Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
DOUBLE BALLOON ENDOSCOPE FACILITATES ENDOSCOPIC RETROGRADE CHOLANGIOPANCREATOGRAPHY IN ROUX‐EN‐Y ANASTOMOSIS PATIENTS

Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) is the gold standard for the treatment of patients with pancreaticobiliary disorders, but endoscopic therapy is very difficult to carry out in patients with a Roux‐en‐Y anastomosis. We herein present the results of ERCP for patients with a Roux‐en‐Y anastomosis using a double‐balloon endoscope. Six patients (six men with a mean age of 69 years) who had undergone prior gastric resection with Roux‐en‐Y reconstruction were enrolled in the present study and underwent ERCP and associated procedures. ERCP was carried out with a double balloon endoscope, which has one balloon attached to the tip of the endoscope and another attached to the distal end of the soft overtube. In all patients, entering the Y loop was successfully accomplished, and the papilla of Vater was also reached in all cases (100%). Cannulation was successful in four patients (66.7%). The final diagnosis was choledocholithiasis in two patients, biliary fistula in one patient and pancreatic cancer in one patient. A needle‐knife precut papillotomy was carried out after placement of a bile duct stent in two patients, and injection of N‐butyl‐2‐cyanoacrylate into a biliary fistula was carried out in one patient. None of the patients suffered from any complications. A double balloon endoscope is therefore considered to be useful for carrying out ERCP and associated procedures in patients with a Roux‐en‐Y anastomosis.
Discussant Comments on: Leverage, Business Cycles and Monetary Policy, by Brunnermeier and Sannikov

First, I would like to thank the organizers for inviting me to discuss this very interesting work by Markus and Yuliy. As a preface to my discussion, when the organizers asked me to discuss this paper, they said that they believed I had some different perspectives on deleveraging and balance sheet issues, and they wanted me to talk a little bit about my own research in that regard. Because, as we all know, academics need encouragement to promote their own research.
Assessing inflammatory liver injury in an acute CCl4 model using dynamic 3D metabolic imaging of hyperpolarized [1‐13C]pyruvate

To facilitate diagnosis and staging of liver disease, sensitive and non‐invasive methods for the measurement of liver metabolism are needed. This study used hyperpolarized 13C‐pyruvate to assess metabolic parameters in a CCl4 model of liver damage in rats. Dynamic 3D 13C chemical shift imaging data from a volume covering kidney and liver were acquired from 8 control and 10 CCl4‐treated rats. At 12 time points at 5 s temporal resolution, we quantified the signal intensities and established time courses for pyruvate, alanine, and lactate. These measurements were compared with standard liver histology and an alanine transaminase (ALT) enzyme assay using liver tissue from the same animals. All CCl4‐treated but none of the control animals showed histological liver damage and elevated ALT enzyme levels. In agreement with these results, metabolic imaging revealed an increased alanine/pyruvate ratio in liver of CCl4‐treated rats, which is indicative of elevated ALT activity. Similarly, lactate/pyruvate ratios were higher in CCl4‐treated compared with control animals, demonstrating the presence of inflammation. No significant differences in metabolite ratios were observed in kidney or vasculature. Thus this work shows that metabolic imaging using 13C‐pyruvate can be a successful tool to non‐invasively assess liver damage in vivo. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
N-Acylethanolamine (NAE) inhibits growth in Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings via ABI3-dependent and -independent pathways

N-Acylethanolamines (NAEs) are lipid metabolites derived from the hydrolysis of the membrane phospholipid N-acylphosphatidylethanolamine (NAPE). Recent work in Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings showed that combined treatments of NAE 12:0 and ABA inhibited seedling growth synergistically, suggesting low levels of NAE could potentiate the action of ABA. Here we examined the interplay between compound concentrations, growth inhibition and mutant genotypes with impaired sensitivities to these regulators. NAE 12:0 and ABA both induced dose-dependent increases in transcript levels of ABI3, and two ABI3 responsive genes, AtHVA22B and RD29B. Interestingly, even in the absence of growth inhibition, RD29B transcripts were elevated by ABA but not NAE treatment outside the sensitive window for ABA/NAE treatment, indicating some differences in the regulation of growth and the modulation of gene expression by these two compounds. Also noteworthy, the growth of ABA insensitive mutant (abi 3-1) seedlings was inhibited at higher concentrations of NAE 12:0 but not ABA, suggesting that NAE may act to inhibit early seedling establishment by both ABI3-dependent and ABI3-independent pathways. Collectively our results reinforce the concept that NAE12:0 interacts with ABA signaling in seedling establishment, but also points to a complexity in this interaction that modulates the sensitivity of young seedlings to phytohormone-mediated growth arrest.
Interpersonal Style Moderates the Effect of Dating Violence on Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression

Over a quarter of young women have experienced some form of violence within a dating relationship. The experience of dating violence is associated with problems in psychological functioning, including symptoms of anxiety and depression. However, not all women who experience dating violence exhibit anxious or depressive symptoms. One factor that may influence symptom expression is interpersonal style. In this study, we examined the main and moderating effects of dimensions of interpersonal style (dominance and warmth) on the association between dating violence and symptoms of anxiety and depression. Warmth exhibited a main effect on anxious and depressive symptoms over and above the effects of dating violence and other life stressors. Dominance moderated the association between dating violence and anxious and depressive symptoms. When levels of dating violence were high, women with higher levels of dominance reported fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression than women with lower dominance. These results indicated that whereas high warmth was associated with fewer symptoms of psychopathology generally, high dominance was a buffer against the effect of dating violence on symptoms more specifically. Directions for future research are discussed.
Politics or Professionalism? Budgeting for Bilingual Education

What drives budgetary support for minority-targeted policies? This question is increasingly salient because the public sector serves numerous minority clientele. One perspective suggests that budgetary decisions are grounded in need or demand, while another contends that political pressures will result in the allocation of resources to those with political power. This article presents a theory of budgetary allocation based on the interaction between politics and professionalism, two seemingly disparate perspectives. Furthermore, we separate professionalism into two dimensions—demand and need. Through an analysis of budgeting decisions for bilingual education, we find that political representation leads to more positive budgetary changes for low-demand and, conversely, high-need environments. These findings support not only the interaction between politics and professionalism as a driver of budgetary outcomes but also the theory of two dimensions of professionalism.
Keren, a new ligand of the Drosophila epidermal growth factor receptor, undergoes two modes of cleavage

Spitz (Spi) is the most prominent ligand of the Drosophila EGF receptor (DER). It is produced as an inactive membrane precursor which is retained in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). To allow cleavage, Star transports Spi to the Golgi, where it undergoes cleavage by Rhomboid (Rho). Since some DER phenotypes are not mimicked by any of its known activating ligands, we identified an additional ligand by database searches, and termed it Keren (Krn). Krn is a functional homolog of Spi since it can rescue the spi mutant phenotype in a Rho‐ and Star‐dependent manner. In contrast to Spi, however, Krn also possesses a Rho/Star‐independent ability to undergo low‐level cleavage and activate DER, as evident both in cell culture and in flies. The difference in basal activity correlates with the cellular localization of the two ligands. While Spi is retained in the ER, the retention of Krn is only partial. Examining Spi/Krn chimeric and deletion constructs implicates the Spi cytoplasmic domain in inhibiting its basal activity. Low‐level activity of Krn calls for tightly regulated expression of the Krn precursor.
Multimodel emotion analysis in response to multimedia

In this demo paper, we designed a novel framework combining EEG and eye tracking signals to analyze users' emotional activities in response to multimedia. To realize the proposed framework, we extracted efficient features of EEG and eye tracking signals and used support vector machine as classifier. We combined multimodel features using feature-level fusion and decision-level fusion to classify three emotional categories (positive, neutral and negative), which can achieve the average accuracies of 75.62% and 74.92%, respectively. We investigated the brain activities that are associated with emotions. Our experimental results indicated there exist stable common patterns and activated areas of the brain associated with positive and negative emotions. In the demo, we also showed the trajectory of emotion changes in response to multimedia.
An Unsupervised Approach for Mapping between Vector Spaces

We present a language independent, unsupervised approach for transforming word embeddings from source language to target language using a transformation matrix. Our model handles the problem of data scarcity which is faced by many languages in the world and yields improved word embeddings for words in the target language by relying on transformed embeddings of words of the source language. We initially evaluate our approach via word similarity tasks on a similar language pair - Hindi as source and Urdu as the target language, while we also evaluate our method on French and German as target languages and English as source language. Our approach improves the current state of the art results - by 13% for French and 19% for German. For Urdu, we saw an increment of 16% over our initial baseline score. We further explore the prospects of our approach by applying it on multiple models of the same language and transferring words between the two models, thus solving the problem of missing words in a model. We evaluate this on word similarity and word analogy tasks.
Kernel-based feature extraction for patient-adaptive ECG beat classification

The increasing cardiac diseases of people in recent years demand an early detection of heart diseases using electrocardiogram (ECG) signal processing techniques. In this work we present a semi automatic scheme to discriminate patient-specific ECG beats by using a kernel based feature extraction technique called kernel canonical correlation analysis (KCCA). The heartbeat classification scheme uses a fixed global training set along with a local patient specific training set to produce a patient adapted training set. The performance of the KCCA features is verified on MIT-BIH arrhythmia database by using three classifiers, namely k-nearest neighbor (KNN), support vector machine (SVM) and vector valued regularized kernel function approximation (VVRKFA), to classify four different type of beats, normal (N), supra-ventricular (S), ventricular (V) and fusion of ventricular and normal (F). Experimental results show that KCCA features are more effective on normal patients than that of arrhythmia patients.
Physical activity patterns in a diverse population of women.

BACKGROUND Demographic and psychosocial correlates of activity in domains other than recreational activity have not been well characterized and may be particularly relevant for health promotion efforts aimed at women. METHODS Cross-sectional relationships between recreational, occupational, and household/caregiving physical activity and demographic and psychosocial factors were assessed with a mail survey in a random sample of 2,636 ethnically diverse women members of a large health maintenance organization, ages 20-65. Activity was assessed with a modified Baecke questionnaire that uses categorical responses regarding frequency of domain-specific activities to create four semicontinuous activity indices (sports/exercise, active living, occupational, household/caregiving). RESULTS Multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that the likelihood of being in the highest quartile of the sports/exercise and active-living indices, compared with the other three quartiles, was decreased among older, nonwhite, less well educated, heavier women who had young children at home, lacked motivation to exercise, and perceived external obstacles to exercise behavior. The odds ratios (ORs) ranged from 0.38, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.33-0.45, associated with low motivation, to 0.95, 95% CI 0.93-0.98, associated with increasing body mass index. Social support and confidence in one's ability to continue to exercise, even when faced with other pressures and demands (termed self-efficacy), were associated with increased likelihood of high levels of sports/exercise and active living (OR = 2.34, 95% CI 1. 83-2.98 and OR = 3.96, 95% CI 2.92-5.38, respectively). In contrast, the highest quartile of household/caregiving activity was positively associated with increasing age (OR = 1.28, 95% CI 1.16-1.42), Hispanic ethnicity (OR = 1.58, 95% CI 0.55-1.01), being married (OR = 1.70, 95% CI 1.33-2.18), having young children at home (OR = 6.99, 95% CI 4.33-11), and greater time constraints as a barrier to exercise (OR = 1.55, 95% CI 1.38-1.74) and was negatively associated with employment (OR = 0.38, 95% CI 0.30-0.47). Increased likelihood of the highest quartile of occupational activity was associated with high school education or less (OR = 2.26, 95% CI 1.74-2.94) and current smoking (OR = 1.66, 95% CI 1.23-2.23), while self-efficacy regarding exercise was associated with decreased likelihood (OR = 0. 77, 95% CI 0.61-0.96). CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest that demographic and psychosocial correlates of physical activity vary by domain and that initiatives to promote physical activity in the population need to take these differences into account.
Towards building a predictive model for remote river quality monitoring for mining sites

Most, if not all, mining sites in the Philippines are not equipped with expensive or modern monitoring tools to check for quality of soil, water and air elements which are relevant to ensure safety and wellness of miners. This study focused on the development of low cost mobile electronic sensors to monitor quality of water from rivers near mining sites. Low cost electronic sensors connected to a smart phone were developed to capture dissolved oxygen (DO2), pH, Turbidity, Temperature, and Salinity. The data for mercury (Hg) and arsenic (As) were obtained through AAS analyses to form baseline data for the model. Data was collected for over a period of one year, with site visits once every two months. A conditional inference tree (ctree) using recursive binary partitioning was used to generate the prediction model using 70 - 30 split on the training and test data set. The multi-feature model returns Good, Not Good or Unknown based on the scores of each element. The results showed a possible three feature model with significant results for site, salinity and pH balance.
Residential HVAC load control strategy based on game theory

It is still a challenging and significative problem on how to adjust the community power demand to reduce the spending, satisfy the living comfort requirement and maximize the service provider's profit. In this paper, a Stackelberg gamebased demand response (SGDR) algorithm is proposed in a microgrid community setup. To achieve win-win situation for both sides, the interaction between the load serving entity and the microgrid is formulated as a Stackelberg game where the load serving entity acts as a leader offering the dynamic real-time price and the microgrid is a follower making the reasonable response to the leader's price strategy. Besides, considering the potential of heat-storage technology in demand response, the residential heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) unit is adopted as demand-side responsive resource. The running status of HVAC unit can be regulated according to the proposed real-time price with bounded temperature constraints. To solve this problem, a queueing model is developed according to the HVAC equivalent thermal parameters (ETP) model. The simulation results based on practical data indicate that the proposed SGDR algorithm can guarantee not only the users' comfortable requirements but also the benefits of players in the game.
Effects of zotepine on extracellular levels of monoamine, GABA and glutamate in rat prefrontal cortex

Background and purpose: The atypical antipsychotic drug, zotepine, is effective in treatment of schizophrenia and acute mania, but the incidence of seizures during treatment is higher than with other antipsychotics. In addition, the mechanisms underlying the clinical actions of zotepine remain uncharacterized.
First report of Pseudomonas marginalis pv. marginalis as a cause of soft rot of potato in China

Pseudomonas marginalis pv. marginalis was identified by physiological and molecular methods (16 S rDNA sequence), as a cause of bacterial soft rot of potato (Solanum tuberosum) in Zhangye District of central Gansu, China. Pathogenicity was confirmed in whole potato microtubers, seedlings and tuber pieces and the pathogen reisolated from the inoculated plants. This is the first report of bacterial soft rot of potato caused by P. marginalis pv. marginalis in China.
The Pathologist’s Slide Reveals More Than Meets the Eye

In the postgenomic era, the accumulation of massive amounts of molecular and genetic data is quickly transforming the landscape of cancer research. A deeper understanding of cancer biology will allow pathologists studying genetically engineered mouse models and spontaneous tumors to ask novel questions and provide useful insights into disease mechanisms. Although tumor suppressor gene loss is known to be an essential step in the pathogenesis of many tumors, the variety of mechanisms that lead to such loss are poorly understood. This article provides an overview of loss of heterozygosity as an important mechanism of tumor suppressor gene loss; it also emphasizes the importance of loss of heterozygosity detection as a tool for tumor suppressor gene discovery. Understanding the applications of the array of molecular techniques currently available in cancer research will enable pathologists to further contribute to the advancement the field.
Improved color and intensity patch segmentation for human full-body and body-parts detection and tracking

This paper presents a new way for detection and tracking of human full-body and body-parts (head, torso, arms, and legs) with color and intensity patch segmentation. The original R, G, and B are transformed to H (hue), S (saturation), and V (value) domain, as well as to Y, I, and Q for the NTSC system. With the help of morphological image processing, the fusion of S, V, Y, I and Q segmentations are used for full-body detection, while the individual V, I and Q segmentations are used for body-parts detection. An adaptive thresholding scheme has been developed for dealing with body size changes, illumination condition changes, and cross camera parameter changes. Preliminary tests with the PETS 2014 datasets show that we can obtain high probability of detection (Pd=100%) and low probability of false alarm (Pfa=1.95%) for both full-body and body-parts. The reliable body-parts (e.g. head) detection allows us to continuously track the individual person even though the torsos and legs of several closely spaced persons are merged together, and accurate human head localization is critical for human ID (face recognition). Furthermore, the detected body-parts allow us to extract important local constellation features of the body-parts' positions and angles related to the centroid position of the full-body. These features are critical for human walk gating estimation (a biometric feature for walking pattern recognition), as well as for human pose (e.g. standing or falling down) estimation for potential abnormal behavior and accidental event detection.
The dose-dependent neuroprotective effect of alpha-lipoic acid in experimental spinal cord injury.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Free radical production after spinal cord injury (SCI) plays an important role in secondary damage. The aim of this study was to investigate neuroprotective effects of the powerful antioxidant alpha-lipoic acid (ALA) in a spinal cord clip compression injury model. MATERIAL AND METHODS Fifty-six Sprague-Dawley rats, weighing between 210 and 300 g, were randomly divided into seven groups. Spinal cord injury was performed by an aneurysm clip placed extradurally at the level of T9. Group 1 (sham) received laminectomy only. Group 2 (control) received SCI; Group 3 received 30 mg/kg of methylprednisolone sodium succinate (MPSS); Groups 4, 5, 6 and 7 received ALA at doses of 50, 100, 150, 200 mg/kg, respectively, via the intraperitoneal route immediately after SCI. The rats were neurologically tested 24 hours after trauma. Spinal cord samples from injury sites were harvested for measurement of lipid peroxidation products and histopathological evaluation. RESULTS Spinal cord malonyldialdehyde levels of rats in treatment groups decreased after administration of ALA. The difference between the trauma group and groups receiving MPSS-ALA was statistically significant. The difference between the ALA (50, 100, 150 mg/kg) and MPSS groups was insignificant. Group 7 (ALA 200 mg/kg) was excluded from the study because of the possible toxic effect. Alpha lipoic acid and MPSS had similar effects on spinal cord injury in terms of lipid peroxidation, neurological recovery and histopathological changes. CONCLUSIONS Alpha lipoic acid at a dose range of 50-150 mg/ kg is as effective as MPSS (30 mg/kg) in neuroprotection after SCI. Further, more detailed experimental studies are needed to determine the effects of ALA on the detrimental results of secondary SCI before its use in humans.
Semi-blind Channel Estimation Algorithm for an FPGA Based 2×2 MIMO System

This paper reports on the development of a semi-blind channel estimation algorithm that is aimed for inclusion in a 2times2 multiple input multiple output (MIMO) system. The system employs a field programmable gate array (FPGA) for fast processing of transmitted data. Its RF part is built using commercially available components and in-house developed antennas. FPGA hardware is used for fast processing of IF signals. The performance of the developed channel estimation algorithm is tested assuming the Alamouti coding scheme. An in-house developed MIMO channel emulation algorithm is applied during these tests.