Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Are certain diuretics also anticonvulsants?

A history of diuretic use has been shown to be protective for first unprovoked seizure in adult patients. Recent animal studies suggest that certain diuretics have anticonvulsant activity. We evaluated the potential for the anticonvulsant activity of current diuretic use in a population‐based, case–control study in older adults. We also tested chlorthiazide and furosemide for seizure protection in animal models of epilepsy. Concurrent medical prescription of any diuretic was protective for the development of epilepsy [odds ratio (OR) = 0.62, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.39–0.99]. A protective effect for current thiazide use was observed (OR = 0.53, CI = 0.31–0.90), and a protective effect for furosemide was suggested (OR = 0.44, CI = 0.1–1.9). In mice, both chlorthiazide and furosemide suppressed the occurrence of maximal electroshock‐induced seizures in a dose‐dependent manner. Chlorthiazide's toxic dose for 50% of animals tested (TD50) could not be achieved even with dosing as high as 1,500 mg/kg; for furosemide, TD50 was 549 mg/kg. Results were similar in rats. Furosemide and chlorthiazide are protective for unprovoked seizures in an epidemiological study and in animal models. Given the potential therapeutic value for seizure control, low toxicity, and low cost, therapeutic efficacy should be explored in clinical studies.
Effects of the AMPA Antagonist ZK 200775 on Visual Function: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Background ZK 200775 is an antagonist at the α-Amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionate (AMPA) receptor and had earned attention as a possible neuroprotective agent in cerebral ischemia. Probands receiving the agent within phase I trials reported on an alteration of visual perception. In this trial, the effects of ZK 200775 on the visual system were analyzed in detail. Methodology In a randomised controlled trial we examined eyes and vision before and after the intravenous administration of two different doses of ZK 200775 and placebo. There were 3 groups of 6 probands each: Group 1 recieved 0.03 mg/kg/h, group 2 0.75 mg/kg/h of ZK 200775, the control group received 0.9% sodium chloride solution. Probands were healthy males aged between 57 and 69 years. The following methods were applied: clinical examination, visual acuity, ophthalmoscopy, colour vision, rod absolute threshold, central visual field, pattern-reversal visual evoked potentials (pVEP), ON-OFF and full-field electroretinogram (ERG). Principal Findings No effect of ZK 200775 was seen on eye position or motility, stereopsis, pupillary function or central visual field testing. Visual acuity and dark vision deteriorated significantly in both treated groups. Color vision was most remarkably impaired. The dark-adapted ERG revealed a reduction of oscillatory potentials (OP) and partly of the a- and b-wave, furthermore an alteration of b-wave morphology and an insignificantly elevated b/a-ratio. Cone-ERG modalities showed decreased amplitudes and delayed implicit times. In the ON-OFF ERG the ON-answer amplitudes increased whereas the peak times of the OFF-answer were reduced. The pattern VEP exhibited lower amplitudes and prolonged peak times. Conclusions The AMPA receptor blockade led to a strong impairment of typical OFF-pathway functions like color vision and the cone ERG. On the other hand the ON-pathway as measured by dark vision and the scotopic ERG was affected as well. This further elucidates the interdependence of both pathways. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00999284
Exploiting Reusable Paths in Mobile Robotics: Benefits and Challenges for Long-term Autonomy

Visual-teach-and-repeat (VT&R) systems have proven extremely useful for practical robot autonomy where the global positioning system is either unavailable or unreliable, examples include tramming for underground mining using a planar laser scanner as well as a return-to-lander function for planetary exploration using a stereo-or laser-based camera. By embedding local appearance/metric information along an arbitrarily long path, it becomes possible to re-drive the path without the need for a single privileged coordinate frame and using only modest computational resources. For a certain class of long-term autonomy problems (e.g., repeatable long-range driving), VT&R appears to offer a simple yet scalable solution. Beyond single paths, we envision that networks of reusable paths could be established and shared from one robot to another to enable practical tasks such as surveillance, delivery (e.g., mail, hospitals, factories, warehouses), worksite operations (e.g., construction, mining), and autonomous roadways. However, for lifelong operations on reusable paths, robustness to a variety of environmental changes, both transient and permanent, is required. In this paper, we relate our experiences and lessons learned with the three above-mentioned implementations of VT&R systems. Based on this, we enumerate both the benefits and challenges of reusable paths that we see moving forwards. We discuss one such challenge, lighting-invariance, in detail and present our progess in overcoming it.
Incentive compatibility and dynamics of congestion control

his paper studies under what conditions congestion control schemes can be both efficient, so that capacity is not wasted, and incentive compatible, so that each participant can maximize its utility by following the prescribed protocol. We show that both conditions can be achieved if routers run strict priority queueing (SPQ) or weighted fair queueing (WFQ) and end-hosts run any of a family of protocols which we call Probing Increase Educated Decrease (PIED). A natural question is whether incentive compatibility and efficiency are possible while avoiding the per-flow processing of WFQ. We partially address that question in the negative by showing that any policy satisfying a certain "locality" condition cannot guarantee both properties. Our results also have implication for convergence to some steady-state throughput for the flows. Even when senders transmit at a fixed rate (as in a UDP flow which does not react to congestion), feedback effects among the routers can result in complex dynamics which do not appear in the simple topologies studied in past work.
Open Strategies for Innovation in the Public Sector: Challenges and Opportunities

La colaboracion con socios externos proporciona un medio para ampliar la base de conocimiento de una empresa, reducir los tiempos de desarrollo del producto, aumentar la innovacion y proporcionar ventajas competitivas. Esta tesis contribuye a la investigacion en innovacion abierta y del usuario mediante la exploracion cualitativa de estrategias en el contexto del sector publico. La tesis pretende comprender los motores subyacentes de la innovacion civica a partir de los esfuerzos innovadores de ciudades europeas y americanas. Las ciudades acceden a la informacion tacita del usuario aprovechando el contexto y la tecnologia para proporcionar soluciones innovadoras colaborando con plataformas y organizaciones civicas. Se propone un enfoque integral del ecosistema, ampliando las conceptualizaciones actuales de los ecosistemas empresariales. El enfasis en la capacidad desorptive en las organizaciones civicas se considera una elusion del bloqueo, debido a los deficits civicos en capacidad de absorcion. La importancia de los procesos de innovacion situados en entornos del mundo real se examina en living labs, mientras se compara con otras metodologias. Ademas, esta tesis propone en el contexto de la Open Public Policy Innovation una herramienta mejorada para acceder a la informacion tacita de los usuarios.
Temporal streaming of shared memory

Coherent read misses in shared-memory multiprocessors account for a substantial fraction of execution time in many important scientific and commercial workloads. We propose temporal streaming, to eliminate coherent read misses by streaming data to a processor in advance of the corresponding memory accesses. Temporal streaming dynamically identifies address sequences to be streamed by exploiting two common phenomena in shared-memory access patterns: (1) temporal address correlation-groups of shared addresses tend to be accessed together and in the same order; and (2) temporal stream locality-recently-accessed address streams are likely to recur. We present a practical design for temporal streaming. We evaluate our design using a combination of trace-driven and cycle-accurate full-system simulation of a cache-coherent distributed shared-memory system. We show that temporal streaming can eliminate 98% of coherent read misses in scientific applications, and between 43% and 60% in database and Web server workloads. Our design yields speedups of 1.07 to 3.29 in scientific applications, and 1.06 to 1.21 in commercial workloads.
Retroperitoneoscopic Living-Donor Nephrectomy and Laparoscopic Kidney Transplantation: Experience of Initial 72 Cases

Background To evaluate the feasibility, safety, and outcome of laparoscopic kidney transplantation (LKT) after retroperitoneoscopic living-donor nephrectomy. Methods Between February 2010 and January 2012, a total of 217 renal transplantations were performed from living donors by a single surgical unit. All living-donor nephrectomies were performed by retroperitoneoscopic approach. Recipient surgery was performed either laparoscopically (n=72) or by conventional open approach (n=145). In the LKT group, a 5 to 6 cm Pfannenstiel incision was placed and the kidney was dropped into abdomen. Renal vessels were anastomosed by freehand suturing technique. Calcineurin inhibitor–based immunosuppressants were given. Results The mean operative time was 223.8 and 175.7 min (P=0.07) and the rewarming time was 60.3 and 30.3 min (P=0.03) in the LKT and open kidney transplantation (OKT) groups, respectively. The estimated glomerular filtration rate value on days 7 and 30 was significantly less in the LKT group, but no difference was found at 3, 6, 12, and 18 months. The mean wound length was 5.5 and 17.8 cm (P=0.0001) and the analgesic requirement was 1.4 and 3.2 mg morphine equivalent in first 24 hr (P=0.005) in the LKT and OKT groups, respectively. In the LKT group, four cases required conversion to open surgery due to vascular complications and one for urinary leak. Kaplan-Meier curve shows 86.5% and 94.6% (P=0.086) and patient survival is 94.1% and 94.7% (P=0.745) at 22.3 months of follow-up. Conclusions LKT after living-donor nephrectomy is feasible, but it has steep learning curve. Graft fixation with peritoneal fold is necessary to avoid torsion and related graft loss. Pain after LKT is significantly less compared with conventional OKT.
Variable Stars in the Fornax Dwarf Galaxy

We present a search for variable stars in the Fornax dwarf galaxy covering an area of half a square degree. We have ∼30 epochs of VI data. We found and determined periods for more than 500 RR Lyrae, 17 anomalous Cepheids, and six Population II Cepheids. In addition we have 85 candidate long-period variables, the majority of which were previously unknown. We estimate that the average metal abundance of RR Lyrae stars is [Fe/H] ≃ -1.6 dex.
Tectonic evolution of the Central Alps in the cross section St. Gallen - Como.

The Swiss Geotraverse Basel-Chiasso is badly placed for investigating the tectonic evolution of the Central Alps since several important elements of Alpine structure are not exposed along it. For this reason, a new structural cross section to the east of the Geotraverse (St.Gallen-Como) is presented, along which the missing elements are well exposed and have recently been analyzed in detail. A series of structural zones can be recognized, characterized by complex deformational histories, each involving at least four phases which resulted in thrust sheets and/or major folds. Correlation from zone to zone and between structural, stratigraphie and radiometric age data is often uncertain, but a synthesis is attempted which reveals a complicated tectonic evolution, starting in the mid-Cretaceous and ending in the Pliocene. In a general way. this can be understood in terms of continental collision. However, some features suggest that gravity may have played a major role at some positions and at certain times. For instance, the shape in cross section and ihe high deformation at the toe of the Helvetic nappes are features thought to be characteristic of gravity gliding. Closer study, however, reveals criteria which exclude this process but which would allow for nappe emplacement partly being driven by gravitv spreading. Further, the southern part of the section shows a number of features suggesting the action of strong buoyancy and diapirism (southern steep zone. Soé gneiss dome), but definitive structural evidence is lacking. These and other examples show how little we still understand large-scale tectonic processes.
Coherent parallel hashing

Recent spatial hashing schemes hash millions of keys in parallel, compacting sparse spatial data in small hash tables while still allowing for fast access from the GPU. Unfortunately, available schemes suffer from two drawbacks: Multiple runs of the construction process are often required before success, and the random nature of the hash functions decreases access performance. We introduce a new parallel hashing scheme which reaches high load factor with a very low failure rate. In addition our scheme has the unique advantage to exploit coherence in the data and the access patterns for faster performance. Compared to existing approaches, it exhibits much greater locality of memory accesses and consistent execution paths within groups of threads. This is especially well suited to Computer Graphics applications, where spatial coherence is common. In absence of coherence our scheme performs similarly to previous methods, but does not suffer from construction failures. Our scheme is based on the Robin Hood scheme modified to quickly abort queries of keys that are not in the table, and to preserve coherence. We demonstrate our scheme on a variety of data sets. We analyze construction and access performance, as well as cache and threads behavior.
Mining directed social network from message board

In the paper, we present an approach to mining a directed social network from a message board on the Internet where vertices denote individuals and directed links denote the flow of influence. The influence is measured based on propagating terms among individuals via messages. The distance with respect to contextual similarity between individuals is acquired since the influence indicates the degree of their shared interest represented as terms.
Neuroprotective Effects of Creatine in a Transgenic Mouse Model of Huntington's Disease

Huntington's disease (HD) is a progressive neurodegenerative illness for which there is no effective therapy. We examined whether creatine, which may exert neuroprotective effects by increasing phosphocreatine levels or by stabilizing the mitochondrial permeability transition, has beneficial effects in a transgenic mouse model of HD (line 6/2). Dietary creatine supplementation significantly improved survival, slowed the development of brain atrophy, and delayed atrophy of striatal neurons and the formation of huntingtin-positive aggregates in R6/2 mice. Body weight and motor performance on the rotarod test were significantly improved in creatine-supplemented R6/2 mice, whereas the onset of diabetes was markedly delayed. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy showed that creatine supplementation significantly increased brain creatine concentrations and delayed decreases in N-acetylaspartate concentrations. These results support a role of metabolic dysfunction in a transgenic mouse model of HD and suggest a novel therapeutic strategy to slow the pathological process.
Phytosanitary Certification

Olive plants are among the most ancient cultivated fruit trees. Over the centuries, propagation occurred mainly vegetatively. The longevity of trees and the latency of most of the virus infections allowed the dissemination through the propagative material of hidden viruses, which were not detected until recently, when the advent of novel diagnostic tools surprisingly revealed that virus infections are in fact widespread.
Cysteines as Redox Molecular Switches and Targets of Disease

Thiol groups can undergo numerous modifications, making cysteine a unique molecular switch. Cysteine plays structural and regulatory roles as part of proteins or glutathione, contributing to maintain redox homeostasis and regulate signaling within and amongst cells. Not surprisingly therefore, cysteines are associated with many hereditary and acquired diseases. Mutations in the primary protein sequence (gain or loss of a cysteine) are most frequent in membrane and secretory proteins, correlating with the key roles of disulfide bonds. On the contrary, in the cytosol and nucleus, aberrant post-translational oxidative modifications of thiol groups, reflecting redox changes in the surrounding environment, are a more frequent cause of dysregulation of protein function. This essay highlights the regulatory functions performed by protein cysteine residues and provides a framework for understanding how mutation and/or (in)activation of this key amino acid can cause disease.
Diaquabis(benzoato-κO)bis[4,4,5,5-tetramethyl-2-(pyridin-4-yl-κN)imidazoline-1-oxyl 3-oxide]cobalt(II)

The title compound, [Co(C7H5O2)2(C12H16N3O2)2(H2O)2], was obtained from a conventional solvent evaporation method. The complex molecule is centrosymmetric, so pairs of equivalent ligands lie trans to each other in a slightly distorted octahedral CoN2O4 geometry. The CoII ion is coordinated by the pyridine N atoms from NITpPy ligands [NITpPy is 4,4,5,5-tetramethyl-2-(pyridin-4-yl)imidazoline-1-oxyl 3-oxide), water O atoms and two monodentate benzoate O atoms. The complex molecules are connected by O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds between water molecules and benzoate ligands, forming chains parallel to [100]. π–π stacking interactions between the benzoate ligands with centroid–centroid distances of 3.752 (2) Å connect the chains into layers parallel to (10-1).
Protein-protein interaction networks (PPI) and complex diseases

The physical interaction of proteins which lead to compiling them into large densely connected networks is a noticeable subject to investigation. Protein interaction networks are useful because of making basic scientific abstraction and improving biological and biomedical applications. Based on principle roles of proteins in biological function, their interactions determine molecular and cellular mechanisms, which control healthy and diseased states in organisms. Therefore, such networks facilitate the understanding of pathogenic (and physiologic) mechanisms that trigger the onset and progression of diseases. Consequently, this knowledge can be translated into effective diagnostic and therapeutic strategies. Furthermore, the results of several studies have proved that the structure and dynamics of protein networks are disturbed in complex diseases such as cancer and autoimmune disorders. Based on such relationship, a novel paradigm is suggested in order to confirm that the protein interaction networks can be the target of therapy for treatment of complex multi-genic diseases rather than individual molecules with disrespect the network.
The Map Task Dialogue System: A Test-bed for Modelling Human-Like Dialogue

The demonstrator presents a test-bed for collecting data on human–computer dialogue: a fully automated dialogue system that can perform Map Task with a user. In a first step, we have used the test-bed to collect human–computer Map Task dialogue data, and have trained various data-driven models on it for detecting feedback response locations in the user’s speech. One of the trained models has been tested in user interactions and was perceived better in comparison to a system using a random model. The demonstrator will exhibit three versions of the Map Task dialogue system—each using a different trained data-driven model of Response Location Detection.
Users' Attitudes on Mobile Devices: Can Users' Practices Protect their Sensitive Data?

Smartphones are the most popular personal electronic devices. They are used for all sorts of purposes, from managing bank accounts to playing games. As smartphone apps and services proliferate, the amount of sensitive data stored on or processed by handheld devices rise as well. This practice entails risks, such as violating users’ privacy, stealing users’ identities, etc. Particularly, stealing an unlocked device grants full access to sensitive data and applications. In this survey, we examine whether users adopt some basic practices to protect their sensitive personal data themselves, or is there a need to further strengthen their protection? Our statistical analysis assesses smartphone users’ security attitudes and practices among different age groups. Finally, we investigate the factors that affect the attitude of users with respect to their practices for the protection of personal data.The results of this study, show that while many smartphone users do take some security precautions, a high percentage (24%) of them still ignores security and privacy risks. In addition, 19,1 % of users do not follow any practices to protect their PINs and Passwords.
Gender, Anxiety, and Depressive Symptoms

Does anxiety lead to depression more for girls than for boys? This study prospectively examines gender differences in the relationship between anxiety and depressive symptoms in early adolescence. One hundred thirteen 11-to 14-year-old middle school students complete questionnaires assessing depressive symptoms and three dimensions of anxiety (worry and oversensitivity, social concerns and concentration, and physiological anxiety) as well as total anxiety symptoms at an initial assessment and 1 year later. Total anxiety and worry and oversensitivity symptoms are found to predict later depressive symptoms more strongly for girls than for boys. There is a similar pattern of results for social concerns and concentration symptoms, although this does not reach statistical significance. Physiological anxiety predicts later depressive symptoms for both boys and girls. These findings highlight the importance of anxiety for the development of depression in adolescence, particularly worry and oversensitivity among girls.
5,10-Methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase gene variants and congenital anomalies: a HuGE review.

The enzyme 5,10-methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) is involved in folate metabolism. The MTHFR gene is located on chromosome 1 (1p36.3), and two common alleles, the C677T (thermolabile) allele and the A1298C allele, have been described. The population frequency of C677T homozygosity ranges from 1% or less among Blacks from Africa and the United States to 20% or more among Italians and US Hispanics. C677T homozygosity in infants is associated with a moderately increased risk for spina bifida (pooled odds ratio = 1.8; 95% confidence interval: 1.4, 2.2). Maternal C677T homozygosity also appears to be a moderate risk factor (pooled odds ratio = 2.0; 95% confidence interval: 1.5, 2.8). The A 1298C allele combined with the C677T allele also could be associated with an increased risk for spina bifida. Some data suggest that the risk for spina bifida associated with C677T homozygosity may depend on nutritional status (e.g., blood folate levels, intake of vitamins) or on the genotype of other folate-related genes (e.g., cystathionine-beta-synthase and methionine synthase reductase). Studies of the C677T allele in relation to oral clefts, Down syndrome, and fetal anticonvulsant syndrome either have yielded conflicting results or have not been yet replicated.