Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cerebral small vessel disease and incident parkinsonism

Objective: To investigate the relation between baseline cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) and the risk of incident parkinsonism using different MRI and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) measures. Methods: In the Radboud University Nijmegen Diffusion Tensor and Magnetic Resonance Cohort (RUN DMC) study, a prospective cohort study, 503 elderly participants with SVD and without parkinsonism were included in 2006. During follow-up (2011–2012), parkinsonism was diagnosed according to UK Brain Bank criteria. Cox regression analysis was used to investigate the association between baseline imaging measures and incident all-cause parkinsonism and vascular parkinsonism (VP). Tract-based spatial statistics analysis was used to identify differences in baseline DTI measures of white matter (WM) tracts between participants with VP and without parkinsonism. Results: Follow-up was available from 501 participants (mean age 65.6 years; mean follow-up duration 5.2 years). Parkinsonism developed in 20 participants; 15 were diagnosed with VP. The 5-year risk of (any) parkinsonism was increased for those with a high white matter hyperintensity (WMH) volume (hazard ratio [HR] 1.8 per SD increase, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.3–2.4) and a high number of lacunes (HR 1.4 per number increase, 95% CI 1.1–1.8) at baseline. For VP, this risk was also increased by the presence of microbleeds (HR 5.7, 95% CI 1.9–16.8) and a low gray matter volume (HR 0.4 per SD increase, 95% CI 0.2–0.8). Lower fractional anisotropy values in bifrontal WM tracts involved in movement control were observed in participants with VP compared to participants without parkinsonism. Conclusions: SVD at baseline, especially a high WMH volume and a high number of lacunes, is associated with incident parkinsonism. Our findings favor a role of SVD in the etiology of parkinsonism.
The impact of internal and external factors on linguistic performance in the home language and in L2 among Russian-Hebrew and Russian-German preschool children

This paper evaluates the contribution of external background factors which pertain to the child’s environment (e.g., parent education, parent occupation, family size, etc.), and internal ones which reflect the child’s time related experience with language (e.g., chronological age, age of L2 onset, etc.) to the development of linguistic skills in the two languages of bilingual children. 65 Russian-German (Mean age: 66mo, Range: 47-86mo) and 78 Russian-Israeli migrant children (Mean age: 70mo, Range: 58-81) with comparable mean length of L2 exposure (M=37mo) and family size (1.88 children) but different Socio-Economic Status (SES), were tested with a battery of language and their parents were interviewed. Overall, internal, temporal, factors showed a stronger relationship to language measures than external, environmental, factors: age of L2 onset and length of L2 exposure correlated with L2, while parents’ education/occupation showed positive correlations with both L1 and L2 measures. In the Russian-German cohort, which had a sub-group with relatively lower SES, SES positively correlated with L1 success as well.
Selection and Evaluation of Reference Genes for Reverse Transcription-Quantitative PCR Expression Studies in a Thermophilic Bacterium Grown under Different Culture Conditions

The phylum Deinococcus-Thermus is a deeply-branching lineage of bacteria widely recognized as one of the most extremophilic. Members of the Thermus genus are of major interest due to both their bioremediation and biotechnology potentials. However, the molecular mechanisms associated with these key metabolic pathways remain unknown. Reverse-transcription quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) is a high-throughput means of studying the expression of a large suite of genes over time and under different conditions. The selection of a stably-expressed reference gene is critical when using relative quantification methods, as target gene expression is normalized to expression of the reference gene. However, little information exists as to reference gene selection in extremophiles. This study evaluated 11 candidate reference genes for use with the thermophile Thermus scotoductus when grown under different culture conditions. Based on the combined stability values from BestKeeper and NormFinder software packages, the following are the most appropriate reference genes when comparing: (1) aerobic and anaerobic growth: TSC_c19900, polA2, gyrA, gyrB; (2) anaerobic growth with varied electron acceptors: TSC_c19900, infA, pfk, gyrA, gyrB; (3) aerobic growth with different heating methods: gyrA, gap, gyrB; (4) all conditions mentioned above: gap, gyrA, gyrB. The commonly-employed rpoC does not serve as a reliable reference gene in thermophiles, due to its expression instability across all culture conditions tested here. As extremophiles exhibit a tendency for polyploidy, absolute quantification was employed to determine the ratio of transcript to gene copy number in a subset of the genes. A strong negative correlation was found to exist between ratio and threshold cycle (CT) values, demonstrating that CT changes reflect transcript copy number, and not gene copy number, fluctuations. Even with the potential for polyploidy in extremophiles, the results obtained via absolute quantification indicate that relative quantification is appropriate for RT-qPCR studies with this thermophile.
Purification and Properties of Peroxidase from Nitrosomonas europaea 1

Nitrosomonas europaea is an obligate chemosynthetic bacterium that oxidizes ammonium (NH4+) to nitrite (NO2-) via a pathway that includes hydroxylamine (NH20H) as an intermediate (18). The conversion ofNH20H to N02has been performed with cell-free systems that are particulate and contain flavine, cytochromes a, b, and c, and NH20H-cytochrome c reductase (12, 15). However, in one report (29), the terminal oxidase is described as soluble rather than particulate and of the cytochrome o rather than of the cytochrome a type. More is known of the oxidation of NH20H to NO2than of the oxidation of NH4+ to NH20H. In fact, the latter transformation has not as yet been accomplished with a cell-free system. Anderson (2) reported that the reaction was endergonic and initially suggested that NH4+ oxidation required an expenditure of high-energy phosphate. He subsequently postulated (3) activation of NH4+ by oxygen in the form of peroxide (H202). Peroxide may be generated by the oxidation of a reduced carrier (flavine) in the electron transport system that links NH20H-cytochrome c reductase and atmospheric oxygen. Of particular interest in this
Électronique et transmission de l ’ information LOW VOLTAGE CHARGE PUMP CIRCUIT USING 0 . 18 μ m CMOS TECHNOLOGY

An enhanced charge pump circuit utilizing charge-transfer-switch (CTS) to direct charge flow with improved voltage pumping gain is proposed in this paper. The diodeconfigured output stage limitation is managed through the pumping of output stage by the clock of improved charge pump circuit. Using Mentor Graphics, the proposed charge pump circuit is designed in 0.18 μm CMOS process. It is able to pump an input voltage of 1.8 V to a measured output of 5.95 V through 20MHz clock signal with each pumping capacitor of 0.1 pF and smoothing capacitor of 0.1 pF at the output. From the simulation result, it is evident that the proposed charged pump circuit offers higher pumping gain compared with the existing charge pump circuit. Besides, using in NonVolatile Memory (NVM), proposed design can be used in low voltage memory circuits.
Hyperspectral Band Selection Based on Trivariate Mutual Information and Clonal Selection

Band selection is an important preprocessing step for hyperspectral data processing. It involves two crucial problems, i.e., suitable measure criterion and effective search strategy. Mutual information (MI) has been widely used as the measure criterion for its nonlinear and nonparametric characteristics. For efficient calculation, traditional MI-based criteria commonly use bivariate MI (BMI) to approximate the ideal MI-based criterion. However, these BMI-based criteria may miss the bands having discriminative information and do not give the condition of the approximation. In this paper, a novel criterion based on trivariate MI (TMI) is proposed to measure the redundancy for classification. From the multivariate MI perspective, the proposed TMI-based and traditional BMI-based criteria are proved as the low-order approximations of the ideal criterion under some assumptions. Compared with the BMI-based criteria, a more relaxed assumption condition is required for the TMI-based criterion. To alleviate the problem of few labeled samples existing in hyperspectral images, the TMI-based criterion is extended to the semisupervised TMI-based (STMI) method by adding a graph regulation term. Additionally, to search an appropriate band subset by the TMI- and STMI-based criteria, a new clonal selection algorithm (CSA) is proposed. In CSA, integer encoding and adaptive operators are devised to reduce space and time cost. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms for hyperspectral band selection.
Octant: A Comprehensive Framework for the Geolocalization of Internet Hosts

Determining the physical location of Internet hosts is a critical enabler for many new location-aware services. In this paper, we present Octant, a novel, comprehensive framework for determining the location of Internet hosts in the real world based solely on network measurements. The key insight behind this framework is to pose the geolocalization problem formally as one of error-minimizing constraint satisfaction, to create a system of constraints by deriving them aggressively from network measurements, and to solve the system geometrically to yield the estimated region in which the target resides. This approach gains its accuracy and precision by taking advantage of both positive and negative constraints, that is, constraints on where the node can and cannot be, respectively. The constraints are represented using regions bounded by Bezier curves, allowing precise constraint representation and low-cost geometric operations. The framework can reason in the presence of uncertainty, enabling it to gracefully cope with aggressively derived constraints that may contain errors. An evaluation of Octant using PlanetLab nodes and public traceroute servers shows that Octant can localize the median node to within 22 mi. , a factor of three better than other evaluated approaches.
Off-Road Path and Obstacle Detection Using Decision Networks and Stereo Vision

Autonomous driving in off-road environments requires an exceptionally capable sensor system, particularly given that the unstructured environment does not provide many of the cues available in on-road environments. This paper presents a complex vision system, which is able to provide the two basic sensorial capabilities needed by autonomous vehicle navigation in extreme environments: obstacle detection and path detection. A variable-width-baseline (up to 1.5 m) single-frame stereo system is used for pitch estimation and obstacle detection, whereas a decision-network approach is used to detect the drivable path by a monocular vision system. The system has been field tested on the TerraMax vehicle, which is one of the only five vehicles to complete the 2005 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge course.
Suicide methods in Europe: a gender-specific analysis of countries participating in the “European Alliance Against Depression”

Objective: To identify the most frequent gender-specific suicide methods in Europe. Design: Proportions of seven predominant suicide methods utilised in 16 countries participating in the European Alliance Against Depression (EAAD) were reported in total and cross-nationally. Relative risk (RR) relating to suicide methods and gender was calculated. To group countries by pattern of suicide methods, hierarchical clustering was applied. Setting and participants: Data on suicide methods for 119 122 male and 41 338 female cases in 2000–4/5 from 16 EAAD countries, covering 52% of European population were obtained. Results: Hanging was the most prevalent suicide method among both males (54.3%) and females (35.6%). For males, hanging was followed by firearms (9.7%) and poisoning by drugs (8.6%); for females, by poisoning by drugs (24.7%) and jumping from a high place (14.5%). Only in Switzerland did hanging rank as second for males after firearms. Hanging ranked first among females in eight countries, poisoning by drugs in five and jumping from a high place in three. In all countries, males had a higher risk than females of using firearms and hanging and a lower risk of poisoning by drugs, drowning and jumping. Grouping showed that countries might be divided into five main groups among males; for females, grouping did not yield clear results. Conclusions: Research on suicide methods could lead to the development of gender-specific intervention strategies. Nevertheless, other approaches, such as better identification and treatment of mental disorders and the improvement of toxicological aid should be put in place.
Psychometric Characteristics of Two Semi-structured Scales for the Functional Evaluation of Hemi- inattention in Extrapersonal and Personal Space

Abstract The psychometric characteristics of two semi-structured scales for evaluation of the extrapersonal and personal hemi-inattentive disorder in situations similar to those of everyday life are analysed. The scales were administered to 73 RBD patients (55 resulted hemi-inattentive on standard diagnostic tests) and to 26 control subjects. Results showed a high level of interjudge and internal consistency for both instruments. Asymmetrical performances were very rare in control subjects. For the Extrapersonal Scale, asymmetry was detected in most neglect patients while it was rare in patients without neglect. For the Personal Scale, about half of hemi-inattentive patients and 25% of patients without hemi-inattention displayed asymmetrical performance. These findings are consistent with the idea that the Personal Scale measures a different dimension than both the Extrapersonal Scale and standard tests for neglect. In a similar vein, the Extrapersonal, but not the Personal, Scale was correlated with stan.
Cost-Effective IP Trace Publishing Using Data Sketch

IP Traces are sets of IP packets (or packet headers) captured at the measuring point. Their publishing, which is most challenged by massive size concern, is crucial for network research. In this paper, we propose a new scheme for IP Trace publishing which offers much smaller transportation quantity than the traditional methods. Based on Cisco's Net flow technique, the data provider first summarizes an original IP Trace to a sketch. During the summarizing process, extra statistics of certain fields in the original IP Trace are obtained. The sketch and the statistics, which are much smaller in size, are then published instead of the original IP Trace. Based on the Monte Carlo simulation technique, the data down loader can generate a synthetic IP Trace from the sketch and the statistics which preserves most of the statistical properties of the original IP Trace. According to our experiments, the transportation quantity of our scheme is only 3% of that in the traditional methods and meanwhile privacy is better protected. In the end, the utility of the synthetic IP Trace and that of the original IP Trace are compared using two network performance metrics (throughput and RTT). The result shows that this scheme is feasible.
Concentration of Strontium-90 at Selected Hot Spots in Japan

This study is dedicated to the environmental monitoring of radionuclides released in the course of the Fukushima nuclear accident. The activity concentrations of β− -emitting 90Sr and β−/γ-emitting 134Cs and 137Cs from several hot spots in Japan were determined in soil and vegetation samples. The 90Sr contamination levels of the samples were relatively low and did not exceed the Bq⋅g−1 range. They were up four orders of magnitude lower than the respective 137Cs levels. This study, therefore, experimentally confirms previous predictions indicating a low release of 90Sr from the Fukushima reactors, due to its low volatility. The radiocesium contamination could be clearly attributed to the Fukushima nuclear accident via its activity ratio fingerprint (134Cs/137Cs). Although the correlation between 90Sr and 137Cs is relatively weak, the data set suggests an intrinsic coexistence of both radionuclides in the contaminations caused by the Fukushima nuclear accident. This observation is of great importance not only for remediation campaigns but also for the current food monitoring campaigns, which currently rely on the assumption that the activity concentrations of β−-emitting 90Sr (which is relatively laborious to determine) is not higher than 10% of the level of γ-emitting 137Cs (which can be measured quickly). This assumption could be confirmed for the samples investigated herein.
A Convex-Ear Decomposition for Rank-Selected Subposets of Supersolvable Lattices

Let $L$ be a supersolvable lattice with nonzero Mobius function. We show that the order complex of any rank-selected subposet of $L$ admits a convex-ear decomposition. This proves many new inequalities for the h-vectors of such complexes, and shows that their g-vectors are M-vectors.
Implicating the H 63 D polymorphism in the HFE gene in increased incidence of solid cancers : a meta-analysis

A number of previous studies have demonstrated that the HFE H63D polymorphism is associated with increased risk of incidence multiple types of cancer, including colorectal cancer, breast cancer, liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, and gynecological malignant tumors. However, the clinical outcomes were inconsistent. Therefore, this meta-analysis was conducted to summarize the effect of the H63D variant on the incidence of solid tumor. PubMed and EMBASE databases were searched for articles associating the HFE H63D polymorphism with cancer risk. The relationships were evaluated by calculating the pooled odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). A total of 28 studies, including 7728 cancer cases and 11,895 controls, were identified. Statistically significant associations were identified between the HFE H63D polymorphism and solid cancer risk (CG vs CC, OR = 1.14, 95%CI = 1.07-1.23, P < 0.001; GG vs CC, OR = 1.28, 95%CI = 1.06-1.55, P = 0.010; CG/GG vs CC, OR = 1.16, 95%CI = 1.08-1.24, P < 0.001; GG vs CC/CG, OR = 1.24, 95%CI = 1.02-1.49, P = 0.027). In the subgroup analysis, we illustrated the effect 13736 L.L. Shen et al. ©FUNPEC-RP www.funpecrp. com.br Genetics and Molecular Research 14 (4): 13735-13745 (2015) of the H63D polymorphism on hepatocellular carcinoma and pancreatic cancer risk, particularly in the Asian and African subgroups; however, this was not observed in gynecological malignant tumors. In summary, this analysis provided strong evidence that the HFE H63D polymorphism may play a critical role in the increased aggressiveness of hepatocellular carcinoma and pancreatic cancer.
Identification of Mycobacterium spp. by Using a Commercial 16S Ribosomal DNA Sequencing Kit and Additional Sequencing Libraries

ABSTRACT Current methods for identification of Mycobacterium spp. rely upon time-consuming phenotypic tests, mycolic acid analysis, and narrow-spectrum nucleic acid probes. Newer approaches include PCR and sequencing technologies. We evaluated the MicroSeq 500 16S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) bacterial sequencing kit (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, Calif.) for its ability to identify Mycobacterium isolates. The kit is based on PCR and sequencing of the first 500 bp of the bacterial rRNA gene. One hundred nineteen mycobacterial isolates (94 clinical isolates and 25 reference strains) were identified using traditional phenotypic methods and the MicroSeq system in conjunction with separate databases. The sequencing system gave 87% (104 of 119) concordant results when compared with traditional phenotypic methods. An independent laboratory using a separate database analyzed the sequences of the 15 discordant samples and confirmed the results. The use of 16S rDNA sequencing technology for identification of Mycobacterium spp. provides more rapid and more accurate characterization than do phenotypic methods. The MicroSeq 500 system simplifies the sequencing process but, in its present form, requires use of additional databases such as the Ribosomal Differentiation of Medical Microorganisms (RIDOM) to precisely identify subtypes of type strains and species not currently in the MicroSeq library.
Detecting Commuting Patterns by Clustering Subtrajectories

In this paper we consider the problem of detecting commuting patterns in a trajectory. For this we search for similar subtrajectories. To measure spatial similarity we choose the Frechet distance and the discrete Frechet distance between subtrajectories, which are invariant under differences in speed. We give several approximation algorithms, and also show that the problem of finding the ‘longest’ subtrajectory cluster is as hard as MaxClique to compute and approximate.
From neural networks to graphical models: a brief introduction

One of the most important and interesting aspects of the neural networks is that they exhibit collective information-processing capabilities by connecting processing elements (“neurons”), each of which performs a very simple and limited information processing. The central issue of the neural network research is thus to explore how and why such a system with simple elements exhibits complex information processing functionalities. Being looked at from another direction, by studying the problem, we are asking about the global characterization of the information processing performed by the network, on the basis of the local characterization of information processing (i.e., that performed by each neuron), as well as how they are interconnected. Essentially the same problem also arises in the study of graphical models (Bayesian networks). The main objective of this section is to give a brief review of the graphical models, with some emphasis on their relation to neural networks. In one important class of graphical models, a system with an N -dimensional random vector x is characterized by a set of local conditional probabilities of the form: p(xi|x\i), where x\i denotes the set of all the elements of x except xi. If, for all i, xi is independent of xj , j > i, then the set of the local conditional probabilities defines a global probability distribution
Factor Structure of the Kaufman Adolescent and Adult Intelligence Test (KAIT) for Whites, African Americans, and Hispanics

Factor-analyzed data for three race/ethnic groups on the Kaufman Adolescent and Adult Intelligence Test (KAIT) for people ages 11 to 93 are reported. Factor structures for Whites (N= 1,535), African Americans (N = 226), and Hispanics (N = 140) yielded Fluid and Crystallized dimensions that were congruent across race/ethnic groups and provided construct validity evidence for each subsample. The "g" factors for the three samples yielded congruence coefficients above . 99. The KAIT results were interpreted in the context of previous investigations, especially with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised.
Quick Reconstruction of Cameras and Quasi-dense Geometry from Unordered Photos

This paper presents a novel approach to quick reconstruction of cameras and quasi-dense geometry from unordered photos of a scene. With three reconstruction goals: reliable camera postures, high-density scene geometry, and a low cost of time, our approach consists of two stages: pairwise relating and two-tier reconstruction. At the first stage, to obtain better putative matches, we impose bidirectional feature matching and disparity constraint; to achieve better normalization, we perform approximate self-calibration using EXIF tag. The second stage includes a sparse and a quasi-dense reconstruction with different pivot respectively, adding selection strategies to avoid degenerate cases and improve time efficiency.