Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Application of vehicle to another entity (V2X) communications for motorcycle crash avoidance

ABSTRACT Information and communication technologies are being massively applied in the automotive field as the basis of the new generation of active safety systems. In this extensive field of technologies, vehicular communications will constitute the core of a large set of advanced driving assistance systems for improving road safety as well as helping to reduce the environmental impact of transport. These communication technologies are currently under deployment, but their mandatory installation in newly manufactured cars is foreseen in the next 5 years. This equipment will enable the new Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) system to be installed in these vehicles. Many of these safety applications are currently under development. However, there are some road users who are not commonly included in this vehicular communication ecosystem, specifically, vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists. Current assistance systems focused on reducing crashes with this user group are based on sensors installed in the vehicles but do not include vehicular communications. In this article, we present a novel Vulnerable Road User (VRU) warning system based on Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communications, which is capable of detecting a motorcycle circulating in the vicinity of the connected vehicles, launching sound and visual warnings, and using a smartphone as human-machine interface. The system has been designed, implemented, and tested in the laboratory as well as on real roads in real traffic flow.
Collusion a mong the C ellular C arriers in Thailand : An E mpirical I nvestigation

This work investigates the game-theoretic structure between the two major players, namely AIS and DTAC, in Thailand’s cellular telephone industry. The duopolistic competition with limited entry has prompted criticism around the two incumbents that they have been tacitly colluding in prices and advertising spending. Applying a theoretical framework proposed by Gasmi, Laffont, and Vuong (1992) with the Three-Stage Least Squares method, this paper finds that the non-collusive model with DTAC as leader and AIS as a follower in both price and advertising yields the best result, contrasting with the popular belief. Full-Information Maximum Likelihood method is also employed but does not produce any indicative results due to limited availability of the data as well as high multicollinearity among variables. Furthermore, incorporating the structural break in 2002 upon the entry of the third firm does not improve goodness of fit of the model to our data.
The selective toxicity of antimicrobial nitroheterocyclic drugs.

Summary: Three antimicrobial nitroimidazole drugs (metronidazole, dimetridazole, and tinidazole) inhibit a range of Clostridia and the protozoan Trichomonas vaginalis; they have an identical site and mode of action as specific electron acceptors from the pyruvate phosphoroclastic reaction. Analogues of the drugs are compared and the structural requirements for activity explained. The nitrofuran (nitrofura-zone) probably has a different mechanism of action.
Processes Forming Volcanic Topography at Atla Regio , Venus

Venus and Earth share a similar size, mass and density, however Venus' high surface temperatures, pressures, dehydrated crust and absence of subduction zones, makes the surface unique. One area which shares similar volcanic landforms to the Earths' is the equatorial highland Alta Regio, which extends from 170°E-220°E 30°N-10°N. The similarity of these volcanic features to Earth based examples, as well as an understanding of the processes which produced them, can help to constrain the deformational mechanisms that may have operated at Atla Regio. This study will aim to compare volcanic topography at Atla Regio to topography observed within the Hawaiian and Cape Verde Archipelagos, Earth to determine if similar deformational processes occurred within Atla Regio. On Earth, three main processes act to produce volcanic topography and include: 1) uplift associated with a mantle plume impinging on the underside of the lithosphere; 2) rifting and volcanism associated with the mantle plume and; 3) volcanic loading, where the extra volcanic mass is compensated by flexure of the lithosphere. An understanding of the processes that gave rise to topography at Atla Regio is fundamental to determine a suitable rheological profile within this area.
Neurophysiologic Aspects of Patients With Generalized or Multifocal Tonic Dystonia of Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy

Summary Reflex sympathetic dystrophy (RSD) is a syndrome dominated by sensory, autonomic, and motor features of the extremities. In this study, 10 severely affected RSD patients who progressed to multifocal or generalized tonic dystonia underwent H-reflex evaluation, needle electromyography (EMG), polysomnography, somatosensory evoked potentials, and transcranial magnetic stimulation. H-reflex evaluation revealed an impaired vibratory inhibition of the H-reflex and a higher facilitation peak in the recovery curve between 200 to 350 msec. Needle EMG revealed an impaired reciprocal inhibition, and many patients were unable to alter the amount of muscle activity voluntarily. Evaluations of the stretch reflex showed a markedly decreased threshold and abnormal responses to tonic and phasic changes. Polysomnography performed in five patients revealed no abnormal EMG activity during nonrapid eye movement and rapid eye movement sleep, but EEG arousal phenomena provoked abnormally high and brief bursts of surface EMG activity in all registered muscle groups. Somatosensory evoked potentials and transcranial magnetic stimulation were normal. Taken together, the findings in these patients with tonic dystonia of RSD are in accordance with an impairment of inhibitory interneuronal circuits at the level of the brainstem or spinal cord.
Myocardial Connective Tissue Metabolism in Response to Injury: HISTOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL STUDIES OF MUCOPOLYSACCHARIDE AND COLLAGEN IN RAT HEARTS AFTER ISOPROTERENOL‐INDUCED INFARCTION

Arteriosclerotic and nonarteriosclerotic rats were given isoproterenol sufficient to cause massive myocardial injury. Hearts, livers, and kidneys were taken for analysis of the connective tissues at various intervals. Mucopolysaccharide was identified as Hale-positive material digestible with testicular hyaluronidase. Hexosamine and hydroxyproline were determined by chemical means. The changes in the connective tissue following infarction were divided into two phases. The first, occurring 1 to 2 days after the induction of necrosis, was characterized by extensive edema, accumulation of hexosamine, and by histologically demonstrable mucopolysaccharide. The second phase, 3 to 7 days after infarction, was characterized by changes typical of wound healing in general, involving both mucopolysaccharide and collagen deposition in foci of myocardial scar tissue formation. The increase in hexosamine was the same in arteriosclerotic breeder animals, which required one-half the dose of isoproterenol, as in virgin animals receiving the full dose of isoproterenol. Since the dose was selected to produce relatively the same degree of necrosis in each type of animal, it was thought that the increase in hexosamine was directly related to the injury and not to the isoproterenol per se. No comparable increase in hexosamine was observed in either the liver or kidney.
Inflammatory and immunological parameters in children with haemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) and gastroenteritis-pathophysiological and diagnostic clues.

The objective of this study was to identify parameters indicating a risk for developing typical haemolytic uremic syndrome (D+HUS) during the prodromal phase of diarrhea caused by enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC). Forty-eight children were studied prospectively with regard to inflammatory serum factors on admission to hospital. Ten patients developed D+HUS (group I), 15 suffered from viral-gastroenteritis (group IIa) and 23 from other types of bacterial gastroenteritis (group IIb). Mean levels of IL-8 tended to be elevated in group I compared to groups IIa and IIb. Neopterin and IL-10 levels particularly were significantly decreased in HUS in comparison to both gastroenteritis groups. Low IL-10 levels indicate a substantial disregulation of the immune response in HUS, as IL-10 downregulates the pro-inflammatory response and suppresses pro-coagulant activity in experimental endotoxemia. Our results suggest low neopterin, high IL-8 and especially low IL-10 levels are indicators of a high risk for developing HUS.
Type‐1 astrocyte‐like stem cells harboring Cacna1d gene deletion exhibit reduced proliferation and decreased neuronal fate choice

In the central nervous system, CaV1.2 and CaV1.3 constitute the main L‐type voltage‐gated calcium channels (LTCCs) coupling membrane depolarization to gene transcription. We have previously demonstrated that inducible disruption of Cav1.2 in type‐1 astrocyte‐like stem cells of the adult dentate gyrus (DG) impairs hippocampal neurogenesis in a cell‐autonomous fashion. To address the role of Cav1.3 channels (encoded by the Cacna1d gene), we here generated TgGLAST‐CreERT2/Cacna1dfl/fl/RCE:loxP mice which facilitate inducible deletion of Cacna1d in tandem with induction of EGFP expression in type‐1 cells, allowing tracking of recombined cells and their descendants. Neurosphere cultures derived from fluorescence‐activated cell sorting sorted Cacna1d‐deficient (Cacna1d‐/‐/EGFP) hippocampal neural precursor cells (NPCs) exhibited a significant decrease in proliferative activity. Further, under differentiation conditions, Cacna1d deficiency conferred an increase in astrogenesis at the expense of neurogenesis. In like manner, type‐1 cells lacking Cacna1d showed reduced proliferation in the dentate gyrus (DG) in vivo. Moreover, Cacna1d deficiency resulted in a significant decrease in the number of newly born cells adopting a neuronal fate. Finally, massive excitation induced by repeated electroconvulsive seizures rescued the proliferation defect of Cacna1d‐/‐/EGFP type‐1 cells. Together, the effects of Cacna1d gene deletion closely recapitulate our earlier findings on the role of Cav1.2 channels expressed by type‐1 cells. Similar to Cav1.2 channels, Cav1.3 channels on type‐1 cells boost type‐1 cell proliferation and promote subsequent neuronal fate choice.
A learning to rank approach for quality‐aware pseudo‐relevance feedback

Pseudo relevance feedback (PRF) has shown to be effective in ad hoc information retrieval. In traditional PRF methods, top‐ranked documents are all assumed to be relevant and therefore treated equally in the feedback process. However, the performance gain brought by each document is different as showed in our preliminary experiments. Thus, it is more reasonable to predict the performance gain brought by each candidate feedback document in the process of PRF. We define the quality level (QL) and then use this information to adjust the weights of feedback terms in these documents. Unlike previous work, we do not make any explicit relevance assumption and we go beyond just selecting “good” documents for PRF. We propose a quality‐based PRF framework, in which two quality‐based assumptions are introduced. Particularly, two different strategies, relevance‐based QL (RelPRF) and improvement‐based QL (ImpPRF) are presented to estimate the QL of each feedback document. Based on this, we select a set of heterogeneous document‐level features and apply a learning approach to evaluate the QL of each feedback document. Extensive experiments on standard TREC (Text REtrieval Conference) test collections show that our proposed model performs robustly and outperforms strong baselines significantly.
Validation in Uganda of the New WHO Diagnostic Algorithm for Smear-Negative Pulmonary Tuberculosis in HIV Prevalent Settings

Background:We compared the effectiveness of the new WHO 2007 diagnostic algorithm for pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) for HIV prevalent settings (WHO07) to the WHO 2003 guidelines used by the Ugandan National Tuberculosis Program (UgWHO03) and most other countries for the diagnosis of smear-negative PTB. Methods:A prospective observational cohort design was employed under routine operational conditions at a District Hospital in Uganda. Newly diagnosed patients with HIV and enrolled to the outpatient HIV clinic were assessed for possible PTB. The study was in 2 phases with evaluation of the UgWHO03 and WHO07 over the first and second phases, respectively. Results:One hundred forty-seven enrolled onto the UgWHO03 and 166 onto WHO07. There were significant reductions in the geometric mean days (11.0 vs. 21.2, P < 0.05) and number of health facility visits (1.7 vs. 2.8, P < 0.001) from presentation to diagnosis of all PTB for the WHO07 compared with the UgWHO03. For smear-negative PTB, the geometric mean days (28.5 vs. 34.1, P > 0.05) and number of health facility visits (2.5 vs. 2.6, P > 0.05) from presentation to diagnosis were nonsignificantly reduced. Diagnostic sensitivity (95% confidence intervals) for smear-negative PTB increased nonsignificantly from 63% (27% to 90%) to 95% (72% to 100%) for the WHO07, with specificity (95% confidence interval) remaining high at 99% (92% to 100%) and 98% (93% to 100%). Conclusions:Implementing the new WHO07 is likely to reduce the number of days and increase sensitivity for diagnosis of smear-negative cases of PTB. We identified many barriers to implementing both guidelines in HIV prevalent resource-poor settings.
Developmental Hemostasis: Relevance to Thromboembolic Complications in Pediatric Patients

The discovery of individual components of hemostasis over the past century has been accompanied by the realization that the hemostatic system in infants and children is profoundly different from adults. Hemostasis can be viewed as a dynamic system that gradually evolves through several forms that can be considered as fetal, neonatal, pediatric, adult and geriatric systems. The fetal and neonatal forms are immature with little reserve capacity to respond to pathologic insults. However, by early infancy and throughout childhood, the hemostatic system must be considered physiological because it provides protection from both hemorrhagic and thrombotic complications in healthy children. Indeed, the hemostatic system during childhood has some advantages including a decreased rate of thromboembolic complications from either inherited or acquired risk factors that cause thrombotic events in the adult population (1-3). The first section of this presentation will review physiological mecha­ nisms that may provide protection to the young from thrombot­ ic events. Although relatively rare, thromboembolic complications do occur in pediatric patients (4,5) and cause significant morbidity with occasional mortality (4,5). The second and third section of this presentation will focus on age-dependent features of the epidemiology and treatment of thromboembolic complications, respectively.
Secreted Form of Amyloid Precursor Protein Enhances Basal Glucose and Glutamate Transport and Protects Against Oxidative Impairment of Glucose and Glutamate Transport in Synaptosomes by a Cyclic GMP‐Mediated Mechanism

Abstract : Synaptic dysfunction and degeneration are believed to underlie the cognitive deficits that characterize Alzheimer's disease, and overactivation of glutamate receptors under conditions of increased oxidative stress and metabolic compromise may contribute to the neurodegenerative process in many different disorders. The secreted form of amyloid precursor protein (sAPPα), which is released from neurons in an activity‐dependent manner, can modulate neurite outgrowth, synaptic plasticity, and neuron survival. We now report that sAPPα can enhance glucose and glutamate transport in synaptic compartments. Treatment of cortical synaptosomes with nanomolar concentrations of sAPPα resulted in an attenuation of impairment of glutamate and glucose transport induced by exposure to amyloid β‐peptide and Fe2+. The protective effect of sAPPα was mimicked by treatment with 8‐bromo‐cyclic GMP and blocked by a cyclic GMP‐dependent protein kinase inhibitor, suggesting that protective action of sAPPα is mediated by cyclic GMP. Our data suggest that glucose and glutamate transport can be regulated locally at the level of the synapse and further suggest important roles for sAPPα and cyclic GMP in modulating synaptic physiology under normal and pathophysiological conditions.
Some histological features of avian kidneys.

The avian kidney is composed of cortical and medullary lobules, with the former surrounding branches of the renal vein. Cortical lobule diameters varied intraspecifically according to level of association with the venous system, and interspecifically were greatest in nonpasserines. All cortical tissue examined contained maculae densae. Each medullary lobule receives collecting ducts and loops of Henle from several cortical lobules. Such a complex may be viewed as a lobe, and the entire kidney as multilobar. The relative diameter of a medullary lobule appears directly related to the number of cortical units with which it is associated. Distally, most lobules vary from 0.3 to 0.5 mm in diameter, and contain 20 to 30 collecting ducts. The latter fuse dendritically as they traverse a medullary unit, and eventually form ureteral branches which drain directly into the ureter. Intramedullary organization in passerines involves aggregated thin limbs bounded by collecting ducts which in turn are surrounded by uneven layers of thick limbs. While some nonpasserines approach this pattern, others lack apparent organization of intramedullary elements. The turn of Henle's loop was restricted to the thick limb in all birds examined. Avian and mammalian thick limbs are similar in diameter, but avian thin limbs are typically wider. Small kidneys have short ureteral branches with primary stems clustered in each kidney division. In larger kidneys, where medullary lobules are often remote from the ureter, ureteral branches are long and not clustered.
Nightmares and sleep disturbances in relation to suicidality in suicide attempters.

STUDY OBJECTIVES To study the prevalence of specific sleep disturbances in suicide attempters and to examine the association between specific sleep disturbances and suicidality. DESIGN AND SETTING A cross-sectional study in suicide attempters during the period October 1, 2001, to June 30, 2004. PARTICIPANTS One hundred sixty-five patients aged 18 to 68 years who were admitted to medical units or psychiatric wards at Sahlgrenska University Hospital after a suicide attempt. INTERVENTIONS N/A. MEASUREMENTS The face-to-face interview included Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV-IV and the Suicide Assessment Scale. Two self-report instruments were employed, the Uppsala Sleep Inventory and Comprehensive Psychopathological Self-rating Scale for Affective Syndromes. The latter assessed symptom burden. Using multiple logistic regression analyses, we examined associations between sleep complaints and suicidality. RESULTS Eighty-nine percent of subjects reported some kind of sleep disturbance. The most common complaint was difficulties initiating sleep (73%). Other complaints included difficulties maintaining sleep (69%), nightmares (66%) and early morning awakening (58%). Nightmares were associated with a 5-fold increase in risk for high suicidality. This relationship remained after adjustment for psychiatric diagnosis and psychiatric symptom intensity. CONCLUSIONS Sleep disturbances are common among suicide attempters. Nightmares are associated with suicidality. Our findings suggest that questions concerning sleep disturbance and nightmares should be addressed in the clinical assessment of suicidal patients.
Solution structure of the antifreeze‐like domain of human sialic acid synthase

The structure of the C‐terminal antifreeze‐like (AFL) domain of human sialic acid synthase was determined by NMR spectroscopy. The structure comprises one α‐ and two single‐turn 310‐helices and two β‐strands, and is similar to those of the type III antifreeze proteins. Evolutionary trace analyses of the type III antifreeze protein family suggested that the class‐specific residues in the human and bacterial AFL domains are important for their substrate binding, while the class‐specific residues of the fish antifreeze proteins are gathered on the ice‐binding surface.
[Long-term treatment with desmopressin in children with primary nocturnal enuresis. An international multicenter study].

BACKGROUND Desmopressin (an analogue of antidiuretic hormone) holds an important place in the treatment of primary nocturnal enuresis. According to some long-term trials its action is mainly symptomatic. The benefit of treatment and persistence of the effect in relation to the expected decline of enuresis in 15% children/1 year is discussed. METHODS AND RESULTS The open multicentre trial lasted 42 months. In the first stage 265 patients (164 boys, 101 girls) aged 9.4 +/- 2.8 (5-18 years) were given desmopressin (nasal drops) to achieve a 4-week dry integral. Enuresis stopped in 207/265 (78.1%) children within six (median) weeks of treatment after an effective dose of 10.5 micrograms (median) based on titration. During the second stage 55/265 children (25 boys and 30 girls) proceeded with treatment for 2-30 (median 12) months, one boy did not complete the trial. An effective dose was administered for 3.5 months (median) and then the dose declined depending on the effect by 3.5 micrograms (1 drop) per months (median). In the titration stage enuresis receded in 89.1% (49/55) children. After the first year of the trial there were 72.7% responders (p < 0.001, as compared with the assumed decline), after two years 70.9% (p < 0.01) and after three years 61.1% children (p < 0.05). The trial was completed by 61.1% (33/54) children as respondents. 23 of them 17-38 months after termination of treatment. 29.6% (16/54) patients were relapsing responders on long-term treatment, 5.6% (3/54) patients completed the trial as partial responders and 3.7% (2/54) children as non-responders. Minor side-effects were recorded during the titration stage in 4.5% children, during long-term treatment 5.4% children. The osmolality of morning urine increased during treatment regardless of the final effect (p < 0.01). The authors did not find a significant relationship between age, sex, familial incidence of enuresis, period of treatment and the achieved effect. CONCLUSIONS The authors provided evidence of a rapid onset of the effect of desmopressin and a high effectiveness throughout the trial. The osmolality of the morning urine was not a reliable predictive factor of the effect. In the authors opinion long-term treatment is important for development of regulation and regression of complaints. During a relapse the authors recommend return to maintenance treatment and gradual discontinuation after 6-12 months. Desmopressin treatment is in the authors' opinion safe, well tolerated and very useful.