Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Amisulpride Versus Olanzapine in the Treatment of Schizophrenia in Indian Patients: Randomized Controlled Trial

Objective: Atypical antipsychotics are increasingly drugs of first choice in schizophrenia. Amisulpride, a new atypical antipsychotic, is reported to be effective for both positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia in Western countries but Indian experience is limited. The aim of the present study was therefore to conduct a trial of amisulpride versus olanzapine in Indian schizophrenia patients. Methods: Eighty adult patients of either sex were randomized to receive standard doses of the two drugs orally, in a single blind manner, for 12 weeks, with follow up at 4 and 8 weeks. Effectiveness was assessed by changes in scores on the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), Scale for Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS), Scale for Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS), and physician-administered Clinical Global Impression (CGI) scale. Tolerability was assessed by treatment-emergent adverse drug reactions (ADRs). Results: Evaluable were 39 patients on amisulpride and 38 on olanzapine. The groups were comparable at baseline with respect to demographics, illness duration and rating scores. Final BPRS score was lower for olanzapine (33.2 ± 9.44) than for amisulpride (37.7 ± 9.67). SAPS and SANS scores and CGI rating improved individually in both arms but remained comparable between groups throughout the study period, but olanzapine reduced SAPS score to a greater extent. ADRs were encountered in 67.5% and 47.5% of patients (p = 0.113) on amisulpride and olanzapine, respectively. Tremor and insomnia were more frequent with amisulpride, while olanzapine caused more weight gain and sedation. No serious ADRs occurred. Conclusions: Amisulpride, although comparable to olanzapine on some measures, did not match the improvement seen with the latter drug in BPRS and SAPS scores. Despite differences in ADR profiles, overall tolerability was satisfactory for both drugs. In Indian patients, amisulpride should therefore be an alternative to olanzapine to a limited extent, such as when weight gain and sedation are undesirable.
Humidity Sensor With a PVA-Coated Photonic Crystal Fiber Interferometer

A photonic crystal fiber (PCF)-model interferometer (MI)-based relative humidity (RH) sensor is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The PCF-MI is formed by fusion splicing a short length of PCF between two single-mode fibers with the air holes of the PCF in the splicing regions being fully collapsed. It was then coated with a layer of polyvinyl alcohol by using a dip-coating process. Experimental results show that a high humidity sensitivity of 40.9 pm/%RH is achieved within a measurement range of 20–95%RH. The sensor also shows good repeatability and low temperature independence.
Uncompetitive Phospholipase A2 Inhibition by CHEC Sequences Including Oral Treatment of Experimental Autoimmune Myeloencephalitis

Catalytic sites of metal dependent phosphatases and phospholipases are characterized by a catalytic histidine (H) and adjacent acidic metal binding residue E (or D). For the secreted phospholipases A2 (sPLA2s), the active sites are stabilized by nearby flanking cystines. CHEC-9 (CHEASAAQC), which displays this organization, is a sPLA2 inhibitor that is an effective treatment for models of traumatic and autoimmune neurodegenerative disorders. We screened modifi- cations of this sequence and found that elimination of the two central alanines followed by cyclization results in another potent sPLA2 inhibitor, CHEC-7 (CHEASQC). CHEC-7, like CHEC-9, had uncompetitive kinetic properties making it ideal for in vivo applications. Subcutaneous injections of CHEC-7 into restrained rats inhibited the transient rise in plasma sPLA2 activity suggesting that this peptide was also effective in vivo. Oral delivery of the peptide attenuated the LPS- induced increases in sPLA2 activity. Thin layer chromatography and mass spectroscopy of representative LPS-treated rats suggested that the peptide also reduced levels of lysophosphatidylcholine, a hydrolytic product of the enzyme reaction. In order to test the efficacy of CHEC-7 for neuroimmune therapies, rats were immunized with spinal cord homogenates to induce experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), followed by daily treatment with oral (1.5 mg/kg) or subcuta- neous (0.1, 0.5, and1.5mg/kg) CHEC-7 and CHEC-9 (n=10 for each different condition). The rats were scored for severity of disease applying a standard EAE scale. Control rats all developed disease over the 23-day course of the experiments. Both CHEC-9 and CHEC-7 produced highly significant reductions in disease severity including via oral delivery. The performance of oral CHEC-7 was notable in that this treatment completely prevented disease in half the rats. The results suggested that continued study of modifications of CHEC sequences would provide stable therapeutic peptides for a variety of inflammatory and autoimmune disorders.
Ieee Transactions on Communications, Accepted for Publication Decision Boundary Evaluation of Optimum and Suboptimum Detectors in Class-a Interference

—The Middleton Class-A (MCA) model is one of the most accepted models for narrow-band impulsive interference superimposed to additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). The MCA density consists of a weighted linear combination of infinite Gaussian densities, which leads to a non-tractable form of the optimum detector. To reduce the receiver complexity, one can start with a two-term approximation of the MCA model, which has only two noise states (Gaussian and impulsive state). Our objective is to introduce a simple method to estimate the noise state at the receiver and accordingly, reduce the complexity of the optimum detector. Furthermore, we show for the first time how the decision boundaries of binary signals in MCA noise should look like. In this context, we provide a new analysis of the behavior of many suboptimum detectors such as a linear detector, a locally optimum detector (LOD), and a clipping detector. Based on this analysis, we insert a new clipping threshold for the clipping detector, which significantly improves the bit-error rate performance.
Drosophila Incenp is required for cytokinesis and asymmetric cell division during development of the nervous system

The chromosomal passenger protein complex has emerged as a key player in mitosis, with important roles in chromatin modifications, kinetochore-microtubule interactions, chromosome bi-orientation and stability of the bipolar spindle, mitotic checkpoint function, assembly of the central spindle and cytokinesis. The inner centromere protein (Incenp; a subunit of this complex) is thought to regulate the Aurora B kinase and target it to its substrates. To explore the roles of the passenger complex in a developing multicellular organism, we have performed a genetic screen looking for new alleles and interactors of Drosophila Incenp. We have isolated a new null allele of Incenp that has allowed us for the first time to study the functions of the chromosomal passengers during development. Homozygous incenpEC3747 embryos show absence of phosphorylation of histone H3 in mitosis, failure of cytokinesis and polyploidy, and defects in peripheral nervous system development. These defects are consistent with depletion of Aurora B kinase activity. In addition, the segregation of the cell-fate determinant Prospero in asymmetric neuroblast division is abnormal, suggesting a role for the chromosomal passenger complex in the regulation of this process.
The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness: Computational Models of Consciousness: A Taxonomy and Some Examples

This chapter aims to provide an overview of existing computational (mechanistic) models of cognition in relation to the study of consciousness, on the basis of psychological and philosophical theories and data. It examines various mechanistic explanations of consciousness in existing computational cognitive models. Serving as an example for the discussions, a computational model of the conscious/unconscious interaction, utilizing the representational difference explanation of consciousness, is described briefly. As a further example, a software agent model that captures another explanation of consciousness (the access explanation of consciousness) is also described. The discussions serve to highlight various possibilities in developing computational models of consciousness and in providing computational explanations of conscious and unconscious cognitive processes. Introduction In this chapter, we aim to present a short survey and a brief evaluation of existing computational (mechanistic) models of cognition in relation to the study of consciousness. The survey focuses on their explanations of the difference between conscious and unconscious cognitive processes on the basis of psychological and philosophical theories and data, as well as potential practical applications. Given the plethora of models, theories, and data, we try to provide in this chapter an overall (and thus necessarily sketchy) examination of computational models of consciousness in relation to the available psychological data and theories, as well as the existing philosophical accounts. We come to some tentative conclusions as to what a plausible computational account should be like, synthesizing various operationalized psychological notions related to consciousness.
Ontology in Information Security

The past several years we have witnessed that information has become the most precious asset, while protection and security of information is becoming an ever greater challenge due to the large amount of knowledge necessary for organizations to successfully withstand external threats and attacks. This knowledge collected from the domain of information security can be formally described by security ontologies. A large number of researchers during the last decade have dealt with this issue, and in this paper we have tried to identify, analyze and systematize the relevant papers published in scientific journals indexed in selected scientific databases, in period from 2004 to 2014. This paper gives a review of literature in the field of information security ontology and identifies a total of 52 papers systematized in three groups: general security ontologies (12 papers), specific security ontologies (32 papers) and theoretical works (8 papers). The papers were of different quality and level of detail and varied from presentations of simple conceptual ideas to sophisticated frameworks based on ontology.
WCET-aware static locking of instruction caches

In the past decades, embedded system designers moved from simple, predictable system designs towards complex systems equipped with caches. This step was necessary in order to bridge the increasingly growing gap between processor and memory system performance. Static analysis techniques had to be developed to allow the estimation of the cache behavior and an upper bound of the execution time of a program. This bound is called worst-case execution time (WCET). Its knowledge is crucial to verify whether hard real-time systems satisfy their timing constraints, and the WCET is a key parameter for the design of embedded systems. In this paper, we propose a WCET-aware optimization technique for static I-cache locking which improves a program's performance and predictability. To select the memory blocks to lock into the cache and avoid time consuming repetitive WCET analyses, we developed a new algorithm employing integer-linear programming (ILP). The ILP models the worst-case execution path (WCEP) of a program and takes the influence of locked cache contents into account. By modeling the effect of locked memory blocks on the runtime of basic blocks, the overall WCET of a program can be minimized. We show that our optimization is able to reduce the estimated WCET (abbr. WCETest) of real-life benchmarks by up to 40.8%. At the same time, our proposed approach is able to outperform a regular cache by up to 23.8% in terms of WCETest.
A Machiavellian analysis of organisational change

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to undertake a Machiavellian analysis of the determinants of organisational change. It aims to present a model of how power, leaders and teams, rewards and discipline, and roles, norms and values, serve as drivers, enablers or inhibitors of organisational change.Design/methodology/approach – The paper adopts the sixteenth century Machiavellian text The Prince as a lens through which to examine organisational change.Findings – The paper concludes that Machiavellian thinking provides a valuable guide to the challenges and obstacles in negotiating organisational change and identifies the individual as occupying the central role in determining whether the change intervention will be accepted or rejected.Originality/value – The longevity of Machiavellian thinking underlines the constancy of human behaviour and the relevance of age‐old thinking in understanding and negotiating change in a complex fast‐paced business environment.
Writing about the Perceived Benefits of Traumatic Events: Implications for Physical Health

Research by Pennebaker and his colleagues supports the healing power of writing about traumatic events. This study explored the importance of writing about the perceived benefits of traumatic events as a factor in this process. The study included 118 participants who were randomly assigned to write about one of four topics in a 2 (writing about perceived benefits vs. not writing about perceived benefits)×2 (writing about trauma vs. not writing about trauma) factorial design. Participants also completed questionnaire measures of subjective well-being and released health center information for the year. Participants who wrote only about trauma or perceived benefits showed significantly fewer health center visits for illness 3 months after writing. In addition, 5 months after writing, the trauma-only and perceived-benefits-only groups maintained a difference from the control group. These results suggest that writing about perceived benefits from traumatic events may provide a less upsetting but effective way to benefit from writing.
Dennett on qualia: The case of pain, smell and taste

Dennett has maintained that a careful examination of our intuitive notion of qualia reveals that it is a confused notion, that it is advisable to accept that experience does not have the properties designated by it and that it is best to eliminate it. Because most scientists share this notion of qualia, the major line of attack of his project becomes that of raising objections against the ability of science to answer some basic questions about qualia. I try to show that science appeals to qualia and that it in fact adheres to a notion of qualia different from the one that Dennett has attributed to it. It is argued that qualia are amenable to scientific investigation and that this is the reason why science contributes toward the clarification of the notion of qualia. I also try to show that Dennett's skepticism about the abilities of science in answering questions posited by one of his thought experiments is unwarranted. I conclude that we need not accept Dennett's eliminativism about qualia.
Privacy-Preserving Verification of Aggregate Queries on Outsourced Databases

It is often desirable to be able to guarantee the integrity of historical data, ensuring that any subsequent modifications to the data can be detected. It would be especially convenient to extend such proofs of integrity to certain computations performed later using the historic data. We approach this question in the context of outsourced databases, where a data owner delegates the ability to answer users’ queries to a service provider, and distrustful users may desire to verify the integrity of responses to their queries on the data. We present a solution for integrity verification of database aggregate queries, such as SUM and MAX. We design proofs of correctness and completeness of aggregate results. What makes the problem challenging is that individual data entries may be sensitive (e.g. as in medical databases), and should not be revealed to the user. We give cryptographic protocols to support verification of query results in a privacy-preserving fashion.
Extracting Pseudo-Labeled Samples for Sentiment Classification Using Emotion Keywords

Sentiment and emotion analysis have been traditionally established as independent research topics in NLP. Although they are two important aspects of subjective information and are closely related, there have been few attempts to combine the two analyses. As a preliminary attempt, we integrate emotion information into sentiment analysis by employing emotion keywords to help automatically extract pseudo-labeled samples. The extracted pseudo-labeled samples are then used as the initial training data to perform semi-supervised learning for sentiment classification. Experimental results across four domains show that our approach using emotion keywords is capable of extracting pseudo-labeled samples with high precision (about 90%). Moreover, the pseudo-labeled samples along with the semi-supervised learning approach further improve the classification performance.
Intrathecal Clonidine Combined with Sufentanil for Labor Analgesia

Background Intrathecal sufentanil provides rapid‐onset and complete analgesia for the first stage of labor. The dose required to produce this effect can be associated with maternal respiratory depression, hypotension, nausea, or pruritus. Because clonidine potentiates the analgesic effects of opioids without increasing their side effects, the authors wanted to determine the efficacy of low doses of intrathecal clonidine (15 and 30 micro gram) combined with sufentanil. Methods Ninety‐eight parturient requesting labor analgesia were studied. In a combined spinal‐epidural technique, patients were randomly assigned to receive one of the following intrathecal solutions: either 15 micro gram clonidine (n = 10); 30 micro gram clonidine (n = 10); 2.5 micro gram sufentanil (n = 13); 5 micro gram sufentanil (n = 13); 2.5 micro gram sufentanil and 15 micro gram clonidine (n = 13); 2.5 micro gram sufentanil and 30 micro gram clonidine (n = 13); 5 micro gram sufentanil and 15 micro gram clonidine (n = 13); or 5 micro gram sufentanil and 30 micro gram clonidine (n = 13). Visual analog scores for pain, blood pressure, heart rate, sensory levels, incidence of nausea and pruritus, and motor blockade, and maternal and cord blood concentrations of clonidine were recorded. Results Patients receiving 30 micro gram intrathecal clonidine with 2.5 or 5 micro gram intrathecal sufentanil had significantly longer‐lasting analgesia (145 +/‐ 36 and 145 +/‐ 43 min vs. 104 +/‐ 35 for those receiving 5 micro gram intrathecal sufentanil alone). Clonidine levels were undetectable in maternal serum. Conclusions Thirty micrograms of intrathecal clonidine combined with 2.5 or 5 micro gram intrathecal sufentanil significantly increased the duration of analgesia during the first stage of labor without adverse maternal or fetal effects.
Echoing with the voices of victims: Reflection on Vietnamese lessons on the Japanese experiences of atomic bombs

This article explores the case of a Vietnamese teacher whose conception of teaching changed greatly following a short but intensive series of lessons based on the Japanese experiences with atomic bombs. The following three issues are considered: 1) what types of efforts teachers should make to increase the depth of their lessons, on the basis of children’s reality of learning; 2) what kinds of support teachers require from colleagues, including external resource persons; and 3) how school management should be organized to practise peace education.
Internet, social sciences and humanities

The paper deals with the state of the social sciences after the boom of internet services in the Czech Republic in the 1990s. The results of our survey, based on 512 responses from the economics and history departments of major Czech public universities, show that internet services are considered a quality factor for academic output; however, the issues of plagiarism, a lack of resource criticism, inadequacy of impact factor-based evaluations, poor academic training for the new generation of social scientists, the failure of state academic policy, and the generation gap make further development in the Czech social sciences rather problematic. As a result we recommend creating a better communication link between policy makers and scholars, reforming the current state policy which encourages lower quality academic output, and improving academic training, which requires a more individual approach, and also placing higher demands on social scientists.
Pharmacokinetic profile that reduces nephrotoxicity of gentamicin in a perfused kidney-on-a-chip

Nephrotoxicity is often underestimated because renal clearance in animals is higher compared to in humans. This paper aims to illustrate the potential to fill in such pharmacokinetic gaps between animals and humans using a microfluidic kidney model. As an initial demonstration, we compare nephrotoxicity of a drug, administered at the same total dosage, but using different pharmacokinetic regimens. Kidney epithelial cell, cultured under physiological shear stress conditions, are exposed to gentamicin using regimens that mimic the pharmacokinetics of bolus injection or continuous infusion in humans. The perfusion culture utilized is important both for controlling drug exposure and for providing cells with physiological shear stress (1.0 dyn cm−2). Compared to static cultures, perfusion culture improves epithelial barrier function. We tested two drug treatment regimens that give the same gentamycin dose over a 24 h period. In one regimen, we mimicked drug clearance profiles for human bolus injection by starting cell exposure at 19.2 mM of gentamicin and reducing the dosage level by half every 2 h over a 24 h period. In the other regimen, we continuously infused gentamicin (3 mM for 24 h). Although junctional protein immunoreactivity was decreased with both regimens, ZO-1 and occludin fluorescence decreased less with the bolus injection mimicking regimen. The bolus injection mimicking regimen also led to less cytotoxicity and allowed the epithelium to maintain low permeability, while continuous infusion led to an increase in cytotoxicity and permeability. These data show that gentamicin disrupts cell–cell junctions, increases membrane permeability, and decreases cell viability particularly with prolonged low-level exposure. Importantly a bolus injection mimicking regimen alleviates much of the nephrotoxicity compared to the continuous infused regimen. In addition to potential relevance to clinical gentamicin administration regimens, the results are important in demonstrating the general potential of using microfluidic cell culture models for pharmacokinetics and toxicity studies.
On the problem of determination of spring stiffness parameters for spring-mesh models

On account of having real-time behavior and being easy to implement, spring meshes have been used for modeling deformable objects. Determining spring stiffness parameters for simulation of soft objects with high accuracy still remains a challenge. Allen Van Gelder derived an approximate formula for determining spring stiffness parameters based on strain analysis. Even though the experimental result showed the effectiveness, the method has not been investigated from a quantitative point of view. In this paper we propose a quantitative method for determining spring stiffness parameters. Moreover we propose a method to improve the accuracy by way of introducing torsional spring into the conventional spring mesh model.