Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Population-based analysis of sporadic and type 2 neurofibromatosis-associated meningiomas and schwannomas

Objective: To estimate the incidence of meningiomatosis and schwannomatosis, and their familial occurrences and relation to type 2 neurofibromatosis (NF2) in a well-defined population. Methods: Patients with histologically verified intracranial, spinal, or peripheral schwannomas or meningiomas, who were residents of the Helsinki University Hospital catchment area (population, 1,713,000) from January 1, 1985, to December 31, 1995, were included in the study. The Population Register Center was used to identify relatives of all the patients, and their data were linked further to the Finnish Cancer Registry to find NF2-related tumors. Detailed pedigrees were constructed for the patients with NF2, schwannomatosis, meningiomatosis, patients with relatives with histologically verified schwannomas or meningiomas, and patients younger than 25 years of age at the time of diagnosis. Results: Approximately 3% (12 of 455) of the schwannoma patients had multiple schwannomas in association with NF2, and 2% (11 of 455) had schwannomatosis without NF2. Two of the patients with schwannomatosis (2 of 11) had familial schwannomatosis. Approximately 1% (7 of 823) of the patients with meningioma had multiple meningiomas in association with NF2, and 4% (29 of 823) had meningiomatosis without NF2. No families with meningiomatosis were found among the 823 patients with meningioma studied. The birth occurrence of NF2 was 1 in 87,410. Conclusions: The current diagnostic criteria of type 2 neurofibromatosis (NF2) seem valid because NF2 patients were differentiated rather easily from patients with sporadic schwannomatosis and meningiomatosis. Familial meningiomatosis, if it truly exists, is very rare, and familial schwannomatosis is uncommon.
Estudiantes con discapacidad e inclusión educativa en la universidad:avances y retos para el futuro

En este trabajo hacemos una revision de diversas investigaciones sobre la situacion de la discapacidad en la universidad espanola, contrastandolos con nuestra propia investigacion sobre la Universidad de A Coruna. Nos centramos en tres aspectos fundamentales: el analisis de las medidas legislativas que regulan la inclusion en la Universidad, los indices de presencia de alumnado con discapacidad y la revision de las tareas que realizan los servicios de apoyo universitarios. Los resultados nos indican que el esfuerzo realizado por las instituciones en la inclusion universitaria, se ha orientado principalmente a favorecer el acceso de las personas con discapacidad, pero ha descuidado el resto de los factores. La conclusion fundamental apunta a que si bien hay que seguir implementando y reforzando el acceso de las personas con discapacidad a la universidad, ya es momento de prestar atencion a la calidad de la participacion de estas personas en las aulas universitarias y fortalecer las medidas curriculares que faciliten su convivencia en la universidad y su exito academico. Es decir construir el andamiaje de una universidad que sea autenticamente para todos.
Intranet Try To Find Project (ITTF): An Approach for the Search of Relevant Information Inside an Organization

We propose to demonstrate that from the point of view of the information flow (analyze, diffusion and/or information retrieval), an organization cannot be described with one and only one exclusive thesaurus (or structured terminology with a simple link such as “synonym”). In fact, generally, any human being organization (firm, university, company, etc.) is understood and then, represented like a pyramid. The components of the pyramid are employees connected to each other in particular by a link of subordination. A leader (or “CEO”, “captain”, “director”, “General”, etc.) is at the top of this pyramid. The leader must take the great decisions. The leader is generally assisted by a “staff” (management team). But every organizations is at the same time composed of different kinds of members (employees) having different categories of knowledges, goals and needs. If we consider an organization, the flow of informations provided to an employee inside this organization must be filtered according to his needs and only those informations. Consequently, flows of information are absolutely not proportional to the hierarchical levels of the employees. For instance, the "head" of the organization could not make a decision if she/he was informed of all the informations related to its own organization: he/she would be completely submerged! We thus deduce from it that it is necessary to distinguish various categories of employees by functional properties. Then, for each category, it is necessary to specify the real needs for information. Lastly, it becomes possible to reconstitute a thesaurus by category. ITTF is an ongoing project organizing and filtering flow of external informations inside an organization using linguistic resources about the organization. Relevant informations are presented to a particular user by the intermediary of a simplified and personalized HTML interfaces.
We should abandon randomized controlled trials in the intensive care unit

The randomized controlled trial is seen by many as the summit of evidence-based medicine, yet, in the intensive care unit, randomized controlled trials can be challenging to conduct, and results are often difficult to interpret and apply. Many randomized controlled trials in intensive care patients have not demonstrated beneficial effects of the intervention under investigation often despite good preclinical and even previous randomized controlled trial evidence. There are many reasons for these negative results including problems with timing, end point selection, and heterogeneous populations. In this article, we will discuss the limitations of randomized controlled trials in the intensive care unit population and highlight the importance of considering other study designs in the challenging intensive care unit environment.
Atmospheric corrosion performance of carbon steel, galvanized steel, aluminum and copper in the North Brazilian coast

The main purpose of this study is to develop a method to characterize and classify the atmospheric corrosivity of the Sao Luis City, located at the Brazilian North coast, establishing 15 atmospheric corrosion sites (ACS), in different environments. These sites were monitored on a monthly basis to determine the deposition rates of atmospheric contaminants, such as airborne salinity, represented by chloride ions (Cl_), sulfur-containing substances, represented by SO2 and dustfall. These parameters were correlated to meteorological data and both were used to classify the atmospheric corrosivity. At the same time, metallic samples such as low carbon steel, galvanized steel, aluminum and copper, which are commonly used in transmission and distribution power lines, were exposed to the environment in four of these 15 sites, in order to qualify the environmental aggressiveness according to the corrosion rate of these materials. Based on the mapping results, it was possible to determine the materials which are more proper to be used in those specific areas, which could result in the cost reduction due to a span-life extension of such structures.
Application of common sense computing for the development of a novel knowledge-based opinion mining engine

The ways people express their opinions and sentiments have radically changed in the past few years thanks to the advent of social networks, web communities, blogs, wikis and other online collaborative media. The distillation of knowledge from this huge amount of unstructured information can be a key factor for marketers who want to create an image or identity in the minds of their customers for their product, brand, or organisation. These online social data, however, remain hardly accessible to computers, as they are specifically meant for human consumption. The automatic analysis of online opinions, in fact, involves a deep understanding of natural language text by machines, from which we are still very far. Hitherto, online information retrieval has been mainly based on algorithms relying on the textual representation of web-pages. Such algorithms are very good at retrieving texts, splitting them into parts, checking the spelling and counting their words. But when it comes to interpreting sentences and extracting meaningful information, their capabilities are known to be very limited. Existing approaches to opinion mining and sentiment analysis, in particular, can be grouped into three main categories: keyword spotting, in which text is classified into categories based on the presence of fairly unambiguous affect words; lexical affinity, which assigns arbitrary words a probabilistic affinity for a particular emotion; statistical methods, which calculate the valence of affective keywords and word co-occurrence frequencies on the base of a large training corpus. Early works aimed to classify entire documents as containing overall positive or negative polarity, or rating scores of reviews.
On the structure of a gene for disease resistance in maize.

Disease resistance is an extremely valuable control measure of rusts in cereal crops and is based, almost entirely, on simple procedures of identification and incorporation of major genes for resistance into economic varieties. Usually, several loci that carry these genes are known in each plant species. Frequently, several alleles at a locus can be distinguished on the basis of their reaction to various races of the pathogen. In spite of the vast array of resistance genes now known, their use has been sharply limited by the restricted number of loci in each species. The result has been a never-ending cycle of (1) releasing a variety resistant to prevalent races, (2) finding it susceptible to new races of the pathogen appearing a few years later, (3) breeding resistance to the new races, and (4) releasing the new variety only to find it susceptible, a few years later, to yet new races of the pathogen. Thus, breeding for rust resistance in cereals has been so repetitious that the value and use in disease control of genes that condition resistance to only a portion of the possible rust races is now widely questioned. ' Although major genes for rust resistance have been used extensively, little is known about their fine structure. This is probably due to the fact that in crops, where resistance genes have been of maximum importance, genetic analyses requiring large test-cross progenies are not feasible. Economic and biological considerations, however, provide compelling reasons why studies on the structure of genes for rust resistance should be made. The system of genetic resistance to rust, Puccinia sorghi Schw. , in maize, Zea mays L. , is apparently parallel to that found in other cereal crops. In maize, there are at least five loci (Rpl, Rp3, Rp4, Rp5, and Rp6) at which dominant genes for rust resistance occur.2-6 Rp, is located in the short arm of chromosome 10 and was considered to occupy the terminal position on the genetic map.3'7 Recently, Rpi has been shown to be located between Rp5 and Rpe which are 1.1 and 2.1 map units, respectively, from it. ' Orientation of these genes with respect to the centromere is not known. Rp3 and Rp4 are independent of Rpi. On the basis of genetic studies and disease reaction, 14 alleles, Rpia, Rp b. to Rpi', all dominant to recessive allele rp1 for susceptibility, have been distinguished at the Rp, locus.5' 6, 8 Allele Rpid is unique in conditioning resistance to all of 59 P. sorghi cultures collected from various regions of the United States and Mexico.9 Other dominant alleles have progressively narrower spectra of resistance, but do not fall into a linear array with respect to dominance relationship. In heterozygotes between dominant alleles, resistance is equal to the sum of the resistance of the two separate alleles. In some instances the resistance is equal to a naturally occurring third allele, which leads to suspicion that Rp, is a complex locus or region.
Pterodon pubescens Benth: Stability study of microencapsulated extract and isolated compounds monitored by antinociceptive assays

Pterodon pubescens Benth. (Pp) seeds, commercially available in Brazil, are used in folk medicine in anti-inflammatory, analgesic, and anti-rheumatic preparations. The present study demonstrated the antinociceptive properties of isomers 6α-hydroxy-7β-acetoxy-vouacapan-17β-oate methyl ester and 6α-acetoxy-7β-hydroxy-vouacapan-17β-oate methyl ester (C1), isolated from (Pp), employing different experimental models. A stability study was performed to investigate the relationship of microencapsulation by spray-drying on the maintenance of antinociceptive action. Therefore, C1 and Pp extract samples were monitored in accelerated stability study, evaluating both microencapsulated and non-microencapsulated samples. It was observed that sample C1 possess antinociceptive activity revealed by writhing and formalin tests; C1 showed significantly anti-allodynic, but not antihyperalgesic effect; the microencapsulation maintained the activity and integrity of both, sample C1 and Pp crude extract; microencapsulation by spray drying is a useful alternative to increase shelf life.
Automatic GCP Extraction in Mountainous Areas Using DEM and PolSAR Data

Mountainous areas in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images suffer severe geometric distortions caused by different look directions. Consequently, ground control point (GCP) extraction hardly obtains accurate results for aircraft positioning. Based on the digital elevation model (DEM) and polarimetric SAR (PolSAR) data, we propose a method for extracting GCPs in mountainous areas by introducing the polarization orientation angle shift (POAS) to minimize geometric distortions. In this method, DEM data are used as the reference map by providing POASs at arbitrary look directions to make up for the look-direction sensitivity of POASs transformed from PolSAR data. The geometric distortions between POASs transformed from DEM and PolSAR data are effectively reduced by calculating the POASs from DEM data at the same look direction and look angles of the PolSAR data. In contrast to the SAR data, which have a large dynamic range, the values of POAS are limited to a small interval. Therefore, the illumination distortions induced by visualization can be reduced. Finally, the GCP extraction between the POAS images is conducted by bilateral filter scale-invariant feature transform. Experiments using various data at different look directions demonstrate that the proposed method obtains better-quality GCPs but less invalid keypoints than the method using only intensity images for mountainous areas.
Comparison of oral and intravenous hydration strategies for the prevention of contrast-induced nephropathy in patients undergoing coronary angiography or angioplasty: a randomized clinical trial

Objective The effi cacy of oral hydration in the prevention of contrast-induced nephropathy in patients undergoing elective coronary intervention is unclear. Methods A total of 120 patients were randomly assigned to three groups. Group A (n = 40) received intravenous hydration before and after coronary angiography or angioplasty. Group B (n = 40) received oral tap water before and after the procedures, whereas group C (n = 40) received only postprocedural drinking water. Levels of serum creatinine and urea nitrogen were measured before, 12 hours after, 2 and 3 days after the coronary angiography or angioplasty. Results There was no statistically signifi cant diff erence in the age, sex, baseline renal function and the volume of contrast medium used during the coronary procedures among the three groups (P > 0.05). There was no statistically signifi cant diff erence in the mean serum creatinine or urea nitrogen among the three groups 12 hours, 2 and 3 days after the coronary procedures (P > 0.05). The incidence of contrast-induced nephropathy in group A, B and C was 5.0% (2/40), 7.5% (3/40) and 5.0% (2/40), respectively (P = 0.86). Renal function in the seven patients who experienced contrast-induced nephropathy recovered within a week following rehydration treatment. Conclusions Pre- and post-procedural oral hydration was as eff ective as intravenous rehydration in the prevention of contrast-induced nephropathy in patients undergoing coronary angiography or angioplasty.
Baseline platelet activity and response after clopidogrel in 257 diabetics among 822 patients with coronary artery disease

Summary The objective was to describe the indices of platelet aggregation and activation in a large cohort of diabetic patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). Recently, a number of observations have indicated that patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) exhibit persistent platelet activation, and low response after antiplatelet therapy, although no randomized data exist. We sought to define the baseline platelet biomarkers, and the patterns of response to aspirin and clopidogrel therapy in DM versus non-diabetic patients. Secondary post-hoc analyses were made of platelet activity biomarkers in the dataset which consisted of patients with documented CAD (n=822), including those with DM (n=257). Patients with DM exhibited higher baseline platelet activity by adenosine diphosphate (ADP)- (p=0.0002), and collagen-induced (p=0.03) aggregometry; Ultegra- (p=0.0001), and PFA-100 (p=0.02) analyzers; and expression of platelet/endothelial cell adhesion molecule-1 (PECAM-1) (p=0.01), glycoprotein (GP) IIb/IIIa antigen (p=0.001), and activity (p=0.02), vitronectin receptor (p=0.03), P selectin (p=0.02), and intact epitope of PAR-1 thrombin receptor (p=0.02). Antiplatelet response after clopidogrel in diabetics was impaired when compared with non-diabetics. In conclusion, diabetic patients exhibit high pretreatment platelet activity, and do not respond well to the available antiplatelet regimens when compared with similar patients without DM. The clinical implications of these findings are unknown but are potentially important. Considering worsened outcomes in this high-risk population, clinical trials in DM are urgently needed in order to define the optimal degree of platelet inhibition and suitability for more aggressive antiplatelet regimens.
StruAP: A Tool for Bundling Linguistic Trees through Structure-based Abstract Pattern

We present a tool for developing tree structure patterns that makes it easy to define the relations among textual phrases and create a search index for these newly defined relations. By using the proposed tool, users develop tree structure patterns through abstracting syntax trees. The tool features (1) intuitive pattern syntax, (2) unique functions such as recursive call of patterns and use of lexicon dictionaries, and (3) whole workflow support for relation development and validation. We report the current implementation of the tool and its effectiveness.
A psychometric evaluation of the Pain Response Preference Questionnaire in a chronic pain patient sample.

OBJECTIVE The Pain Response Preference Questionnaire (PRPQ) assesses preferences regarding pain-related social support. The initial factor analytic study of the PRPQ conducted with a nonclinical sample identified scales labeled Solicitude, Management, Suppression, and Encouragement. The first aim of the current study was to evaluate whether these scales would be appropriate for use with chronic pain patients. The construct validity of the emerging scales and their relations to pain-related disability were also investigated. METHODS A large sample of chronic pain patients (N = 300) completed the PRPQ along with self-reports of personality constructs, coping styles, pain severity, and disability. RESULTS Factor analysis supported a three-factor solution. Two factors were similar to those obtained in its initial evaluation, and were given the identical labels of Solicitude and Suppression. The remaining factor was labeled Activity Direction and was comprised primarily of items that were part of the earlier Management and Encouragement scales. Internally consistent PRPQ scales based on these factors were created. Correlation analyses involving the personality and coping measures provided support for the construct validity of these PRPQ scales. Supportive of their clinical utility, multiple regression analyses indicated that, after adjusting for pain severity, the PRPQ scales accounted for significant variance in disability ratings. CONCLUSIONS Additional factor analytic research aimed at identifying the most appropriate set of PRPQ scales is warranted. The present findings indicate that the PRPQ scales used in the current study have strong psychometric properties and hold promise as research and clinical tools.
A Practical Algorithm for Reformulation of Deductive Databases

Database Reformulation is the process of rewriting the data and rules in deductive databases in a functionally equivalent manner, ideally in ways that decrease query processing time while keeping storage costs within acceptable bounds. Early research in this area focussed on materializing existing views, i.e. caching those views as data. Subsequent research investigated the problem of inventing new views to afford different opportunities for materialization. The Bounding Theorem, introduced in this latter effort, is significant in that it gives a finite bound on the number of useful reformulations for conjunctive queries. Unfortunately, the number of possibilities allowed by the Bounding Theorem is doubly exponential in the size of the query (not the database instance). In this paper, we show that we can reduce that double exponential to a single exponential. We first present an improved version of the Bounding Theorem, called the Subgoal Theorem. We then present an additional result, called the Projection Theorem. Finally, we present a reformulation algorithm that runs in exponential time; and, using the Subgoal Theorem and the Projection Theorem, we show that the algorithm is correct for all conjunctive queries, i.e. it produces reformulations that are as good as or better than any other reformulation (in terms of worst-case query evaluation performance with at most linear growth in storage space).
A phoneme-based pre-training approach for deep neural network with application to speech enhancement

In this study, we present a new phoneme-based deep neural network (DNN) framework for single microphone speech enhancement. While most speech enhancement algorithms overlook the phoneme structure of the speech signal, our proposed framework comprises a set of phoneme-specific DNNs (pDNNs), one for each phoneme, together with an additional phoneme-classification DNN (cDNN). The cDNN is responsible for determining the posterior probability that a specific phoneme was uttered. Concurrently, each of the pDNNs estimates a phoneme-specific speech presence probability (pSPP). The speech presence probability (SPP) is then calculated as a weighted averaging of the phoneme-specific pSPPs, with the weights determined by the posterior phoneme probability. A soft spectral attenuation, based on the SPP, is then applied to enhance the noisy speech signal. We further propose a compound training procedure, where each pDNN is first pre-trained using the phoneme labeling and the cDNN is trained to classify phonemes. Since these labels are unavailable in the test phase, the entire network is then trained using the noisy utterance, with the cDNN providing phoneme classification. A series of experiments in different noise types verifies the applicability of the new algorithm to the task of speech enhancement. Moreover, the proposed scheme outperforms other schemes that either do not consider the phoneme structure or use simpler training methodology.