Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stigma scale of epilepsy: the perception of epilepsy stigma in different cities in Brazil.

PURPOSE To assess the perception of epilepsy stigma in different regions of Brazil. METHOD The Stigma Scale of Epilepsy (SSE) questionnaire was applied to people in different Brazilian urban settings. The survey was performed on individual basis; an interviewer read the questions to the subjects and wrote down the answers. The same procedure was applied to all the subjects and took around 10 minutes. RESULTS 266 questionnaires were completed in four different towns of Brazil (Curitiba=83; São Paulo=47; Vila Velha=79; Ipatinga=57). The overall stigma score was 49.7 (median). Different scores were obtained in each locality. Vila Velha=42; Curitiba=49; São Paulo=52; Ipatinga=54 (ANOVA [2.262]=3.82; p=0.01). CONCLUSION This study showed differences in the perception of stigma, which may depend on cultural and regional aspects. The concept of stigma has cultural perspectives, depending on the region and the context where each person lives. The understanding of this aspect of epilepsy is important to promote better de-stigmatization campaigns, considering the cultural and social differences.
Multiple sclerosis: Oligodendrocytes display cell death–related molecules in situ but do not undergo apoptosis

To investigate whether apoptosis is involved in the fate of oligodendrocytes in chronic multiple sclerosis lesions, the pro‐apoptotic molecules fas and tumor necrosis factor receptors and the anti‐apoptotic molecule bcl‐2 were examined by immunohistochemistry, and DNA fragmentation was assessed by an end labeling technique. Fas and both tumor necrosis factor receptors were preferentially expressed on oligodendrocytes in multiple sclerosis lesions, this phenotype being more evident at the lesion edge. The ligand for fasL, was constitutively present at high levels on microglia. The anti‐apoptotic molecule bcl‐2 was selectively expressed on oligodendrocytes in silent lesions and on astrocytes in active lesions. These molecules were also detected in control material, albeit at lower levels. In chronic active lesions, a few inflammatory cells displayed fas reactivity, whereas the majority expressed bcl‐2. DNA fragmentation was found in a number of infiltrating cells and some microglia, whereas, with one possible exception, oligodendrocytes showed no evidence of apoptosis. Thus, while apoptosis is involved in the elimination of infiltrating cells, it plays little or no role in oligodendrocyte depletion in multiple sclerosis, a process that may be related to a lytic pathway. In addition, microglia constitutively displayed the ligand for fas, and appeared to be the major effector cell population in the central nervous system.
Abenomics, Yen Depreciation, Trade Deficit and Export Competitiveness (Japanese)

The sharp depreciation of the yen from the end of 2012 was expected to have a positive impact on the Japanese trade balance, since Japan had recorded large trade deficits since the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011. Trade balance tends to deteriorate at the beginning due to the J-curve effect. However, the Japanese trade balance has not shown any signs of improvement, even though one year has passed since the start of the yen depreciation. There is a growing concern that Japanese firms might lose export competitiveness in the global market. This paper empirically shows that Japanese firms expanded overseas production after the sharp appreciation of the yen from 2008 to 2012, which resulted in the increase in Japanese imports of intermediate inputs as well as finished products. The empirical result of an auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) model also indicates that the long-run impact of yen depreciation has weakened in recent years. It is demonstrated that Japanese manufacturing export prices in terms of the contract (invoice) currency have not changed in response to the large exchange rate fluctuations of the yen, which is empirically confirmed by the exchange rate pass-through analysis. Finally, a comparative analysis of the industry-specific exchange rate between Japan and Korea shows that the recent depreciation of the yen has improved the export price competitiveness of the Japanese manufacturing sectors.
Cornea Objective Assessment of Corneal Staining Using Digital Image Analysis

METHODS. One hundred photographs of corneal staining from various ocular surface diseases in 100 patients were quantified by a new strategy: a combination of the difference of Gaussians (DoG) edge detection for morphologic properties of corneal erosions and the redgreen-blue (RGB) systems and hue-saturation-value (HSV) color model for detection of color. To enhance the image, we adopted a median filter, Otsu thresholding, and contrast-limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE). To validate the diagnostic value of this new strategy, the same photographs were also graded by two independent clinicians using the Oxford scheme and the National Eye Institute/Industry (NEI)-recommended guidelines. The correlation between the average subjective grade and objective image analysis measurement was evaluated using the Pearson’s correlation coefficient.
Anatomy of the posterior lateral line system in young larvae of the zebrafish

We studied the anatomy of neuromasts, afferent sensory neurons, and efferent neurons of the midbody branch of the posterior lateral line in larvae of the zebrafish (Brachydanio rerio), 5 days after fertilization. This simple sensory system consists often or 11 neuromasts, 15–20 sensory neurons, and about nine efferent neurons. The neuromasts are typical free neuromasts and both afferent and efferent synapses are present on hair cells within them. The sensory neurons project into a single longitudinal column of neuropil in the hindbrain. The sensory terminals appear by light microscopy to contact the dorsolateral dendrite of the ipsilateral Mauthner cell. Three types of efferent neurons are present; two types in the hindbrain and one type in the diencephalon. We provide several lines of evidence that demonstrate that these central neurons are efferent to the lateral line.
Not-so-Classical Measurement Errors: A Validation Study of Homescan

We report results from a validation study of Nielsen Homescan data. We use data from a large grocery chain to match thousands of individual transactions that were recorded by both the retailer (at the store) and the Nielsen Homescan panelist (at home). First, we report how often shopping trips are not reported, and how often trip information, product information, price, and quantity are reported with error. We focus on recording errors in prices, which are more prevalent, and show that they can be classified to two categories, one due to standard recording errors, while the other due to the way Nielsen constructs the price data. We then show how the validation data can be used to correct the impact of recording errors on estimates obtained from Nielsen Homescan data. We use a simple application to illustrate the impact of recording errors as well as the ability to correct for these errors. The application suggests that while recording errors are clearly present, and potentially impact results, corrections, like the one we employ, can be adopted by users of Homescan data to investigate the robustness of their results.
An optimal inventory management for supply chain considering demand distortion

In the conventional inventory policy, the normal distribution approximates the real demand distribution. It is, however, not adequate since the real distribution has distortion. We have proposed an optimal inventory policy based on new demand model with the third order Gram-Charlier series expansion. The new demand model is an approximate normal distribution with the third cumulant. Simulation results show that the proposed method decreases the excess inventory and cost as compared with those of the conventional method.
Measurement of cerebral blood flow by intravenous xenon-133 technique and a mobile system. Reproducibility using the Obrist model compared to total curve analysis.

The recent development of a mobile 10 detector unit, using i.v. Xenon-133 technique, has made it possible to perform repeated bedside measurements of cerebral blood flow (CBF). Test-retest studies were carried out in 38 atherosclerotic subjects, in order to evaluate the reproducibility of CBF level and side-to-side asymmetry. Data were analysed according to the Obrist model and the results compared with those obtained using a model correcting for the air passage artifact. Reproducibility was of the same order of magnitude as reported using stationary equipment. The side-to-side CBF asymmetry was considerably more reproducible than CBF level. Using a single detector instead of five regional values averaged as the hemispheric flow increased standard deviation of CBF level by 10-20%, while the variation in asymmetry was doubled. In optimal measuring conditions the two models revealed no significant differences, but in low flow situations the artifact model yielded significantly more stable results. The present apparatus, equipped with 3-5 detectors covering each hemisphere, offers the opportunity of performing serial CBF measurements in situations not otherwise feasible.
Henoch-Schönlein purpura and meningococcal B vaccination

The risk of Henoch-Schönlein purpura (HSP) following vaccination with a group B meningococcal vaccine was assessed through active hospital safety monitoring. There was no increase in the relative incidence of HSP within 30 days after vaccination nor recurrence in HSP cases who received one or more further vaccine doses (re-challenge).
Evaluating Economic Theories of Growth and Inequality: A Study of the Danish Economy

We present a model for studying regional and sectoral variation in total factor productivity (TFP) and develop an empirical test, based on the skewness of TFP distribution, to empirically distinguish between different growth theories. While negative skewness is consistent with the neo-Schumpeterian idea of catching up with leaders, zero skewness supports the neoclassical view that deviations from the frontier reflect only idiosyncratic productivity shocks. We argue that positive skewness corresponds to a model where the combination of exogenous technology with non-transferable knowledge accumulated in specific sectors and regions explains TFP. This argument provides the framework for an empirical model based on stochastic frontier analysis. The model is used to analyse regional and sectoral inequalities in productive efficiency across Danish sectors and regions.
Relationship between obesity and B-type natriuretic peptide levels.

BACKGROUND The relationships among B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) levels, body mass index (BMI), and congestive heart failure (CHF) as an emergency diagnosis are unknown. METHODS Of 1586 participants in the Breathing Not Properly Multinational Study who had acute dyspnea, 1369 (86.3%) had BNP values and self-reported height and weight. Two independent cardiologists masked to the BNP results adjudicated the final diagnosis. RESULTS Congestive heart failure was found in 46% of participants. Individuals with higher BMIs were younger and had more frequent edema on examination but were equally as likely to have CHF vs noncardiac sources of dyspnea. A nearly 3-fold difference was seen in mean +/- SD BNP values at the low and high extremes of the BMI groupings (516.7 +/- 505.9 vs 176.3 +/- 270.5 pg/mL, respectively; P< .001). The correlations between BMI and log BNP among those with and without CHF were r = -0.34 and r = -0.21, respectively (P< .001 for both). Multivariate analysis for the outcome of log BNP among a small subset with CHF (n = 62) found that Framingham score (P = .002), estimated glomerular filtration rate (P = .007), female sex (P = .03), New York Heart Association functional class (P = .09), and third heart sound (P = .08) were independent predictors. However, BMI was not found to be independently related to log BNP (P = .59). CONCLUSIONS In patients with and without CHF, BNP levels are inversely related to BMI. When considering demographics, severity of disease, and renal function, BMI is not independently related to BNP levels in a small subgroup when detailed information about CHF severity is known.
Single and Aggregate Salivary Cortisol Measures in Working Women Living in High and Low Status Neighborhoods in Sweden

Contextual factors including neighborhood status have consistently been associated with health disparities. This may relate to a poorer neighborhood status involving an exposure to chronic stressors, which dysregulates cortisol secretion. This study investigated single and aggregate cortisol measures in 88 working women living in high and low status neighborhoods. Results showed significantly lower waking cortisol among women in low status neighborhoods. However, there were no group differences in aggregate cortisol measures. The lower morning cortisol among women in the low status neighborhoods follows previous research suggesting hypocortisolism as a pathway linking neighborhood status and health disparities, albeit a less consistent finding across cortisol measures in this sample. This may relate to the Swedish welfare state and its fostering of equality.
The Nonvoting Voter in Voting Research

Postelection surveys consistently overestimate voter turnout by a substantial margin. This paper compares, via discriminant analysis of data from the 1978 National Election Study, the characteristics of respondents who falsely claim to have voted with the characteristics of actual voters and admitted nonvoters. More importantly, it undertakes two parallel analyses of the factors affecting voting or nonvoting. The first employs respondent-supplied voting data, and the second employs officially validated voting data. Even though misreporters differ in some respects from actual voters and admitted nonvoters, the parallel analyses in the latter part of the paper indicate that substantive conclusions about the factors that influence voting or nonvoting are largely unaffected by the use of validated as opposed to reported voting data.
Tensorial Feed Forward Neural Networks with Random Weights for Gait Recognition Using MPCA Features

Because of gait sequences are naturally three-dimensional data, there have been several tensorial feature extraction methods to deal with tensors while there are effective tensorial classifiers. In this work, by using a linear tensor projection, a new classifier based on neural networks with random weights is introduced. Due to the proposed algorithm can classify gait samples directly without vectorizing them, the intrinsic structure information of the input data can be reserved. In addition, discriminative features sets are generated using MPCA to ascertain classification accuracy. Finally, Extensive experiments are carried out on two gait databases and results are compared against state-of-the-art techniques. It is demonstrated that the proposed algorithm MPCA plus TNNRE achieves better recognition performance.
Trait Stacking, Licensing, and Seed Firm Acquisitions on Genetically Modified Grains: A Strategic Analysis

Commercialization of genetically modified (GM) traits leads to interesting strategic questions for agbiotechnology and seed firms. The purpose of the study is to evaluate equilibrium strategies of agbiotechnology and seed firms regarding commercialization of GM traits. Two game theory models were developed to examine equilibrium strategies. In the first, both agbiotechnology firms have commercialization strategies of licensing or not. In the second, the agbiotechnology firm also has the strategic option to purchase a seed form as a commercialization strategy. Results indicate that the equilibrium strategy would be for each of the agbiotechnology firms to license their traits, and the seed firm would release a stacked trait. However, order of play matters and impacts the equilibrium. Finally, in the second game, the equilibrium is for the agbiotechnology company to purchase a seed firm. Each of these decisions is highly strategic and reflects the current strategic challenges in the agbiotechnology industry.
Personalized online video recommendations by using adaptive feedback control frameworks

Recommender systems have changed the way people originally find products, information, and even their social circles. However, most existing research activities neglect its time-varying feature, i.e., the growing input data, the change of user behaviors. In order to sustain the high accuracy of recommendations, systems have to be updated regularly. However, the more often the update proceeds, the more cost of time and other computational resources. Thus, it is critical to strike the balance between accuracy and cost. In this paper, we propose an adaptive recommender system by using feedback control frameworks. The proposed solution continuously monitors its changes and estimates the loss of performance (in terms of accuracy) from two perspectives: data problem(data aging and data deficient) in training set, and changes of user behavior by “revisiting ratio”. When the benefit of performing an update exceeds the cost of resources, the system update itself. Theoretical analysis and extensive results by using a real data set are supplemented to show the advantages of the proposed system.
Estimating the Impact of Economic Factors on Tourism: Evidence from Hong Kong

This study examines issues relating to the impact of economic factors on tourist expenditure and hotel room occupancy rate. The article first presents an overview of the tourism industry in Hong Kong, an examination of the particular aspects of the tourism industry, and an estimate of tourist spending and hotel room occupancy rates. Using an expectations model, real tourism expenditure is found to depend on expected income, expected exchange rate and price level. The results of the article also reveal that the equilibrium hotel occupancy rate is a function of tourist flows, exchange rates, price level and length of stay.
Resourcing Conservative Transition in Vietnam: Rent Switching and Resource Appropriation

This article applies a novel approach to analysis of the transition to the market economy in Vietnam, a country with a political economy that draws upon South-East Asian, Sinic and Leninist cultural elements. This was a 'conservative' transition, in the sense that no shift in political regime occurred. Understanding transition as a process where endogenous forces drive and resource institutional change, and far from dependent upon policy shifts, the article argues that it relied heavily upon two sets of phenomena. The first may be understood in terms of the creation and seeking out of economic rents, in the 'neoclassical' sense of resources available 'below economic costs'. When rents result from institutional obstacles to competition, institutional change can support relatively costless output gains. I argue for Vietnam that as the economic system switched from plan to market, so rent seeking shifted away from advantageous access to resources for plan implementation, to switching resources into forms that supported market-oriented activity. This 'rent switching' (RS) relied upon adaptive social relations, comparable to the 'competitive clientelism' of the SEA studies literature, that were preserved and augmented during transition. It also permitted mobilisation of resources derived from static efficiency gains. This framework contrasts with a second, more 'classical' in nature, that concentrates upon the creation of appropriable resources (ARs) and contestation over them. These help explain the medium and longer term, and how ways of appropriating resources supported the political economy of systemic change. At root, this is then to do with the emergence of factor markets (land, labour and capital), class formation and thus broader social and cultural change. The article thus argues that different economic theories provide useful insights into the social as well as the economic implications and nature of the transition to a market economy. Given that static efficiency gains, whilst significant in relative impact, tend to act over the short term, and, since growth processes take decades, the 'neoclassical' approach is ultimately less important than the 'classical' one.
Thermostable ricin vaccine protects rhesus macaques against aerosolized ricin: Epitope-specific neutralizing antibodies correlate with protection

Significance Ricin toxin (RT) is a CDC-designated select agent that can be dispersed as an aerosol. In mammals, aerosolized RT causes rapid and irreversible necrosis of the lung epithelium, multifocal hemorrhagic edema, and death within 24–36 h. A safe and effective recombinant subunit vaccine (RiVax) has been developed and formulated as a thermostable, lyophilized, adjuvant-containing “powder. ” This formulation of RiVax elicited neutralizing antibodies against RT, which protected macaques from the lethality of aerosolized RT. The epitope-specific antibody responses in macaques revealed a distinctive profile that was also observed in vaccinated humans. This profile might represent a signature of protection in both species. Ricin toxin (RT) is the second most lethal toxin known; it has been designated by the CDC as a select agent. RT is made by the castor bean plant; an estimated 50,000 tons of RT are produced annually as a by-product of castor oil. RT has two subunits, a ribotoxic A chain (RTA) and galactose-binding B chain (RTB). RT binds to all mammalian cells and once internalized, a single RTA catalytically inactivates all of the ribosomes in a cell. Administered as an aerosol, RT causes rapid lung damage and fibrosis followed by death. There are no Food and Drug Administration-approved vaccines and treatments are only effective in the first few hours after exposure. We have developed a recombinant RTA vaccine that has two mutations V76M/Y80A (RiVax). The protein is expressed in Escherichia coli and is nontoxic and immunogenic in mice, rabbits, and humans. When vaccinated mice are challenged with injected, aerosolized, or orally administered (gavaged) RT, they are completely protected. We have now developed a thermostable, aluminum-adjuvant–containing formulation of RiVax and tested it in rhesus macaques. After three injections, the animals developed antibodies that completely protected them from a lethal dose of aerosolized RT. These antibodies neutralized RT and competed to varying degrees with a panel of neutralizing and nonneutralizing mouse monoclonal antibodies known to recognize specific epitopes on native RTA. The resulting antibody competition profile could represent an immunologic signature of protection. Importantly, the same signature was observed using sera from RiVax-immunized humans.
Application to Dissolution studies and HPLC Assay Method for Determination of Diacerein and Aceclofenac in Tablet Dosage Form

2 Abstract: The proposed method is precise, accurate, selective and rapid for the simultaneous determination of Diacerein and Aceclofenac. A simple, rapid and selective HPLC method has been developed for quantitation of Diacerein and Aceclofenac from bulk drug and pharmaceutical formulations using a mobile phase consisting mixture of methanol and water (80:20 v/v) at the flow rate of 1mL/min. An ODS C18 RP-Column (Intersile 4.6 mm x 25 cm, 10 µm) column was used as stationary phase. The retention time of Diacerein and Aceclofenac were 4.6 min. and 7.3 min. respectively. Linearity was obtained in the concentration range of 5-35µg/ml for Diacerein, 5-35 µg/ml for Aceclofenac. Gatifloxacin was used as an internal standard. The method was statistically validated and RSD was found to be less than 2% indicating high degree of accuracy and precision of the proposed HPLC method. Due to its simplicity, rapidness, high precision and accuracy, the proposed HPLC method may be used for determining Diacerein and Aceclofenac in bulk drug samples or in pharmaceutical dosage form.