Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics

Automated border detection is one of the most important steps in dermoscopy image analysis. Although numerous border detection methods have been developed, few studies have focused on determining the optimal color channels for border detection in dermoscopy images. This paper proposes an automatic borderdetectionmethodwhichdeterminestheoptimalcolorchannelsandperformshybridthresholding to detect the lesion borders. The color optimization process is tested on a set of 30 dermoscopy images with four sets of dermatologist-drawn borders used as the ground truth. The hybrid border detection method is tested on a set of 85 dermoscopy images with two sets of ground truth using various metrics including accuracy, precision, sensitivity, speciﬁcity, and border error. The proposed method, which is comprised of two stages, is designed to increase speciﬁcity in the ﬁrst stage and sensitivity in the second stage. It is shown to be highly competitive with three state-of-the-art border detection methods and potentially faster, since it mainly involves scalar processing as opposed to vector processing performed in the other methods. Furthermore, it is shown that our method is as good as, and in some cases more effective than a dermatology registrar.
Meta‐analysis of the heterogeneity in association of DRD4 7‐repeat allele and AD/HD: Stronger association with AD/HD combined type

The purpose of this meta‐analysis was to examine whether association studies between attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) and the dopamine receptor 4 gene 7‐repeat (DRD4 7R) allele vary systematically based on study characteristics. A total of 27 empirical studies with 28 distinct samples using either case–control or family‐based association analyses were included. Consistent with previous meta‐analytic work [Gizer et al. (2009), Hum Genet 126:51–90], the DRD4 7R allele was associated with AD/HD across studies (OR = 1.33; 95% CI = 1.16–1.53, z = 4.04, P = 0.00005) and there was significant systematic variability among studies (Q = 54.24; P = 0.001; I2 = 50.22). To account for the variability among studies, sample and study level covariates were examined. No differences in overall effect size emerged between family‐based and case–control studies. However, the risk allele frequency in the control population accounted for a significant portion of the variance in overall effect size within case–control studies. In addition, evidence for the association between the DRD4 7R allele and distinct AD/HD subtypes emerged across family‐based and case–control studies. The proportion of AD/HD, combined type individuals within the AD/HD sample was associated with a significant increase in the magnitude of association between the DRD4 7R allele and AD/HD. Conversely, an increase in the proportion of AD/HD, predominantly inattentive type individuals within the AD/HD sample was associated with a decrease in study effect size. Implications regarding AD/HD etiological and phenotypic heterogeneity are discussed. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Inhibition of cell-cell interactions in Myxococcus xanthus by congo red

The function of molecules associated with the cell surface may be determined by examining the phenotype of cells treated with inhibitors specific to these cell surface molecules. This strategy was used to examine the function of the major Congo red receptor of the myxobacterium Myxococcus xanthus, which has a developmental cycle that involves social interactions among cells. A class of social motility mutations (A+ S-), known as dsp, may inhibit the same subcellular component as Congo red because the phenotype of wild-type cells which had been treated with Congo red resembled in several ways the phenotype of the Dsp mutants. First, Congo red inhibited agglutination of wild-type cells, whereas Dsp cells were incapable of agglutinating, even in the absence of Congo red. Second, Congo red inhibited fruiting body formation by wild-type cells and reduced the yield of myxospores. Untreated Dsp cells were unable to form fruiting bodies and produced few myxospores. Third, Congo red reduced the rate of wild-type gliding motility to a level comparable to that of untreated Dsp cells, but did not inhibit the A motility of Dsp cells. Finally, binding studies showed that Dsp cells lacked the major Congo red receptor. Wild-type cells bound Congo red with an apparent association constant of 2.4 X 10(5) M-1, while Dsp cells bound it with an apparent association constant of 8.5 X 10(3) M-1. Binding of Congo red to wild-type cells was saturated in less than 10 min and was reversible when excess Congo red was removed. These results suggest that the Congo red receptors are controlled by the S motility system and that these receptors are involved in cell cohesion, social motility, and fruiting body formation.
Behavioural treatment for sleep problems in children with severe learning disabilities and challenging daytime behaviour: Effect on sleep patterns of mother and child

Children with sleep problems present serious management problems to their parents. Such children are also more likely to have additional problems, behavioural disturbance being particularly common. This randomized controlled trial of behavioural interventions for the children's sleep problems was conducted to explore the efficacy and mechanisms of treatment in children with the most extreme forms of problems: severe learning disabilities, severe sleep problems and severe daytime challenging behaviour.
[Validation of the Spanish version of the Brief Pain Inventory in patients with oncological pain].

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Our goal was to validate the Spanish version of the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI) questionnaire used to measure the intensity of oncological pain and its impact on activities of daily living in patients with cancer. PATIENTS AND METHOD Patients with oncological pain were consecutively included in the study. These patients filled up the Spanish version of the BPI questionnaire (CBD) and the Rotterdam Symptom Checklist (RCSL) during the inclusion visit and again after 3-5 days (patients with clinically stable oncological pain) or after one month (patients with unstable oncological pain). RESULTS 126 patients were assessed; 85.1% of them had suffered some episode of irruptive pain 24 hours prior to their inclusion in the study. 86.5% of patients fully completed the questionnaire. The CBD showed mild to moderate correlations with the patients perception of pain severity and with the presence of tumor dissemination. The <<psychological symptoms>> dimension of the RCSL displayed the highest correlation with the dimensions of the BPI (<<pain intensity>> and <<interference in activities of daily living>>). The internal consistency and the test-retest reliability between dimensions were good (0.87 and 0.89) and low to moderate (0.53 and 0.77), respectively. The CBD questionnaire was found to be a tool capable of detecting changes in pain intensity. The changes observed in the two CBD dimensions between study visits fairly reflected the patients perceived changes in pain intensity. CONCLUSIONS The Spanish version of BPI is valid for measuring the intensity of oncological pain and its impact on activities of daily living in conditions of usual clinical practice.
Differences in Gene Content between Salmonella enterica Serovar Enteritidis Isolates and Comparison to Closely Related Serovars Gallinarum and Dublin

ABSTRACT Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis is often transmitted into the human food supply through eggs of hens that appear healthy. This pathogen became far more prevalent in poultry following eradication of the fowl pathogen S. enterica serovar Gallinarum in the mid-20th century. To investigate whether changes in serovar Enteritidis gene content contributed to this increased prevalence, and to evaluate genetic heterogeneity within the serovar, comparative genomic hybridization was performed on eight 60-year-old and nineteen 10- to 20-year-old serovar Enteritidis strains from various hosts, using a Salmonella-specific microarray. Overall, almost all the serovar Enteritidis genomes were very similar to each other. Excluding two rare strains classified as serovar Enteritidis in the Salmonella reference collection B, only eleven regions of the serovar Enteritidis phage type 4 (PT4) chromosome (sequenced at the Sanger Center) were absent or divergent in any of the other serovar Enteritidis strains tested. The more recent isolates did not have consistent differences from 60-year-old field isolates, suggesting that no large genomic additions on a whole-gene scale were needed for serovar Enteritidis to become more prevalent in domestic fowl. Cross-hybridization of phage genes on the array with related genes in the examined genomes grouped the serovar Enteritidis isolates into two major lineages. Microarray comparisons of the sequenced serovar Enteritidis PT4 to isolates of the closely related serovars Dublin and Gallinarum (biovars Gallinarum and Pullorum) revealed several genomic areas that distinguished them from serovar Enteritidis and from each other. These differences in gene content could be useful in DNA-based typing and in understanding the different phenotypes of these related serovars.
Assessment of sexuality among middle-aged women using the Female Sexual Function Index

Objective The purpose of the present investigation was to assess sexual function among middle-aged women and determine related risk factors (personal and partner) for sexual dysfunction. Methods In this cross-sectional study, women aged 40–59 years were requested to fill out the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) and a general demographic questionnaire containing personal and partner data. Results A total of 409 women with a mean age of 47 ± 5.3 years were surveyed. Of these, 42.1% were premenopausal, 24.4% perimenopausal and 33.5% postmenopausal. At the time of survey, 10.5% of women were hysterectomized, 1.5% used psychotropic drugs, and 9.8% were on hormone therapy (HT) for the menopause; 28.1% had less than 12 years of schooling and 80.4% had only one partner at the moment of survey. Among their male partners, 7.3% abused alcohol, 10.3% had erectile dysfunction, 11.2% premature ejaculation and 63.83% were faithful partners. Mean (± standard deviation) scores for the FSFI domains were: desire (3.7 ± 1.2), arousal (3.1 ± 2.5), lubrication (3.3 ± 2.6), orgasm (2.6 ± 2.3), satisfaction (4 ± 1.7), and pain/dyspareunia (3.2 ± 2.6). The mean total FSFI score was 20.1 ± 12.4 (median 24.7). In this series, the prevalence of female sexual dysfunction (FSFI score ≤26.55) was 55.7%, with women presenting difficulties across all domains of female sexual function but mostly in the dyspareunia and lubrication domains. Logistic regression analysis determined that female age (odds ratio (OR) 3.3, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.6–6.8), p = 0.001), postmenopausal status (OR 2.8, 95% CI 1.3–6.1, p = 0.007), partner's age (OR 2.0, 95% CI 1–4, p = 0.03), educational level (OR 2.7, 95% CI 1.5–5, p = 0.001), and the presence of erectile dysfunction (OR 3.8, 95% CI 1.3–10.9, p = 0.01) and premature ejaculation (OR 4.1, 95% CI 1.4–11.7, p = 0.0001) significantly increased the risk for female sexual dysfunction. Partner faithfulness (OR 0.2, 95% CI 0.1–0.4, p = 0.001) and menopausal HT use (OR 0.4, 95% CI 0.1–1, p = 0.04) decreased this risk. Conclusions In this series, male sexual health and demographic profile and female HT use were relevant determinants for sexual functioning among middle-aged women.
Delivering Acceleration: The Potential for Increased HPC Application Performance Using Reconfigurable Logic

SRC Computers, Inc. has integrated adaptive computing into its SRC-6 high-end server, incorporating reconfigurable processors as peers to the microprocessors. Performance improvements resulting from reconfigurable computing can provide orders of magnitude speedups for a wide variety of algorithms. Reconfigurable logic in Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) has shown great advantage to date in special purpose applications and specialty hardware. SRC Computers is working to bring this technology into the general purpose HPC world via an advanced system interconnect and enhanced compiler technology.
School-Age Children With Asthma and Their Parents: Relationships With Health Care Providers

Health care providers, including nurses, physicians, and other personnel, are key figures who design and implement plans of care to help families manage childhood asthma, yet families' perceptions of relationships with these professionals has received limited study. Child and parent perspectives about relationships with their health care providers emerged as themes in a study that explored responsibility sharing between school-age children with asthma and their parents (). Fourteen school-age children with asthma and 14 of their parents from 11 families participated in the study. Parents and, to a lesser extent, children, described aspects of their relationships with their health care providers that were supports or barriers to asthma management. Implications for nurses and other health care providers stem from these data and include the importance for health care providers to educate themselves and their patients about state-of-the-art asthma care. Education should be directed to both parents and their children. In addition, parents need to receive education about how to coach their children because the children depend on them for information and direction. Finally, nurses and other health care providers need to listen to parents and value their input about their children's conditions.
What comes first? Electrophysiological differences in the temporal course of memory and future thinking

It is now widely accepted that remembering the past and imagining the future rely on a number of shared processes and recruit a similar set of brain regions. However, memory and future thinking place different demands on a range of processes. For instance, although remembering should lead to early associative retrieval of event details, event construction may be slower for future events, for which details from different memories are combined. In order to shed light on the question of how the brain distinguishes between memories and future thoughts, we investigated the differences in the electrophysiological correlates of the vivid elaboration of future and past events. In the slow cortical potentials of 24 healthy human participants, differences during early elaboration were observed at temporo‐parietal and parieto‐occipital electrode sites, presumably reflecting differential recruitment of sensory and semantic detail retrieval. Additional differences emerged over the right pre‐frontal cortex during later elaboration, which could be linked to differential retrieval demands. In conclusion, the time course differences, which presumably reflect the varying recruitment of sub‐processes engaged during mental time travel, will help to understand the mechanisms with which the brain separates memories from future thoughts.
Electron microscopy of Golgi‐impregnated interneurons: Notes on the intrinsic connectivity of the cerebral cortex

The Golgi‐electron microscope technique has opened new avenues to explore the synaptic organization of the brain. In this article, we shall discuss basic methodological principles necessary to analyze axonal arborizations with this combined technique. To illustrate the applications of the method, we shall review the forms and distribution of the synapses in which the axonal arborizations of local cortical interneurons engage. © 1992 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Twenty Years of Inscriptions

Since 1968 the number of inscriptions newly found in Libya has been limited by the limited scale of excavations; but there has been some compensation from the results of surface surveys and from chance discoveries, especially in rural areas. Although the individual items are not necessarily stirring, they form, when taken together, a valuable base for study of the rural populations, at least within the city territories or near to the Roman forts. There has been, indeed, a steady stream of articles on inscriptions, or using inscriptions. Together with some new texts, they have presented many new readings and interpretations of ones previously published. In addition four small corpora have appeared: of the inscriptions of Apollonia (Reynolds 1976, 293–333), of Berenice (Reynolds 1977, 233–254), of the Jewish inhabitants of Cyrenaica (Lüderitz 1983), and of the Neo-Punic texts of Tripolitania known by 1967 (Levi della Vida and Amadasi Guzzo 1987). Another feature of the twenty years has been the intermittent publication of bibliographies of work in progress (Garbini 1974 (Neo-Punic), Gasperini and Paci 1975, Paci 1979 (Cyrenaica and Tripolitania), Reynolds 1972, 1980a (Cyrenaica), Le Glay 1974 (Tripolitania)). These, together with the running records produced approximately every year (L'Année Epigraphique, L'Année Philologique, Bulletin Epigraphique (in REG), SEG), obviate the need to do more here than note what seems to me to show best where the epigraphic contribution is leading us. The selection is inevitably much influenced by my current interests; it is not at all intended to suggest that what is omitted is lacking in importance.
Dysregulated production of interleukin-10 (IL-10) and IL-12 by peripheral blood lymphocytes from human immunodeficiency virus-infected individuals is associated with altered proliferative responses to recall antigens

The loss of immune function following infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) may result from altered production of immunoregulatory cytokines such as interleukin-10 (IL-10) and IL-12. In this study, we analyzed IL-10 and IL-12 production by mitogen-stimulated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from HIV+ individuals and correlated their levels with proliferative responses to the recall antigens HIV p25 and influenza virus. We report two distinct groups of HIV+ patients. One group produced small amounts of IL-10, had PBMC that proliferated in response to recall antigens, and demonstrated enhanced recall antigen-induced proliferation upon addition of anti-IL-10 antibodies and/or IL-12. Conversely, the second group produced high levels of IL-10, had PBMC that failed to proliferate to recall antigens, and did not demonstrate enhanced proliferation upon addition of anti-IL-10 antibodies and/or IL-12. Mitogen-stimulated PBMC from both groups produced significantly lower levels of IL-12 than did those from HIV- controls. Analysis of the source of the IL-10-producing cell subset in PBMC demonstrated that in HIV+ individuals, IL-10 is produced by monocytes, while in HIV- controls, it is produced by both T cells and monocytes. Taken together, our results suggest that monocytes from HIV+ individuals secrete decreased amounts of IL-12, a Th1-type cytokine, which may lead to the development of Th2-type responses characterized by high IL-10 secretion and immune dysfunction.
The results of clinical trials in stroke rehabilitation research.

UNLABELLED RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: There are currently 1.5 million stroke survivors in the United States. More than half of these individuals have significant residual physical disability and functional impairment. Survivors of stroke constitute the largest group of patients receiving rehabilitation services in this country. We examined existing clinical trials investigating the effectiveness of stroke rehabilitation programs to improve functional outcomes and discharge destination. One hundred twenty-four research reports were initially identified. From this sample, 36 trials meeting selected criteria were evaluated by the methods of meta-analysis. RESULTS A total of 3717 patients participated in the 36 clinical trials included in the meta-analysis. The results revealed a mean d-index of 0.40 +/- 0.33. This effect size index was converted to a U3 value of 65.5, indicating that the average patient receiving a program of focused stroke rehabilitation performed better than approximately 65.5% of those patients in comparison groups (95% confidence interval, 63.6% to 67.3%). The results also revealed a significant interaction between type of research design and method of recording the outcome of a clinical trial. Blind recording of the outcome measure appears to be an essential design characteristic in clinical trials that do not randomize patients to conditions. CONCLUSIONS Programs of focused stroke rehabilitation may improve functional performance for some patients who have experienced a stroke. The improvement in performance appears related to early initiation of treatment, but not to the duration of intervention. Improvements are also associated with the patient's age and the type of design. Research design should be considered an important moderator variable in planning and interpreting future clinical trials of treatment effectiveness in stroke rehabilitation.
Multi-operating points PM motor design methodology for electric actuation systems

In this paper, a comparative optimal design of Permanent Magnet Motors (PMMs) for aerospace actuation applications based on single and double layer Fractional Slot Concentrated Winding (FSCW) topologies with different motor segmentation strategies is undertaken, by means of a combined electromagnetic, fault tolerance and thermal evaluation. Initially, analytical machine equations and 2D Finite Element (FE) analysis are employed for the determination of the motors basic dimensional and operating characteristics. Both configurations considered are in a next step optimized regarding the mean torque, efficiency, torque ripple, induced Electromotive Force (EMF) quality and motor weight. The proposed methodology involves appropriate handling of mean torque and induced EMF as constraints through the application of a particular single-objective Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) technique accounting also for multiple motor operating conditions. Fault tolerance and thermal robustness of the optimized motors are also examined. Both single layer and double layer FSCW PMM optimal configurations present complementary advantages for this class of applications.
Genetically modified soya bean in rabbit feeding: detection of DNA fragments and evaluation of metabolic effects by enzymatic analysis

The presence of DNA fragments in tissues from rabbits given genetically modified (GM) soya-bean meal (solvent extracted) was investigated by using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) approach. Moreover, the possible effects on cell metabolism were evaluated by determination of several specific enzymes in serum, heart, skeletal muscle, liver and kidney. The chloroplast sequence for tRNA Leu by using the Clor1/Clor2 primers designed on chloroplast trnL sequence was clearly detected. On the contrary, two couples of species specific primers for conventional (Le1-5/Le 1-3 which amplifies the soya bean lectin gene) and genetically modified (35S1/35S2 which amplifies the 35S CMV promoter that is present in the genomic structure of GM soya bean) soya bean were not found in all samples. No differences in enzyme levels were detected in serum, but a significant increase of lactic dehydrogenase, mainly concerning the LDH1 isoenzyme was found in particular in kidney and heart but not in the muscle, thus suggesting a potential alteration in the local production of the enzyme. Finally, no significant differences were detected concerning body weight, fresh organ weights and no sexual differences were detected.