Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MR diskography and CT diskography with gadodiamide-iodinated contrast mixture for the diagnosis of foraminal impingement.

OBJECTIVE This study was designed to investigate whether the use of MR diskography would result in improved reader confidence over the use of CT diskography alone for evaluating foraminal impingement causing lumbar radiculopathy. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Sixteen disk levels in 14 consecutive patients with suspected foraminal impingement causing lumbar radiculopathy were prospectively included in the study. A mixture of diluted gadodiamide and iodinated contrast material was injected at each disk level. After diskography, a CT scan (CT diskography) and T1-weighted fat-suppressed MR image (MR diskography) were obtained. Two spine radiologists and an orthopedic spine surgeon independently scored CT diskography and MR diskography for foraminal evaluation on a 3-point scale: 1, low confidence; 2, moderate confidence; and 3, high confidence. Each reader also assessed whether MR diskography showed an additional benefit over CT diskography with regard to the depiction of foraminal abnormalities only. Another radiologist reviewed conventional MR images focused on disk height and morphology. RESULTS The reviewers' confidence scores for MR diskography were superior to those for CT diskography (reader 1, p = 0.00008; reader 2, p = 0.0008; reader 3, p = 0.0015) (p < 0.05). MR diskography was considered beneficial in 13 of 16 disk levels (reader 1), 14 of 16 (reader 2), and 14 of 16 (reader 3). MR diskography increased the confidence scores for the detection of foraminal impingement, especially in cases of severe disk degeneration, but did not show additional benefits in cases of an extensive vacuum in the disk or large disk extrusion. CONCLUSION Simultaneous MR diskography and CT diskography with a mixture of gadodiamide and iodinated contrast material may be beneficial for evaluating foraminal impingement causing lumbar radiculopathy.
Muscle biopsies from human muscle diseases with myopathic pathology reveal common alterations in mitochondrial function

Muscle diseases are clinically and genetically heterogeneous and manifest as dystrophic, inflammatory and myopathic pathologies, among others. Our previous study on the cardiotoxin mouse model of myodegeneration and inflammation linked muscle pathology with mitochondrial damage and oxidative stress. In this study, we investigated whether human muscle diseases display mitochondrial changes. Muscle biopsies from muscle disease patients, represented by dysferlinopathy (dysfy) (dystrophic pathology; n = 43), polymyositis (PM) (inflammatory pathology; n = 24), and distal myopathy with rimmed vacuoles (DMRV) (distal myopathy; n = 31) were analyzed. Mitochondrial damage (ragged blue and COX‐deficient fibers) was revealed in dysfy, PM, and DMRV cases by enzyme histochemistry (SDH and COX‐SDH), electron microscopy (vacuolation and altered cristae) and biochemical assays (significantly increased ADP/ATP ratio). Proteomic analysis of muscle mitochondria from all three muscle diseases by isobaric tag for relative and absolute quantitation labeling and liquid chromatography‐tandem mass spectrometry (LC‐MS/MS) analysis demonstrated down‐regulation of electron transport chain (ETC) complex subunits, assembly factors and Krebs cycle enzymes. Interestingly, 80 of the under‐expressed proteins were common among the three pathologies. Assay of ETC and Krebs cycle enzyme activities validated the MS data. Mitochondrial proteins from muscle pathologies also displayed higher tryptophan (Trp) oxidation and the same was corroborated in the cardiotoxin model. Molecular modeling predicted Trp oxidation to alter the local structure of mitochondrial proteins. Our data highlight mitochondrial alterations in muscle pathologies, represented by morphological changes, altered mitochondrial proteome and protein oxidation, thereby establishing the role of mitochondrial damage in human muscle diseases.
Flexibility of DNA

A model for the flexibility of DNA is proposed that is based on discrete variations in the direction of propagation in going from one subunit to the next. Expansion of the local free energy in terms of the local bending gives a Gaussian distribution function. The assumption of the independence of local bends on neighbors lead to very simple formulae for the persistence length and the characteristic ratio. Emphasis, however, is placed on the application of the formulae for molecules of finite size where the persistence length and C∞ are not defined. The formulae are worked out for two models, which should serve as limits for the real physical situation.
Iris Recognition Using Combination of Dual Tree Rotated Complex Wavelet and Dual Tree Complex Wavelet

The increasing requirement of security due to advances in information technologies, especially e-Commerce have led to rapid development of personnel identification /recognition systems based on biometric. A remarkable and important characteristic of the iris is the randomly distributed irregular texture details in all directions. In this paper, the authors have proposed a novel approach of feature extraction of iris image using 2D redundant rotated complex wavelet transform (RCWT) in combination with 2D Dual Trace Complex wavelet Transform(DT-CWT) to obtains the features in 12 different directions as against 3 and 6 directions in Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Complex Wavelet Transform (CWT) respectively. Iris features are obtained by computing energies and standard deviation of detailed coefficients in 12 directions. The sub-bands f RCWT are derived from sub-bands of CWT by using the suitable mapping rules. Canbera distance is used for matching. The results are obtained using DWT, CWT and combination of CWT and RCWT on UBIRIS database of 2400 images. The performance measure, ZeroFAR is reduced from 6.3 using DWT to 2.9 using the proposed method. The method is also computationally efficient as compared to Gabor Filters.
Emission rate studying through nanodiamonds with embedded nitrogen vacancy centers

High-refractive index nanoparticles, including diamond nanoparticles, can exhibit strong optical resonances, whose spectral position depends on particle size and shape. In this work we demonstrate that these resonances can be used to control the emission of active defects within the particles. We present the theoretical concept of an active dielectric nanoantenna, and study the dependence of the radiation properties on the position of the defect within the particle, as well as on particle size.
Fast, multicore-scalable, low-fragmentation memory allocation through large virtual memory and global data structures

We demonstrate that general-purpose memory allocation involving many threads on many cores can be done with high performance, multicore scalability, and low memory consumption. For this purpose, we have designed and implemented scalloc, a concurrent allocator that generally performs and scales in our experiments better than other allocators while using less memory, and is still competitive otherwise. The main ideas behind the design of scalloc are: uniform treatment of small and big objects through so-called virtual spans, efficiently and effectively reclaiming free memory through fast and scalable global data structures, and constant-time (modulo synchronization) allocation and deallocation operations that trade off memory reuse and spatial locality without being subject to false sharing.
Crystal structure of human sex hormone‐binding globulin: steroid transport by a laminin G‐like domain

Human sex hormone‐binding globulin (SHBG) transports sex steroids in blood and regulates their access to target tissues. In biological fluids, SHBG exists as a homodimer and each monomer comprises two laminin G‐like domains (G domains). The crystal structure of the N‐terminal G domain of SHBG in complex with 5α‐dihydrotestosterone at 1.55 Å resolution reveals both the architecture of the steroid‐binding site and the quaternary structure of the dimer. We also show that G domains have jellyroll topology and are structurally related to pentraxin. In each SHBG monomer, the steroid intercalates into a hydrophobic pocket within the β‐sheet sandwich. The steroid and a 20 Å distant calcium ion are not located at the dimer interface. Instead, two separate steroid‐binding pockets and calcium‐binding sites exist per dimer. The structure displays intriguing disorder for loop segment Pro130–Arg135. In all other jellyroll proteins, this loop is well ordered. If modelled accordingly, it covers the steroid‐binding site and could thereby regulate access of ligands to the binding pocket.
The Contextual Interference Effect and Sport Skills

During the last twenty-five years, the contextual interference effect has been thoroughly studied. This review finds that the effect is relatively robust in basic research, but considerably weaker in applied settings. Motor learning scholars have urged practitioners to develop instructional strategies based upon the inferences of the contextual interference effect. The smaller effects seem to indicate that the concept may have more limited use for the physical educator. It appears that the generalization of procedures from other domains may not adequately accommodate the complexity of motor skills. Manipulating the task difficulty, both nominal and functional, and the contextual continuum may be a promising route for the practitioner.
Impact of Statistical Central Composite Face Centered Design Approach on Method and Process Optimization of Metformin Hydrochloride Loaded PLGA Nanoformulation

Background: In a conventional approach, development of nanoformulation necessitate significant amount of time, effort and cost. Objective: The current investigation was aimed at studying the impact of statistical central composite face centered (CCF) design on method and process optimization of metformin HCl (MH) loaded poly (D,L-lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) nanoformulation. Method: MH loaded PLGA nanoformulations were prepared by solvent evaporation method (SEV) and nanoprecipitation method (NPT) within a validated design space of 2-factor, 3–level CCF design. The effect of independent variables, PLGA and Poloxamer-188 on response variables such as particle size, zetapotential, entrapment efficiency and drug release were evaluated. Desirability approach, contour plots, surface response plots, perturbation plots and sweet spot analysis of graphical optimization technique were employed in nanoformulation. Results: Comparative study of optimized nanoformulations of SEV, NPT methods by CCF design reveal that both methods produce spherical shape particles of nanosize, with homogenous distribution and good drug entrapment efficiency. Nanoprecipitation method is proven as the best optimized method, composed of nanoformulation of 1.0%, w/v PLGA and 0.680%, w/v Poloxamer exhibited mean particle size of 110.8 nm, entrapment efficiency of 71.62% and drug release 88.85% at 12hrs, in comparison to solvent evaporation method. Conclusion: These research findings not only emphasize the understanding of CCF design as a promising optimization tool for method and formulation process development of MH loaded PLGA nanoformulations, but are also a worthwhile option time and efforts involved in complex and complicated formulation development process of nanoformulations for successful commercialization.
WatchUDrive: Differentiating drivers and passengers using smartwatches

Personalization and automation in future smart vehicles hinge on accurately identifying the driver and passengers in the vehicle. Traditional approaches either require additional infrastructure or impose assumptions about how users interact with their smartphones. The recent proliferation of commercial smartwatches enables new opportunities to solve this problem due to the fixed position of the watch on the wrist. We use this observation to motivate WatchUDrive, our smartwatch-based application for identifying whether the wearer is the driver or a passenger in a vehicle. We evaluate two smartwatch sensing modalities for driver vs. passenger differentiation: the accelerometer and the camera. Using 40 in-vehicle episodes collected from 8 users and 8 different vehicles, we show that the accelerometer yields 90% accuracy within 10 seconds, whereas the camera only yields 62% accuracy within 110 seconds.
A robust on-board tracking technique for spaceborne radar sounders

In spaceborne radar sounder systems, the constraint on data storage imposes an upper bound to the radar receiving window length. Accordingly, an adaptive tracking procedure capable of shifting the receiving window in time according to the topography and spacecraft orbit variations is needed for maximizing the amount of signal acquired from the subsurface. Moreover, spaceborne sounder systems usually have constraints in terms of number of acquisitions and power consumption. Thus, tracking robustness and simplicity are mandatory requirements. In this paper, we present an adaptive range tracking technique derived from a combination of OCOG (Offset Center Of Gravity) leading edge estimation and a-β filter. It gives significant improvements in the loss of lock detection. The performances of the overall technique are evaluated by different simulations of meaningful application scenarios which confirm its effectiveness.
A Parkinsonian syndrome in methcathinone users and the role of manganese.

BACKGROUND A distinctive extrapyramidal syndrome has been observed in intravenous methcathinone (ephedrone) users in Eastern Europe and Russia. METHODS We studied 23 adults in Latvia who had extrapyramidal symptoms and who had injected methcathinone for a mean (+/-SD) of 6.7+/-5.1 years. The methcathinone was manufactured under home conditions by potassium permanganate oxidation of ephedrine or pseudoephedrine. All patients were positive for hepatitis C virus, and 20 were also positive for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). RESULTS The patients reported that the onset of their first neurologic symptoms (gait disturbance in 20 and hypophonia in 3) occurred after a mean of 5.8+/-4.5 years of methcathinone use. At the time of neurologic evaluation, all 23 patients had gait disturbance and difficulty walking backward; 11 patients were falling daily, and 1 of these patients used a wheelchair. Twenty-one patients had hypophonic speech in addition to gait disturbance, and one of these patients was mute. No patient reported decline in cognitive function. T(1)-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed symmetric hyperintensity in the globus pallidus and in the substantia nigra and innominata in all 10 active methcathinone users. Among the 13 former users (2 to 6 years had passed since the last use), lesser degrees of change in the MRI signal were noted. Whole-blood manganese levels (normal level, <209 nmol per liter) averaged 831 nmol per liter (range, 201 to 2102) in the active methcathinone users and 346 nmol per liter (range, 114 to 727) in former users. The neurologic deficits did not resolve after patients discontinued methcathinone use. CONCLUSIONS Our observation of a distinctive extrapyramidal syndrome, changes in the MRI signal in the basal ganglia, and elevated blood manganese levels in methcathinone users suggests that manganese in the methcathinone solution causes a persistent neurologic disorder.
Analysis and design of an adaptive proactive reconfiguration approach for memristive crossbar memories

Memristive devices are being considered as a promising alternative to implement future memory cells. However, manufacturing process at nano-scale sizes makes them susceptible to several kinds of reliability concerns, and consequently it becomes necessary to design innovative architectures to overcome these drawbacks. This paper presents the design basis of a proactive reconfiguration approach in memristive crossbars, in order to extend the system lifetime by utilizing available resources in an intense way and without need of failure recovery. Then, an architectural implementation of a this crossbar with adaptive proactive realization, i.e. a proactive strategy by adjustable shifting, is introduced, what can improve the reliability and extend their lifetime up to 65% in comparison with non-adaptive reconfiguration strategy.
Identification of rare anti-phospholipid/protein co-factor autoantibodies in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus

Lupus anticoagulant (LA) and β2-glikoprotein I (b2GPI) dependent anti-cardiolipin (aCL) are part of the diagnostic criteria both of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and anti-phospholipid syndrome (APS). Anti-phospholipid antibodies (aPL) may also bind to other phospholipids and/or protein co-factors. In the present study, besides aCL and anti-b2GPI, antibodies directed against phosphatidylserine, prothrombin (PT) and annexin V (aANX) were measured in 85 randomly selected SLE patients, 14 suffering from secondary APS. LA was detected by hemostasis tests. Correlations were determined between rare aPLs and clinical manifestations, including thrombotic events. Anti-cardiolipin IgG was positive in 14 patients, aCL IgM in 8, anti-b2GPI IgG in 4 and IgM in 5 patients. LA was detected in nine cases. Seven patients were positive for anti-phosphatidylserine (aPS) IgG, nine for aPS IgM, while anti-PT (aPT) IgG was positive in nine cases. aPT IgM and anti-aANX were negative in all patients. Correlation was found between aPS and aCL antibodies. The frequency and concentration of rare anti-phospholipid/co-factor antibodies was higher in patients with secondary APS. The presence of such rare aPLs cumulated in APS patients, their presence increased the frequency of thrombotic events in the entire study population, furthermore in patients positive for LA or aCL. Rare anti-phospholipid/co-factor antibodies were found in 12% of an un-selected lupus patient population. Their presence was more frequent in patients with secondary APS, and further increased the risk of thrombotic complications.
Computational models of location-invariant orthographic processing

We trained three topologies of backpropagation neural networks to discriminate 2000 words (lexical representations) presented at different positions of a horizontal letter array. The first topology (zero-deck) contains no hidden layer, the second (one-deck) has a single hidden layer, and for the last topology (two-deck), the task is divided in two subtasks implemented as two stacked neural networks, with explicit word-centred letters as intermediate representations. All topologies successfully simulated two key benchmark phenomena observed in skilled human reading: transposed-letter priming and relative-position priming. However, the two-deck topology most accurately simulated the ability to discriminate words from nonwords, while containing the fewest connection weights. We analysed the internal representations after training. Zero-deck networks implement a letter-based scheme with a position bias to differentiate anagrams. One-deck networks implement a holographic overlap coding in which representations are essentially letter-based and words are linear combinations of letters. Two-deck networks also implement holographic-coding.
Evolution of Biologics Screening Technologies

Screening for biologics, in particular antibody drugs, has evolved significantly over the last 20 years. Initially, the screening processes and technologies from many years experience with small molecules were adopted and modified to suit the needs of biologics discovery. Since then, antibody drug discovery has matured significantly and is today investing earlier in new technologies that commercial suppliers are now developing specifically to meet the growing needs of large molecule screening. Here, we review the evolution of screening and automation technologies employed in antibody discovery and highlight the benefits that these changes have brought.
Human-in-the-Loop Parsing

This paper demonstrates that it is possible for a parser to improve its performance with a human in the loop, by posing simple questions to non-experts. For example, given the first sentence of this abstract, if the parser is uncertain about the subject of the verb “pose,” it could generate the question What would pose something? with candidate answers this paper and a parser. Any fluent speaker can answer this question, and the correct answer resolves the original uncertainty. We apply the approach to a CCG parser, converting uncertain attachment decisions into natural language questions about the arguments of verbs. Experiments show that crowd workers can answer these questions quickly, accurately and cheaply. Our human-in-the-loop parser improves on the state of the art with less than 2 questions per sentence on average, with a gain of 1.7 F1 on the 10% of sentences whose parses are changed.
Automatic Extraction of Subcategorization from Corpora

We describe a novel technique and implemented system for constructing a subcategorization dictionary from textual corpora. Each dictionary entry encodes the relative frequency of occurrence of a comprehensive set of subcategorization classes for English. An initial experiment, on a sample of 14 verbs which exhibit multiple complementation patterns, demonstrates that the technique achieves accuracy comparable to previous approaches, which are all limited to a highly restricted set of subcategorization classes. We also demonstrate that a subcategorization dictionary built with the system improves the accuracy of a parser by an appreciable amount1.
A radio-telemetry system with a shape memory alloy microelectrode for neural recording of freely moving insects

A radio frequency (RF) telemetry system with a shape memory alloy microelectrode was designed and fabricated. The total size and weight are 15 mm /spl times/8 mm and 0.1 g, respectively. Since the telemeter is small and light enough to be loaded on a small animal such as an insect, the system can be used for the neural recording of a freely moving insect. The RF-telemeter can transmit signals by frequency modulation transmission at 80-90 MHz. The transmitted signals can be received up to about 16 meters away from the telemeter with a high signal-to-noise ratio. The neural activity can be detected without attenuation by using an instrumentation amplifier with its input impedance set to 2 M/spl Omega/ at 1kHz. The telemeter was loaded on a cockroach and the neural activity during a free-walk was successfully measured through this telemetry system.
Tracking cortical surface deformations based on vessel structure using a laser range scanner

This paper reports a vessel structure based non-rigid registration method for cortical surface registration and deformation tracking using a laser-range scanner(LRS). The LRS contains both geometric and texture information of the brain surface, i.e. the unit produces a three-dimensional (3-D) textured point cloud. Unlike our previous registration work, in this paper we investigate using vessel structures on the brain surface in conjunction with a 3-D point-based nonrigid registration method to measure brain deformations from LRS data. Specifically, three separate 3-D vessel contour models were extracted from two LRS textured point clouds (pre- and post-deformed cortical surfaces) and the robust point matching (RPM) by Chui and Rangarajaan was used to align the vessel structures non-rigidly. The measurements of four landmarks were compared to those acquired with an independent optically tracked stylus. Preliminary results improved target registration error from 5.7 mm to 4.1 mm, and the angular error from 32.7deg to 21.2deg. When analyzing each landmark independently across the vessel models, the results indicate that this error may potentially be reduced to less than 2 mm