Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Probe-Specific Procedure to Estimate Sensitivity and Detection Limits for 19F Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Due to low fluorine background signal in vivo, 19F is a good marker to study the fate of exogenous molecules by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using equilibrium nuclear spin polarization schemes. Since 19F MRI applications require high sensitivity, it can be important to assess experimental feasibility during the design stage already by estimating the minimum detectable fluorine concentration. Here we propose a simple method for the calibration of MRI hardware, providing sensitivity estimates for a given scanner and coil configuration. An experimental “calibration factor” to account for variations in coil configuration and hardware set-up is specified. Once it has been determined in a calibration experiment, the sensitivity of an experiment or, alternatively, the minimum number of required spins or the minimum marker concentration can be estimated without the need for a pilot experiment. The definition of this calibration factor is derived based on standard equations for the sensitivity in magnetic resonance, yet the method is not restricted by the limited validity of these equations, since additional instrument-dependent factors are implicitly included during calibration. The method is demonstrated using MR spectroscopy and imaging experiments with different 19F samples, both paramagnetically and susceptibility broadened, to approximate a range of realistic environments.
Some effects of alcohol on eyewitness memory.

Male volunteers (N = 120) in small groups of 5 to 10 watched a staged theft involving live actors. Some (n = 47) were under the influence of alcohol (average blood alcohol level of .10) at the time. Some subjects (n = 58) were interviewed immediately after the event, and all were interviewed 1 week later. The delayed interview included the presentation of a photospread that either did or did not contain the picture of the "thief. " Alcohol suppressed the amount recalled during the immediate interview and both the amount and accuracy of recall after the 1-week delay. Alcohol had no influence on the ability of witnesses to recognize the thief's picture. When the thief's picture was not present in the photospread, however, alcohol increased the rate of false identifications. An immediate interview substantially improved the amount of information subjects were able to recall 1 week later.
Genomic Analyses of the Microsporidian Nosema ceranae, an Emergent Pathogen of Honey Bees

Recent steep declines in honey bee health have severely impacted the beekeeping industry, presenting new risks for agricultural commodities that depend on insect pollination. Honey bee declines could reflect increased pressures from parasites and pathogens. The incidence of the microsporidian pathogen Nosema ceranae has increased significantly in the past decade. Here we present a draft assembly (7.86 MB) of the N. ceranae genome derived from pyrosequence data, including initial gene models and genomic comparisons with other members of this highly derived fungal lineage. N. ceranae has a strongly AT-biased genome (74% A+T) and a diversity of repetitive elements, complicating the assembly. Of 2,614 predicted protein-coding sequences, we conservatively estimate that 1,366 have homologs in the microsporidian Encephalitozoon cuniculi, the most closely related published genome sequence. We identify genes conserved among microsporidia that lack clear homology outside this group, which are of special interest as potential virulence factors in this group of obligate parasites. A substantial fraction of the diminutive N. ceranae proteome consists of novel and transposable-element proteins. For a majority of well-supported gene models, a conserved sense-strand motif can be found within 15 bases upstream of the start codon; a previously uncharacterized version of this motif is also present in E. cuniculi. These comparisons provide insight into the architecture, regulation, and evolution of microsporidian genomes, and will drive investigations into honey bee–Nosema interactions.
Consensus guidelines on pediatric acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease.

JUSTIFICATION Acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic chronic valvular heart disease is an important preventable cause of morbidity and mortality in suburban and rural India. Its diagnosis is based on clinical criteria. These criteria need verification and revision in the Indian context. Furthermore, there are glaring differences in management protocols available in literature. These facts prompted Indian Academy of Pediatrics to review the management of rheumatic fever. PROCESS Management of Rheumatic fever was reviewed and recommendation was formulated at national consultative meeting on 20th May 2007 at New Delhi. OBJECTIVES To formulate uniform guidelines on management of acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease in the Indian context. Guidelines were formulated for the management of streptococcal pharyngitis, acute rheumatic fever and its cardiac complication as well as secondary prophylaxis for recurrent episodes. RECOMMENDATIONS (1) Streptococcal eradication with appropriate antibiotics (Benzathine penicillin single dose or penicillin V oral or azithromycin). (2) Diagnosis of rheumatic fever based on Jones criteria. (3) Control inflammatory process with aspirin with or without steroids (total duration of treatment of 12 weeks). (4) Treatment of chorea according to severity (therapy to continue for 2-3 weeks after clinical improvement). (5) Protocol for managing cardiac complication like valvular heart disease, congestive heart failure and atrial fibrillation. (6) Secondary prophylaxis with benzathine penicillin and management of anaphylaxis.
An Infeasibility Result for the Multiterminal Source-Coding Problem

We prove a new outer bound on the rate-distortion region for the multiterminal source-coding problem. This bound subsumes the best outer bound in the literature and improves upon it strictly in some cases. The improved bound enables us to obtain a new, conclusive result for the binary erasure version of the "CEO problem. " The bound recovers many of the converse results that have been established for special cases of the problem, including the recent one for the Gaussian version of the CEO problem.
Calcium deficiency and causation of rickets in Ethiopian children.

OBJECTIVE To assess the role of calcium in the development of clinical rickets among Ethiopian children coming to Jimma Specialised Hospital outpatient, department. DESIGN Case control study. SETTINGS Jimma Specialised Teaching Hospital and surrounding urban and rural community in the catchment area. SUBJECTS One hundred and thirty five under five year old children (30 cases of rickets and 104 non-rachitic cases) who came for paediatric service in Jimma hospital. RESULTS The mean (+/- SD) level of calcium intake for cases and controls was 664.5 (+/- 102.7) mg and 645.8(+/- 144.4) mg, respectively. There was no statistically significance difference between the two groups in the mean level of calcium intake (t = 0.659, P > 0.05). Generally, in both cases and controls the majority of the study participants were taking calcium below the recommended daily calcium requirement of 800 mg for age group according to Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council. When adjusted for different co-variates including age, sex, breast feeding history, history of diarrhoea lasting longer than 14 days and 24 hours calcium intake children and religion, occupation, educational status and residence the mothers/care givers using logistic regression model, frequency of exposure to sunlight ( OR = 1.55, 95%CI: 1.2, 2.0), being from rural areas (OR = 5.0, 95% CI: 1.1, 23.3) and age 12-23 months (OR= 4.5, 95% CI: 1.2, 16.5) were significantly associated with rickets (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION It was found that Ethiopian children with rickets and without had a low calcium intake as compared to the recommended daily allowance. The fact that there was no difference in the dietary calcium intake between cases and controls and the significant difference observed between case and controls in terms of frequency of exposure to sunlight per week reflects that vitamin D deficiency emanating from poor exposure to radiant energy is the main cause of rickets in Ethiopian children. This study also documented the fact that rural children are at a higher risk of developing rickets as compared to their urban counterparts which could be mainly due to the traditional beliefs and practices more prevalent in the rural areas. Enhancing behaviour change communication about the benefits of exposing children to sunlight is very important in preventing the prevalence of rickets.
Preventive attitudes and beliefs of deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the unique health care issues of deaf and hard-of-hearing (D&HH) persons by studying their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors toward preventive medicine. DESIGN A self-administered, cross-sectional survey, written in a format comprehensible to persons whose primary language is American Sign Language. POPULATION One hundred forty D&HH persons recruited from southeastern Michigan, Chicago, Ill, and Rochester, NY, and 76 hearing subjects from southeastern Michigan and Rochester. RESULTS No significant differences existed between D&HH or hearing persons from different states. However, numerous differences existed between D&HH and hearing persons. Deaf and hard-of-hearing persons were less likely to report receiving preventive information from physicians or the media, and more likely to report receiving it from a Deaf club. They rated the following physician-initiated procedures as less important than hearing persons: discussion of alcohol consumption, smoking, depression, and diet, plus screening for hypertension, hearing loss, and cancer. Deaf and hard-of-hearing persons often considered a preventive procedure important if it was reported performed at their last health maintenance examination. They were less likely to report being asked about alcohol consumption and smoking, or to having been examined for hypertension, cancer, height, and weight. They were more likely to report receiving a hearing examination, mammogram, and Papanicolaou smear. Deaf and hard-of-hearing persons were less likely to report believing that smoking less, exercising regularly, maintaining ideal weight, and regular physical examinations improve health. Differences existed within the D&HH cohort depending on the respondent's preferred language (oral English vs American Sign Language); our sample size was too small for a complete assessment of these differences. CONCLUSIONS Deaf and hard-of-hearing persons appear to have unique knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors regarding preventive medicine, and their attitudes are influenced by their personal experiences with physicians. Preventive practices addressed during health visits may differ between D&HH and hearing patients. Further research is needed to clarify the reasons for these differences, including within D&HH subgroups, and to develop effective mechanisms to improve the health care of all D&HH persons.
An introduction to the dimer model

A perfect matching of a graph is a subset of edges which covers every vertex exactly once, that is, for every vertex there is exactly one edge in the set with that vertex as endpoint. The dimer model is the study of the set of perfect matchings of a (possibly infinite) graph. The most well-known example is when the graph is Z, for which perfect matchings are equivalent (via a simple duality) to domino tilings, that is, tilings of the plane with 2× 1 and 1× 2 rectangles. In the first three sections we study domino tilings of the plane and of finite polygonal regions, or equivalently, perfect matchings on Z and subgraphs of Z. In the last two sections we study the FK-percolation model and the dimer model on a more general family of planar graphs.
Sensitivity of PMMA nanoindentation measurements to strain rate

This study aims to investigate the effects of strain rate on polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) nanoindentation measurements. Nanoindentation experiments were used to characterize the mechanical properties of PMMA. A wide range of strain rates were employed to examine strain rate sensitivity of PMMA. The test results indicate that the elastic modulus and hardness of PMMA are strain-rate-dependent. In addition, both the elastic modulus and hardness of PMMA exhibit increases with increasing strain rate. However, the elastic modulus became a stable value until strain-rate of 0.2 s−1. Creep behavior of PMMA under the condition of high strain rate is more obvious than that experience a low strain rate. Moreover, the effects of strain rate on the PMMA nanomechanical properties are detailed analyzed by discussing each stage of the indentation process. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015, 132, 41896.
Which argument is more convincing? Analyzing and predicting convincingness of Web arguments using bidirectional LSTM

We propose a new task in the field of computational argumentation in which we investigate qualitative properties of Web arguments, namely their convincingness. We cast the problem as relation classification, where a pair of arguments having the same stance to the same prompt is judged. We annotate a large datasets of 16k pairs of arguments over 32 topics and investigate whether the relation “A is more convincing than B” exhibits properties of total ordering; these findings are used as global constraints for cleaning the crowdsourced data. We propose two tasks: (1) predicting which argument from an argument pair is more convincing and (2) ranking all arguments to the topic based on their convincingness. We experiment with feature-rich SVM and bidirectional LSTM and obtain 0.76-0.78 accuracy and 0.35-0.40 Spearman’s correlation in a cross-topic evaluation. We release the newly created corpus UKPConvArg1 and the experimental software under open licenses.
Upper limb spasticity reduction following active training: a robot-mediated study in patients with chronic hemiparesis.

OBJECTIVE To compare the effects on spasticity of 2 robot-mediated therapies in patients with chronic hemiparesis. DESIGN Groups comparison. SUBJECTS Thirty-four patients, divided into 2 homogeneous groups. METHODS Outcome measures were: motor status score, Modified Ashworth scale, and range of motion. A pattern of reaching exercises was implemented, in which the direction and length of the movements were modified with the aim of reducing activity of the flexor muscles and improving extension of the arm. A 3-month follow-up was performed. RESULTS Statistically significant improvements were found in both groups after treatment. Some differences were found in elbow motor improvement between the 2 groups. CONCLUSION Comparison between groups confirms that active movement training does not result in increased hypertonia, but results in spasticity reduction in antagonist muscles by activating the reciprocal inhibition mechanism. Furthermore, robot-mediated therapy contributes to a decrease in motor impairment of the upper limbs in subjects with chronic hemiparesis, resulting in a reduction in shoulder pain.
Dental health of Irish alcohol/drug abuse treatment centre residents.

OBJECTIVES This study examines the independent and combined impact of 'alcohol only' and 'alcohol plus drug' abuse on the dental health of Irish alcohol/drug abuse treatment centre residents, comparing their dental caries experience. METHODS Four Irish treatment centres were visited periodically over a year. Data was collected on residents' alcohol, tobacco and drug habits. Participants underwent comprehensive oral examination. RESULTS Of 210 participants (148 males and 62 females), 53% reported an 'alcohol plus drug' abuse; 44% had an 'alcohol-only' abuse. 'Drug-only' abusers (n = 7) were excluded. Ages ranged from 18-73 with 59% aged under 40. 'Alcohol-only' abusers were significantly older than "alcohol plus drugs" abusers (p < 0.001). Mean DMFT (14.4, sd 7.3) and MT scores (7.3, sd 6.8) were above the national averages. "Alcohol-only" abusers had higher DMFT scores (p < 0.001), more missing teeth (p < 0.001) and more filled teeth (p < 0.01) than "drugs plus alcohol" abusers. DT scores did not vary significantly between study groups. Multivariate analysis confirmed the significance of gender (males OR = 2.31, p = 0.009) on DT scores and highly significant influence of age (age < 36, OR = 0.08, p < 0.001) on MT status. However, study group was not a significant influence once age was taken into consideration. CONCLUSIONS The study reveals a high level of dental disease among Irish alcohol/drug abusers. While some authors have suggested that 'alcohol-only' abusers may experience less decay than 'alcohol plus drug' abusers, this study found no significant difference in the caries experience of the two groups once age was taken into consideration.
Randomised representations

The authors show that a number of existing methods for side-channel defence are essentially the same techniques presented in different contexts. By abstracting this technique, they present necessary conditions which need to be satisfied for it to be successful in preventing side-channel analysis. They also show that concrete application of the technique via randomised field representation produces more efficient implementations than application of the technique via randomised projective coordinates.
Effect of cisplatin on renal function in rabbits: mechanism of reduced glucose reabsorption.

This study was performed to determine the effect of cisplatin (cis-diamminedichloroplatinum II) on renal function in rabbits. Injection of a single i.p. dose of 4 mg/kg cisplatin caused an increase in fractional excretion of Na+ and K+ and a decrease in urine osmolality (Uosm), free-water reabsorption, (TcH2O), and urine to plasma creatinine ratio (U/Pcr). Urine flow was decreased following cisplatin treatment, which was accompanied by marked reduction in GFR. Cisplatin induced glucosuria, phosphaturia, and aminoaciduria. These results suggest that cisplatin results in impaired proximal tubular reabsorptive function and the renal concentrating defect. Cisplatin treatment impaired the accumulation of PAH and TEA and ouabain-sensitive oxygen consumption in renal cortical slices. Na(+)-K(+)-ATPase activity in renal cortical microsomes and basolateral membrane vesicles was significantly depressed in cisplatin-treated animals. Cisplatin treatment did not affect the Na(+)-dependent uptake of glucose and L-glutamate by brush-border membrane vesicles (BBMV), but caused a significant decrease in Na(+)-dependent succinate and H(+)-dependent TEA uptake. Morphological observations showed that cisplatin caused a focal loss of the microvillus brush border. These results suggest that (1) cisplatin induces oliguric acute renal failure in rabbits and (2) glucosuria induced by cisplatin was not due to a direct impairment of glucose transporter in brush-border membranes but due to an inhibition of Na(+)-pump activity and a decrease in area for active glucose reabsorption in the proximal tubule.
What I’ve learned about annotating informal text (and why you shouldn’t take my word for it)

In conjunction with this year’s LAW theme, “Syntactic Annotation of Non-canonical Language” (NCL), I have been asked to weigh in on several important questions faced by anyone wishing to create annotated resources of NCLs. My experience with syntactic annotation of noncanonical language falls under an effort undertaken at Carnegie Mellon University with the aim of building an NLP pipeline for syntactic analysis of Twitter text. We designed a linguistically-grounded annotation scheme, applied it to tweets, and then trained statistical analyzers—first for part-of-speech (POS) tags (Gimpel et al., 2011; Owoputi et al., 2012), then for parses (Schneider et al., 2013; Kong et al., 2014). I will review some of the salient points from this work in addressing the broader questions about annotation methodology.
Notch Signaling Activation Suppresses v-Src-Induced Transformation of Neural Cells by Restoring TGF-β-Mediated Differentiation

Background We have been investigating how interruption of differentiation contributes to the oncogenic process and the possibility to reverse the transformed phenotype by restoring differentiation. In a previous report, we correlated the capacity of intracellular Notch (ICN) to suppress v-Src-mediated transformation of quail neuroretina (QNR/v-srcts) cells with the acquisition by these undifferentiated cells of glial differentiation markers. Methodology/Principal Findings In this work, we have identified autocrine TGF-β3 signaling activation as a major effector of Notch-induced phenotypic changes, sufficient to induce transition in differentiation markers expression, suppress morphological transformation and significantly inhibit anchorage-independent growth. We also show that this signaling is constitutive of and contributes to ex-vivo autonomous QNR cell differentiation and that its down-regulation is essential to achieve v-Src-induced transformation. Conclusions/Significance These results support the possibility that Notch signaling induces differentiation and suppresses transformation by a novel mechanism, involving secreted proteins. They also underline the importance of extracellular signals in controlling the balance between normal and transformed phenotypes.
The Role of Initial Oligomers in Amyloid Fibril Formation by Human Stefin B

Oligomers are commonly observed intermediates at the initial stages of amyloid fibril formation. They are toxic to neurons and cause decrease in neural transmission and long-term potentiation. We describe an in vitro study of the initial steps in amyloid fibril formation by human stefin B, which proved to be a good model system. Due to relative stability of the initial oligomers of stefin B, electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI MS) could be applied in addition to size exclusion chromatography (SEC). These two techniques enabled us to separate and detect distinguished oligomers from the monomers: dimers, trimers, tetramers, up to decamers. The amyloid fibril formation process was followed at different pH and temperatures, including such conditions where the process was slow enough to detect the initial oligomeric species at the very beginning of the lag phase and those at the end of the lag phase. Taking into account the results of the lower-order oligomers transformations early in the process, we were able to propose an improved model for the stefin B fibril formation.
The Star Formation Rate Function of the Local Universe

We have derived the bivariate luminosity function for the far-ultraviolet (1530 Å) and far-infrared (60 μm). We use matched GALEX and IRAS data, and redshifts from NED and the PSCz survey. We have derived a total star formation luminosity function ϕ(Ltot), with Ltot = LFUV + LFIR. Using these, we determined the cosmic "star formation rate" (SFR) function and density for the local universe. The total SFR function ϕ(Ltot) is fitted very well by a lognormal distribution over 5 decades of luminosity. We find that the bivariate luminosity function ϕ(LFUV, LFIR) shows a bimodal behavior, with LFIR tracking LFUV for Ltot < 1010 L☉ and LFUV saturating at ~1010 L☉, while Ltot ~ LFIR for higher luminosities. We also calculate the SFR density and compare it with other measurements.