attenuates hemodynamic responses during intubation and pneumoperitoneum during laparoscopic cholecystectomy.
Liposuction: Review of the Techniques, Innovations and Applications

Abstract Liposuction is currently the most frequently performed aesthetic operation in the world. Despite its widespread popularity, it should nevertheless be stated that it is not trivial surgery, not always benign and not as safe as intimated in the glossy office brochures. Since the initial description of liposuction, numerous changes have taken place. Today, surgical indications are well defined and the liposuction procedure is well codified. However, several surgeons and manufacturers have developed new equipment and techniques. We propose to survey all the techniques showing the real place of each of them. Their advantages and disadvantages will be discussed. The various techniques dealt with are: the wetting solution techniques, standard liposuction or Suction-Assisted Lipoplasty (SAL), internal Ultrasound-Assisted Liposuction (iUAL), VASSER assisted liposuction, external Ultrasound-Assisted Liposuction (eUAL), Laser-Assisted Liposuction (LAL), Power-Assisted Liposuction (PAL) and Vibroliposuction (VL). On the basis of this review of the literature and of our clinical experience, we conclude that VL is the safest, most effective and precise surgery that can be used in any of the modern indications for liposuction. We concluded that VL seems to have all the advantages and none of the disadvantages associated with iUAL.
The Importance of Physicians' Communication Skills and Patients' Satisfaction

Background: Doctor-patient interaction plays an important role in patient satisfaction, treatment results, medical expenses, quality of clinical services and even patient’s complaints toward doctors and health care system. Objectives: This study was performed to assess the level of patient satisfaction in the Iranian context. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in a public clinic in Tehran in 2010. The participants included 392 patients who referred to this center for a period of two months. A patient satisfaction questionnaire was used which had 24 items on patient satisfaction with the communication skills of the physician that included six subscale scores. The total score and subscales scores were calculated on a maximum possible of 100. Results: The mean age of the patients was 38 years and 69% of them were female. The education level of most patients was high school diploma or higher (72%). The mean patient satisfaction score was 44 ± 15. Patients expressed highest satisfaction with patient training (56 ± 24) and response to their questions (49 ± 17) while they were least satisfied with the examination (31 ± 23). No significant relation was found between patient age and overall patient satisfaction (P = 0.392, r = 0.007). In addition, no significant differences were found between the overall scores of male and female or married and single patients. However, highly educated or salaried employee patients showed a higher satisfaction score than self-employed or unemployed patients (P < 0.001). The results of the regression analysis showed education and employment status of patients to be the effective variables on patients’ satisfaction. Conclusions: The results of the present study revealed that patients are not highly satisfied with the communication skills of physicians and they were least satisfied only with the quality of examination processes by the physicians. In addition, patients with lower education showed lower satisfaction as well. Thus, a higher quality and elaboration of examination, more patience and better communication skills considering the education and social status of the patients may increase patient satisfaction.
A Study of Professional Development of Swedish School Leaders and their Views on how it needs to be Navigated

A school principal has to play many different roles, such as a decision maker, problem solver, instructional leader and change agent. Research studies on profiles and preparation of school leaders have demonstrated many similarities and some differences between school leaders in different contexts. This study undertaken in Sweden, the third largest country in Europe, but with a small population with particular problems of her own, focuses on the profiles and pre-service and in-service training received, and how the school leaders perceive that their future professional development programs requirements to be designed and provided. The sample includes both principals and vice-principals in Swedish schools. Results suggest that the most important reasons for becoming principals were to transform society and the attraction of higher salaries. Only one third had undergone some sort of pre-service training whereas almost all have undergone in-service training. In their view ‘Human resources management’; ‘Introduction and management of reforms’; ‘An induction program’; and ‘Ethics, morals and values for educational leaders’ were the most important topics for pre-service programs.
The BURCHAK corpus: a Challenge Data Set for Interactive Learning of Visually Grounded Word Meanings

We motivate and describe a new freely available human-human dialogue data set for interactive learning of visually grounded word meanings through ostensive definition by a tutor to a learner. The data has been collected using a novel, character-by-character variant of the DiET chat tool (Healey et al., 2003; anon.) with a novel task, where a Learner needs to learn invented visual attribute words (such as “burchak” for square) from a tutor. As such, the text-based interactions closely resemble face-to-face conversation and thus contain many of the linguistic phenomena encountered in natural, spontaneous dialogue. These include self- and other-correction, mid-sentence continuations, interruptions, turn overlaps, fillers, hedges and many kinds of ellipsis. We also present a generic n-gram framework for building user (i.e. tutor) simulations from this type of incremental dialogue data, which is freely available to researchers. We show that the simulations produce outputs that are similar to the original data (e.g. 78% turn match similarity). Finally, we train and evaluate a Reinforcement Learning dialogue control agent for learning visually grounded word meanings, trained from the BURCHAK corpus. The learned policy shows comparable performance to a rule-based system built previously.
Evidências de validade de uma prova informatizada de linguagem oral – Bilo

The present study aimed to search for evidence of validity using the full informa- tion factorial analysis for a computerized instrument that evaluates oral language com- prehension. 119 children took part in the study, from five to ten year-olds that were going to kindergarten, K1 and K2 from the public schools system. The application oh the Compu- terized Battery of Oral Language (Bilo) was realized in a school environment, in the compu- ter lab with a maximum of 10 children. The results obtained with the factorial analysis reve- aled that the items of each subtest indicate not only good factorial loads but also the unidimentionality of each test, noting the viability of the instrument in the analysis of oral language comprehension. It was noticed the necessity of the withdrawn of some items, sug- gesting a new configuration to the battery. It was identified the characteristics of the items per test as to their difficulties levels.
Alpha B‐Crystallin, a New Independent Marker for Poor Prognosis in Head and Neck Cancer

Objectives: Gene expression profiling has provided many insights into tumor progression but translation to clinical practice has been limited. We have previously identified a list of potential markers by the differences of expression profiling of seven matched head and neck cancer (HNSCC) tumors with autologous normal oral mucosa (NOM). Alpha B‐crystallin (CRYAB) was in the top 5% of genes identified with statistically significant differences in expression between tumor and NOM at the mRNA level. The objective was to confirm this in routine paraffin sections at the protein level.
Tom40, the Pore-Forming Component of the Protein-Conducting Tom Channel in the Outer Membrane of Mitochondria

Tom40 is the main component of the preprotein translocase of the outer membrane of mitochondria (TOM complex). We have isolated Tom40 of Neurospora crassa by removing the receptor Tom22 and the small Tom components Tom6 and Tom7 from the purified TOM core complex. Tom40 is organized in a high molecular mass complex of ∼350 kD. It forms a high conductance channel. Mitochondrial presequence peptides interact specifically with Tom40 reconstituted into planar lipid membranes and decrease the ion flow through the pores in a voltage-dependent manner. The secondary structure of Tom40 comprises ∼31% β-sheet, 22% α-helix, and 47% remaining structure as determined by circular dichroism measurements and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Electron microscopy of purified Tom40 revealed particles primarily with one center of stain accumulation. They presumably represent an open pore with a diameter of ∼2.5 nm, similar to the pores found in the TOM complex. Thus, Tom40 is the core element of the TOM translocase; it forms the protein-conducting channel in an oligomeric assembly.
Exploiting Connections Between MIMO MMSE Achievable Rate and MIMO Mutual Information

We present an interesting and powerful new framework connecting the achievable sum rate of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless systems employing linear minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) receivers, and the ergodic MIMO mutual information. This allows the vast literature on ergodic MIMO mutual information to be directly applied to the analysis of MMSE receivers. As an example, the framework is particularized to spatially-correlated Rayleigh fading to yield new exact closed-form expressions for the achievable sum rate, as well as simplified expressions for high and low signal to noise ratios.
Minority Stress and Psychological Distress Among Asian American Sexual Minority Persons 1Ψ7

The purpose of this study was to examine multiple minority stressors (i.e., heterosexist events, racist events, heterosexism in communities of color, racism in sexual minority communities, race-related dating and relationship problems, internalized heterosexism or homophobia, outness to family, and outness to world) as they relate to the psychological distress of 144 Asian American lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) persons. When examined concomitantly, these minority stress variables accounted for approximately one third of the variance in psychological distress scores. Results indicate that heterosexism in communities of color, race-related dating and relationship problems in the LGBTQ community, internalized heterosexism, and outness to world were the only significant and unique predictors of Asian American LGBTQ persons’ psychological distress. In addition, no support was found for the moderating or mediating roles of outness in the internalized heterosexism-distress link.
A new form of the circle method, and its application to quadratic forms.

If the coefficients r(n) satisfy suitable arithmetic conditions the behaviour of F (α) will be determined by an appropriate rational approximation a/q to α, with small values of q usually producing large values of F (α). When α lies in an interval [a/q − δ, a/q + δ] with q small, a ‘major arc’, one hopes to estimate F (α) asymptotically, while if the corresponding q is large, for the ‘minor arcs’, one hopes that F (α) will be small, at least on average. One can distinguish two different types of application of the circle method. The first type, following the above pattern, uses one of a variety of mean-value techniques, Hua’s inequality for example, to give an upper bound for the minor arc contribution. Results on Waring’s problem are generally proved this way, for example. The second type of application, on which we shall be focusing our attention, avoids the minor arcs completely, and treats F (α) asymptotically for all α. Here one cannot take advantage of the mean-value ideas used in the first type of problem. The savings come instead from the availability of good estimates for ‘complete’ exponential sums. Kloosterman’s work [12] on quaternary quadratic forms, and the papers of the author [5] and Hooley [8] and [9] on cubic forms, are of this latter type. We should point out that such applications do not include any problems in which F is the generating function for a polynomial of degree 4 or more. There are
Doing Bayesian Data Analysis: A Tutorial with R and BUGS

There is an explosion of interest in Bayesian statistics, primarily because recently created computational methods have finally made Bayesian analysis obtainable to a wide audience. Doing Bayesian Data Analysis, A Tutorial Introduction with R and BUGS provides an accessible approach to Bayesian data analysis, as material is explained clearly with concrete examples. The book begins with the basics, including essential concepts of probability and random sampling, and gradually progresses to advanced hierarchical modeling methods for realistic data. The text delivers comprehensive coverage of all scenarios addressed by non-Bayesian textbooks--t-tests, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and comparisons in ANOVA, multiple regression, and chi-square (contingency table analysis). This book is intended for first year graduate students or advanced undergraduates. It provides a bridge between undergraduate training and modern Bayesian methods for data analysis, which is becoming the accepted research standard. Prerequisite is knowledge of algebra and basic calculus. Author website: http://www.indiana. edu/~kruschke/DoingBayesianDataAnalysis/ -Accessible, including the basics of essential concepts of probability and random sampling -Examples with R programming language and BUGS software -Comprehensive coverage of all scenarios addressed by non-bayesian textbooks- t-tests, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and comparisons in ANOVA, multiple regression, and chi-square (contingency table analysis). -Coverage of experiment planning -R and BUGS computer programming code on website -Exercises have explicit purposes and guidelines for accomplishment
A clinical trial of estrogen-replacement therapy after ischemic stroke.

BACKGROUND Observational studies have suggested that estrogen-replacement therapy may reduce a woman's risk of stroke and death. METHODS We conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of estrogen therapy (1 mg of estradiol-17beta per day) in 664 postmenopausal women (mean age, 71 years) who had recently had an ischemic stroke or transient ischemic attack. Women were recruited from 21 hospitals in the United States and were followed for the occurrence of stroke or death. RESULTS During a mean follow-up period of 2.8 years, there were 99 strokes or deaths among the women in the estradiol group, and 93 among those in the placebo group (relative risk in the estradiol group, 1.1; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.8 to 1.4). Estrogen therapy did not reduce the risk of death alone (relative risk, 1.2; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.8 to 1.8) or the risk of nonfatal stroke (relative risk, 1.0; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.7 to 1.4). The women who were randomly assigned to receive estrogen therapy had a higher risk of fatal stroke (relative risk, 2.9; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.9 to 9.0), and their nonfatal strokes were associated with slightly worse neurologic and functional deficits. CONCLUSIONS Estradiol does not reduce mortality orthe recurrence of stroke in postmenopausal women with cerebrovascular disease. This therapy should not be prescribed for the secondary prevention of cerebrovascular disease.
In situ assay of acid sphingomyelinase and ceramidase based on LDL-mediated lysosomal targeting of ceramide-labeled sphingomyelin.

The activity of lysosomal sphingolipid hydrolases is usually estimated in vitro from complex assays on cell lysates under artificial conditions including the presence of detergents and substrate analogs. However, the measure of their effective activity in situ (i.e., in living cells) is necessary to understand the normal intracellular sphingolipid turnover. Moreover, their determination in cells from patients with genetic enzyme deficiencies represents a key parameter of the pathophysiology of sphingolipid storage disorders. In this report, we have developed a procedure for estimating the effective activity of lysosomal sphingomyelinase and ceramidase in situ. This procedure is based on the selective targeting to lysosomes of a natural substrate under physiological conditions of substrate influx. Epstein-Barr virus-transformed human lymphoid cells and human skin fibroblasts were incubated with purified human low density lipoproteins (LDL) containing [3H]ceramide-labeled sphingomyelin. Data demonstrate that this substrate is internalized through the apolipoprotein B/E receptor pathway and targeted to lysosomes. Lysosomal localization of the incorporated substrate was evidenced by ultrastructural autoradiography and subcellular fractionation as well as by metabolic studies in mutant cells. Short-term pulse-chase experiments with LDL-associated [3H]ceramide-labeled sphingomyelin allowed us to determine the effective activity of lysosomal sphingomyelinase and ceramidase in normal cells. Initial velocities of sphingomyelin and ceramide degradation were, respectively, estimated at 0.66 and 1.14 nmol.h-1.mg cell protein-1 in lymphoid cells, and 5.4 and 3 nmol.h-1.mg cell protein-1 in skin fibroblasts. The advantages and applications of these in situ studies are discussed.