Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Through-wall tracking using mean-shift algorithm

In through-wall-radar-imaging tracking, the target, such as a human body, is better to be regarded as a nonrigid cluster rather than a point target, because the target image usually occupies a lot of pixels in the image and dramatically changes its profile over time. Thus, instead of the traditional point tracking algorithm, we try to use the mean shift algorithm to deal with the problem, as it has been proved to be suitable for real-time visual tracking of nonrigid objects. Before mean shift algorithm, the strong clutter, such as the multi-path ghosts and grating-lobe artifacts, is suppressed by the phase coherence factor (PCF) to provide high signal-to-clutter-ratio images. Simulation and experimental results show that the mean shift algorithm works very well in through-wall moving target tracking. Furthermore, the mean shift algorithm has a very low computational complexity which makes the real-time tracking possible.
Alcohol and sex.

Diminished sexual functioning among individuals dependent upon alcohol has been assessed. Ninety-seven male patients entered the study, all inpatients as the unit for treatment of alcoholism and drug addiction (Villa 6) in Porirua Hospital, Porirua. The sexual ability of these patients before the development of alcoholism was also rated for the same items and this rating was used as a control. Of the 97 patients, 69 (71 percent) suffered from sexual dysfunction for a period more than 12 months prior to admission to hospital. The disturbances noted were diminished sexual desire (58 percent of patients), erectile impotence (16 percent), premature ejaculation (4 percent), ejaculatory in competence (22 percent). A high proportion of the alcoholics showed signs of sexual deviation-19 percent having performed sexual crimes and a further 28 percent having repeated thought of sexual crimes. The possible causes of alcohol induced sexual dysfunction are discussed.
Connectivity‐based parcellation of the nucleus accumbens into core and shell portions for stereotactic target localization and alterations in each NAc subdivision in mTLE patients

The nucleus accumbens (NAc), an important target of deep brain stimulation for some neuropsychiatric disorders, is thought to be involved in epileptogenesis, especially the shell portion. However, little is known about the exact parcellation within the NAc, and its structural abnormalities or connections alterations of each NAc subdivision in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) patients. Here, we used diffusion probabilistic tractography to subdivide the NAc into core and shell portions in individual TLE patients to guide stereotactic localization of NAc shell. The structural and connection abnormalities in each NAc subdivision in the groups were then estimated. We successfully segmented the NAc in 24 of 25 controls, 14 of 16 left TLE patients, and 14 of 18 right TLE patients. Both left and right TLE patients exhibited significantly decreased fractional anisotropy (FA) and increased radial diffusivity (RD) in the shell, while there was no significant alteration in the core. Moreover, relatively distinct structural connectivity of each NAc subdivision was demonstrated. More extensive connection abnormalities were detected in the NAc shell in TLE patients. Our results indicate that neuronal degeneration and damage caused by seizure mainly exists in NAc shell and provide anatomical evidence to support the role of NAc shell in epileptogenesis. Remarkably, those NAc shell tracts with increased connectivities in TLE patients were found decreased in FA, which indicates disruption of fiber integrity. This finding suggests the regeneration of aberrant connections, a compensatory and repair process ascribed to recurrent seizures that constitutes part of the characteristic changes in the epileptic network.
Early diagnosis of Usher syndrome in children.

PURPOSE To screen severe to profound, preverbal hearing-impaired children for Usher syndrome by ophthalmologic examinations, including electroretinographic testing. These patients are especially good candidates for early cochlear implants, which will improve listening and spoken language skills. METHODS Consecutive patients over 2 years of age, given a diagnosis of severe to profound, preverbal hearing loss, were screened for Usher syndrome by a complete ophthalmologic examination including an electroretinogram. RESULTS Five of 48 patients screened (10.4%) were diagnosed with Usher syndrome and received cochlear implants. CONCLUSION All children with severe to profound, preverbal sensorineural hearing loss should be screened for Usher syndrome by ophthalmologic examination including electroretinogram.
Complete mitochondrial genome of Rhodeus lighti (Cypriniformes: Cyprinidae)

Abstract In this study, the complete mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) sequence of Rhodeus lighti (Cypriniformes: Cyprinidae) was determined by long PCR and primer walking methods. The complete mitochondrial genome is 16,677 bp in length and contains 13 protein-coding genes, 2 ribosomal RNA genes, 22 transfer RNA genes as well as a displacement loop (D-loop). The overall base composition of the genome is A (28.87%), T (27.22%), C (26.53%) and G (17.38%). The mitogenome of R. lighti displayed novel gene order arrangement compared with published Rhodeus sinensis to date. The mitogenome would contribute to resolving phylogenetic position and interrelationships of Acheilognathinae.
Nextopia? Beyond Revolution 2.0

Research on the impact of the internet in the Middle East has been dominated by a focus on politics and the public sphere, and oscillated between the hope for “revolutionary” change and the admission that regime stability in the region has not easily been unsettled by media revolutions alone. Obsession with the new and with latest technologies has helped to obscure more long-term sociocultural developments. This contribution is a plea for a shift of paradigm: to study more seriously the social and cultural effects of Internet and mobile phone use; to find out what impact the use of these media has on conceptions of the individual and its role in the construction of knowledge and values; and to determine how these dynamics are embedded in more long-term historical developments promoting a greater role for the individual vis-à-vis established authorities.
Air-Inflated Magnetic Resonance Colonography in Patients with Incomplete Conventional Colonoscopy: Comparison with Intraoperative Findings, Pathology Specimens, and Follow-Up Conventional Colonoscopy

BACKGROUND:To assess the usefulness of air-inflated magnetic resonance colonography (MRC) in patients with incomplete conventional colonoscopy (CC). METHODS:From September 2001 to December 2004, 51 patients (25 male and 26 female, age range 32 to 85 years) with incomplete colonoscopy were recruited to have MRC performed. Half-fourier single short turbo spin echo (HASTE) axial, coronal, and three dimensional fat suppressed gradient echo sequence (VIBE) coronal images in both the prone and supine positions were performed for each patient. MRC was reviewed by two radiologists for detection of synchronous colonic lesion. The location and size of lesions were recorded and were compared with the findings of CC. Patients were managed according to the clinical situation and intraoperative findings were compared with MRC findings. Follow-up colonoscopy was performed in 29 patients. The follow-up colonoscopy findings were then compared with the MRC findings.RESULTS:Forty-four patients had incomplete colonoscopy because of an obstructing tumor. The other seven patients had incomplete colonoscopy because of excessive bowel looping. Apart from one patient suffering from chronic obstructive airway disease with resulting nondiagnostic MRC, all other patients had MRC successfully performed. Each colon was divided into six bowel segments for analysis. All 300 segments were of diagnostic quality and were assessed by the MRC. MRC correctly identified all 44 obstructing tumors demonstrated by initial CC. Synchronous tumors in proximal colonic segments were identified in two patients by MRC. In addition, MRC identified two colonic tumors located in bowel segments inaccessible by CC because of excessive looping.CONCLUSIONS:MRC is useful for detection of colonic pathology and assessment of proximal colon in patients with colonic cancer after incomplete colonoscopy.
Aggregated form of dextransucrases from Leuconostoc mesenteroides NRRL B-512F and its constitutive mutant.

Purified dextransucrases [EC 2.4. 1.5], DSW-D and DSW-G, from Leuconostoc mesenteroides B-512F were obtained from affinity chromatography with DEAE-Sephadex A-50 by elution with clinical dextran and guanidine-HCl, respectively. DSM-G was purified from the B-512F mutant strain SH 3002, which produces dextransucrase constitutively. Although the sugar contents of the purified enzymes were different, their molecular masses by SDS-PAGE were all 170 kDa. DSW-D and DSW-G were highly aggregated and the all the activities were eluted at the void volume (V0) on Sepharose 6B, while the DSM-G was eluted at 1.2 x V0 volume. On rechromatography, DSM-G was separated into three peaks corresponding to the aggregated form, monomeric form, and partially digested form, respectively. The aggregation of Leuconostoc dextransucrase was looser than that of streptococcal glucosyltransferases, but the structures of these enzymes had high homology with each other.
Effect of Individual and District-level Socioeconomic Disparities on Cognitive Decline in Community-dwelling Elderly in Seoul

This study was to investigate the effects of individual and district-level socioeconomic status (SES) on the development of cognitive impairment among the elderly. A 3-year retrospective observational analysis (2010–2013) was conducted which included 136,217 community-dwelling healthy elderly who participated in the Seoul Dementia Management Project. Cognitive impairment was defined as 1.5 standard deviations below the norms on the Mini-mental status examination. In the individual lower SES group, the cumulative incidence rate (CIR) of cognitive impairment was 8.7% (95% confidence interval [CI], 8.64–8.70), whereas the CIR in the individual higher SES group was 4.1% (95% CI, 4.08–4.10). The CIR for lower district-level SES was 4.7% (95% CI, 4.52–4.86), while that in the higher district-level SES was 4.3% (95% CI, 4.06–4.44). There were no additive or synergistic effects between individual and district-level SES. From this study, the individual SES contributed 1.9 times greater to the development of cognitive impairment than the district-level SES, which suggests that individual SES disparities could be considered as one of the important factors in public health related to cognitive impairment in the elderly.
Determinants of Demand for Life Insurance: The Case of Canada

This study examines the determinants of demand for life insurance in Canada. Lewis (1989) model is used to identify the determinants of life insurance demand. However, based on the findings by Stock and Watson (1988) of possible spurious regression, especially in light of our limited dataset, we focussed on testing for co-integration to establish long-run equilibrium among identified variables rather than estimating a demand model. The Johansen co-integration methodology was applied. The results confirm that education, income, inflation, social security, interest rates, dependency ratio, financial development and life expectancy have long term equilibrium relationship with life insurance. An interesting result was that co-integration between income and demand for life insurance occurred after a 3-year lag period. On the basis of the permanent income hypothesis, an interpretation of this result could be that people wait to make sure that their increase in income is permanent before they increase their spending on certain items, including life insurance. While this study does not produce a definitive structural demand model for life insurance, the results provide a valid basis for governments and other life insurance policy makers across the globe to focus on certain key variables as potential drivers of demand for life insurance.
Nurses’ experiences from pain management in children in Iranian culture: A phenomenology study

BACKGROUND: Management pain in hospitalized children is challenging for the health-care professionals. Nurses have the most interactions with children who need to assess and manage for their pain. Therefore, the aim was to describe nurses’ experiences from pain management among hospitalized children from Iranian culture in this study. METHODS: A phenomenological study was conducted in which 23 nurses working in an educational hospital in Isfahan–Iran. The nurses participated in interviews based on a purposeful sampling method. RESULTS: Participants’ experiences were categorized into three major themes and twelve subthemes including the nurses’ ability of detection of the pain nature, reaction to pain management and belief in pain relief. CONCLUSIONS: The research showed that the nurses have valuable experiences in pain management in their workplaces. Their descriptions were based on the use of three domains that consist of knowledge, belief, and practice. Therefore, it is vital to focus on the subject of pain in nursing curriculum and guidelines in hospitals. A more extensive research is needed to demonstrate perceived barriers to pain management.
Lifetime tobacco, alcohol and other substance use in adolescent Minnesota twins: univariate and multivariate behavioral genetic analyses.

AIMS We sought to estimate the contribution of genetic and environmental factors to adolescent tobacco, alcohol and other substance use. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS The sample consisted of 327 monozygotic and 174 like-sex dizygotic twin pairs born in Minnesota and aged 17-18 years at time of assessment. Biometrical methods were used to estimate the contribution of additive genetic, shared and non-shared environmental factors to adolescent substance use. MEASUREMENTS As part of a day-long psychological assessment, adolescent twins completed a computerized substance use interview to determine whether they had ever used tobacco, alcohol or other illicit drugs. FINDINGS The heritability for the liabilities to tobacco, alcohol and other drug use was estimated to be 59%, 60% and 33% among males, and 11%, 10% and 11% among females. However, the gender difference was not statistically significant. Estimates of shared environmental effect were substantial and insignificantly higher among females (71%, 68% and 36%, respectively) than among males (18%, 23% and 23%, respectively). The covariation among the three substance use phenotypes could be accounted for by a common underlying substance use factor. Estimates of the contributions of genetic, shared environmental and non-shared environmental factors to variance in this factor were 23% 63% and 14%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS These findings add to the growing behavioral genetic literature indicating that adolescent initiation of substance use, a powerful predictor of adult substance use diagnosis, is influenced primarily by environmental rather than genetic factors.
IP2Vec: Learning Similarities Between IP Addresses

IP Addresses are a central part of packet- and flow-based network data. However, visualization and similarity computation of IP Addresses are challenging to due the missing natural order. This paper presents a novel similarity measure IP2Vec for IP Addresses that builds on ideas from Word2Vec, a popular approach in text mining. The key idea is to learn similarities by extracting available context information from network data. IP Addresses are similar if they appear in similar contexts. Thus, IP2Vec is automatically derived from the given network data set. The proposed approach is evaluated experimentally on two public flow-based data sets. In particular, we demonstrate the effectiveness of clustering IP Addresses within a botnet data set. In addition, we use visualization methods to analyse the learned similarities in more detail. These experiments indicate that IP2Vec is well suited to capture the similarity of IP Addresses based on their network communications.
Molecular Characteristics and Peptide Specificity of Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide Receptors from Rat Cerebral Cortex

Abstract Vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) receptors have been identified in CNS by their chemical specificity and molecular size. Using synaptosomes isolated from rat cerebral cortex, it was shown that central VIP receptors discriminated among natural and synthetic VIP‐related peptides, because half‐maximal inhibition of [125I]VIP binding to synaptosomes was obtained for 0.6 nM VIP, 9 nM peptide histidine isoleucineamide (PHI), 50 nM VIP 2–28, 70 nM secretin, 100 nM rat growth hormone‐releasing factor (GRF), and 350 nM human GRF. Other peptides of the VIP family, such as glucagon and gastric inhibitory polypeptide, did not interact with cortical VIP receptors. The molecular components of VIP receptors in rat cerebral cortex were identified after [125I]VIP cross‐linking to synaptosomes using the cross‐linker dithiobis(succinimidyl propionate). Sodium dodecyl sulfate‐polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis of synaptosomal proteins revealed two major [125I]VIP‐pro‐tein complexes of Mr 49,000 and 18,000. The labeling of the Mr49,000 component was specific, because it was abolished by native VIP, whereas the labeling of the Mr 18,000 component was not. Natural VIP agonists reduced the labeling of the Mr49,000 component with the following order of potency: VIP > PHI > secretin ∼ rat GRF. In contrast, glucagon and octapeptide of cholecystokinin were without effect, a result indicating its peptide specificity. Densitometric scanning of autoradiographs showed that the labeling of the Mr 49,000 component was inhibited by low VIP concentrations between 10−‐10 and 10−‐6M (IC50= 0.8 nM), a result indicating the component's high affinity for VIP. Labeling was also reduced by GTP in the concentration range between 10−‐7 and 10−‐3M (ED50= 5 μM). Assuming that one molecule of [125I]VIP is bound per molecule of synaptosomal protein, a major protein of Mr 46,000 was identified as a component of the VIP receptor in rat cerebral cortex.
Socioeconomic differences in use of medical care and antibiotics among schoolchildren in Sweden.

BACKGROUND Studies of mortality among children and adults in Sweden have demonstrated considerable socioeconomic differences. This paper describes socioeconomic patterns of physical morbidity and use of medical care and antibiotics in schoolchildren in Sweden. METHODS A cross-sectional study based on parent interviews from the Swedish Survey of Living Conditions in 1996-1997 was used. The study population consisted of 3,557 children aged 6-15 years. RESULTS Forty-five percent of the schoolchildren in the study were reported to have been absent from school because of illness at least once during the previous three months, 8% were taking regular medication and 10% had ever suffered from a chronic disorder. There were no indications of socioeconomic differences according to the education of the responding parent in morbidity or use of consultations with a physician. However, children in families where the responding parents had primary education only consumed antibiotics less often (OR 0.7 and CI: 0.5-0.9) when compared to children in families with post-secondary education. Children in rural areas used consultations with a physician less often and consumed less antibiotics (adjusted OR 0.7 and CI: 0.4-0.9 and 0.7 and CI: 0.5-0.9 respectively). CONCLUSION No obvious patterns of socioeconomic inequality in physical morbidity or use of medical care were identified among schoolchildren in Sweden. Further studies are needed in order to explain the social inequality in consumption of antibiotics among schoolchildren in Sweden and to describe social and regional patterns of psychiatric, behavioural and psychosomatic morbidity.
Electrophysiologic Measures of Delayed Maturation in Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

The cause or causes of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) remain elusive. A widespread delay in brain maturation, mostly in the frontal lobe, has been proposed in recent years as the most likely source of the syndrome. Delay in laying down myelin, suggested by others’ as a potential explanation for the syndrome, is amenable to investigation. Findings of borderline abnormal or abnormal electroencephalogram (EEG) were incorporated early in the 1960s~ into the cluster of symptoms, including specific learning deficits, hyperkinesis, impulsivity, and short attention span, that defined the syndrome. The newly developed method of computerized EEG has overcome prior vague interpretations of the brain activity by offering interesting data of the quantified frequency spectrum in children with ADHD and in controls. ’ Transcranial
Whole‐genome sequencing reveals absence of recent gene flow and separate demographic histories for Anopheles punctulatus mosquitoes in Papua New Guinea

Anopheles mosquitoes are the vectors of several human diseases including malaria. In many malaria endemic areas, several species of Anopheles coexist, sometimes in the form of related sibling species that are morphologically indistinguishable. Determining the size and organization of Anopheles populations, and possible ongoing gene flow among them is important for malaria control and, in particular, for monitoring the spread of insecticide resistance alleles. However, these parameters have been difficult to evaluate in most Anopheles species due to the paucity of genetic data available. Here, we assess the extent of contemporary gene flow and historical variations in population size by sequencing and de novo assembling the genomes of wild‐caught mosquitoes from four species of the Anopheles punctulatus group of Papua New Guinea. Our analysis of more than 50 Mb of orthologous DNA sequences revealed no evidence of contemporary gene flow among these mosquitoes. In addition, investigation of the demography of two of the An. punctulatus species revealed distinct population histories. Overall, our analyses suggest that, despite their similarities in morphology, behaviour and ecology, contemporary sympatric populations of An. punctulatus are evolving independently.
Foreign direct investment (FDI) and corruption: Is it a major hindrance for encouraging inward FDI?

The study used panel data from 1998 to 2014 among 48 different countries to determine the relationship between foreign direct investment and corruption. For identifying the relationship, the study employed random effect model (REM), feasible general least squares method (FGLS) and panels corrected standard errors (PCSE). The results of the three panel estimation methods reveal that the variable of corruption is statistically significant at 1%, but negative relations between corruption and FDI results were determine by using REM, FGLS and PCSE estimation methods in three different regions (South and South-East Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa). It interprets that 1% decrease in the level of corruption may leads to about 8.15, 9.25 and 11.5% increase in FDI inflows by using REM, FGLS and PCSE respectively. Other control variables like gross domestic product per capital (GDPPC), gross domestic product growth rate (GDPG), population growth rate (POPG), urban population growth rate (UPOPG), trade openness, tele-density, gross school enrolment in primary (GSEP), agglomeration, bureaucracy (BURA), law and democracy are positively statistically significant as expected and risk and inflation are negatively statistically significant. Key words: Random effect model, feasible general least squares, panel corrected standard errors, FDI, corruption.