Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Psychometric Limitations of the Mini-Mental State Examination Among Nondemented Older Adults: An Evaluation of Neurocognitive and Magnetic Resonance Imaging Correlates

Background/Study Context: Although many of the Mini-Mental State Examination's (MMSE) limitations are well accepted among geriatricians, neuropsychologists, and other interested clinicians and researchers, its continued use in psychometrically unsound ways suggests that additional investigation and dissemination of information are sorely needed. The authors aimed to describe the reliability and validity of the MMSE as a measure of cognitive function among healthy older adults. Methods: The authors examined MMSE performance in 124 stroke- and dementia-free, community-dwelling older adults (65% male; mean age = 66.5 years). All participants were administered an extensive neuropsychological battery composed of measures of attention, executive function, memory, and visuospatial function. A subset of 99 participants also underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MMSE test-retest reliability was examined among 65 participants who underwent repeat MMSE testing over an average interval of 83.2 days. Results: Spearman test-retest correlation for total MMSE scores was r S = . 35 (p = .004), for Serial Sevens was r S = . 40 (p = .001), and for Word Recall was r S = −. 01 (p = .96). Total MMSE performance correlated significantly with a minority of neuropsychological tests and MRI-derived indices of white matter disease and brain atrophy. A subset of 17% of participants demonstrated inappropriate intrusion of MMSE Pentagon Copy during another test of visuospatial recall. Conclusions: Overall, MMSE scores exhibited ceiling effects, poor test-retest reliability, limited sensitivity to subtle brain abnormalities, and a high rate of intrusion elsewhere in the neuropsychological battery. Individual MMSE items demonstrated poor construct validity. These qualities illustrate the serious limitations of the MMSE in detecting individual differences in cognitive function among healthy older adults.
ER‐Tracker dye and BODIPY‐brefeldin A differentiate the endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi bodies from the tubular‐vacuole system in living hyphae of Pisolithus tinctorius

Two fluorochromes, ER‐TrackerTM Blue‐White DPX dye and the fluorescent brefeldin A (BFA) derivative, BODIPY‐BFA, label the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) in hyphal tips of Pisolithus tinctorius and allow its differentiation from the tubular‐vacuole system at the light microscope level in living cells. The ER‐Tracker dye labels a reticulate network similar in distribution to ER as seen in electron micrographs of freeze‐substituted hyphae. BODIPY‐BFA stains a thicker axially aligned structure with an expanded region at the apex, which is similar to that seen when hyphae are stained with ER‐Tracker dye in the presence of unconjugated BFA. This structure is considered to be ER modified by BFA, a view supported by ultrastructural observations of the effect of BFA on the fungal ER. Both fluorescent probes also stain punctate structures, which are most likely to be Golgi bodies. Neither probe labels the tubular‐vacuole system.
Genetic and Biochemical Characterization of an Acquired Subgroup B3 Metallo-β-Lactamase Gene, blaAIM-1, and Its Unique Genetic Context in Pseudomonas aeruginosa from Australia

ABSTRACT Three clinical Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates (WCH2677, WCH2813, and WCH2837) isolated from the Women's and Children's Hospital, Adelaide, Australia, produced a metallo-β-lactamase (MBL)-positive Etest result. All isolates were PCR negative for known MBL genes. A gene bank was created, and an MBL gene, designated blaAIM-1, was cloned and fully characterized. The encoded enzyme, AIM-1, is a group B3 MBL that has the highest level of identity to THIN-B and L1. It is chromosomal and flanked by two copies (one intact and one truncated) of an ISCR element, ISCR15. Southern hybridization studies indicated the movement of both ISCR15 and blaAIM-1 within the three different clinical isolates. AIM-1 hydrolyzes most β-lactams, with the exception of aztreonam and, to a lesser extent, ceftazidime; however, it possesses significantly higher kcat values for cefepime and carbapenems than most other MBLs. AIM-1 was the first mobile group B3 enzyme detected and signals further problems for already beleaguered antimicrobial regimes to treat serious P. aeruginosa and other Gram-negative infections.
Differential impact of tongue exercise on intrinsic lingual muscles

Aging is associated with muscle fiber hypotrophy and decreased percentages of rapidly contracting myosin heavy chain (MyHC) type IIb muscle fibers. Tongue exercise programs used to treat dysphagia target age‐related decline in tongue muscle function, but the impact of exercise on the intrinsic tongue muscles is unknown. We hypothesized that exercise would induce muscle fiber hypertrophy and increase the percentage of MyHC IIa fibers in the intrinsic tongue.
Family Size and Educational Investments in Children: Evidence from Private Tutoring Expenditures in South Korea

Relying on private tutoring expenditures in South Korea, this paper examines whether large family size has a strong negative impact on educational investments in children. To deal with endogeneity of family size, the paper employs a non-parametric bounding method as well as an instrumental variables method. Our primary finding is that quantity–quality trade-offs in educational investments function in a way that varies by the sex of the child. While there is a non-negligible negative effect of large family size on educational investments for girls, there is little if any impact on those for boys. Son preferences traditionally shown by Korean parents seem to underlie such empirical findings.
A Morpheme-Based Weighting for Chinese-Mongolian Statistical Machine Translation

SUMMARY In this paper, a morpheme-based weighting and its integration method are proposed as a smoothing method to alleviate the data sparseness in Chinese-Mongolian statistical machine translation (SMT). Besides, we present source-side reordering as the pre-processing model to verify the extensibility of our method. Experi-mental results show that the morpheme-based weighting can substantially improve the translation quality.
Effectiveness of medical resident education in mechanical ventilation.

Specific methods of mechanical ventilation management reduce mortality and lower health care costs. However, in the face of a predicted deficit of intensivists, it is unclear whether residency programs are training internists to provide effective care for patients who require mechanical ventilation. To evaluate these educational outcomes, we administered a validated 19-item case-based test and survey to resident physicians at 31 diverse U.S. internal medicine residency programs nationwide. Of 347 senior residents, 259 (75%) responded. The mean test score was 74% correct (SD, 14%; range, 37 to 100%). Important items representing evidence-based standards of critical care answered incorrectly were as follows: use of appropriate tidal volume in the acute respiratory distress syndrome (48% incorrect), identifying a patient ready for a weaning trial (38% incorrect), and recognizing indication for noninvasive ventilation (27% incorrect). Most accurately identified pneumothorax (86% correct) and increased intrathoracic positive end-expiratory pressure (93% correct). Better scores were associated with "closed" versus "open" intensive care unit organization (76 versus 71% correct, p = 0.001), resident perception of greater versus lesser ventilator knowledge (79 versus 71% correct, p = 0.001), and graduation from a U.S. versus international medical school (75 versus 69% correct, p = 0.033). Although overall training satisfaction correlated strongly with program use of learning objectives (r = 0.89, p < 0.0001), only 46% reported being satisfied with their mechanical ventilation training. We conclude that senior residents may not be gaining essential evidence-based knowledge needed to provide effective care for patients who require mechanical ventilation. Residency programs should emphasize evidence-based learning objectives to guide mechanical ventilation instruction.
Distributed fault detection and isolation filter design for heterogeneous multi-agent LPV systems

In this paper, we present a new approach for the design of fault detection and isolation (FDI) filters for a class of linear parameter-varying (LPV) multi-agent systems, where the state-space representations of the agents are not identical. The developed formulation for the fault detection and isolation offers a distributed filter design method, in which each agent uses sensor measurements both locally and from the neighboring agents. Each FDI filter is in the “unknown input observer” form which are designed so that their outputs, i.e., residual signals, are: (i) robust with respect to the external disturbance inputs, and (ii) sensitive with respect to the fault signals. Finally, a numerical example is given to illustrate the efficacy of the main results of the paper.
Affective story teller: a TTS system for emotional expressivity

Some Text-to-Speech (TTS) systems revealed weaknesses in their emotional expressivity but this situation can be improved by a better parameterization of the acoustic and prosodic parameters. This paper describes a system, Affective Story Teller (AST), as an example of emotionally expressive speech synthesizer. Our technique uses several linguistic resources that recognizes emotions in the input text according to its emotional affinity and assigns appropriate prosodic parameters as well as pitch accents by XML-based tagging to generate a synthesized speech sample. Then the synthesized sample is re-synthesized through TD-PSOLA based pitch manipulation in accordance to emotional connotation. The system employed MARY TTS system to readout a folk tale. The preliminary perceptual test results are encouraging and human judges, by listening to the re-synthesized speech samples of AST, could perceive ”happy”, “sad”, and “fear” emotions much better than compared to when they listened non-affective synthesized speech.
Prevalence of Ca2+-ATPase-Mediated Carbonate Dissolution among Cyanobacterial Euendoliths

ABSTRACT Recent physiological work has shown that the filamentous euendolithic cyanobacterium Mastigocoleus testarum (strain BC008) is able to bore into solid carbonates using Ca2+-ATPases to take up Ca2+ from the medium at the excavation front, promoting dissolution of CaCO3 there. It is not known, however, if this is a widespread mechanism or, rather, a unique capability of this model strain. To test this, we undertook a survey of multispecies euendolithic microbial assemblages infesting natural carbonate substrates in marine coastal waters of the Caribbean, Mediterranean, South Pacific, and Sea of Cortez. Microscopic examination revealed the presence of complex assemblages of euendoliths, encompassing 3 out of the 5 major cyanobacterial orders. 16S rRNA gene clone libraries detected even greater diversity, particularly among the thin-filamentous forms, and allowed us to categorize the endoliths in our samples into 8 distinct phylogenetic clades. Using real-time Ca2+ imaging under a confocal laser scanning microscope, we could show that all communities displayed light-dependent formation of Ca2+-supersaturated zones in and around boreholes, a staple of actively boring phototrophs. In 3 out of 4 samples, boring activity was sensitive to at least one of two inhibitors of Ca2+-ATPase transporters (thapsigargin or tert-butylhydroquinone), indicating that the Ca2+-ATPase mechanism is widespread among cyanobacterial euendoliths but perhaps not universal. Function-community structure correlations point to one particular clade of baeocyte-forming euendoliths as the potential exception.
Progress on Fabric Electrodes Used in ECG Signals Monitoring

Wearable monitoring system is designed for skin stimulation of conductive adhesive, prolonged physiological monitoring and biocompatibility, whose core is fabric electrodes and it can feedback physiological status by analysis of abnormal electrocardiogram (ECG). Fabric electrode is a sensor to collect biological signals based on textile materials including signals acquisition, processing systems and information feedback platform and so on. In this paper, the design methods and classification of medical electrodes would be introduced. It also sorted out the principle of biological electrical signals, the design methods and characteristics of different material and different structure electrodes from the point of dry electrodes and wet electrodes. There are many methods that can be used to prepare fabric electrodes. They are mainly metal plating, conductive polymer coating, magnetron sputtering, gas phase deposition and impregnation. Besides, they select the appropriate substrate, conductive medium and composite way to get light fabric electrodes which have high conductivity, good conformability. From the perspective of biological signal acquisition by fabric electrodes, this paper also sorted out the influence and approaches of biological signals and the way to feedback the physiological condition of human. As a new generation of bio-signal acquisition material, fabric electrode has met the requirements of the development of modern medicine. Fabric electrode is different from traditional conductive materials in the characteristics of comfort, intelligence, convenience, accuracy and so on.
DECOMPOSITION KINETICS OF GAP BINDER IN THE PRESENCE OF AN ENERGETIC COMPONENT

Glycidyl Azide Polymers (GAP) are promising candidates as energetic binders for future solid composite propellants. They produce minimum smoke, cause reduced pollution, and have low sensitivity. In our hands, we have undertaken a study of the decomposition kinetics of energetic binder in the presence of the energetic oxidizer, to assess the stability of the composite formulation. We now report the decomposition kinetics of GAP binder in the presence of two high performance and environment friendly oxidizers like Ammonium Dinitramide (ADN) and 4,10-dinitro-2,6,8,12-4,10-diazatetracyclo-[5.5. 0.0 0]dodecane (TEX). Thermal gravimetric analyses (TGA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) were used to investigate the decomposition characteristics and heat of decomposition of TEX/GAP and ADN/GAP gum formulations. Addition of GAP has improved the thermal stabilities of both AND and TEX. GAP has been found to be more vulnerable to thermal decomposition in the presence of TEX than in the presence of ADN.
Fepstrum: an improved modulation spectrum for ASR

In our previous work[3, 4], we have introduced fepstrum; an improved modulation spectrum estimation technique that overcomes certain theoretical as well as practical shortcomings in the previously published modulation spectrum related techniques[11, 13, 14]. In[3], we have also shown that fep-strum is an exact dual of the well known quantity, real cepstrum. In this paper, we provide further extensive ASR results using the fepstrum features over the TIMIT core test-set phoneme recognition task using a triphone context dependent HMM recognizer. Moreover, fepstrum performance is rigorously bench-marked against a competitive MFCC baseline, other best re-sults reported on the same task[7, 8, 9] and a heterogeneous and multiple classiﬁer based technique[5]. In our experiments, a simple concatenation of fepstrum and MFCC composite feature is used to train a conventional hidden Markov model Gaussian mixture model (HMM-GMM) recognizer. This composite feature achieves a phoneme recognition accuracy of 74.6% on the TIMITcoretest-setwhichis1.8%absolutebetterthantheMFCC HMM-GMMrecognizeraccuracyof72.8% 1 .
Disability after cardiac surgery is the major predictor of infections occurring in the rehabilitation phase

Background Few data have assessed the incidence, site and predictors of infections following cardiac surgery after discharge, particularly during an early rehabilitation phase. Aim To assess the epidemiology and predictors of infections occurring after cardiac surgery. Methods Data prospectively recorded from 5464 patients, consecutively included in a residential cardiac rehabilitation programme after cardiac surgery, were retrospectively analysed. Major infections were arbitrarily defined as (1) demonstration of bacterial growth in a sample collected to rule out a clinical suspected infection and (2) requiring an intravenous antibiotic treatment. Infections were grouped as (1) surgery-site infections (SSIs), and (2) healthcare associated infections (HCAIs). Barthel index was used as a measure of disability. Results Major infections occurred in 10.9% of patients, with SSI documented in 4.1% and HCAI in 6.8% of patients. In 50% of the cases, infections were diagnosed within four days from admission, 18 ± 16 days from intervention. A Barthel index <60 was the strongest independent predictor of SSI or HCAI. An older age, the presence of chronic renal failure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease were all significantly associated with HCAI but not with SSI. Conclusions In a large cohort of patients, residual disability after cardiac surgery was the strongest independent predictor of infections. Disability is readily accessible, and can be used to recognize patients at higher risk of infections. The 10.9% rate of major infections observed after discharge from the surgical department confirms the importance of prolonging infection surveillance after discharge from the cardiac surgery department.
A content-aware image stitching algorithm for mobile multimedia devices

This paper presents a new image stitching algorithm for mobile multimedia devices. In general, the stitched image obtained by optimal seam finding can avoid the ghost effects but sometimes experience the unconformity of the image structure and color differences near the transition region between images. To solve these problems, the proposed algorithm adopts the seam carving/inserting operator and exploits an adaptive color blending algorithm. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can produce a stitched image without visible artifacts including the ghost effects, the unconformity of the structure, and the visible color differences. With respect to the visual quality of the stitched images, the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms simple conventional stitching algorithms and is comparable to the computationally demanding Poisson image editing algorithm1.
Vitamin B 12 Deficiency and Depression in Physically Disabled Older Women : Epidemiologic Evidence From the Women ’ s Health and Aging Study

VITAMIN B12 DEFICIENCY PENNINX, GURALNIK, FERRUCCI, ET AL. Objective: It has been hypothesized that adequate concentrations of vitamin B12 and folate are essential to maintain the integrity of the neurological systems involved in mood regulation, but epidemiologic evidence for such a link in the general population is unavailable. This study examined whether community-dwelling older women with metabolically significant vitamin B12 or folate deficiency are particularly prone to depression.
Design and performance of miniaturized superconducting coplanar waveguide filters

Design and performance of coplanar waveguide (CPW) microwave filters using high Tc superconducting films have been studied. The bandpass filter made of CPW requires the coating of only one side of the substrate with a superconductor, and the width of the CPW filter can be uniformly reduced in scale without changing its characteristic impedance, leading to a miniaturized filter by adopting the meanderline geometry. In order to realize the miniaturized filter we investigate the interdigital gap with strong coupling and the modeling of the corner bend. It is shown that the size of the filter can be greatly reduced by introducing CPW with a meanderline geometry. Experiments of a prototype miniaturized CPW filter with its computer-simulated performance have been presented.
Fractionally spaced bussgang equalization for GMSK modulated signals

The problem of blind equalization of GMSK modulated signals is here addressed. In particular, resorting to a linearized model of the GMSK signal we design a Bussgang blind equalization algorithm that allows a simple incorporation of the correlation between adjacent symbols. Simulation results show that this equalization scheme achieves good performance in term of MSE on the equalized symbols, and hence, in probability of bit error.
Autologous Bone Marrow–Derived Cells in the Treatment of Liver Disease Patients

Liver transplantation is universally accepted as a “cure” procedure, and yet is not universally applicable for the treatment of end-stage liver diseases (ESLD) because of the shortage of donors, operative complications, risk of rejection, and high cost. Bioartificial liver device is an option to temporarily improve the liver function and to bridge the patients to liver transplantation. However, bioartificial liver device has many problems in clinical application, such as hepatocyte allograft rejection and maintenance of hepatocyte viability and function. Another therapeutic option is stem cell transplantation. There are two broad types of stem cells: Embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells. The latter are sourced from bone marrow (BM), adipose tissue, and blood. This review will concentrate on BM-derived cells. BM-derived cell transplantation, although not ideal, is theoretically an optimal modality for the treatment of ESLD. Autologous BM-derived cells have no graft rejection, have the capability of regeneration and self-renewal, and are multipotent stem cells that can differentiate into a variety of cell types which include hepatocytes. The pathway from BM-derived cell to hepatocyte is well documented. The present review summarizes the delivery routes of BM-derived cells to the liver, the evidences of engraftment of BM-derived cells in the liver, and the possible mechanisms of BM-derived cells in liver repair and regeneration, and finally, updates the clinical applications.
Effects of pulsed magnetic stimulation on tumor development and immune functions in mice

We investigated the effects of pulsed magnetic stimulation on tumor development processes and immune functions in mice. A circular coil (inner diameter = 15 mm, outer diameter = 75 mm) was used in the experiments. Stimulus conditions were pulse width = 238 µs, peak magnetic field = 0.25 T (at the center of the coil), frequency = 25 pulses/s, 1000 pulses/sample/day and magnetically induced eddy currents in mice = 0.79–1.54 A/m2. In an animal study, B16‐BL6 melanoma model mice were exposed to the pulsed magnetic stimulation for 16 days from the day of injection of cancer cells. A tumor growth study revealed a significant tumor weight decrease in the stimulated group (54% of the sham group). In a cellular study, B16‐BL6 cells were also exposed to the magnetic field (1000 pulses/sample, and eddy currents at the bottom of the dish = 2.36–2.90 A/m2); however, the magnetically induced eddy currents had no effect on cell viabilities. Cytokine production in mouse spleens was measured to analyze the immunomodulatory effect after the pulsed magnetic stimulation. tumor necrosis factor (TNF‐α) production in mouse spleens was significantly activated after the exposure of the stimulus condition described above. These results showed the first evidence of the anti‐tumor effect and immunomodulatory effects brought about by the application of repetitive magnetic stimulation and also suggested the possible relationship between anti‐tumor effects and the increase of TNF‐α levels caused by pulsed magnetic stimulation. Bioelectromagnetics 27:64–72, 2006. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.