Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Properties of Ca2+ sparks evoked by action potentials in mouse ventricular myocytes

1 Calcium sparks were examined in enzymatically dissociated mouse cardiac ventricular cells using the calcium indicator fluo‐3 and confocal microscopy. The properties of the mouse cardiac calcium spark are generally similar to those reported for other species. 2 Examination of the temporal relationship between the action potential and the time course of calcium spark production showed that calcium sparks are more likely to occur during the initial repolarization phase of the action potential. The latency of their occurrence varied by less than 1·4 ms (s.d.) and this low variability may be explained by the interaction of the gating of L‐type calcium channels with the changes in driving force for calcium entry during the action potential. 3 When fixed sites within the cell are examined, calcium sparks have relatively constant amplitude but the amplitude of the sparks was variable among sites. The low variability of the amplitude of the calcium sparks suggests that more than one sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) release channel must be involved in their genesis. Noise analysis (with the assumption of independent gating) suggests that > 18 SR calcium release channels may be involved in the generation of the calcium spark. At a fixed site, the response is close to ‘all‐or‐none’ behaviour which suggests that calcium sparks are indeed elementary events underlying cardiac excitation‐contraction coupling. 4 A method for selecting spark sites for signal averaging is presented which allows the time course of the spark to be examined with high temporal and spatial resolution. Using this method we show the development of the calcium spark at high signal‐to‐noise levels.
Recent Advances in the Design of Electro-Optic Sensors for Minimally Destructive Microwave Field Probing

In this paper we review recent design methodologies for fully dielectric electro-optic sensors that have applications in non-destructive evaluation (NDE) of devices and materials that radiate, guide, or otherwise may be impacted by microwave fields. In many practical NDE situations, fiber-coupled-sensor configurations are preferred due to their advantages over free-space bulk sensors in terms of optical alignment, spatial resolution, and especially, a low degree of field invasiveness. We propose and review five distinct types of fiber-coupled electro-optic sensor probes. The design guidelines for each probe type and their performances in absolute electric-field measurements are compared and summarized.
Early detection of neurodegenerative diseases from bio-signals : a machine learning approach

Given the fact that people, especially in advanced countries, are living longer due to the advancements in medical sciences which resulted in the prevalence of age-related diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia. The occurrence of such diseases continues to increase and ultimately the cost of caring for these groups will become unsustainable. Addressing this issue has reached a critical point and failing to provide a strategic way forward will negatively affect patients, national health services and society as a whole.Three distinctive development stages of neurodegenerative diseases (Retrogenesis, Cognitive Impairment and Gait Impairment) motivated me to divide this research work into two main parts. To fully achieve the purpose of early detection/diagnosis, I aimed at analysing the gait signals as well as EEG signals, separately, as both of these signals severely get affected by any neurological disease.The first part of this research work focuses on the discrimination analysis of gait signals of different neurodegenerative diseases (Parkinson’s, Huntington, and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) and also of control subjects. This involves relevant feature extraction, solving the issues of imbalanced datasets and missing entries and lastly classification of multiclass datasets. For the classification and discrimination of gait signals, eleven (11) classifiers are selected representing linear, non-linear and Bayes normal classification techniques. Results revealed that three classifiers have provided us with higher accuracy rate which are UDC, LDC and PARZEN with 65%, 62.5% and 60% accuracy, respectively. Further, I proposed and developed a new classifier fusion strategy that combined classification algorithms with combining rules (voting, product, mean, median, maximum and minimum). It generates better results and classifies subjects more accurately than base-level classifiers.The last part of this research work is based on the rectification and computation of EEG signals of mild Alzheimer’s disease patients and control subjects. To detect the perturbation in EEG signals of Alzheimer’s patients, three neural synchrony measurement techniques; phase synchrony, magnitude squared coherence and cross correlation are applied on three different databases of mild Alzheimer’s disease (MiAD) patients and healthy subjects. I have compared right and left temporal parts of brain with rest of the brain area (frontal, central and occipital), as temporal regions are relatively the first ones to be affected by Alzheimer’s. Two novel methods are proposed to compute the neural synchronization of the brain; Average synchrony measure and PCA based synchrony measure. These techniques are evaluated for three different datasets of MiAD patients and control subjects using the Wilcoxon ranksum test (Mann-Whitney U test). Results demonstrated that PCA based method helped us to find more significant features that can be used as biomarkers for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s.
Handbook of research methods in clinical psychology

GENERAL ISSUES IN CLINICAL RESEARCH Overview of Research Design Issues in Clinical Psychology - A. Kazdin Ethical Perspectives in Clinical Research - D. Bersoff & D. Bersoff Ethnicity, Gender, and Cross-Cultural Issues in Clinical Research - S. Sue, et al. Statistical Methods in Clinical Research - A. Farrell Focus Chapter: Publishing and Communicating Research Findings: Seeking Scientific Objectivity - L. Beutler & B. Martin AREAS OF CLINICAL RESEARCH: ASSESSMENT Psychometric Issues in Assessment Research - S. Haynes, et al. Research Design in Objective Personality Assessment - J. Butcher Observational Assessment: Measure Development and Research Issues - J. Cone Focus Chapter: Methodological Issues in Research Using Projective Methods - D. Westen, et al. Focus Chapter: Methodological Issues in Research on Neuropsychological and Intellectual Assessment - G. Prigatano & J. DeLuca Focus Chapter: Methodological Issues in Psychophysiological Research - A. Tomarken Focus Chapter: Item Response Theory in Assessment Research - S. Embretson & K. Prenovost AREAS OF CLINICAL RESEARCH: TREATMENT Application of Time-Series - Single-Subject) Designs in Clinical Psychology - S. Gaynor, et al. Therapy Outcome Research Methods - P. Kendall, et al. Treatment Process Research Methods - W. Stiles, et al. Focus Chapter: Research Methods in Community-Based Treatment and Prevention - P. Tolan Focus Chapter: Meta-Analytic Research Methods - J. Durlak AREAS OF CLINICAL RESEARCH: PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND HEALTH Conceptual and Methodological Issues in Developmental Psychopathology Research - D. Cicchetti & F. Rogosch Research Methods in Adults Psychopathology - L. Alloy, et al. Methodological Issues in Adult Health Psychology - T. Smith & J. Ruiz Focus Chapter: Research Methods in Pediatric Psychology - A. La Greca & W. Schuman Focus Chapter: Research Methods in Behavioral Genetics - S. Moldin Focus Chapter: Research Methods in the Study of Sexual Behavior - J. St. Lawrence & M. McFarlane SPECIAL POPULATIONS Focus Chapter: Research Methods with Children - J. Culbertson Focus Chapter: Research Methods with Adolescents - G. Holmbeck & W. Shapera Focus Chapter: Research Methods with Older Adults - B. Rybarczyk & M. Lopez Focus Chapter: Research Methods with Couples - K. Eldridge, et al. Focus Chapter: Research Methods with Families - T. Jacob, et al. Indexes.
Generalization from Sparse Input

Over the past decade, there has been an increasing awareness of the extent to which the speaker/hearer's language knowledge reflects the fine details of personal experience. This awareness can be seen in theoretical linguistics (e. approaches that rely on large-scale electronic corpora). In a curious way this reflects a pendulum swing back to older views that predate the generative era. But it is a pendulum swing with a difference. The emphasis over the past 50 years on the abstract nature of linguistic knowledge, and on ways in which linguistic generalizations often crucially refer to that abstract structure, has upped the ante for usage-based approaches. There is now a richer set of data and a more sophisticated awareness of the kinds of phenomena that want explaining. I am a firm believer in usage-based approaches. But I believe that usage has its place. We do more than simply record our past experiences, say, in some table of frequencies or probabilities. Rather, our experience forms the basis for generalization and abstraction. So induction is the name of the game. But it is also important to recognize, that induction is not unbridled or unconstrained. Indeed, decades of work in machine learning makes abundantly clear that there is no such thing as a general purpose learning algorithm that works equally well across domains. Induction may be the name of the game, but constraints are the rules that we play by. And, enthusiast that I am, I would also be the first to acknowledge that we are only now scratching the surface in developing our understanding of how induction in language learning works. In this paper, I would like to discuss several problems that arise as a result of the following conundrum. On the one hand, two things are clear. First, children receive massive amounts of language input. This point is made abundantly clear by the research of Huttenlocher and her colleagues (e. others. By some estimates, children may hear as many as 30 million words by age 3 (Hart & Risely, 1995). Second, children are extraordinarily conservative in their productions. They rarely venture very far beyond what they have heard others say. (This can give a misleading impression of linguistic precocity, when in fact children are simply skilled mimics.) This is not a new observation. among others, made this point this many years ago, but it seems only recently—perhaps in part as a result of …
Influence of the shape and surface oxidation in the magnetization reversal of thin iron nanowires grown by focused electron beam induced deposition

Iron nanostructures grown by focused electron beam induced deposition (FEBID) are promising for applications in magnetic sensing, storage and logic. Such applications require a precise design and determination of the coercive field (HC), which depends on the shape of the nanostructure. In the present work, we have used the Fe2(CO)9 precursor to grow iron nanowires by FEBID in the thickness range from 10 to 45 nm and width range from 50 to 500 nm. These nanowires exhibit an Fe content between 80 and 85%, thus giving a high ferromagnetic signal. Magneto-optical Kerr characterization indicates that HC decreases for increasing thickness and width, providing a route to control the magnetization reversal field through the modification of the nanowire dimensions. Transmission electron microscopy experiments indicate that these wires have a bell-type shape with a surface oxide layer of about 5 nm. Such features are decisive in the actual value of HC as micromagnetic simulations demonstrate. These results will help to make appropriate designs of magnetic nanowires grown by FEBID.
Evaluation of human-robot interaction awareness in search and rescue

In this paper we report on the analysis of critical incidents during an urban search and rescue robot competition where critical incidents are defined as a situation where the robot could potentially cause damage to itself, the victim, or the environment. We look at the features present in the human-robot interface that contributed to success in different tasks needed in urban search and rescue and present guidelines for human-robot interaction design.
Comparison of Output Devices for Augmented Audio Reality

We compared two audio output devices for augmented audio reality applications. In these applications, we plan to use speech annotations on top of the actual ambient environment. Thus, it becomes essential that these audio output devices are able to deliver intelligible speech annotation along with transparent delivery of the environmental auditory scene. Two candidate devices were compared. The first output was the bone-conduction headphone, which can deliver speech signals by vibrating the skull, while normal hearing is left intact for surrounding noise since these headphones leave the ear canals open. The other is the binaural microphone/earphone combo, which is in a form factor similar to a regular earphone, but integrates a small microphone at the ear canal entry. The input from these microphones can be fed back to the earphones along with the annotation speech. We also compared these devices to normal hearing (i.e., without headphones or earphones) for reference. We compared the speech intelligibility when competing babble noise is simultaneously given from the surrounding environment. It was found that the binaural combo can generally deliver speech signals at comparable or higher intelligibility than the bone-conduction headphones. However, with the binaural combo, we found that the ear canal transfer characteristics were altered significantly by shutting the ear canals closed with the earphones. Accordingly, if we employed a compensation filter to account for this transfer function deviation, the resultant speech intelligibility was found to be significantly higher. However, both of these devices were found to be acceptable as audio output devices for augmented audio reality applications since both are able to deliver speech signals at high intelligibility even when a significant amount of competing noise is present. In fact, both of these speech output methods were able to deliver speech signals at higher intelligibility than natural speech, especially when the SNR was low. key words: augmented audio reality, speech intelligibility, mobile audio navigation, bone-conduction headphone, binaural microphone/earphone
Acceleration of diabetic wound healing using a novel protease–anti-protease combination therapy

Significance Chronic wounds in diabetic patients are a devastating complication of diabetes that can lead to amputations or even death. Our work in db/db mice shows that matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-9 contributes to delayed or impaired wound healing and that MMP-8 is involved in repairing the wound. A combination of a selective inhibitor of MMP-9 (a small molecule) and exogenously applied active recombinant MMP-8 (an enzyme) accelerates diabetic wound healing in mice. Nonhealing chronic wounds are major complications of diabetes resulting in >70,000 annual lower-limb amputations in the United States alone. The reasons the diabetic wound is recalcitrant to healing are not fully understood, and there are limited therapeutic agents that could accelerate or facilitate its repair. We previously identified two active forms of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), MMP-8 and MMP-9, in the wounds of db/db mice. We argued that the former might play a role in the body’s response to wound healing and that the latter is the pathological consequence of the disease with detrimental effects. Here we demonstrate that the use of compound ND-336, a novel highly selective inhibitor of gelatinases (MMP-2 and MMP-9) and MMP-14, accelerates diabetic wound healing by lowering inflammation and by enhancing angiogenesis and re-epithelialization of the wound, thereby reversing the pathological condition. The detrimental role of MMP-9 in the pathology of diabetic wounds was confirmed further by the study of diabetic MMP-9–knockout mice, which exhibited wounds more prone to healing. Furthermore, topical administration of active recombinant MMP-8 also accelerated diabetic wound healing as a consequence of complete re-epithelialization, diminished inflammation, and enhanced angiogenesis. The combined topical application of ND-336 (a small molecule) and the active recombinant MMP-8 (an enzyme) enhanced healing even more, in a strategy that holds considerable promise in healing of diabetic wounds.
Vision system for human body infrared thermography

A new method in medicine for detecting and investigating the illness like breast cancer is the Infrared Thermographic Imaging. An infrared thermal camera takes a temperature map of human body. The exact localization of specific areas from 2-dimensions thermal map is difficult and implies an invasive intervention of medicine doctors. In order to automate this process a special scanner for acquire a 4-dimensions map is used and consist of the 3-D scanner and the temperature sensor. In present paper an example of acquisitions the 4-D temperature map in the breast region is presented.
Nucleotide Variation in the Egfr Locus of Drosophila melanogaster

The Epidermal growth factor receptor is an essential gene with diverse pleiotropic roles in development throughout the animal kingdom. Analysis of sequence diversity in 10.9 kb covering the complete coding region and 6.4 kb of potential regulatory regions in a sample of 250 alleles from three populations of Drosophila melanogaster suggests that the intensity of different population genetic forces varies along the locus. A total of 238 independent common SNPs and 20 indel polymorphisms were detected, with just six common replacements affecting >1475 amino acids, four of which are in the short alternate first exon. Sequence diversity is lowest in a 2-kb portion of intron 2, which is also highly conserved in comparison with D. simulans and D. pseudoobscura. Linkage disequilibrium decays to background levels within 500 bp of most sites, so haplotypes are generally restricted to up to 5 polymorphisms. The two North American samples from North Carolina and California have diverged in allele frequency at a handful of individual SNPs, but a Kenyan sample is both more divergent and more polymorphic. The effect of sample size on inference of the roles of population structure, uneven recombination, and weak selection in patterning nucleotide variation in the locus is discussed.
An approach for single tooth classification and identification

This paper presents the study of the distinctiveness of single human tooth and the development of three dimensional (3D) single-tooth identification scheme which is useful when only very partial jaws with teeth are available. Two types of single-tooth samples are studied: tooth crown segmented from scanned dental casts and entire single tooth (crown and root) reconstructed from cone beam CT images. Eigenteeth feature and K nearest neighbourhood (KNN) classifier are applied to classify posterior (molar, premolar) and anterior (canine and incisor) tooth types. The iterative closest point algorithm (ICP) is then applied to match post-mortem (PM) and ante-mortem (AM) tooth data, with the former being the sample to be matched, and the latter representing captured complete tooth geometry kept in a database.
Prominin-1 (CD133) Defines Both Stem and Non-Stem Cell Populations in CNS Development and Gliomas

Prominin-1 (CD133) is a commonly used cancer stem cell marker in central nervous system (CNS) tumors including glioblastoma (GBM). Expression of Prom1 in cancer is thought to parallel expression and function in normal stem cells. Using RNA in situ hybridization and antibody tools capable of detecting multiple isoforms of Prom1, we find evidence for two distinct Prom1 cell populations in mouse brain. Prom1 RNA is first expressed in stem/progenitor cells of the ventricular zone in embryonic brain. Conversely, in adult mouse brain Prom1 RNA is low in SVZ/SGZ stem cell zones but high in a rare but widely distributed cell population (Prom1hi). Lineage marker analysis reveals Prom1hi cells are Olig2+Sox2+ glia but Olig1/2 knockout mice lacking oligodendroglia retain Prom1hi cells. Bromodeoxyuridine labeling identifies Prom1hi as slow-dividing distributed progenitors distinct from NG2+Olig2+ oligodendrocyte progenitors. In adult human brain, PROM1 cells are rarely positive for OLIG2, but express astroglial markers GFAP and SOX2. Variability of PROM1 expression levels in human GBM and patient-derived xenografts (PDX) – from no expression to strong, uniform expression – highlights that PROM1 may not always be associated with or restricted to cancer stem cells. TCGA and PDX data show that high expression of PROM1 correlates with poor overall survival. Within proneural subclass tumors, high PROM1 expression correlates inversely with IDH1 (R132H) mutation. These findings support PROM1 as a tumor cell-intrinsic marker related to GBM survival, independent of its stem cell properties, and highlight potentially divergent roles for this protein in normal mouse and human glia.
[Analgesic alternatives for the control of postoperatory pain in radical mastectomy].

INTRODUCTION The purpose of preventive analgesia based on regional blocks with local anesthetics is to avoid sharp and hard-to-control pain in the anterior side of thorax and axilla secondary to radical mastectomy. OBJECTIVE Our aim was to compare the analgesic effectiveness of direct trans-operational block applied to nerves vs conventional analgesia using analgesic-antipiretic and antiinflammatory (AINES) drugs. MATERIAL AND METHODS We designed a 1-year case-control study at the Hospital de Oncología of the Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social's (IMSS's) Centro Medico Nacional Siglo XXI (CMN-SXXI) in Mexico City. A total of 112 patients were mastectomized under general anesthesia: Thirty one patients received preventive analgesia (cases) by direct transoperational infiltration of brachial and intercostal nerves III-VI; bupivacaine 1 mg/kg and buprenorphine 0.005 mg/kg in 15 ml were distributed among appropriate nerves accompanied by a single dose of AINES in emersion stage; during anesthetic emersion, 81 patients received conventional analgesia (control), including endovenous AINES alone or combined, and buprenorphine 0.3 mg or nalbuphine 10 mg. Three evaluations employing analog visual scale were conducted: recovery (immediate post surgery); floor (mediate), and following day. RESULTS We studied 110 women and two men. Demographic, laboratory, anesthetic, and surgical variables were similar in both groups (p = not significant [ns]). In no case was post-surgical pain reported. Among controls, slight pain was reported by 13 patients, moderate pain by 66, and severe pain was reported by two patients, whereas in patients returned to their rooms on the floor, slight pain was reported by 38, moderate by 42, and severe by one. Finally, on the following day all patients reported slight pain. Types of pain included 15 patients with somatic pain, 10 with neuropathic, and 56 patients with mixed pain (p <0.0001). CONCLUSIONS Preventive analgesia by direct transoperational block on nerves turned out to be an effective alternative with low level of systemic morbidity, which must be considered to prevent moderate and severe pain syndromes that are difficult to control in thoracic oncological surgery.