Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Anxiety disorders in Parkinson's disease: Prevalence and risk factors

Anxiety disorders are common in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients, yet are poorly studied. We examined the prevalence of anxiety disorders in PD, investigated the association between anxiety, and presentation and progression of PD, and studied for the first time the contribution of putative risk factors for anxiety in PD. A case‐series of 79 PD patients recruited from neurology out‐patient clinics was examined for anxiety disorders using the DSM‐IV criteria. The Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale and the Hoehn and Yahr Staging of PD were employed to understand the relationship between anxiety disorders, and the clinical presentation and severity of PD. A validated survey assessed putative risk factors for anxiety in PD. Twenty‐five percent of PD patients were diagnosed with anxiety. Panic disorder, generalised anxiety disorder and social phobia were prevalent anxiety disorders. Comorbid depression with anxiety was observed (14%). The severity but not the duration of PD was positively related to anxiety. PD patients with postural instability and gait dysfunction symptom clustering were more likely to experience anxiety than tremor‐dominant patients. While levodopa dosage had no relationship to anxiety, experience of dyskinesias or on/off fluctuations increased the risk. Lateralisation of PD had no association with anxiety. Anxiety disorders decreased with age and young onset PD patients were more likely to experience anxiety than the late onset subjects. Anxiety adds to the complexity of PD, lowering patients' quality of life. Future research can be directed to identify reactive and organic nature of anxiety in PD. © 2010 Movement Disorder Society
On simple one-class classification methods

The one-class classification has been successfully applied in many communication, signal processing, and machine learning tasks. This problem, as defined by the one-class SVM approach, consists in identifying a sphere enclosing all (or the most) of the data. The classical strategy to solve the problem considers a simultaneous estimation of both the center and the radius of the sphere. In this paper, we study the impact of separating the estimation problem. It turns out that simple one-class classification methods can be easily derived, by considering a least-squares formulation. The proposed framework allows us to derive some theoretical results, such as an upper bound on the probability of false detection. The relevance of this work is illustrated on well-known datasets.
PoseAgent: Budget-Constrained 6D Object Pose Estimation via Reinforcement Learning

State-of-the-art computer vision algorithms often achieve efficiency by making discrete choices about which hypotheses to explore next. This allows allocation of computational resources to promising candidates, however, such decisions are non-differentiable. As a result, these algorithms are hard to train in an end-to-end fashion. In this work we propose to learn an efficient algorithm for the task of 6D object pose estimation. Our system optimizes the parameters of an existing state-of-the art pose estimation system using reinforcement learning, where the pose estimation system now becomes the stochastic policy, parametrized by a CNN. Additionally, we present an efficient training algorithm that dramatically reduces computation time. We show empirically that our learned pose estimation procedure makes better use of limited resources and improves upon the state-of-the-art on a challenging dataset. Our approach enables differentiable end-to-end training of complex algorithmic pipelines and learns to make optimal use of a given computational budget.
The Role of the Temporal Lobes in Recognizing Visuospatial Materials: Remembering versus Knowing

Recognition memory for abstract visuospatial designs was assessed in unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) patients and normal controls using a remember/know recognition paradigm. Subjects assigned "remember" judgments to recognized items for which they could recall the study presentation, and "know" judgments to items recognized on the basis of familiarity without conscious recollection of the study episode. In Experiment 1 normal controls and left TLE patients gave more "know" than "remember" recognition judgments for visuospatial materials. Right TLE subjects, however, showed the opposite response pattern. Experiment 1a demonstrated that this dissociation between left and right temporal patients occurred in both presurgery and postsurgery patients. In Experiment 2 recognition was assessed following encoding conditions in which subjects answered questions about either the number of lines in the designs or the appropriateness of verbal labels for presented stimuli. The previous pattern of "know" and "remember" responses was replicated for all groups in the line count condition, but was reversed for normal controls in the label condition. These results are interpreted within a theoretical framework in which "remember" responses are based on the contribution of distinctiveness of individual items to recognition whereas "know" judgements reflect perceptual fluency.
Transmission Distortion in Crohn's Disease Risk Gene ATG16L1 Leads to Sex Difference in Disease Association

Background: Crohn's disease (CD), an inflammatory disease of the bowel, affects millions of people around the world. Evidence suggests that disease onset and pathogenesis differ between males and females. Yet no comprehensive efforts exist to assess the sex‐specific genetic architecture of CD. Methods: We used genotyping data from a cohort of 1748 CD cases and 2938 controls to investigate 71 meta‐analysis‐confirmed CD risk loci for sex differences in disease risk. We further validated the significant results in separate cohorts of 968 CD cases and 2809 controls, and performed a meta‐analysis across datasets. Results: The single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs3792106 (C/T) in ATG16L1 showed a significant sex effect with P‐value 6.9 × 10−13 and allelic odds ratio 1.48 in females, and P‐value 0.013 and odds ratio 1.22 in males (odds ratio heterogeneity P‐value 0.037). Surprisingly, the difference was found to arise from a discrepancy in allele frequencies between male and female controls (P‐value 0.0045) rather than cases. We found similar results for this SNP in the separate validation datasets. Using 155 HapMap 3 trios, we detected significant maternal overtransmission of the T allele at rs3792106 (P‐value 0.027). Conclusions: Our results indicate that different transmission patterns between sexes may sustain the disparate allele frequencies at rs3792106 in healthy populations, and furthermore that a virus‐risk variant mechanism implicated in CD alters the distribution in diseased patients. To our knowledge, this is the first report of sex‐specific CD association in ATG16L1. The possible implications in CD and basic human biology present interesting areas for future investigation. (Inflamm Bowel Dis 2011;)
Human Astrocytes Are Resistant to Fas Ligand and Tumor Necrosis Factor-Related Apoptosis-Inducing Ligand-Induced Apoptosis

Human astrocytes express Fas yet are resistant to Fas-induced apoptosis. Here, we report that calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) is constitutively activated in human astrocytes and protects the cells from apoptotic stimulation by Fas agonist. Once stimulated, Fas recruits Fas-associated death domain and caspase-8 for the assembly of the death-inducing signaling complex (DISC); however, caspase-8 cleavage is inhibited in the DISC. Inhibition of CaMKII kinase activity inhibits the expression of phosphoprotein enriched astrocytes-15 kDa/phosphoprotein enriched in diabetes (PEA-15/PED) and cellular Fas-associated death domain-like interleukin-1β-converting enzyme-inhibitory protein (c-FLIP), thus releasing their inhibition of caspase-8 cleavage. Inhibition of PEA-15/PED or c-FLIP by small interfering RNA sensitizes human astrocytes to Fas-induced apoptosis. In contrast, inhibition of CaMKII, PEA-15, or c-FLIP does not affect the sensitivity of human astrocytes to tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL). TRAIL death receptors (DR4, DR5) are weakly expressed at mRNA, protein, and cell surface levels and thus fail to mediate the assembly of the DISC in human astrocytes. Overexpression of DR5 restores TRAIL signaling pathways and sensitizes the human astrocytes to TRAIL-induced apoptosis if CaMKII kinase activity or expression of PEA-15 and c-FLIP is inhibited; the results suggest that CaMKII-mediated pathways prevent TRAIL-induced apoptosis in human astrocytes under conditions in which TRAIL death receptors are upregulated. This study has therefore identified the molecular mechanisms that protect normal human astrocytes from apoptosis induced by Fas ligand and TRAIL.
Role of reduced ADAMTS13 in arterial ischemic stroke: A Pediatric Cohort Study

Previous studies in adults and mice have implicated ADAMTS13 (a disintegrin and metalloproteinase with a thrombospondin type 1 motif, member 13), also known as von Willebrand factor (VWF)‐cleaving protease, as a protective factor for stroke. Here we investigated ADAMTS13 in 208 pediatric patients with arterial ischemic stroke (AIS) and 125 population‐based control children in a frequency‐matched case–control study.
A survey of classification learning algorithm

Classification is one of the most active research and application areas. Since Fisher's famous discriminant analysis a plethora of algorithms for classification have been developed. This paper provides the survey of some of the important classification algorithms, outlines their advantages and disadvantages, analyzes the challenges encountered in practice nowadays and gives the promising solution to challenges.
A New Symbol Timing Synchronization Method for Wireless OFDM Systems

This paper proposes a new method for the coarse symbol timing synchronization and frequency offset estimation in wireless OFDM systems. Different from the conventional method based on the correlation between cyclic prefix and its duplicated part in the single sample point, the proposed method employs the separated block of the correlation. Simulation results and the corresponding analysis demonstrate its better accuracy and steadiness. Besides these, the presented method can also be utilized to evaluate the multi-path profile of channels
Temporal trends in socioeconomic inequalities in obesity prevalence among economically-active working-age adults in Scotland between 1995 and 2011: a population-based repeated cross-sectional study

Objectives Obesity has been an alarming public health issue in the UK. Socioeconomic inequalities in obesity have been well-studied, however limited studies addressed inequality trends over time and none of them in Scotland. Methods We used nationally-representative data from the Scottish Health Survey (SHeS) across four time points between 1995 and 2010/2011. Respondents were economically active adults aged 16–65 years (N=27 059, 12 218 men). Socioeconomic position (SEP) was assessed by highest educational qualification, occupational social class and household income (2003 and 2010/2011 only) as well as a composite SEP score. We carried out sex-stratified logistic regression analyses (adjusted for age, smoking status, alcohol consumption, self-rated general health and physical activity) and we computed the relative index of inequality (RII). Results Between 1995 and 2010/2011, obesity prevalence increased in both men (from 17% in 1995 to 30.2% in 2010/2011, 2010/2011 OR of obesity compared with 1995=2.07; 95% CI 1.83 to 2.34) and women (from 18.4% to 30.2%; OR=1.85; 95% CI 1.66 to 2.07). Increase in obesity prevalence was observed across all socioeconomic strata, within which the most rapid increase was among males from the highest socioeconomic groups. RII showed that educational inequalities in obesity narrowed for both men (p=0.007) and women (p=0.008). Income inequalities in obesity between 2003 and 2010/2011 in women were also reduced (p=0.046) on the relative scale. Conclusions Obesity prevalence in Scotland increased substantially between 1995 and 2010/2011, although socioeconomic inequalities have decreased due to the more rapid increase in the higher socioeconomic strata.
The Effect of Ultrasonic Irradiation on the Anaerobic Digestion of Activated Sludge

The activated sludge method is under continuous development and improvements. The slow degradation rate of sludge in anaerobic digester is due to the rate limiting step of sludge hydrolysis. This is caused by a low biodegradability of the cell walls and extra cellular biopolymers in sludge. It is important to reduce the amount of sludge produced and to reduce its residual organic content. There is a urgent need for the modification in sludge in anaerobic digester for compact, cost effective and efficient process for water purification system. The review showed that ultrasonic irradiation has improved the process of anaerobic digestion, solubilization, cell disruption of microorganisms, disintegration of bio-solids, the reduction of flock size and reduction in weight and volume of sludge. Thus ultrasound treatment has the potential to improve the anaerobic digestion process and enhance the recovery of valuables. This review paper will discuss the role of ultrasound in all these processes.
Asp2 and Asp3 Interact Directly with GspB, the Export Substrate of the Streptococcus gordonii Accessory Sec System

ABSTRACT GspB is a serine-rich glycoprotein adhesin of Streptococcus gordonii that is exported to the bacterial surface by the accessory Sec system. This dedicated export pathway is comprised of seven components (SecA2, SecY2, and five accessory Sec proteins [Asp1 to Asp5]). The latter proteins have no known homologs beyond the Asps of other species. Asp1 to Asp3 are absolutely required for export of the substrate GspB, but their roles in this process are unknown. Using copurification analysis and far-Western blotting, we found that Asp2 and Asp3 could individually bind the serine-rich repeat (SRR) domains of GspB. Deletion of both SRR regions of GspB led to a decrease in its export, suggesting that binding of the Asps to the SRR regions is important for GspB transport by the accessory Sec system. The Asps also bound a heterologous substrate for the accessory Sec system containing a slow-folding MalE variant, but they did not bind wild-type MalE. The combined results indicate that the Asps may recognize the export substrate through preferential interactions with its unstructured or unfolded regions. Glycosylation of the SRR domains on GspB prevented Asp binding, suggesting that binding of the Asps to the preprotein occurs prior to its full glycosylation. Together, these findings suggest that Asp2 and Asp3 are likely to function in part as chaperones in the early phase of GspB transport.
Hippocampus Segmentation Techniques: A Survey

Since the volume of hippocampal formation has been found to be an early biomarker for MCI and Alzheimer's disease, hippocampus segmentation plays a significant role in clinical diagnosis. Because hippocampus in MR images presents features of low contrast, low signal-to-noise ratio and discontinuous boundaries, accurate segmentation still remains a challenging task. We presented a survey of the methods used to segment the hippocampal formation in MR images of human brain and concluded with a discussion on the trend of the future research in hippocampus segmentation.
Fundamentals of generalized rigidity matrices for multi-layered media

abstract Rigidity matrices for multi-layered media are derived for isotropic and orthotropic layers by a simple direct procedure which brings to light their fundamental mathematical structure. The method was introduced many years ago by the author in the more general context of dynamics and stability of multi-layers under initial stress. Other earlier results are also briefly recalled such as the derivation of three-dimensional solutions from plane strain modes, the effect of initial stresses, gravity, and couple stresses for thinly laminated layers. The extension of the same mathematical structure and symmetry to viscoelastic media is valid as a consequence of fundamental principles in linear irreversible thermodynamics.
Siesta and the risk of coronary heart disease: results from a population-based, case-control study in Costa Rica.

BACKGROUND The siesta (afternoon nap or rest), a common traditional behaviour in tropical areas, may increase the risk of myocardial infarction (MI) since the post siesta cardiovascular response very closely resembles the period soon after waking up in the morning when the onset of acute cardiovascular events is high. METHODS We studied 505 MI survivors and 522 randomly selected controls, matched for age, gender, and area of residence, in a population-based case-control study in Costa Rica. Participation rates were 97% for cases and 90% for controls. All subjects completed a physical activity questionnaire that included occupational and leisure time components with specific questions on siesta. Five siesta frequency categories (<1/wk, 1-4/wk, 5-6/wk, daily [> or =1 h and <2 h], and daily [> or =2 h and <3:30 h]) were used to calculate the odds ratio (OR) by multiple logistic regression. RESULTS Compared to controls, cases were more likely to take daily siestas (44 versus 35%, P = 0. 01), and spend more time per siesta (1:07 +/- 0:04 versus 0:54 +/- 0:04 h:min, P = 0.002). As compared to subjects with the lowest siesta frequency (<1/wk), the OR for MI among those in the highest category was 1.51 (95% CI : 1.02-2.25, P for trend = 0.006). After adjusting for risk factors, lifestyle, and health history the OR across the siesta categories were 1.0, 0.77, 1.28. 1.66, and 1.40 (P for trend = 0.02). CONCLUSIONS Our data suggest that the practice of daily siesta is associated with increased risk of MI.
Absolute Spatial Context-aware visual feature descriptors for outdoor handheld camera localization overcoming visual repetitiveness in urban environments

We present a framework that enables 6DoF camera localization in outdoor environments by providing visual feature descriptors with an Absolute Spatial Context (ASPAC). These descriptors combine visual information from the image patch around a feature with spatial information, based on a model of the environment and the readings of sensors attached to the camera, such as GPS, accelerometers, and a digital compass. The result is a more distinct description of features in the camera image, which correspond to 3D points in the environment. This is particularly helpful in urban environments containing large amounts of repetitive visual features. Additionally, we describe the first comprehensive test database for outdoor handheld camera localization comprising of over 45,000 real camera images of an urban environment, captured under natural camera motions and different illumination settings. For all these images, the dataset not only contains readings of the sensors attached to the camera, but also ground truth information on the full 6DoF camera pose, and the geometry and texture of the environment. Based on this dataset, which we have made available to the public, we show that using our proposed framework provides both faster matching and better localization results compared to state-of-the-art methods.
Acute Post-Bariatric Surgery Increase in Orexin Levels Associates with Preferential Lipid Profile Improvement

Context Orexin is a recently identified neuropeptide hormone. Objectives Acute and long-term post-bariatric changes in Orexin and relationship to post-operative metabolic outcomes. Design and Participants Men and women undergoing biliopancreatic diversion with duodenal switch bariatric surgery (n = 76, BMI≥35 kg/m2) were evaluated for body composition and plasma parameters at baseline, acutely (1 and 5 days) and long-term (6 and 12 months) post-surgery. Setting University Hospital Centre, Canada. Interventions and Main Outcome Measures Groups were subdivided based on acute (average 1 and 5 day) changes in Orexin prior to weight loss: (i)>10% Orexin decrease (n = 33, OrexinDEC) and (ii)>10% Orexin increase (n = 20, OrexinINC), to evaluate impact on long-term changes. Results Both groups had comparable preoperative Orexin levels, BMI, age, sex distribution, diabetes and lipid lowering medication, plasma glucose and lipid parameters except for apolipoproteinB (p<0.007). Orexin increase was rapid and maintained throughout one year, while OrexinDEC subjects remained significantly lower throughout. Over 12 months, changes in BMI, fat mass, and %fat mass were comparable. Fasting glucose and insulin increased immediately 1-day post-operatively, decreasing rapidly (5-day) and declining thereafter with the OrexinINC group remaining lower than the OrexinDEC group throughout (p = 0.001). Similarly, plasma cholesterol, triglyceride, LDL-C and HDL-C decreased at 1-day, increased slightly (5-day), except HDL-C, then decreased over 1 year, with greater decreases in OrexinINC group relative to OrexinDEC group. Conclusion Rapid postoperative increases in plasma Orexin are associated with better improvement of glucose and lipid profiles following bariatric surgery.
Maximum Entropy Model Learning of the Translation Rules

This paper proposes a learning method of translation rules from parallel corpora. This method applies the maximum entropy principle to a probabilistic model of translation rules. First, we define feature functions which express statistical properties of this model. Next, in order to optimize the model, the system iterates following steps: (1) selects a feature function which maximizes loglikelihood, and (2) adds this function to the model incrementally. As computational cost associated with this model is too expensive, we propose several methods to suppress the overhead in order to realize the system. The result shows that it attained 69.54% recall rate.
Competitive Interactions of Attentional Resources in Early Visual Cortex during Sustained Visuospatial Attention within or between Visual Hemifields: Evidence for the Different-hemifield Advantage

Performing a task across the left and right visual hemifields results in better performance than in a within-hemifield version of the task, termed the different-hemifield advantage. Although recent studies used transient stimuli that were presented with long ISIs, here we used a continuous objective electrophysiological (EEG) measure of competitive interactions for attentional processing resources in early visual cortex, the steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP). We frequency-tagged locations in each visual quadrant and at central fixation by flickering light-emitting diodes (LEDs) at different frequencies to elicit distinguishable SSVEPs. Stimuli were presented for several seconds, and participants were cued to attend to two LEDs either in one (Within) or distributed across left and right visual hemifields (Across). In addition, we introduced two reference measures: one for suppressive interactions between the peripheral LEDs by using a task at fixation where attention was withdrawn from the periphery and another estimating the upper bound of SSVEP amplitude by cueing participants to attend to only one of the peripheral LEDs. We found significantly greater SSVEP amplitude modulations in Across compared with Within hemifield conditions. No differences were found between SSVEP amplitudes elicited by the peripheral LEDs when participants attended to the centrally located LEDs compared with when peripheral LEDs had to be ignored in Across and Within trials. Attending to only one LED elicited the same SSVEP amplitude as Across conditions. Although behavioral data displayed a more complex pattern, SSVEP amplitudes were well in line with the predictions of the different-hemifield advantage account during sustained visuospatial attention.