Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Central Nervous System Infections as a Limiting Factor in the Intelligence of Children with Myelomeningocele

The expectation for intellectual performance of children born with myelomeningocele has often been reported to be significantly decreased due to the presence of hydrocephalus. This study examines the medical histories as well as psychological performance scores of 167 patients observed in our multidisciplinary clinic. Based only on medical histories, the subjects were placed into one of three groups: nonshunted, shunted, and shunted with a history of ventriculitis. Their IQ scores were then compiled and resulted in the following performance breakdown of mean IQs: nonshunted, IQ = 102; shunted, IQ = 95; shunted with a history of ventriculitis, IQ = 72, There were no cases of central nervous system infections in patients who did not have hydrocephalus. Visual motor integration scores were also categorized in the same manner, illustrating a similar trend for severely depressed scores in the group that was shunted and had a history of ventriculitis, while at the same time showing the two remaining groups to be statistically similar. These results have significant importance in the management of hydrocephalus and/or infection as well as indicating the nonpredictability of simple hydrocephalus in the ultimate outcome for intellectual function of those persons born with myelomeningocele.
Communication performance of the Intel Touchstone DELTA mesh

The communication performance of the i860-based Intel DELTA mesh supercomputer is compared with the Intel iPSC/860 hypercube and the Ncube 6400 hypercube. Single and multiple hop communication bandwidth and latencies are measured. Concurrent communication speeds and speed under network load are also measured. File I/O performance of the mesh-attached Concurrent File System is measured.
Organisational quality and organisational change: Interconnecting paths to effectiveness

Purpose – Which comes first – quality or change? Managing change is inherent in organisational quality enhancement. Managing organisational change and managing organisational quality go hand‐in‐hand. This paper seeks to look into quality enhancement initiatives to achieve organisational fitness for purpose.Design/methodology/approach – This discussion focuses first on organisational quality – what quality means, why it is important and the means for achieving quality. The focus then shifts to effective management of organisational change including the nature of change and the high failure rate of change initiatives. Many models, approaches and prescriptions for understanding, and effectively managing, change are available. Two are discussed here: Kotter's eight‐step model of change and Doppelt's seven‐point “wheel of change”. Commonalities and differences of the two approaches are examined and pointers to “green” and “red” lights for change managers are highlighted. A large‐scale organisational reform pro.
Évaluation de l'efficacité et établissement du dosage thérapeutique de l'anticonvulsivant Lévétiracétam dans une population pédiatrique épileptique

Levetiracetam (LEV) is a novel anticonvulsant drug approved in Canada since 2003 for the treatment of partial refractory epilepsy in children over 4 years. The objective of our study was to determine the LEV plasma concentration and evaluate Jits efficacy and tolerability in children with refractory partial or generalized epilepsies. We also decided to determine the existence of a correlation between LEV plasma rate and its efficacy. We used a drug monitoring method to correlate plasma LEV concentrations with its efficacy. We recruited 69 children (30 females and 39 males aged 2.75 to 20 years old) treated with LEV (previously or currently). Fifty one patients (74%) responded to LEV with a reduction of seizure frequency of at least 50%. Sixteen of them (23% of the global population) became seizure free. Only 18 patients (26%) showed a seizure reduction of less than 50%. Nineteen children experienced adverse events; the more common being drowsiness in 8, worsened behaviour in 5, headaches in 2 and increased seizures in 3. Seven patients stopped medication due to these adverse events. The LEV plasma concentration was measured in 37 patients. The mean LEV plasma concentration (PC) was 27.44 ± 3 Ilg/ml. No association was found between PC and epilepsy type and there was no significant difference in the mean LEV PC of each efficacy group (0-24, 25-49, 5074, 75-100%). Taken together, the results show that LEV is an effective and tolerable anticonvulsant drug with a large spectrum of action, in the treatment of partial and generalized epilepsies in the pediatric population.
Amblyopia therapy in Asian children: factors affecting visual outcome and parents' perception of children's attitudes towards amblyopia treatment.

INTRODUCTION Amblyopia treatment in the form of glasses and/or patching in children poses a great challenge to parents. This study aimed to assess the factors that influence visual outcome in amblyopia and children's perception towards treatment. METHODS 180 children (aged 3.0-7.0 years) with newly diagnosed amblyopia were recruited. The effects of age, gender, type of amblyopia, treatment and compliance on visual outcome at one year were assessed. Parents completed a questionnaire on children's attitudes towards amblyopia treatment. RESULTS 150 (83%) children with a mean age of 5.2 ± 0.8 years returned for follow-up at one year. 130 (87%) had refractive amblyopia and 20 (13%) had strabismic and refractive-strabismic amblyopia. Visual acuity (VA) of 6/9 or better in the amblyopic eye was achieved in 121 (81%) children. On multivariable analysis, poor responders were more likely to have initial VA of worse than 6/15 (relative risk [RR] 4.17, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.58-11.00, p = 0.004), prescribed combined (glasses and patching) treatment (RR 2.83, 95% CI 1.02-7.83, p = 0.045) and poor compliance (RR 6.10, 95% CI 1.90-19.57, p = 0.002) after adjustment for age, gender and type of amblyopia. While 7% of children initially reacted poorly to treatment, 5% remained uncooperative at the first follow-up visit. Children had difficulty with schoolwork (5%), mood changes (6%) and social problems (2%) associated with treatment. CONCLUSION Most children with amblyopia respond well to treatment, but more care (i.e. more parental education and closer follow-up) may be needed in children who are non-compliant and have poorer initial VA.
Stabilized real-time face tracking via a learned dynamic rigidity prior

Despite the popularity of real-time monocular face tracking systems in many successful applications, one overlooked problem with these systems is rigid instability. It occurs when the input facial motion can be explained by either head pose change or facial expression change, creating ambiguities that often lead to jittery and unstable rigid head poses under large expressions. Existing rigid stabilization methods either employ a heavy anatomically-motivated approach that are unsuitable for real-time applications, or utilize heuristic-based rules that can be problematic under certain expressions. We propose the first rigid stabilization method for real-time monocular face tracking using a dynamic rigidity prior learned from realistic datasets. The prior is defined on a region-based face model and provides dynamic region-based adaptivity for rigid pose optimization during real-time performance. We introduce an effective offline training scheme to learn the dynamic rigidity prior by optimizing the convergence of the rigid pose optimization to the ground-truth poses in the training data. Our real-time face tracking system is an optimization framework that alternates between rigid pose optimization and expression optimization. To ensure tracking accuracy, we combine both robust, drift-free facial landmarks and dense optical flow into the optimization objectives. We evaluate our system extensively against state-of-the-art monocular face tracking systems and achieve significant improvement in tracking accuracy on the high-quality face tracking benchmark. Our system can improve facial-performance-based applications such as facial animation retargeting and virtual face makeup with accurate expression and stable pose. We further validate the dynamic rigidity prior by comparing it against other variants on the tracking accuracy.
Development of Mathematics Teaching Materials Based on Realistic Mathematics Education and Literacy in Junior High School

the backround of the research was low mathematics literacy of ninth grade students at SMPN 1 Bukittinggi. It was proved by result of Mathematics literacy tests. The result showed 36.24% of questions could be answered by the students correctly, with an average score 31.87. It stated that the mathematics literacy junior high school students in Bukittinggi is also low. It was caused by many factors, such as the teaching materials used in schools did not support students' mathematical literacy achievement yet. This study is aimed to develop validity, practicality and affectivity of mathematics teaching materials based on Realistic Mathematics Education and Literacy to improve students' mathematical literacy. This research focuses on preliminary research in the development of mathematics teaching materials based on Realistic Mathematics Education. The research was design research that proposed by Plomp which consisted of three stages, preliminary research phase, prototype or development phase, and summative evaluation phase. Keywords—teaching materials, realistic mathematical education, mathematics literacy.
Predictors of functional outcome in patients with stroke thrombolysis in a tertiary hospital in Malaysia.

INTRODUCTION Intravenous (IV) thrombolysis with alteplase (rt-PA) is effective in ischaemic stroke. The primary objective was to evaluate predictors of functional outcome in acute ischaemic stroke (AIS) patients treated with IV rt-PA. The secondary objective was to assess the outcome with the modified Rankin scale (mRS). We also examined the predictive value of the Totaled Health Risks in Vascular Events (THRIVE) score. METHODS AIS patients treated with IV rt-PA from February 2012 to August 2016 were recruited. Demographic data, National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) scores, timing and neuroradiological findings were recorded. Patients received a dose of 0.9 mg/kg IV rt-PA within 4.5 hours of symptom onset. mRS score was evaluated at discharge and three months, and good and poor clinical outcomes were defined as scores of 0-2 and 3-6, respectively. Baseline THRIVE scores were assessed. RESULTS 36 patients received IV rt-PA. 20 (55.6%) patients had an mRS score of 0-2 at three months. Based on THRIVE score, 86.1% had a good or moderately good prognosis. On univariate analysis, poor outcome was associated with NIHSS score before rt-PA (p = 0.03), THRIVE score (p = 0.02), stroke subtype (p = 0.049) and diabetes mellitus (DM; p = 0.06). Multiple logistic regression showed that outcome was significantly associated with NIHSS score before rt-PA (p = 0.032) and DM (p = 0.010). CONCLUSION Our newly developed Malaysian IV rt-PA service is safe, with similar outcomes to the published literature. Functional outcome after thrombolysis was associated with baseline NIHSS score and DM.
Advances in the Evaluation of Cardiovascular Function by Echocardiography

textabstractThe aim of this thesis was to study the advances in the evaluation of cardiovascular function by 2D and real-time 3D stress echocardiography and vascular stiffness measurements. Stress echocardiography is a widely used non-invasive stress modality for the detection of coronary artery disease The Part A of the thesis is focusing on this method demonstrating the current status of 2D and real-time 3D echocardiography (RT3DE).
Expression of LRP Gene in Breast Cancer Patients Correlated with MRP1 as Two Independent Predictive Biomarkers in Breast Cancer

Background: Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women. Multidrug resistance (MDR) is still a great obstacle of breast cancer chemotherapy. We have previously shown that multidrug resistance-associated protein 1 (MRP1) is associated with response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The lung resistance-related protein (LRP) is identified as a prognostic marker and response to treatment factor which has been studied mainly in hematological malignancy and leukemia. In this study, we aimed to analyze LRP expression and possible correlation between the expression level of this gene with MRP1 as a candidate marker for chemotherapy resistance. Materials and Methods: We collected 54 breast tumors and adjacent normal tissues from Iranian breast cancer patients and Real time RT-PCR was employed to measure the gene expression level in our samples. Results: MRP1 and LRP expression level were significantly lower in tumor tissues of the patients responding to chemotherapy compared to non-responding patients. No relation between the expression level of either of these genes and clinicopathology markers was found. Conclusion: Our results suggest that LRP gene expression is correlated to MRP1 in human breast cancer cells and may affect the clinical response to treatment.
Concepts Of Occupational Therapy

Interestingly, concepts of occupational therapy that you really wait for now is coming. It's significant to wait for the representative and beneficial books to read. Every book that is provided in better way and utterance will be expected by many peoples. Even you are a good reader or not, feeling to read this book will always appear when you find it. But, when you feel hard to find it as yours, what to do? Borrow to your friends and don't know when to give back it to her or him.
Unsupervised Meta-Learning For Few-Shot Image and Video Classification

Few-shot or one-shot learning of classifiers for images or videos is an important next frontier in computer vision. The extreme paucity of training data means that the learning must start with a significant inductive bias towards the type of task to be learned. One way to acquire this is by meta-learning on tasks similar to the target task. However, if the meta-learning phase requires labeled data for a large number of tasks closely related to the target task, it not only increases the difficulty and cost, but also conceptually limits the approach to variations of well-understood domains. In this paper, we propose UMTRA, an algorithm that performs meta-learning on an unlabeled dataset in an unsupervised fashion, without putting any constraint on the classifier network architecture. The only requirements towards the dataset are: sufficient size, diversity and number of classes, and relevance of the domain to the one in the target task. Exploiting this information, UMTRA generates synthetic training tasks for the meta-learning phase. We evaluate UMTRA on few-shot and one-shot learning on both image and video domains. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to evaluate meta-learning approaches on UCF-101. On the Omniglot and Mini-Imagenet few-shot learning benchmarks, UMTRA outperforms every tested approach based on unsupervised learning of representations, while alternating for the best performance with the recent CACTUs algorithm. Compared to supervised model-agnostic meta-learning approaches, UMTRA trades off some classification accuracy for a vast decrease in the number of labeled data needed. For instance, on the five-way one-shot classification on the Omniglot, we retain 85% of the accuracy of MAML, a recently proposed supervised meta-learning algorithm, while reducing the number of required labels from 24005 to 5.
Comparison of Quality of Life of Patients with Hydrocele and Quality of Life of Patients with Inguinal Hernia

Introduction: Quality of life (QOL) is one measure of how much a disease has affected the life of a patient from his or her perspective. WHOQL 100 assesses QOL under six domains and 24 facets along with overall quality of life. It was translated to Sinhala and was validated. QOL of hydrocele patients as well as inguinal hernia patients is expected to be lower than normal. Method: Ethical clearance was obtained from the ethical review committee of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ruhuna, WHOQOL 100 was self administered to patients admitted for hydrocelectomy or herniotomy before surgery and by-standers in surgical ward as the control. Results: There were 23 males subjects in each category. The mean ages and SDs were 43.8±12.9 (Hydrocele), 44.4±14.0 (Control) and 43.7±11.9 (Hernia). QOL score of physical capacity (66.4±9.7 and 78.0±12.1; p=0.001), psychological (65.5±15.4 and 78.0±9.5; p=0.002) and level of independence (67.7±14.3 and 76.5±12.7; p=0.033) domains of hydrocele patients were significantly lower than those of the control. QOL scores of social relation were significantly lower in hydrocele patients than in hernia patients (60.1±15.5 and 71.5±14.4; p=0.014). Conclusions: QOL of hydrocele patients were lower than normal. Physical, psychological and level of independence are more affected than the other aspects of QOL. Psychological aspects of the QOL are lower in hydrocele patients than in patients with hernia. Assessment of QOL using WHOQOL 100 can be considered as a valid tool to find out the impact of hydrocele on different aspects health.
Analysis of a Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis Genotype B3 Virus from the 2009-2010 South African Measles Epidemic Shows That Hyperfusogenic F Proteins Contribute to Measles Virus Infection in the Brain

Measles virus can invade the central nervous system (CNS) and cause severe neurological complications, such as MIBE and SSPE. However, mechanisms by which MeV enters the CNS and triggers the disease remain unclear. We analyzed viruses from brain tissue of individuals with MIBE or SSPE, infected during the same epidemic, after the onset of neurological disease. Our findings indicate that the emergence of hyperfusogenic MeV F proteins is associated with infection of the brain. We also demonstrate that hyperfusogenic F proteins permit MeV to enter cells and spread without the need to engage nectin-4 or CD150, known receptors for MeV that are not present on neural cells. ABSTRACT During a measles virus (MeV) epidemic in 2009 in South Africa, measles inclusion body encephalitis (MIBE) was identified in several HIV-infected patients. Years later, children are presenting with subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE). To investigate the features of established MeV neuronal infections, viral sequences were analyzed from brain tissue samples of a single SSPE case and compared with MIBE sequences previously obtained from patients infected during the same epidemic. Both the SSPE and the MIBE viruses had amino acid substitutions in the ectodomain of the F protein that confer enhanced fusion properties. Functional analysis of the fusion complexes confirmed that both MIBE and SSPE F protein mutations promoted fusion with less dependence on interaction by the viral receptor-binding protein with known MeV receptors. While the SSPE F required the presence of a homotypic attachment protein, MeV H, in order to fuse, MIBE F did not. Both F proteins had decreased thermal stability compared to that of the corresponding wild-type F protein. Finally, recombinant viruses expressing MIBE or SSPE fusion complexes spread in the absence of known MeV receptors, with MIBE F-bearing viruses causing large syncytia in these cells. Our results suggest that alterations to the MeV fusion complex that promote fusion and cell-to-cell spread in the absence of known MeV receptors is a key property for infection of the brain. IMPORTANCE Measles virus can invade the central nervous system (CNS) and cause severe neurological complications, such as MIBE and SSPE. However, mechanisms by which MeV enters the CNS and triggers the disease remain unclear. We analyzed viruses from brain tissue of individuals with MIBE or SSPE, infected during the same epidemic, after the onset of neurological disease. Our findings indicate that the emergence of hyperfusogenic MeV F proteins is associated with infection of the brain. We also demonstrate that hyperfusogenic F proteins permit MeV to enter cells and spread without the need to engage nectin-4 or CD150, known receptors for MeV that are not present on neural cells.
Persistence in Brainstorming: Exploring Stop Rules in Same-Sex Groups

In a laboratory experiment, three-person interactive and three-person nominal groups of college students brainstormed without externally imposed time constraints. All groups were homogeneous with regard to gender. Half of the participants were instructed to continue brainstorming until they ran out of ideas (expectancy stop rule), whereas the other half were instructed to continue until they were satisfied with their performance (satisfaction stop rule). We found that interactive groups were more persistent than nominal groups in both of the stop rule conditions and thereby compensated for their usual productivity loss. We also found, as predicted, that women were more persistent in the satisfaction stop rule condition, whereas men were more persistent in the expectancy stop rule condition. This effect may be due to gender differences in self-evaluations.
Mechanism and physiological significance of autoregulation of the Escherichia coli hfq gene

The RNA chaperone Hfq plays a critical role in sRNA-mediated gene regulation in enteric bacteria. The major role of Hfq is to stimulate base-pairing between sRNAs and target mRNAs by binding both RNAs through three RNA-binding surfaces. To understand the post-transcriptional network exerted by Hfq and its associated sRNAs, it is important to know how the cellular concentration of Hfq is regulated. While an early study showed that hfq translation is repressed by Hfq, the detailed mechanism and biological significance of the hfq autoregulation remain to be studied. Here, we show that the synthesis of Hfq is strictly autoregulated to maintain the cellular concentration of Hfq within a limited range even when the hfq mRNA is overexpressed from a plasmid-borne hfq gene. Mutational and biochemical studies demonstrate that Hfq represses its own translation primarily by binding to the hfq mRNA through the distal face. The growth of cells harboring the hfq plasmid is markedly inhibited due to an increased Hfq level when the distal face of Hfq is mutated or the 5′-UTR of hfq is mutated. A mutation in the rim suppresses the growth inhibition caused by the distal face mutation, suggesting that the interaction of Hfq with undefined RNAs through the rim is responsible for the growth inhibition by the increased Hfq level. In addition, the data suggest that the hfq autoregulation operates not only in cells harboring a multicopy hfq gene but also in the wild-type cells.
Hepatozoon milleri sp. nov. (Adeleorina: Hepatozoidae) in Akodon montensis (Rodentia: Cricetidae: Sigmodontinae) from southeastern Brazil

Abstract Members of the genus Hepatozoon (Miller, 1908) are blood parasites found in a wide range of host species, including wild rodents; however, information about the life cycle, distribution and Hepatozoon species diversity infecting these mammals are lacking. We studied the parasite stages and DNA sequences of Hepatozoon sp. of 11 naturally infected Akodon montensis. Thin blood smears, tissue samples and whole blood were obtained for morphology, morphometry and molecular analyses. Seven of the 11 rodents had gamonts on the blood smears. Biological and morphological features of the parasite such as tissue tropism, gamonts and meronts size and morphology, as well as the DNA sequence comparison and phylogenetic analysis, indicated that the Hepatozoon sp. detected in this study is distinct from those species previously reported in small rodents. Herein, we propose a new species, named Hepatozoon milleri sp. nov. This is the first description of a new Hepatozoon species from wild small rodents in Brazil, based on morphological and molecular characteristics.