Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cybex® II Isokinetic Dynamometer for the Documentation of Spasticity

Recent studies involving patients with CNS lesions have clearly demonstrated that agonist paresis rather than antagonist spasticity is the primary factor limiting torque production.1,2 The presence of spasticity can, nonetheless, be important because of its effect on the quality of movement and because of the propensity of spastic muscles toward contracture.3 Therefore, methods for more precisely documenting spasticity remain of value to those clinicians who include among their therapeutic goals the reduction of spasticity. Among the methods proposed for measuring spasticity (resistance to passive movement) are the Ashworth test4 and the goniometric pendulum test.5–7 Alfieri reported that the Ashworth test can provide an indication of therapeutic efficacy but is of limited objectivity because it uses an ordinal scale.8 The pendulum test, on the other hand, provides a more objective measurement on a continuous ratio scale. …
[Coagulation inhibitors in severe sepsis: state of the art].

OBJECTIVE To present and discuss the rationale and the results of clinical trials using supplementation with physiologic anticoagulants (Tissue Factor Pathway Inhibitor (TFPI), AntiThrombin (AT), and Protein C (PC) in patients with severe sepsis. RATIONALE An early activation of the coagulation cascade occurs in severe sepsis. TFPI, AT, and PC are major inhibitors of the coagulation cascade, and additionally modulate inflammatory and vascular reactions. They are consumed or inhibited in the sepsis pathologic process. Therapeutic supplementation with these inhibitors could improve the sepsis-induced organ failures and mortality. CLINICAL RESULTS Randomized controlled studies were recently completed. No effect on the mortality rate could be documented after treatment with recombinant TFPI. AT concentrates neither improve mortality, but a biological interaction with heparin therapy could have biased the study results. Treatment with recombinant activated PC (alpha-drotrecogin) was associated with a significant reduction in the mortality rate of severely ill patients and received recently the approval from FDA and EC authorities in this indication. An increase in the rate of hemorrhagic adverse effects has been observed with these compounds, justifying a strict observance of contraindications and of patients selection. PROSPECTIVE: Additional studies are needed to give confirmation of the positive effects of activated PC supplementation in less severely ill patients, children and specific clinical situations. The effects of new anticoagulant compounds are currently evaluated in preclinical studies.
Common lower limb sport-related overuse injuries in young athletes.

INTRODUCTION Sports injuries in children and adolescent present a unique challenge to the physician. They are often seen for clinical conditions unique to their age group. This paper highlights the epidemiological aspect of sports-related overuse injuries in this age group. MATERIALS AND METHODS This retrospective study reviewed all the paediatric patients diagnosed with overuses injuries during a 5 years and 7 months period. The overuse injuries were anterior superior iliac spine avulsion fracture, Osgood-Schlatter disease, Sinding-Larson-Johansson disease, osteochondritis dissecan and Sever's disease. We reviewed the literature and attempted to give an overview for each condition and the anatomical differences that contributed to their occurrence in this age group. RESULTS A total of 506 cases of the overuse injuries were seen during the study period. Seventy-three per cent were male patients. The knee joint was the commonest affected joint while the hip was the least affected joint. The mean age at diagnosis was younger in female compared to male for all conditions except in Sinding-Larson Johansson syndrome. Female was diagnosed at a mean age of 11.7 years while male at 10.8 years. Osgood-Schlatter disease was the commonest among the overuse injuries. There was no discernible racial predilection for these conditions except in the patients with anterior superior iliac spine avulsion. CONCLUSIONS Overuse injuries are not uncommon in children and adolescent. An adequate understanding of the anatomy of the sports the children participated in as well as the anatomical differences between adult and children may assist the primary care providers better meet parents' and coaches' expectations.
The clinical significance of binge eating disorder.

OBJECTIVE Current controversy exists regarding the status of binge eating disorder (BED) as a diagnostic entity. A critique of the literature is provided to address the question of whether BED represents a clinically significant syndrome. METHOD The scientific evidence is considered through addressing five questions that are key in evaluating the clinical utility of any mental disorder. RESULTS Individuals with BED meaningfully differ from individuals without eating disorders, and share important similarities to, yet are distinct from, individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN). BED is associated with co-occurring physical and mental illnesses, as well as impaired quality of life and social functioning. Questions about the course of the disorder and the optimal treatment regimen for the syndrome need to be explored further. DISCUSSION BED's distinctive combination of core eating disorder psychopathology, and other co-occurring physical and psychiatric conditions, impaired psychosocial functioning, and overweight constitute an eating disorder of clinical severity and a significant public health problem.
Effects on Sperms’ Quality of Selegiline in Aged Rats

Background: Selegiline is used to treat Parkinsonian patients. Other indications of its use have recently been discovered. Objective: Scouting special and beneficial side effects of selegiline treatment. Method: Two-year old male Wistar rats were daily treated with 0.25 mg/kg of selegiline s.c. (subcutaneous injection). The rats were sacrificed following a four-weeks’ treatment. Results: Mass of testes, number of sperms, progressive motility of sperms, and their viability definitely increased. Conclusion: Selegiline can successfully be used to stop/counterbalance certain symptoms of aging.
Modeling Distributed Energy Resource Dynamics on the Transmission System

As distributed energy resource (DER) projects grow in popularity, there has been little focus on their potential to influence the dynamic stability of a transmission system. If implemented in large enough numbers, DER equipment may feasibly be leveraged to provide ancillary services such as spinning reserve, system inertia, or system stabilization. To determine the potential impacts of DER on future transmission grid stability, dynamic models of DER load combinations were created, reduced in order, and scattered throughout central and southem Califomia within an existing Western Systems Coordinating Council (WSCC) dynamic model. Evaluation of the composite WSCC-DER dynamic model allows correlations to be drawn between various DER properties and the transmission grid stability. Key findings show that increasing DER inertia tends to destabilize the transmission system. The cause of this counterintuitive relationship requires further study but likely is related to the high impedance separating the DER from the transmission grid.
Laparoscopic sterilization of Sardinia donkeys using an endoscopic stapler.

OBJECTIVE To describe a laparoscopic technique for sterilization of the male donkey using an endoscopic linear stapler (ELS). STUDY DESIGN Clinical report. ANIMALS Male Sardinia donkeys (n=6), aged 24-36 months. METHODS Laparoscopic sterilization was performed under standing sedation or recumbent under general anesthesia. An endoscopic linear stapler was used to transect, and control hemorrhage of, the spermatic cord. Serum testosterone concentrations were measured preoperatively and at 3, 6, and 12 months after sterilization. One testis from each of 2 donkeys was collected at 12 months for histologic examination. RESULTS Sterilization was successfully achieved. The only minor intraoperative complication experienced was hemorrhage from 1 spermatic cord stump, which was re-stapled. No other major short- or long-term complications occurred. Serum testosterone concentrations were < 15 ng/dL at 3, 6, and 12 months after surgery in all donkeys. Testicular atrophy without evidence of revascularization was observed in the 2 testes examined histologically. CONCLUSIONS Sterilization of descended testes by intraabdominal laparoscopic transection of the spermatic cord is a simple practical method, with minimal intraoperative or postoperative complications. Testicular revascularization did not occur. CLINICAL RELEVANCE Laparoscopic sterilization in donkey can be performed using an endoscopic linear stapler as an alternative to scrotal castration.
A 7.5mW 9MHz CT ΔΣ modulator in 65nm CMOS with 69 dB SNDR and reduced sensitivity to loop delay variations

This paper presents a 3rd-order, 3-bit continuous-time (CT) ΔΣ modulator for an LTE radio receiver. By adopting a return-to-zero (RZ) pulse in the innermost DAC, the modulator shows a reduced sensitivity to loop-delay variations, and the additional loop delay compensation usually needed in CT modulators can be omitted. The modulator has been implemented in a 65 nm CMOS process, where it occupies an area of 0.2 mm × 0.4 mm. It achieves an SNR of 71 dB and an SNDR of 69 dB over a 9 MHz bandwidth with an oversampling ratio of 16, while consuming 7.5 mW from a 1.2 V supply.
Outcome at 6 Months After Admission for Pediatric Intensive Care: A Report of a National Study of Pediatric Intensive Care Units in the United Kingdom

OBJECTIVE. The goal was to measure, by using the Health Utilities Index, the health status of children 6 months after admission to PICUs in the United Kingdom. METHODS. All PICUs in the United Kingdom were invited to participate. Children who were ≥6 months of age at admission and were discharged alive from participating units during a 1-year period were eligible for this study. Children with completed consent forms who had survived to 6 months after admission received the Health Utilities Index questionnaire. RESULTS. Admission data on 7214 admissions to 22 units were collected between March 2001 and February 2002. Of those patients, 6786 survived to unit discharge, and consent for follow-up contact was obtained for 2642. At 6 months after admission, the mortality rate was estimated at 11.1% and 2034 children were still alive and contactable. Of those children, Health Utilities Index questionnaires were returned by 1455. No impairment was indicated for 767, 951, 940, 919, 962, and 939 children with respect to the Health Utilities Index sensation, cognition, emotion, pain, mobility, and self-care attributes, respectively. The mean ± SE Health Utilities Index utility score was 0.73 ± 0.01, with 397 children (27.3%) in full health. CONCLUSIONS. Death after pediatric intensive care in the United Kingdom is uncommon, making assessment of health status important. At 6 months after admission, there is significant morbidity. To assess the impact of strategies to improve or to optimize care on longer-term outcomes, standardized collection of data on preexisting comorbidities and illness severity is required.
FORECASTING OF INFLATION IN BANGLADESH USING ANN MODEL

In this paper an ANN model is developed to forecast the monthly inflation of Bangladesh as a function of its own previous value. The model selects a feed-forward back- propagation ANN with two inputs, one hidden layer with five hidden neurons and one output as the optimum network. The model is tested with actual time series data of inflation in case of Bangladesh and forecast evaluation criteria. The forecast performance of the ANN model is also compared with different plausible traditional ARIMA based model. One the basis of forecasting accuracy and the evaluation statistics it was observed that RMSE of ANN based forecasts is much less than the RMSE of forecasts based on ARIMA models. So it can be said that forecasting of inflation with ANN offers better performance than the other traditional models.
Suicidal ideation and help-negation: Not just hopelessness or prior help.

Few distressed young people seek professional psychological help and little is known about what sources of help young people seek for different problems. In suicidal youth, the process of help-negation may exacerbate poor help-seeking. Three hundred and two undergraduate university students completed a questionnaire measuring suicidal ideation, hopelessness, prior help-seeking experience, and help-seeking intentions. Participants indicated they would seek help from different sources of help for different types of problems, but friends consistently were rated as the most likely source of help. Help-negation was suggested by higher levels of suicidal ideation being associated with lower help-seeking intentions. However, the negative suicidal ideation/help-seeking-intentions relationship was not explained by hopelessness or prior help-seeking. Help-negation appears to involve more than just negative expectations regarding the future. The discussion proposes social problem-solving orientation as one of a number of potential explanatory variables.
A Study of Snippet Length and Informativeness: Behaviour, Performance and User Experience

The design and presentation of a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) has been subject to much research. With many contemporary aspects of the SERP now under scrutiny, work still remains in investigating more traditional SERP components, such as the result summary. Prior studies have examined a variety of different aspects of result summaries, but in this paper we investigate the influence of result summary length on search behaviour, performance and user experience. To this end, we designed and conducted a within-subjects experiment using the TREC AQUAINT news collection with 53 participants. Using Kullback-Leibler distance as a measure of information gain, we examined result summaries of different lengths and selected four conditions where the change in information gain was the greatest: (i) title only; (ii) title plus one snippet; (iii) title plus two snippets; and (iv) title plus four snippets. Findings show that participants broadly preferred longer result summaries, as they were perceived to be more informative. However, their performance in terms of correctly identifying relevant documents was similar across all four conditions. Furthermore, while the participants felt that longer summaries were more informative, empirical observations suggest otherwise; while participants were more likely to click on relevant items given longer summaries, they also were more likely to click on non-relevant items. This shows that longer is not necessarily better, though participants perceived that to be the case - and second, they reveal a positive relationship between the length and informativeness of summaries and their attractiveness (i.e. clickthrough rates). These findings show that there are tensions between perception and performance when designing result summaries that need to be taken into account.
A New Gene Expression Signature for Triple-Negative Breast Cancer using Frozen Fresh Tissue before Neoadjuvant chemotherapy

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive subtype of breast cancer tumors. Comparisons between TNBC and non-triple-negative breast cancer (nTNBC) may help to differentiate key components involved in TNBC neoplasms. The purpose of the study was to analyze the expression profile of TNBC versus nTNBC tumors in a homogeneous population from northeastern Mexico. A prospective study of 50 patients (25 TNBC and 25 nTNBC) was conducted. Clinic parameters were equally distributed for TNBC and nTNBC: age at diagnosis (51 versus 47 years, p = 0.1), glucose level (107 mg/dl versus 104 mg/dl, p = 0.64), and body mass index (28 versus 29, p = 0.14). Core biopsies were collected for histopathological diagnosis and gene expression analysis. Total RNA was isolated and expression profiling was performed. Forty genes showed differential expression pattern in TNBC tumors. Among these, nine overexpressed genes (PRKX/PRKY, UGT8, HMGA1, LPIN1, HAPLN3, FAM171A1, BCL141A, FOXC1, and ANKRD11), and one underexpressed gene (ANX9) are involved in general metabolism. Based on this biochemical peculiarity and the overexpression of BCL11A and FOXC1 (involved in tumor growth and metastasis, respectively), we validated by quantitative polymerase chain reaction the expression profiles of seven genes out of the signature. In this report, a new gene signature for TNBC is proposed. To our knowledge, this is the first TNBC signature that describes genes involved in general metabolism. The findings may be pertinent for Mexican patients and require evaluation in other ethnic groups and populations.
Contractile Responses to Morphine, Piritramide, Meperidine, and Fentanyl: A Comparative Study of Effects on the Isolated Ventricular Myocardium

The effects of four analgesics on myocardial contractility were studied in isolated cat papillary muscle preparations. At low doses, both morphine (1–10 µg/ml) and piritramide (0.01–1 µg/ml) produced slight, but non-significant, increases in the extent of shortening, the velocity of shortening, the rate of tension development, cardiac work, and cardiac power. No positive inotropic effects of meperidine and fentanyl were detected. At larger doses all analgesics caused dose-dependent decreases in these measures. Equal contractile depressant doses (measured in terms of 50 per cent inhibition of the velocity of isotonic shortening) were: morphine, 2,000 µg/ml; piritramide, 1,000 µg/ml; meperidine; 100 µg/ml; fentanyl, 10 µg/ml. The results are discussed in relation to equianalgesic potency.
Attention networks for image-to-text

The paper approaches the problem of image-to-text with attention-based encoder-decoder networks that are trained to handle sequences of characters rather than words. We experiment on lines of text from a popular handwriting database with different attention mechanisms for the decoder. The model trained with softmax attention achieves the lowest test error, outperforming several other RNN-based models. Our results show that softmax attention is able to learn a linear alignment whereas the alignment generated by sigmoid attention is linear but much less precise.
Mother tongues as media of instruction: The case of Kenya

This paper advances the argument that using mother tongues as media of instruction in the lower levels of formal learning in Kenya is the best option there is for the children‟s education. The use of mother tongues as the media of instruction has been a vexing issue in Kenya. Besides the indigenous languages or mother tongues, the country also has English, which was inherited from the colonial past. This ex-colonial language (English) is associated with the professions, white-collar jobs, upward mobility, power and material prosperity. On the other hand, mother tongues are seen to signify pre-modernity and lack of sophistication. Kiswahili, a mother tongue for some Kenyans and also Kenya‟s national and official language (alongside English), is placed in-between English and the other mother tongues in a three-tier language prestige hierarchy. Since English has the highest prestige among the languages spoken in the country, many parents want their children to learn the language well. Consequently, a policy providing for the use of mother tongues as media of instruction in the lower levels of formal learning has attracted reactions ranging from scepticism, at best, to hostility, at the very worst, not only from parents but also from other members of society who consider them as being of little value. There is no doubt that there are challenges standing on the way of the efforts to implement such a policy but it is still reasonable to submit that the challenges are surmountable.
Original Research Article An echocardiographic study in patients with non haemorrhagic cerebral infarction to find cardiac abnormalities

Background: Strokes are a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Majority are due to ischemic cerebral infarction. Ischemia may result from occlusion of blood vessels due to a disease process intrinsic to carotid and intracranial vessels or may relate to coexisting heart diseases, predisposing to embolic phenomenon. Objective: Echocardiographic study in patients with cerebrovascular accident, confirmed to be of non hemorrhagic nature on CT scan/MRI, for evidence of potential cardiac abnormalities as a predisposing cause for the vascular event. Material and Methods: An observational study was conducted in department of medicine, GNDH, Amritsar. 50 patients of ischemic stroke were taken and 2D transthoracic echocardiography was done to find potential cardioembolic abnormalities. Results: 76% of patients had echocardiographic abnormalities and 42% had potential cardioembolic abnormalities, out of which most common were ventricular wall hypokinesia, calcific aortic valve, rheumatic heart disease and dilated cardiomyopathy. The prevalence was almost similar in different age groups and both the sexes. Conclusion: Prevalence of potential cardioembolic abnormalities is high (42%) in ischemic stroke patients and 2D echocardiography is therefore recommended in the management and secondary prevention of cardioembolic stroke, which has a higher mortality and more chances of recurrence than atherothrombotic type of ischemic stroke.
Development of the anatomical alteration of the cerebellar fissura prima

The development of the naturally occurring malformation of the cerebellar fissura prima was monitored in rats starting from 4 days of life to the adulthood. The first sign of the malformation was evident at 10 days of life and consisted of an interruption of the pia mater and the fusion of the external granular layers on the two sides of the fissura. Later, nests of apparently mature granule cells could be seen to be encircled by cells of the external granular layer and to be connected to the granule cell layer by thin bridges of cells. Calretinin immunoreactive fibers followed the bridges of cells to reach the ectopic masses of cells. Towards the end of histogenesis and in adult animals, brush cells and Golgi cells were present in the ectopic masses of granule cells. The latter appeared to contribute to the formation of normal glomeruli, as in the orthotopic granule cell layer. In addition, bundles of parallel fibers crossed the boundary between the molecular layers on the two side of the fissure, thus suggesting that parallel fibers can contact Purkinje cells of the opposite folium. Anat Rec 259:150–156, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Assessing gene-disease relationship with multifunctional genes using GO

Multifunctional genes possess special significance due to their role in multiple biological and molecular activities in many organisms. In this paper, we study multifunctional genes in human with gene functional annotations in Gene Ontology, and we utilize the extensive information available for genes related to gene functionalities from the Molecular Function and Biological Process aspects of the Gene Ontology. Specifically, we examine the gene ontology annotations of human genes to assess the gene multifunctionality and their relationship with human diseases. We examined and analyzed all human genes having gene ontology annotations from GOA database and using the OMIM diseases. We combined all OMIM disease genes with the GO annotated human genes in relation to human diseases and the results of the relationships between highly annotated human genes and diseases are highly significant.