Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of Gravity Compensation on Muscle Activation Patterns During Different Temporal Phases of Arm Movements of Stroke Patients

Background. Arm support to help compensate for the effects of gravity may improve functional use of the shoulder and elbow during therapy after stroke, but gravity compensation may alter motor control. Objective. To obtain quantitative information on how gravity compensation influences muscle activation patterns during functional, 3-dimensional reaching movements. Methods. Eight patients with mild hemiparesis performed 2 sets of repeated reach and retrieval movements, with and without unloading the arm, using a device that acted at the elbow and forearm to compensate for gravity. Electromyographic (EMG) patterns of 6 upper extremity muscles were compared during elbow and shoulder joint excursions with and without gravity compensation. Results. Movement performance was similar with and without gravity compensation. Smooth rectified EMG (SRE) values were decreased from 25% to 50% during movements with gravity compensation in 5 out of 6 muscles. The variation of SRE values across movement phases did not differ across conditions. Conclusions. Gravity compensation did not affect general patterns of muscle activation in this sample of stroke patients, probably since they had adequate function to complete the task without arm support. Gravity compensation did facilitate active arm movement excursions without impairing motor control. Gravity compensation may be a valuable modality in conventional or robot-aided therapy to increase the intensity of training for mildly impaired patients.
A Pre-Protostellar Core in L1551

Large-field surveys of NH3, C2S, 13CO, and C18O in the L1551 dark cloud have revealed a prolate, pre-protostellar molecular core (L1551 MC) in a relatively quiescent region to the northwest of the well-known IRS 5 source. The kinetic temperature is measured to be 9 K, the total mass is ~2 M☉, and the average particle density is 104-105 cm-3. L1551 MC is 2. ′25 × 1. ′11 in projection, oriented at a position angle of 133°. The turbulent motions are on the order of the sound speed in the medium and contain 4% of the gravitational energy, Egrav, of the core. The angular momentum vector is projected along the major axis of L1551 MC, corresponding to a rotational energy of 2.5 × 10-3 i|Egrav|. The thermal energy constitutes about a third of |Egrav|, and the virial mass is approximately equal to the total mass. L1551 MC is gravitationally bound and in the absence of strong, ~160 μG magnetic fields will likely contract on a ~0.3 Myr timescale. The line profiles of many molecular species suggest that the cold quiescent interior is surrounded by a dynamic, perhaps infalling envelope that is embedded within the ambient molecular gas of L1551.
Operationalizing Social Work Science Through Research–Practice Partnerships

Recent efforts to identify and promote a distinct science for the discipline of social work have led to an ongoing debate regarding the nature and function of such a science. Central to this debate is a lack of consensus as to how to operationalize a social work science. Drawing from the field of implementation science and its application in reducing the gap between research and practice in child welfare and child mental health, this article examines the role of research–practice partnerships in creating and advancing social work science. Through the exercise of cultural exchanges among researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and other stakeholders, such partnerships offer the potential to integrate different disciplinary approaches to understanding why populations experience inequity or disadvantage and what to do about it as well as different perspectives on the nature and use of research evidence to achieve such understanding.
The self-similar numbers as a special case of cyclic numbers and their relation to the cyclic (genetic) codes

The genetic code is analyzed as one of the major natural codes, which as such can reveal the deeper principles of optimal coding. The analysis is based on a discovery that the symmetrical architecture of genetic code and the nucleon number of its constituents — the free canonical amino acids and bases, are strictly determined by the prime number with a cycling digit property −037. A detailed derivation for all types of analogues of 037 is given and shown that they represent a special case of cyclic numbers whose digits and multipliers are equidistant. The derived generic formula for analogues of 037 is correlated with cyclotomic and generalized Golden Mean polynomials, by which is shown their relation with discrete self-similarity, why author named them the Self-similar Numbers. Also it is given their relationship with the cyclic codes, which is with fact that the genetic code is arranged in multiple ways at different levels as a cyclic code, generally indicate that the hierarchically nested cyclicality is one of the principles of fractal organization of the genetic code, as well as the other organic codes in the living organisms.
Hyperlipemic Response of Young Trained and Untrained Men after a High Fat Meal

To test the hypothesis that endurance training Is associated with a decreased llpemla after a high fat meal, 16 young men [22 to 34 years old, nine of whom were trained (T) and seven of whom were untrained (UT)] were recruited. T ran >30 or blked >100 miles a week, while UT had been sedentary for at least the preceding 3 months. Dally caloric Intake and dally caloric expenditure during exercise were 35% and 704% greater, respectively, In T than In UT. VO2max was 31% greater, while percent body fat was 36% lower In T than In UT. Dietary composition and body height and weight were similar. After a fasting blood sample was taken, the men ate a high fat meal (approximately 56% of total calories as fat In 1100 kcal adjusted to body weight), and additional blood samples were taken hourly for 8 hours. Fasting llplds were similar. Postprandial peak trtglyceride (TGw), percent TG Increase (%TGI), and total llpemlc response (TLR, the area under the llpemla curve In excess of fasting TG) were 42%, 54%, and 75% greater, respectively, In UT vs. T. Stepwlse regression analysis showed that the same three-variable model (training status, fasting TG, and VO2max) described the variation In TGmax (R2=0.97), %TGI (R2=0.75), and TLR (R2=0.92). Furthermore, this same analysis showed that after adjustment for fasting TG and Often, the UT group had a significantly greater postprandial llpemla whether expressed as TGmax (/X0.0001), %TGI (p=0.0002), or TLR (p=0.0002). Thus, endurance training appears to be associated with a diminished llpemla after a high fat meal in young adult men.
FRACTIONAL DYNAMICS IN A SYSTEM OF LONG TERM INTERNATIONAL INTEREST RATES

DeGennaro, Kunkel, and Lee (1994) studied the long run dynamics of a system of long term interest rates of five industrialized countries by means of sophisticated cointegration methods. They found little evidence in support of the cointegration hypothesis, thus concluding that a separate set of fundamentals drives the dynamics of each of the individual long term interest rate series. In this study, we extend the existing literature by exploring the possibility of very slow mean reverting dynamics (fractional cointegration) in the same system of five long term interest rates. We use the GPH test as our testing methodology for fractional integration and cointegration. Through rigorous investigation of the full system of the five long term interest rate series and its various subsystems, we provide evidence that the error correction term follows a fractionally integrated process with long memory, that is, it is mean reverting, though not covariance stationary. Despite significant persistence in the short run, a shock to the system of long term interest rates eventually dissipates so that an equilibrium relationship prevails in the long run.
Bioactivity of food peptides: biological response of rats to bovine milk whey peptides following acute exercise

ABSTRACT Background: Several physiologically beneficial effects of consuming a whey protein hydrolysate (WPH) have been attributed to the greater availability of bioactive peptides. Aims: The aim was to investigate the effect of four branched-chain amino acid- (BCAA-)containing dipeptides, present in WPH, on immune modulation, stimulation of HSP expression, muscle protein synthesis, glycogen content, satiety signals and the impact of these peptides on the plasma free amino acid profiles. Methods: The animals were divided in groups: control (rest, without gavage), vehicle (water), L-isoleucyl-L-leucine (lle-Leu), L-leucyl-L-isoleucine (Leu-lle), L-valyl-Lleucine (Val-Leu), L-leucyl-L-valine (Leu-Val) and WPH. All animals were submitted to acute exercise, except for control. Results: lle-Leu stimulated immune response, hepatic and muscle glycogen and HSP60 expression, whereas Leu-Val enhanced HSP90 expression. All dipeptides reduced glucagon-like peptide-1 and glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide, no changes were observed on leptin. All peptides inhibited NF-kB expression. The plasma amino acid time-course showed peptide-specific and isomer-specific metabolic features, including increases of the BCAAs. Conclusion: The data indicate that lle-Leu was effective to attenuate immune-suppression exercise-induced, promoted glycogen content and stimulated anti-stress effect (HSP). Furthermore, Leu-Val increased HSP90, p-4EBP1, p-mTOR and p-AMPK expression. The data suggest the involvement of these peptides in various beneficial functions of WPH consumption.
Chapter 3. Does Facebook Cause Addiction? An Analysis of German Facebook Users

With the increasing use of social networking services (SNSs), such as Facebook, the topic of Facebook addiction attracts more and more researchers’ interest. However, until recently, it has been neither clear which characteristics define Facebook addiction nor whether it even exists. This chapter aims to explore the relatively new phenomenon of Facebook addiction and identify factors pointing toward excessive Facebook usage. As Facebook addiction is presumed to be a specific form of Internet addiction, an Internet addiction scale was tested for its applicability to measure Facebook addiction and was used as the basis for developing a Facebook addiction scale. Using an online survey, German Facebook users’ addiction potential was measured; moreover, participants supposed to be at risk were analyzed in detail to gain further insight into factors that may lead to excessive as well as addictive Facebook usage.
Induction of Proinflammatory Cytokines and C-Reactive Protein in Human Macrophage Cell Line U937 Exposed to Air Pollution Particulates

Exposure to particulate matter air pollution causes inflammatory responses and is associated with the progression of atherosclerosis and increased cardiovascular mortality. Macrophages play a key role in atherogenesis by releasing proinflammatory cytokines and forming foam cells in subendothelial lesions. The present study quantified the inflammatory response in a human macrophage cell line (U937) after exposure to an ambient particulate sample from urban dust (UDP) and a diesel exhaust particulate (DEP). The effect of native UDP and DEP was compared with their corresponding organic extracts (OE-UDP/OE-DEP) and stripped particles (sUDP/sDEP) to clarify their respective roles. Exposure to OE-UDP, OE-DEP, UDP, DEP, and 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin led to a greater increase of interleukin (IL)-8, tumor necrosis factor-α, and cyclooxygenase-2 mRNA expression than did the stripped particles, whereas sUDP, sDEP, UDP, and DEP led to a greater production of C-reactive protein and IL-6 mRNA. The particles and the organic extract-induced expression of cyclooxygenase-2 and cytochrome P450 (CYP)1a1 was significantly suppressed by co-treatment with an aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) antagonist, indicating that these effects are mainly mediated by the organic components, which can activate the AhR and CYP1a1. In contrast, the induction of C-reactive protein and IL-6 seems to be a particle-related effect that is AhR independent. The inflammatory response induced by particulate matter was associated with a subsequent increase of cholesterol accumulation, a hallmark of foam cells. Together, these data illustrate the interaction between particulate matter and the inflammatory response as well as the formation of cholesterol-accumulating foam cells, which are early markers of cardiovascular disease.
The Lateral Hypothalamic Area Controls Paradoxical (REM) Sleep by Means of Descending Projections to Brainstem GABAergic Neurons

It has recently been shown that the ventrolateral part of the periaqueductal gray (VLPAG) and the adjacent dorsal deep mesencephalic nucleus (dDpMe) contain GABAergic neurons gating paradoxical sleep (PS) onset by means of their projection to the glutamatergic PS-on neurons of the sublaterodorsal tegmental nucleus (SLD). To determine the mechanisms responsible for the cessation of activity of these GABAergic PS-off neurons at the onset and during PS, we combined the immunostaining of c-FOS, a marker of neuronal activation, with cholera toxin b subunit (CTb) retrograde tracing from the VLPAG/dDpMe in three groups of rats (control, PS deprived, and PS hypersomniac). We found that the lateral hypothalamic area (LH) is the only brain structure containing a very large number of neurons activated during PS hypersomnia and projecting to the VLPAG/dDpMe. We further demonstrated that 44% of these neurons express the neuropeptide melanin concentrating hormone (MCH). We then showed that bilateral injections in the LH of two inhibitory compounds, clonidine (an α-2 adrenergic agonist) and muscimol (a GABAa agonist) induce an inhibition of PS. Furthermore, after muscimol injections in the LH, the VLPAG/dDpMe contained a large number of activated neurons, mostly GABAergic, and projecting to the SLD. Altogether, our results indicate for the first time that the activation of a population of LH neurons, in part MCH containing, is necessary for PS to occur. Furthermore, our results strongly suggest that these neurons trigger PS by means of their inhibitory projection to the PS-off GABAergic neurons located in the VLPAG/dDpMe.
Beyond 100 Gb/s: capacity, flexibility, and network optimization [Invited]

In this paper, we discuss building blocks that enable the exploitation of optical capacities beyond 100 Gb∕s. Optical networks will benefit from more flexibility and agility in their network elements, especially from coherent transceivers. To achieve capacities of 400 Gb∕s and more, coherent transceivers will operate at higher symbol rates. This will be made possible with higher bandwidth components using new electro-optic technologies implemented with indium phosphide and silicon photonics. Digital signal processing will benefit from new algorithms. Multi-dimensional modulation, of which some formats are already in existence in current flexible coherent transceivers, will provide improved tolerance to noise and fiber nonlinearities. Constellation shaping will further improve these tolerances while allowing a finer granularity in the selection of capacity. Frequency-division multiplexing will also provide improved tolerance to the nonlinear characteristics of fibers. Algorithms with reduced computation complexity will allow the implementation, at speeds, of direct pre-compensation of nonlinear propagation effects. Advancement in forward error correction will shrink the performance gap with Shannon’s limit. At the network control and management level, new tools are being developed to achieve a more efficient utilization of networks. This will also allow for network virtualization, orchestration, and management. Finally, FlexEthernet and FlexOTN will be put in place to allow network operators to optimize capacity in their optical transport networks without manual changes to the client hardware.
Deep Learning Markov Random Field for Semantic Segmentation

Semantic segmentation tasks can be well modeled by Markov Random Field (MRF). This paper addresses semantic segmentation by incorporating high-order relations and mixture of label contexts into MRF. Unlike previous works that optimized MRFs using iterative algorithm, we solve MRF by proposing a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), namely Deep Parsing Network (DPN), which enables deterministic end-to-end computation in a single forward pass. Specifically, DPN extends a contemporary CNN to model unary terms and additional layers are devised to approximate the mean field (MF) algorithm for pairwise terms. It has several appealing properties. First, different from the recent works that required many iterations of MF during back-propagation, DPN is able to achieve high performance by approximating one iteration of MF. Second, DPN represents various types of pairwise terms, making many existing models as its special cases. Furthermore, pairwise terms in DPN provide a unified framework to encode rich contextual information in high-dimensional data, such as images and videos. Third, DPN makes MF easier to be parallelized and speeded up, thus enabling efficient inference. DPN is thoroughly evaluated on standard semantic image/video segmentation benchmarks, where a single DPN model yields state-of-the-art segmentation accuracies on PASCAL VOC 2012, Cityscapes dataset and CamVid dataset.
Synthesis of Xylitan Derivatives and Preliminary Evaluation of in Vitro Trypanocidal Activity

A series of novel xylitan derivatives derived from xylitol were synthesized using operationally simple procedures. A xylitan acetonide was the key intermediate used to prepare benzoate, arylsulfonate esters and 1,2,3-triazole derivatives of xylitan. These compounds were evaluated for their in vitro anti-Trypanosoma cruzi activity against trypomastigote and amastigote forms of the parasite in T. cruzi-infected cell lineages. Benznidazole was used as positive control against T. cruzi and cytotoxicity was determined in mammalian L929 cells. The arylsulfonate xylitan derivative bearing a nitro group displayed the best activity of all the compounds tested, and was slightly more potent than the reference drug benznidazole. The importance of the isopropylidene ketal moiety was established and the greater lipophilicity of these compounds suggests enhancement in cell penetration.
Observations of the hot horizontal-branch stars in the metal-rich bulge globular cluster NGC 6388 Indications of helium enrichment and a lesson in crowded field spectroscopy

Context. The metal-rich bulge globular cluster NGC 6388 shows a distinct blue horizontal-branch tail in its colour-magnitude diagram (Rich et al. 1997) and is thus a strong case of the well-known 2nd Parameter Problem. In addition, its horizontal branch (HB) shows an upward tilt toward bluer colours, which cannot be explained by canonical evolutionary models. Aims. Several noncanonical scenarios have been proposed to explain these puzzling observations. In order to test the predictions of these scenarios, we have obtained medium resolution spectra to determine the atmospheric parameters of a sample of the blue HB stars in NGC 6388. Methods. Using the medium resolution spectra, we determine effective temperatures, surface gravities and helium abundances by fitting the observed Balmer and helium lines with appropriate theoretical stellar spectra. As we know the distance to the cluster, we can verify our results by determining masses for the stars. During the data reduction we took special care in subtracting the background, which is dominated by the overlapping spectra of cool stars. Results. The cool blue tail stars in our sample with effective temperatures T eff ≈ 10000 K have lower than canonical surface gravities, suggesting that these stars are, on average, ≈0.4 m brighter than canonical HB stars in agreement with the observed upward slope of the HB in NGC 6388. Moreover, the mean mass of these stars agrees well with theoretical predictions. In contrast, the hot blue tail stars in our sample with Ten > 12 000 K show significantly lower surface gravities than predicted by any scenario, which can reproduce the photometric observations. Their masses are also too low by about a factor of 2 compared to theoretical predictions. Conclusions. The physical parameters of the blue HB stars near 10000 K support the helium pollution scenario. The low gravities and masses of the hot blue tail stars, however, are probably caused by problems with the data reduction, most likely due to remaining background light in the spectra, which would affect the fainter hot blue tail stars much more strongly than the brighter cool blue tail stars. Our study of the hot blue tail stars in NGC 6388 illustrates the obstacles which are encountered when attempting to determine the atmospheric parameters of hot HB stars in very crowded fields using ground-based observations. We discuss these obstacles and offer possible solutions for future projects.
On an Efficient Two-Step Estimator for Dynamic Simultaneous Equations Models with Autoregressive Errors

where R is a stable matrix and { E : . : t = 0, k1, k 2 , , . ) is a sequence of independent identically distributed (i.i.d.) random variables having mean zero and nonsingular covariance matrix Z. It is assumed that whatever the process generating {w:. :t = 0, kl, +2, . -) the latter sequence is independent of (6:. : t = 0, A 1, t2, .). In Dhry~nes [I] under the additional assumption of normality for the E-process the full information maximum likelihood (ML) estimator wasobtai ned as well as the three-stage-least-squares-like estimator, termed there the full information dynamic autoregressive (FIDA). The converging iterate of the latter (CIFIDA) was compared with the ML estimator and it was determined that the difference between the two lies in the way in which the (jointly) dependent variables of the system are purged of their stochastic component. In Dhryines and Erlat [3] the asymptotic distribution of the converging iterate of FIDA was obtained. The purpose of this paper is twofold: First, to show that the asymptotic distributions of the converging iterate of FIDA and the ML estimator are identical and second, to provide a simple two step procedure which is fully as efficient as CIFIDA and ML estimators. This is a natural extension of the results in Dhrymes [2] and Hatanaka [5].