Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Efficient method for the removal of ECG artifact from measured EEG Signal using PSO algorithm

Abstract Electroencephagram (EEG) is the recording of electrical activity of the brain. Though it is intended to record cerebral signals,it also records the signals that are not of cerebral origin called artifacts. Artifact removal from EEG signals is essential for better diagnosis. This paper proposes a hybrid learning algorithm based on Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) for eliminating ECG artifact from EEG signal. The proposed hybrid learning algorithms, ANFIS-PSO uses Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm for tuning the antecedent and consequent part of the ANFIS. Performance of the proposed technique is compared with ANFIS. Improvements in the output Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) , minimum Mean-Square Error (MSE) along with the Power Spectrum Density (PSD) plot are used as the criteria for comparing the performance of the algorithm. It is found that the proposed ANFIS-PSO algorithm works better, and outperforms the ANFIS technique in minimizing the ECG artifacts from the corrupted EEG signals.
Irregular Breathing in Mice following Genetic Ablation of V2a Neurons

Neural networks called central pattern generators (CPGs) generate repetitive motor behaviors such as locomotion and breathing. Glutamatergic neurons are required for the generation and inhibitory neurons for the patterning of the motor activity associated with repetitive motor behaviors. In the mouse, glutamatergic V2a neurons coordinate the activity of left and right leg CPGs in the spinal cord enabling mice to generate an alternating gait. Here, we investigate the role of V2a neurons in the neural control of breathing, an essential repetitive motor behavior. We find that, following the ablation of V2a neurons, newborn mice breathe at a lower frequency. Recordings of respiratory activity in brainstem–spinal cord and respiratory slice preparations demonstrate that mice lacking V2a neurons are deficient in central respiratory rhythm generation. The absence of V2a neurons in the respiratory slice preparation can be compensated for by bath application of neurochemicals known to accelerate the breathing rhythm. In this slice preparation, V2a neurons exhibit a tonic firing pattern. The existence of direct connections between V2a neurons in the medial reticular formation and neurons of the pre-Bötzinger complex indicates that V2a neurons play a direct role in the function of the respiratory CPG in newborn mice. Thus, neurons of the embryonic V2a lineage appear to have been recruited to neural networks that control breathing and locomotion, two prominent CPG-driven, repetitive motor behaviors.
Correlation between ischemia-modified albumin and Ranson score in acute pancreatitis.

BACKGROUND Although Ranson score is the most commonly used prognostic model in the severity of acute pancreatitis (AP), ischemia-modified albumin (IMA) has been reported as a novel biomarker of various ischemia-based diseases in recent years. The aim of the present study is to investigate the correlation between Ranson score and IMA in patients with AP. METHODS Forty-three patients with AP were included in the study. All patients were classified as mild and severe AP. Plasma IMA level was measured after diagnosis and before treatment. The correlation between IMA level and amylase level, Ranson score, and disease severity was evaluated. RESULTS Twenty-nine (67.4%) patients were diagnosed as mild AP; the remaining 14 (32.6%) patients had moderately severe or severe form of disease, and were classified as severe AP. There was no significant difference in the IMA levels between the patient groups (p=0.737). No correlation between IMA levels and amylase levels (p=0.470), Ranson score (p=0.664), and disease severity (p=0.741) was found. CONCLUSION According to the results from the study, IMA does not seem as a useful marker in earlier prediction of disease severity in AP. Despite important disadvantages, Ranson score still indicates the disease severity more accurately.
Adaptive, convergent origins of the pygmy phenotype in African rainforest hunter-gatherers

Significance Tropical rainforest hunter-gatherer populations worldwide share the pygmy phenotype, or small human body size. The evolutionary history of this phenotype is largely unknown. Here we studied DNA from the Batwa, a rainforest hunter-gatherer population from east central Africa, to identify regions of the Batwa genome that underlie the pygmy phenotype. We then performed population genomic analyses to study the evolution of these regions, including comparisons with the Baka, a west central African rainforest hunter-gatherer population. We conclude that the pygmy phenotype likely arose due to positive natural selection and that it arose possibly multiple times within Africa. These results support longstanding anthropological hypotheses that small body size confers an important selective advantage for human rainforest hunter-gatherers. The evolutionary history of the human pygmy phenotype (small body size), a characteristic of African and Southeast Asian rainforest hunter-gatherers, is largely unknown. Here we use a genome-wide admixture mapping analysis to identify 16 genomic regions that are significantly associated with the pygmy phenotype in the Batwa, a rainforest hunter-gatherer population from Uganda (east central Africa). The identified genomic regions have multiple attributes that provide supporting evidence of genuine association with the pygmy phenotype, including enrichments for SNPs previously associated with stature variation in Europeans and for genes with growth hormone receptor and regulation functions. To test adaptive evolutionary hypotheses, we computed the haplotype-based integrated haplotype score (iHS) statistic and the level of population differentiation (FST) between the Batwa and their agricultural neighbors, the Bakiga, for each genomic SNP. Both |iHS| and FST values were significantly higher for SNPs within the Batwa pygmy phenotype-associated regions than the remainder of the genome, a signature of polygenic adaptation. In contrast, when we expanded our analysis to include Baka rainforest hunter-gatherers from Cameroon and Gabon (west central Africa) and Nzebi and Nzime neighboring agriculturalists, we did not observe elevated |iHS| or FST values in these genomic regions. Together, these results suggest adaptive and at least partially convergent origins of the pygmy phenotype even within Africa, supporting the hypothesis that small body size confers a selective advantage for tropical rainforest hunter-gatherers but raising questions about the antiquity of this behavior.
Dudley North visits North London: Learning When to Transliterate to Arabic

We report the results of our work on automating the transliteration decision of named entities for English to Arabic machine translation. We construct a classification-based framework to automate this decision, evaluate our classifier both in the limited news and the diverse Wikipedia domains, and achieve promising accuracy. Moreover, we demonstrate a reduction of translation error and an improvement in the performance of an English-to-Arabic machine translation system.
Strain rate imaging in normal and reduced diastolic function: comparison with pulsed Doppler tissue imaging of the mitral annulus.

OBJECTIVES The pixel velocity values obtained by color Doppler tissue imaging (DTI) can be processed to velocity gradients as a measure of longitudinal strain rate with a technique termed strain rate imaging (SRI). Color mapping of strain rate does show the spatial-temporal relations of the diastolic phases. The phases of early filling and late filling during atrial systole can be seen to consist of a stretch wave in the myocardium, propagating from the base to the apex. Diastolic function is characterized by both peak strain rate and propagation velocity of this wave. The goals of this study were to establish normal values for these measurements and to study the changes with minimal diastolic dysfunction. METHODS Twenty-eight healthy control subjects and 26 patients with hypertension and normal systolic function were studied. The patients had normal blood pressure on treatment, normal ejection fraction, minimal hypertrophy, and moderately prolonged deceleration and isovolumic relaxation times. Real-time SRI color cineloops, ordinary echocardiography and Doppler recordings, and pulsed wave DTI from the mitral ring were acquired and processed. RESULTS Patients showed a reduction of systolic and early diastolic tissue velocities and strain rates and no significant increase in late diastolic tissue velocity and strain rate. Propagation velocity of diastolic strain during both early and late filling phases was reduced in the patients. The combination of changes in peak strain rate and propagation velocity of strain rate corresponded with changes in DTI. CONCLUSION Diastolic deformation of the ventricle can be shown as a complex series of events, with temporal sequences in the ventricle. The peak strain rate and the propagation velocities of strain rate can describe the two main diastolic events: early and late filling. In reduced diastolic function, both are reduced during early filling. The velocities of the mitral ring are the result of this combination. This adds information about the physiology and pathophysiology of diastole.
Functional Outcomes After Surgery for Spinal Fractures: Return to Work and Activity

Object of Study. The literature regarding surgical treatment’s impact on patient function after spinal fracture is sparse. Some authors have speculated that operative injury—the dissection of paraspinous muscle tissue, damage to spinal motion segments, implantation of spinal devices—may impair functional recovery in spine trauma patients. Nonoperative care has produced satisfactory results in some hands, but results are difficult to reproduce, treatment is resource-intensive, and functional outcomes are poorly documented. This study reports return to work and functional recovery in a 5-year follow-up of severely injured patients treated with segmental spinal instrumentation. Materials and Methods. Seventy consecutive patients treated with Cotrel Dubousset instrumentation for unstable thoracic, thoracolumbar, and lumbar spine fractures were followed-up. All had high-energy trauma and were admitted directly to a level 1 university trauma center; 38% were polytraumatized; and 56% had neurologic injuries. Indications for surgery included: (1) segmental instability; (2) incomplete or progressive neurologic injuries with residual spinal canal compromise; (3) concomitant injuries precluding cast treatment; and (4) polytrauma. Two patients died and six were lost to follow-up, leaving 62 (91%) for assessment at a mean 5-year follow-up (range 2–8 y). Clinical outcome has been reported. Functional recovery was assessed based on return to work, level of work, and level of daily activity. Results. Despite the severity of spinal and concomitant injuries, 70% of patients returned to full-time work and another 8% were considered capable: 54% to their previous level of employment without restrictions and 16% to full-time, but lighter, jobs. Twenty-two percent were working part-time or not at all, and 8% were unemployed despite unrestricted functional status. Work status correlated directly with neurologic impairment (P < 0.00005) and was not related to level of injury, hardware failure, extent of surgical dissection, or construct pattern. Of patients with limitations, 18% were limited by pain and 27% by neurologic injury. Conclusion. Neurologic injury had a greater impact on functional outcome than any other variable. Patients limited by pain were more often impaired by residual radicular and neuropathic symptoms than by back pain. Impairment was not related to the extent of either the surgical incision or the instrumentation. Patients with persistent back pain generally had an identifiable and correctable mechanical problem—sagittal imbalance, pseudarthrosis, or persistent instability—as the underlying cause. Our series of trauma patients was predominantly young and male. Among this cohort, individual characteristics of occupation (often physical laborers and craftsmen) and judgment (criminal convictions and incarceration) may have restricted opportunities for re-employment in 40% of the entire study group.
Periodic Permanent-Magnet Quadrupole Focusing Lattices for Linear Electron-Beam Amplifier Applications

Periodic lattices of permanent-magnet quadrupoles (PMQs) have the potential to provide the strong focusing necessary to transport high-current space-charge-dominated electron beams commonly used in vacuum electronic power amplifiers. We describe a new design methodology and computational tools to produce optimized PMQ lattices, verifying the results with fully 3-D particle simulations of design examples. These examples include a PMQ system with a greater than fivefold reduction in magnet weight and volume compared with a periodic permanent-magnet (PPM) stack designed for a comparable beam and a PMQ system that can stably transport a factor of three times more current than a comparable PPM system. We conclude with a simple analysis of the interaction between the elliptical beam in the PMQ lattice with the waves on a helical traveling-wave circuit. In addition to enabling higher RF power operation, we show that the higher beam currents afforded by PMQ focusing enable a higher power gain per unit length and result in more compact form factors and higher amplifier power densities compared with comparable PPM-focused circuits.
Trust On the Security of Wireless Vehicular Ad-hoc Networking

Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) security is one of the central issues in vehicular communications since each vehicle has to rely on messages sent out by the peers where the received message could be malicious. In order to protect VANETs from malicious actions, each vehicle must be able to evaluate, decide and react locally on the information received from other vehicles. In this paper, we analyze probabilistic and deterministic approaches (individually and combined) to estimate trust for VANET security. The probabilistic approach determines the trust level of the peer vehicles based on received information. The trust level is used to determine legitimacy of the message, which is used to decide whether the message would be considered for further transmission over the VANET or dropped. The deterministic approach measures the trust level of the received message by using distances calculated using received signal strength (RSS) and the vehicle’s geolocation (position coordinate). Combination of probabilistic and deterministic approach gives better results compared to individual approaches. The proposed algorithms are illustrated with numerical results obtained from simulations.
Liraglutide and Renal Outcomes in Type 2 Diabetes.

To the Editor: In reporting the results of the secondary analysis of the Liraglutide Effect and Action in Diabetes: Evaluation of Cardiovascular Outcome Results (LEADER) trial, Mann et al. (Aug. 31 issue)1 provide details on the previously reported prespecified composite renal outcome that was 22% lower with long-term use of the human glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) analogue liraglutide than with placebo.2 That result was driven by a 26% reduction in new-onset persistent macroalbuminuria. Continuous data on the urinary albumin-tocreatinine ratio indicate that liraglutide slowed albuminuria progression at month 12, which was maintained until the trial ended. Yet the relative contribution of liraglutide-related improvement in variables otherwise associated with a reduction in albuminuria — namely, the glycated hemoglobin level, blood pressure, weight, and lipid levels2,3 — remains insufficiently analyzed. The considerable difference in the glycated hemoglobin level (approximately 1.0 percentage point up to month 6, followed by approximately 0.4 percentage points until the trial ended) between the liraglutide group and the placebo group2 is probably relevant, and dedicated exploratory analyses should determine glucose independence (i.e., effects beyond glycemic control). 4 The current exploration across glycated hemoglobin tertiles at month 6 is not fully convincing in this regard. To increase the clinical relevance of the “headline” finding indicating a drug-specific benefit of liraglutide, and to increase mechanistic insight, the results should account for representative changes versus placebo with respect to the glycated hemoglobin level, blood pressure, body weight, lipid levels, and estimated glomerular filtration rate (GFR). Such a statistical approach was used recently in assessing the effects of the sodium–glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitor empagliflozin in the EMPA-REG OUTCOME trial. An exploratory analysis of that trial characterized the effect of individual risk factors on the overall change in the urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio.5 Lennart Tonneijck, M.D. Daniël H. van Raalte, M.D., Ph.D. Marcel H.A. Muskiet, M.D.
Prevalence of Barrett's esophagus in asymptomatic individuals.

BACKGROUND & AIMS The incidence of esophageal adenocarcinoma in the western world has been linked to chronic heartburn, regurgitation, and the development of the premalignant epithelium of Barrett's esophagus (BE). However, up to 40% of esophageal adenocarcinomas occur in patients without prior reflux symptoms. We prospectively screened for the presence of BE in asymptomatic subjects older than 50 years of age undergoing screening sigmoidoscopy for colorectal cancer. METHODS Subjects undergoing sigmoidoscopy for colorectal cancer (CRC) screening were invited to undergo upper endoscopy. Exclusion criteria included symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) more than once a month, use of medications for GERD, or previous endoscopy. BE was classified as long-segment BE (LSBE), short-segment BE (SSBE), and microscopic specialized intestinal metaplasia of the esophagogastric junction (SIM-EGJ). RESULTS Of 408 potential study candidates, 110 subjects were screened; 9 were women. The mean (+/-SD) age was 61 +/- 9.3 (range, 50-80) years, most of them (73%) Caucasian. Intestinal metaplasia (IM) extending above the EGJ was detected in 27 (25%) subjects; 8 (7%) had LSBE, and 19 (17%) had SSBE. Patients with BE were no more likely to be obese, consumers of tobacco or alcohol, report a family history of GERD, show association with toxic exposure, or use antacids more than once a month, compared with those without BE. CONCLUSIONS BE was detected in 25% of asymptomatic male veterans older than 50 years of age undergoing screening sigmoidoscopy for CRC.
Mechanical ventilation in an obstetric population: characteristics and delivery rates.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to describe the characteristics and outcomes of obstetric patients who require mechanical ventilation. STUDY DESIGN A review was conducted of obstetric patients who required mechanical ventilation and who received care at our institutions between 1990 and 1998. Data that were collected included maternal demographics, medical condition that necessitated ventilation, delivery status, duration of ventilation, onset of parturition while receiving ventilation, mode of delivery, and maternal and early neonatal morbidity or death. RESULTS Fifty-one women were identified; 43 women(84%) received care in the labor and delivery setting. The most common admission diagnoses were preeclampsia/eclampsia (44%), labor/preterm labor (14%), and pneumonia (12%). Forty-three women (86%) were undelivered on admission (mean gestational age, 31.6 weeks). Delivery occurred in 37 women (86%) during their admission; 24 women (65%) underwent cesarean delivery. Eleven women began labor while receiving ventilation; 6 were delivered vaginally. The maternal mortality rate was 14% (7/51 women), and the perinatal mortality rate was 11% (4/37 fetuses). CONCLUSION A large number of obstetric patients who receive mechanical ventilation will require delivery because of their condition. Centers that care for such women should form a treatment strategy to coordinate obstetric and medical care for this unique population
Estimating the Socio-Economic Impact of Product Reviews: Mining Text and Reviewer Characteristics

With the rapid growth of the Internet, the ability of users to create and publish content has created active electronic communities that provide a wealth of product information. However, the high volume of reviews that are typically published for a single product makes harder for individuals as well as manufacturers to locate the best reviews and understand the true underlying quality of a product. In this paper, we re-examine the impact of reviews on economic outcomes like product sales and see how different factors affect social outcomes like the extent of their perceived usefulness. Our approach explores multiple aspects of review text, such as lexical, grammatical, semantic, and stylistic levels to identify important text-based features. In addition, we also examine multiple reviewer-level features such as average usefulness of past reviews and the self-disclosed identity measures of reviewers that are displayed next to a review. Our econometric analysis reveals that the extent of subjectivity, informativeness, readability, and linguistic correctness in reviews matters in influencing sales and perceived usefulness. Reviews that have a mixture of objective, and highly subjective sentences have a negative effect on product sales, compared to reviews that tend to include only subjective or only objective information. However, such reviews are considered more informative (or helpful) by the users. By using Random Forest based classifiers, we show that we can accurately predict the impact of reviews on sales and their perceived usefulness. Reviews for products that have received widely fluctuating reviews, also have reviews of widely fluctuating helpfulness. In particular, we find that highly detailed and readable reviews can have low helpfulness votes in cases when users tend to vote negatively not because they disapprove of the review quality but rather to convey their disapproval of the review polarity. We examine the relative importance of the three broad feature categories: ‘reviewer-related’ features, ‘review subjectivity’ features, and ‘review readability’ features, and find that using any of the three feature sets results in a statistically equivalent performance as in the case of using all available features. This paper is the first study that integrates econometric, text mining, and predictive modeling techniques toward a more complete analysis of the information captured by user-generated online reviews in order to estimate their socio-economic impact. Our results can have implications for judicious design of opinion forums.