Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Anodal tDCS of the Primary Motor Cortex and Motor Sequence Learning in a Large Sample of Patients with Parkinsons Disease

Abstract Objectives: Parkinson’s disease (PD) has been associated with impaired motor sequence learning (also known as procedural learning). In the current study, we determined the potential of anodal transcranial direct current stimulation delivered over the primary motor cortex to promote the acquisition of sequential movement in a large sample of patients with idiopathic PD and matched controls. Methods: Thirty-one idiopathic PD patients and 33 healthy controls, matched for age, gender, and education, participated in the study. Both groups received anodal and sham transcranial direct current stimulation delivered over the primary motor cortex during the acquisition of a novel sequence movement in the Serial Reaction Time task. Results: Motor sequence learning proved to be intact in patients relative to controls. Compared to sham stimulation, anodal transcranial direct current stimulation of the primary motor cortex did not significantly improve motor sequence learning in patients, nor controls. Conclusions: Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation delivered over the primary motor cortex did not exert a positive effect on the acquisition of sequential movement in patients with Parkinson’s disease. More research is needed to establish the determinants associated with a positive effect of tDCS on sequential skill in PD, such as medication status, the amount of tDCS stimulation needed, as well as the brain regions that need to be targeted to elicit a beneficial response.
New plate medium for growth and detection of urease activity of Helicobacter pylori

A new medium for detection of urease activity and isolation of Helicobacter pylori is proposed. This medium, containing Columbia Agar Base, was supplemented with IsoVitaleX, hemin, urea, and phenol red (nonselective medium [NSM]). Both bacterial growth and color change were evaluated and compared with growth in the same medium supplemented with cefsulodin, vancomycin, polymyxin B sulfate, and amphotericin B (selective medium [SM]). Twenty-five recent clinical isolates and antral biopsy specimens from 33 patients who underwent endoscopy were examined. The isolates showed a rapid color change and good growth at 5 days of incubation with NSM and SM. H. pylori-positive biopsies revealed a color change within 36 h, and bacterial growth was better appreciated in NSM, but with more contaminating flora than in SM.
Syntactic Analysis of Technical Drawing Dimensions

We present a syntactic approach to technical drawing dimensions analysis. A specific grammar is used to describe dimensions of drawings. This grammar can be graphically designed by combining different graphic primitives. The algorithm used for analysis can start at different points of the grammar. The analysis proceeds bottom-up and top-down according to previously obtained results.
An Update of the Classical and Novel Methods Used for Measuring Fast Neurotransmitters During Normal and Brain Altered Function

To understand better the cerebral functions, several methods have been developed to study the brain activity, they could be related with morphological, electrophysiological, molecular and neurochemical techniques. Monitoring neurotransmitter concentration is a key role to know better how the brain works during normal or pathological conditions, as well as for studying the changes in neurotransmitter concentration with the use of several drugs that could affect or reestablish the normal brain activity. Immediate response of the brain to environmental conditions is related with the release of the fast acting neurotransmission by glutamate (Glu), γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and acetylcholine (ACh) through the opening of ligand-operated ion channels. Neurotransmitter release is mainly determined by the classical microdialysis technique, this is generally coupled to high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Detection of neurotransmitters can be done by fluorescence, optical density, electrochemistry or other detection systems more sophisticated. Although the microdialysis method is the golden technique to monitor the brain neurotransmitters, it has a poor temporal resolution. Recently, with the use of biosensor the drawback of temporal resolution has been improved considerably, however other inconveniences have merged, such as stability, reproducibility and the lack of reliable biosensors mainly for GABA. The aim of this review is to show the important advances in the different ways to measure neurotransmitter concentrations; both with the use of classic techniques as well as with the novel methods and alternant approaches to improve the temporal resolution.
Probing nanoscale photo-oxidation in organic films using spatial hole burning near-field scanning optical microscopy

Spatial hole burning near-field scanning optical microscopy (SHB–NSOM) is used to locally photopattern three species of organic thin films, poly(2-methoxy, 5-(2′-ethyl hexyloxy)–p-phenylene vinylene) (MEH–PPV), tris-8-hydroxyquinoline aluminum (Alq3) and dye-functionalized polyelectrolyte self-assembled layers, on a 100 nm length scale. In SHB–NSOM the film is illuminated with light from a stationary NSOM tip to induce photo-oxidation. The reduction in the fluorescence yield resulting from this exposure is then mapped using fluorescence NSOM (FL–NSOM). We have examined the localized photo-oxidation as a function of time, position, and environment free from the limits of far-field spatial averaging. In all of the thin film materials studied we find that the long-time diameter of the dark spot is much larger than the tip diameter and is a signature of energy migration. Characteristic lengths of the energy migration are extracted from this data by a simple diffusion model and are found to be of the order of .
Effects of Patient and Physician Practice Socioeconomic Status on the Health Care of Privately Insured Managed Care Patients

Background. Previous research shows that patient socioeconomic status (SES) affects health care, but little is known about the relative effects of patient and physician practice SES among privately insured patients. Objective. To examine the effects of patient and physician practice SES on prevention, disease management, utilization, and cost expenditures. Design. Cross‐sectional analyses of claims data. Subjects. Primary care physicians (568) and their adult managed care organization patients (437,743) in the Rochester, New York, area. Measures. Pap smears, mammograms, glycohemoglobins, and eye examinations for diabetics, physician visits, referrals, hospitalizations, costs standardized expenditures (diagnostic testing, office visits, and total), patient zip code‐based SES, and physician practice SES (mean SES of patients in practice). Results. After adjustment, lower SES patients had lower compliance with Pap smears, mammograms, and diabetic eye exams, and were less likely to have a referral or make any office visit, but were more likely to be hospitalized, and generated higher testing standardized expenditures. Lower physician practice SES was associated with lower adjusted Pap, mammogram, and glycohemoglobin compliance, lower office visit standardized expenditures, but higher diagnostic testing and total standardized expenditures. Patient SES effects were stronger for mammography, whereas physician practice SES effects were stronger for diagnostic testing costs. For the utilization indicators, the SES effects on utilization exhibited a linear gradient, whereas there was a threshold effect for costs. Conclusions. Patient and practice SES are independently associated with care among privately insured patients. These effects are not confined to the poorest patients but span the entire socioeconomic spectrum. Interventions to address these disparities need to be broad‐based, but should also address the needs of practices with predominantly lower SES patients.
Facial Age Classification using Subpattern-based Approaches

In this paper subpattern-based approaches are used to solve the age classification problem on facial images. Subpattern-based approaches named Local Binary Patterns (LBP), subpattern-based Principal Component Analysis (spPCA) and modular Principal Component Analysis (mPCA) are examined to demonstrate the age classification performance on female and male facial images of human beings with several parameter settings. Classification of age intervals are conducted separately on female and male facial images since the aging process for female and male is different for human beings in real life. Subpattern-based LBP, spPCA and mPCA are used for feature extraction on different datasets selected from FG-NET and MORPH databases. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of subpattern-based LBP over spPCA and mPCA techniques. Age classification performance using these three subpattern-based techniques with different parameter settings on the selected datasets is also presented.
A Polymorphic Microdeletion in the RGS9 Gene Suppresses PTB Binding and Associates with Obesity

Objective: RGS9 is a member of the family of Regulators of G-Protein Signaling (RGS) proteins defined by the presence of an RGS domain which can accelerate the GTPase-activity of G protein Gα subunits. An insertion/deletion (I/D) polymorphism of the nucleotide sequence TTTCT (rs3215227) has been identified in the human RGS9 gene, which matches the consensus high affinity binding motif for the ubiquitously expressed RNA binding Polypyrimidine Tract Binding Protein (PTB). In this study, we evaluate the genetic association and functional relevance of this polymorphism in type 2 diabetes and obesity. Subjects and methods: We genotyped a larger population of 9272 Chinese and Malaysian individuals for the RGS9 I/D polymorphism using Taq Man allelic discrimination protocols. We found that the D allele of the RGS9 polymorphism was associated with a decreased prevalence of obesity in women (P=0.003, OR=0.753 95%CI 0.625-0.906) and girls (P=0.002, OR=0.604 95%CI 0.437-0.835). The association was moderate in boys (P=0.038, OR=0.724 95%CI 0.533-0.983) and not significant in men. Furthermore, we found that the transcript deletion variant exhibited a 10-fold reduction in PTB binding in vitro and that the splicing of the deletion variant was less affected by PTB co-expression. Conclusions: We provide genetic and biochemical data to support a genetic role of RGS9 in obesity but unlikely in T2D. The RGS9 I/D polymorphism influence the post-transcriptional processing of the gene through an altered affinity for the splicing factor PTB and are associated with obesity.
On optimal transmission policies for energy harvesting devices

We consider an energy harvesting device whose state at a given time is determined by its energy level and an “importance” value, associated to the transmission of a data packet to the receiver at that particular time. We consider policies that, at each time, elect whether to transmit the data packet or not, based on the current energy level and data importance, so as to maximize the long-term average transmitted data importance. Under the assumption of i.i. d. Bernoulli energy arrivals, we show that the sensor should report only data with an importance value above a given threshold, which is a strictly decreasing function of the energy level, and we derive upper and lower bounds on the thresholds for any energy level. Leveraging on these findings, we construct a suboptimal policy that performs very close to the optimal one, at a fraction of the complexity. Finally, we demonstrate that a threshold policy, which on the average transmits with probability equal to the average energy arrival rate is asymptotically optimal as the energy storage capacity grows large.
Assembly, Disassembly, Adaptation and Replacement of Software Components

Component-based software development is of paramount importance for rigorous system design methodologies. It is founded on a paradigm: complex systems can be obtained by assembling components, thereby main work focuses on the methods and techniques of component modeling, adapting and assembling. However, these attempts have not established a more systematic approach for component operations yet. In the paper, we investigate operations of changing components (assembly, disassembly, adaptation and replacement) and assembly relationships among components in order to construct a set of assembly rules, optimize solutions to the assemblies of components.
Thresholds and transitions for activation of cellular radioprotective mechanisms – correlations between HRS/IRR and the ‘inverse’ dose-rate effect

Purpose: In biophysical modeling for several instances of radiation-induced radioprotection, i.e., adaptive response (AR), hyper-radiosensitivity and induced radioresistance (HRS/IRR), and the inverse dose-rate effect (IDRE), empirical fits are premised for the thresholds and transitions of the radioprotection. We provide realistic model formulations for the observed behaviors, which we apply to both HRS/IRR and IDRE. Materials and methods: We use homeostatic balance equations, including cell biophysical endogenic adjustments (originating from within the cell), providing a radiation-induced ‘trigger’ or continuous thresholds and transitions. Results: A ‘trigger’ threshold requires an instantaneous, step function. Current HRS/IRR transition model does not provide ‘triggered’ threshold but continuous progression from high sensitivity to reduced radiosensitivity, although the investigators premise ‘trigger’ behavior. IDRE data suggest ‘triggered’ thresholds at discrete dose rates. It appears that HRS/IRR and IDRE at low dose and dose rate intentionally provide protection against potentially carcinogenic mutations. Conclusions: The homeostatic formulation shows, when applied to the IRR using a dose and dose rate dependent Linear-Quadratic model (LQ2), that the IRR protection is ‘triggered’ at a discrete low dose and induced by a transitory increase in the damage repair rate constant in the LQ2 model of the single event, linear response, radiation damage. Since both IDRE and IRR have ‘triggered’ thresholds and as a result of increased endogenic damage recognition, increased mobilization of repair resources, activation of cell cycle arrest and/or increased repair rate, we premise that both may be from the same endogenic radioprotection biochemical mechanisms.
Evaluation of Ontology Knowledge in Chinese Classical Poetry Classification

This paper describes preliminary research in the use of ontological knowledge for the task of automatically classifying classical Chinese poetry (CCCP) according to authorship. Based on a collection of poems written by Liu Yong (987–1053 AD) and Su Shi (1037– 1101 AD), which have been analyzed according to a taxonomy of ontological entities at the lexical level, the research looks into the issue of whether characteristic features can be automatically extracted as important stylistic differences between the two poets. This paper examines the efficiency of different ontological concepts as features in CCCP using Support Vector Machine (SVMs). The experiment shows that an integration of ontological knowledge and bags-of-words (BoW) produces a higher precision for CCCP than BoW only with an overall increase of 2.1% and 2.2% in terms of precision and F-score.
Highly Scalable and Efficient Publish/Subscribe Protocols Using Geographic Information for Wireless Sensor Networks

Publish/subscribe (Pub/Sub) systems have been used in traditional distributed computing applications to provide effective and efficient event services. Recently, the design of Pub/Sub systems are proposed for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Some of the proposed Pub/Sub protocols address the issue of establishing event delivery path with low routing cost by using geographic information. However, they have not considered how to reduce redundant event delivery, which may cause high resource consumption and poor system scalability. In this paper, we propose protocols which address both issues. More specifically, our protocols use geographic information to save routing cost, and meanwhile reduce redundant event delivery by letting the subscribers share the event delivery paths. Three highly scalable and efficient Pub/Sub protocols for WSNs, namely shortest delivery path (SDP), shortest delivery path with lower delivery overhead (SDP-LDO), and lowest delivery overhead (LDO), are designed to achieve different performance goals. The results of theoretical and experimental evaluation show that the proposed protocols can significantly improve the resource efficiency and scalability of a Pub/Sub system compared to the previous solutions. Our protocols can also be used to achieve a good tradeoff between the costs of event subscribing and event delivery.
Automatic annotation extension and classification of documents using a probabilistic graphical model

With the fast growth of document images, document annotation has become a research area of great interest. Annotation allows to describe the semantic content of documents and facilitates their use and research. However, for a huge number of documents, the manual annotation of each document becomes a tedious task. A solution is to annotate a small part of the documents and to extend it automatically to the whole dataset. In this paper, we propose a model for annotation extension and document classification using a probabilistic graphical model. In this latter, we combine visual and textual characteristics and we show that the integration of the user feedback improves the annotation step.
Integration of haptics with Web3D using the SAI

Haptics force-feedback technology is fast becoming a consumer product and no longer only found in research laboratories. The emergence of the budget Falcon device (Novint Technologies, Inc., USA) represents a key step in the dissemination of haptics technology as it offers this functionality to home users, in particular to games players. Haptics has the potential to revolutionise the Human Computer Interface if novel and creative software solutions can be found to utilise it. Currently developing for haptics requires low level programming knowledge, which is often a barrier to uptake. This paper looks at how haptics support can be integrated into an X3D authored virtual world using an open source haptics library via the Scene Authoring Interface (SAI). We supply a partial implementation of a Java wrapping to the HAPI open-source haptics library and provide a demonstration of its use within the Xj3D browser through SAI. This work is intended to contribute to a possible future haptics extension of the ISO X3D standard.
Measuring Cross-Cultural Competence in Soldiers and Cadets: A Comparison of Existing Instruments

Abstract : Assessment tools are needed to support efforts to train and develop cultural capabilities in Soldiers and other military personnel. The Army and other Services have implemented training and education programs to develop cultural capabilities in military personnel; however, methods and tools to assess cultural learning are lacking. The goal of the present research was to identify metrics developed to assess cross-cultural competence and related constructs in non-military populations and to compare them in an Army sample. Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy and active-duty Soldiers completed the Cultural Intelligence Scale, the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire and the Intercultural Development Inventory. Results showed substantial convergence among the three measures, as well as correlations with biographical variables previously linked with cross-cultural competence. Results also indicated that officers have higher levels of intercultural development and traits than NCOs. Current findings and past research suggest that the MPQ shows promise for predicting intercultural performance; however, due to our sample, we were unable to examine the measure's structure. Future research should examine the extent to which these traits can be influenced through training and other developmental interventions. Future research into the assessment of cross-cultural competence should also explore alternatives to self-report measures.
Development and Evaluation of a Computerized Test Battery for Alzheimer's Disease Screening in Community-based Settings

Aim. To evaluate the capability of a computerized test battery for Alzheimer's disease screening which has been newly developed to provide a standardized and efficient method for widespread use in routine clinical and community-based settings. Methods. Participants were 72 individuals diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and 102 healthy elderly individuals. Both groups were tested by the battery. Receiver operating characteristic analysis was used to examine the ability of the battery to differentiate between those with Alzheimer's disease and cognitively healthy elderly individuals. Results. On a group level, the Alzheimer's disease group performed worse than the control group on each of the 4 computerized test tasks. Receiver operating characteristic analysis yielded maximum sensitivity and specificity values of 96% and 86% for total scores, respectively. Conclusion. We believe the battery is very useful for routine clinical and community-based settings.
Constraint Networks

1 Introduction Constraint-based reasoning is a paradigm for formulating knowledge as a set of constraints without specifying the method by which these constraints are to be satised. A variety of techniques have been developed for nding partial or complete solutions for dierent kinds of constraint expressions. These have been successfully applied to diverse tasks such as design, diagnosis, truth maintenance, scheduling, spatiotemporal reasoning, logic programming and user interface. Constraint networks are graphical representations used to guide strategies for solving constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs).
An Evaluation of MTA Cements as Coronal Barrier

INTRODUCTION: Coronal leakage seems to play an important role in the failure of endodontic treatment. A double seal over root canal filling has been suggested as a means of improving the coronal seal. Several restorative materials have been used in an attempt to produce a coronal barrier. The purpose of this study was to assess gray-coloured mineral trioxide aggregate (GMTA), white-coloured mineral trioxide aggregate MTA (WMTA), and Principle (a resin-modified glass ionomer) as coronal barriers to bacterial leakage. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Fifty-one human anterior teeth were cleaned and obturated with gutta-percha and sealer. In group 1, teeth received a 3 mm barrier of GMTA. In groups 2 and 3, samples received WMTA and Principle, respectively. Obturated teeth without barrier were used as positive control and obturated teeth covered with epoxy resin were used as negative control. A leakage model utilizing Enterococcus faecalis used for the evaluation. Leakage was recorded when turbidity was observed. RESULTS: All controls behaved as expected. Three samples in group 1, three samples in group 2, and four samples leaked in group 3. There was no statistically significant difference in leakage between GMTA and WMTA or between GMTA and Principle. CONCLUSION: It seems that GMTA, WMTA and Principle can be recommended as a coronal barrier for up to 90 days.