Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Memory functioning in Lyme borreliosis.

BACKGROUND To objectively measure memory functioning in patients with Lyme borreliosis and examine the relationship between subjective reports of memory dysfunction and actual impairment. METHOD A prospective pretreatment study of patients with Lyme borreliosis (N = 21), a patient control group (osteomyelitis, N = 21), and healthy controls (N = 21) was conducted by using tests of verbal memory functioning (California Verbal Learning Test) and self-reported depression (Beck Depression Inventory-Cognitive Index), fatigue (Fatigue Severity Scale), and subjective ratings of memory abilities (Self-Rating Scale of Memory Functions). RESULTS Patients with Lyme borreliosis performed worse than healthy controls on verbal memory testing, but did not perform significantly differently from patient controls. Lyme borreliosis patients reported increased fatigue, which was correlated with poorer memory performance. Although the Lyme borreliosis patients rated their memory as more impaired, subjective complaints were not correlated with objective memory scores. CONCLUSION These findings suggest impaired memory performance is not specific to Lyme borreliosis and may be a result of evaluating cognitive functioning in patients with physical illness and somatic complaints. Fatigue is a prominent presenting complaint in patients with Lyme borreliosis and needs to be controlled for since it is known to influence neuropsychological performance. Subjective complaints are not correlated with objective memory assessment, so self-report of memory impairment should not be the criterion for inclusion in studies investigating cognitive manifestations of Lyme borreliosis.
Formal Semantics & Verification for the Border Gateway Protocol

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) use the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) to exchange routing information. ISPs use a variety of formalisms, checkers, and simulators to avoid BGP configuration errors. However, these tools are based on simplified semantics of BGP or no semantics at all, and therefore they cannot guarantee the absence of router misconfigurations. Meanwhile, BGP router misconfiguration has led to worldwide outages and traffic hijacks. To enable tools that provide formal guarantees, and to provide a foundation for future work on BGP, we present the first mechanized formal semantics of the BGP specification RFC 4271. The semantics is implemented in Coq. The semantics models all required features of the BGP specification modulo low-level details such as bit representation of update messages and TCP. Three case studies show how to use our semantics to develop reliable proofs, checkers, and simulators; and provide evidence for the correctness of our semantics. 1) We formalized and extended the seminal pen-and-paper proof by Gao & Rexford on the convergence of BGP, revealing necessary extensions to Gao & Rexford’s original assumptions. 2) We verified the soundness of the Bagpipe tool which automatically checks that BGP configurations adhere to given specifications. 3) We tested the popular BGP simulator C-BGP against our semantics, revealing a bug in C-BGP.
Learning fuzzy control rules by alpha-constrained Simplex method

The learning of fuzzy control rules can be defined as a constrained nonlinear optimization problem so that its objective function is indifferentiable. As an optimization method of this problem, “α-constrained Powell method,” which optimizes a given initial rule, is proposed. However, the difficulty with the learning by the α-constrained Powell method is that it is necessary to have initial rules of certain accuracy formulated by human experts, thus requiring a very large number of control experiments. In this study, we propose an α-constrained Simplex method, in which the α-level comparison is added to the Simplex method, which is a nonlinear optimization method. The α-constrained Simplex method is an optimization method for constrained problems using the α-level comparison that takes account of the constraint satisfaction instead of ordinary order relation used in the Simplex method, which is a direct search method based only on values of the objective function. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of this method, we carried out computer simulation of the fuzzy control rules for a pole-cart system. We have shown that this method makes it possible to achieve a fast learning of highly accurate rules from mechanically created rules based on a relatively small number of experiments, without relying on any existing rules. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 34(6): 80–90, 2003; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/scj.1207
BcIqg1, a fungal IQGAP homolog, interacts with NADPH oxidase, MAP kinase and calcium signaling proteins and regulates virulence and development in Botrytis cinerea

NADPH oxidases (Nox) produce reactive oxygen species (ROS) in multicellular eukaryotic organisms. They trigger defense reactions (‘oxidative burst’) – in phagocytes and plant cells –, and are involved in a broad range of differentiation processes. Fungal Nox‐complexes play a central role in vegetative, sexual and pathogenic processes. In contrast to mammalian systems, knowledge is limited about composition, localisation and connection to major signaling cascades in fungi. Here, we characterize a fungal homolog of the RasGAP scaffold protein IQGAP, which links several major signaling processes, including Nox in mammalian cell lines. We show that BcIqg1 interacts directly with a cytosolic, regulatory component (BcRac) and a membrane‐associated subunit (BcNoxD) of a Nox‐complex in the pathogen Botrytis cinerea. Thus, this protein may be a scaffold that mediates interaction of the catalytic subunits with the regulator BcNoxR. The protein interacts with modules of the MAP kinase‐ and calcium‐dependent signaling pathways. Functional analysis of BcIqg1 substantiated its involvement in different signaling pathways. It mediates the Ca2+‐triggered nuclear translocation of − BcCRZ1 and the MAP kinase BcBmp1. BcIqg1 is involved in resistance against oxidative and membrane stress and is required for several developmental processes including formation of sclerotia, conidial anastomosis tubes and infection cushions as well as for virulence.
Direct repeats flanking the Bacteroides transposon Tn4351 are insertion sequence elements

The clindamycin-erythromycin resistance (Ccr Emr) region of the Bacteroides transposon Tn4351 is flanked by direct repeats. This study showed that the direct repeats are insertion sequence (IS) elements. Although both IS elements can mediate transfer of the chloramphenicol (Cmr) marker on pBR328 by cointegrate formation with the conjugal IncW plasmid R388, IS4351R-mediated transfer of Cmr occurred at a consistently lower frequency than did the transfer mediated by IS4351L. Analysis of plasmids from the resultant transconjugants revealed IS-mediated activities such as deletions, tandem duplication of IS4351L, and excision of IS4351R.
Repeatability and accuracy of a paralleling technique for radiographic evaluation of distal bone healing after impacted third molar surgery.

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to investigate the repeatability and radiographic accuracy of an intraoral paralleling technique to evaluate periodontal bone healing on the distal surface of the second mandibular molar (2 Mm) after impacted third mandibular molar (3 Mm) surgical extraction. METHODS In order to estimate the variation in different radiographs, three replicas were made, each from 2 Mm, totalling 69 radiographic radicular longitude (RRL) recordings. One operator performed the periapical radiographs in a standard manner, utilizing a modified posterior film holder for the radiographic technique of parallelism, applied on the posterior region with the X-ray beam focused on the centre of 2 Mm. These radiographic recordings of the same region were obtained on three different and separate occasions, over a 12 month evaluation period after surgical extraction of the impacted 3 Mm. The RRL variable was measured and recorded three times by the same operator, with side-by-side comparison of three posterior periapical radiographs, irrespective of when the assessments were performed. RESULTS There were no statistically significant differences between the three replica recordings (p = 0.969). The correlations between the three sets of measurements were evaluated and found to be highly associated (intraclass correlation reliability coefficient = 0.90) and statistically significant (p≤0.05). The median and mean error of the radiographic technique evaluated was ±0.257 mm and ±0.347 mm, respectively. CONCLUSIONS The radiographic technique described permits standardization in periapical radiographs with a high repeatability and accuracy in posterior radiographic records (distal surface of 2 Mm) over a postoperative evaluation period of 12 months.
Multi-domain simulation and analysis of electromagnetically actuated reclosers

This paper deals with the analysis and simulation of an electromagnetic actuator for medium voltage reclosers. At first the actuator structure and its theoretical analytical model is shortly presented; a detailed finite element (FE) model is then reported and described. A mid-level simulation model based on co-energy approach is finally presented, allowing estimating the effect of different control strategies as well as different design parameters. Several simulation results provided by the models are reported and commented referring to different case studies. The results obtained by a purposely developed prototype are finally compared with the simulation results in order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approaches.
Phenomenology of rapid-cycling bipolar disorder: data from the first 500 participants in the Systematic Treatment Enhancement Program.

OBJECTIVE This study compared demographic and phenomenological variables between bipolar patients with and without rapid cycling as a function of bipolar I versus bipolar II status. METHOD The authors examined demographic, historical, and symptomatic features of patients with and without rapid cycling in a cross-sectional study of the first 500 patients with bipolar I or bipolar II disorder enrolled in the Systematic Treatment Enhancement Program for Bipolar Disorder, a multicenter project funded by the National Institute of Mental Health designed to evaluate the longitudinal outcome of patients with bipolar disorder. RESULTS Rapid-cycling bipolar disorder occurred in 20% of the study group. Rapid-cycling patients were more likely to be women, although the effect was somewhat more pronounced among bipolar I patients than bipolar II patients. In addition, rapid-cycling bipolar patients experienced onset of their illness at a younger age, were more often depressed at study entry, and had poorer global functioning in the year before study entry than nonrapid-cycling patients. Rapid-cycling patients also experienced a significantly greater number of depressive and hypomanic/manic episodes in the prior year. A lifetime history of psychosis did not distinguish between rapid and nonrapid-cycling patients, although bipolar I patients were more likely to have experienced psychosis than bipolar II patients. CONCLUSIONS Patients with rapid-cycling bipolar disorder demonstrate a greater severity of illness than nonrapid-cycling patients on a number of clinical measures. This study highlights the need to refine treatments for rapid cycling to reduce the overall morbidity and mortality of patients with this illness course modifier.
Comparative Study on Multilayer Graphene Nanoribbon (MLGNR) Interconnects

Based on an equivalent single-conductor (ESC) model of multilayer graphene nanoribbon (MLGNR) interconnects with side contacts, comparative study on their distributed parameters and transmission characteristics is performed in this paper. It is found that the number of conducting channels of a metallic MLGNR interconnect is the linear function of its width and Fermi energy, which can be described by an analytical equation. Its equivalent inductance and capacitance in the ESC model can also be characterized by a set of closed-form equations. Furthermore, according to the ITRS projection, transmission performance of the MLGNR interconnects with different contacts are predicted and compared with their Cu and carbon nanotube counterparts at different technology nodes. Also, some numerical results prove that MLGNR interconnects can provide better performance than Cu wires in particular at intermediate level. Even with the maximum crosstalk impacts considered, the advantage of MLGNR interconnects over Cu wires can still be kept.
Performance comparison for FinFETs, nanowire and stacked nanowires FETs: Focus on the influence of surface roughness and thermal effects

We perform a comprehensive comparison of FinFETs, stacked nanowires (stacked NWs), circular and square gate-all-around (GAA) n-FETs with same footprint, by using an in-house deterministic BTE solver accounting for quantum confinement, a wide set of scattering mechanisms and self-heating. We show that an increase in surface roughness (SR) can frustrate the improvement in on current, Ion, that for high-quality interfaces we observe in stacked NWs compared to FinFETs. Simulations suggest that SR also influences whether or not In0.53Ga0. 47As can provide better Ion than strained silicon (sSi).
Simultaneous thin-thread processors for low-power embedded systems

The traditional pipelined RISC processors have been the mainstream technology in high-end embedded systems; it is due to that embedded applications are often satisfied with minimum performance requirement. However, the upcoming application domain of embedded systems will require more advanced microprocessor cores due to the future computing demands. Therefore, the system would eventually have to turn to advanced processors such as superscalars for the embedded processing cores. A drawback is that the conventional design of the superscalar processors possesses inherent complexity and power problems which are not easily acceptable in the domain of embedded processors. In this paper, we investigate the possibility to use multi-threaded processors to solve the problems with the traditional superscalar processors in embedded systems.
On measures of gametic disequilibrium.

Various measures have been proposed for characterizing the statistical association that arises between alleles at different loci. Hedrick has compared these measures with the standardized measure D' proposed by Lewontin on the grounds that this latter measure is independent of allele frequency. Although D' has the same range for all allelic frequencies, in fact, D' is not "independent" of allele frequency, and no measure with that general property is possible for the multilocus association problem. The insolubility of this problem arises from the ill-defined nature of general "association. "
Partial representations improve the prosody of incremental speech synthesis

When humans speak, they do not plan their full utterance in all detail before beginning to speak, nor do they speak piece-by-piece and ignoring their full message – instead humans use partial representations in which they fill in the missing parts as the utterance unfolds. Incremental speech synthesizers, in contrast, have not yet made use of partial representations and the information contained there-in. We analyze the quality of prosodic parameter assignments (pitch and duration) generated from partial utterance specifications (substituting defaults for missing features) in order to determine the requirements that symbolic incremental prosody modelling should meet. We find that broader, higher-level information helps to improve prosody even if lower-level information about the near future is yet unavailable. Furthermore, we find that symbolic phrase-level or utterance-level information is most helpful towards the end of the phrase or utterance, respectively, that is, when this information is becoming available even in the incremental case. Thus, the negative impact of incremental processing can be minimized by using partial representations that are filled in incrementally.
A Mixed Reality Telepresence System for Collaborative Space Operation

This paper presents a mixed reality (MR) system that results from the integration of a telepresence system and an application to improve collaborative space exploration. The system combines free viewpoint video with immersive projection technology to support nonverbal communication (NVC), including eye gaze, interpersonal distance, and facial expression. Importantly, these features can be interpreted together as people move around the simulation, maintaining a natural social distance. The application is a simulation of Mars, within which the collaborators must come to agreement over; for example, where the Rover should land and go. The first contribution is the creation of an MR system supporting contextualization of NVC. Two technological contributions are prototyping a technique to subtract a person from a background that may contain physical objects and/or moving images and a lightweight texturing method for multiview rendering, which provides balance in terms of visual and temporal quality. A practical contribution is the demonstration of pragmatic approaches to sharing space between display systems of distinct levels of immersion. A research tool contribution is a system that allows comparison of conventional authored and video-based reconstructed avatars, within an environment that encourages exploration and social interaction. Aspects of system quality, including the communication of facial expression and end-to-end latency are reported.
Engagement of T cell receptor triggers its recruitment to low‐density detergent‐insoluble membrane domains

T‐cell receptors (TCRs) upon binding to peptide–MHC ligands transduce signals in T lymphocytes. Tyrosine phosphorylations in the cytoplasmic domains of the CD3 (γδϵ) and ζ subunits of the TCR complex by Src family kinases initiate the signaling cascades via docking and activation of ZAP‐70 kinase and other signaling components. We examined the role of the low‐density detergent‐insoluble membranes (DIMs) in TCR signaling. Using mouse thymocytes as a model, we characterized the structural organization of DIMs in detail. We then demonstrated that TCR engagement triggered an immediate increase in the amount of TCR/CD3 present in DIMs, which directly involves the engaged receptor complexes. TCR/CD3 recruitment is accompanied by the accumulation of a series of prominent tyrosine‐phosphorylated substrates and by an increase of the Lck activity in DIMs. Upon TCR stimulation, the DIM‐associated receptor complexes are highly enriched in the hyperphosphorylated p23 ζ chains, contain most of the TCR/CD3‐associated, phosphorylation‐activated ZAP‐70 kinases and seem to integrate into higher order, multiple tyrosine‐phosphorylated substrate‐containing protein complexes. The TCR/CD3 recruitment was found to depend on the activity of Src family kinases. We thus provide the first demonstration of recuitment of TCR/CD3 to DIMs upon receptor stimulation and propose it as a mechanism whereby TCR engagement is coupled to downstream signaling cascades.
Direct and sensitive detection of a pathogenic protozoan, Toxoplasma gondii, by polymerase chain reaction

We applied the polymerase chain reaction to detection of the pathogenic protozoan Toxoplasma gondii based on our identification of a 35-fold-repetitive gene (the B1 gene) as a target. Using this procedure, we were able to amplify and detect the DNA of a single organism directly from a crude cell lysate. This level of sensitivity also allowed us to detect the B1 gene from purified DNA samples containing as few as 10 parasites in the presence of 100,000 human leukocytes. This is representative of the maximal cellular infiltration (10(5)/ml) in 1 ml of cerebrospinal fluid obtained from patients with toxoplasmic encephalitis. The B1 gene is present and conserved in all six T. gondii strains tested to date, including two isolates from patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. No signal was detected by using this assay and DNAs from a variety of other organisms, including several which might be found in the central nervous system of an immunocompromised host. This combination of sensitivity and specificity should make detection of the B1 gene based on polymerase chain reaction amplification a very useful method for diagnosis of toxoplasmosis both in immunocompromised hosts and in congenitally infected fetuses.
An Optimized and Adaptive Error-Resilient Coding for H. 264 Video

This paper has proposed and implemented a new optimized and adaptive error-resilient coding based on bit-error detection and directional intra-frame concealment (DIFC). The bit error detection based on multiblock checksum, chain coverage and remainder coding. The DIFC takes the advantage of flexible block sizes to deal with detailed movement areas and make the usage of object edge detection to improve the accuracy of spatial interpolation. The results showed that the proposed directional intra-frame concealment has a better performance than the weighted pixel interpolation in H.264 software
Chinese herbal medicines for type 2 diabetes mellitus.

BACKGROUND Traditional Chinese herbal medicines have been used for a long time to treat diabetes, and many controlled trials have been done to investigate their efficacy. OBJECTIVES To assess the effects of Chinese herbal medicines in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. SEARCH STRATEGY We searched the following electronic databases: The Cochrane Library (CENTRAL), the Chinese BioMedical Database, MEDLINE, EMBASE, and LILACS, combined with hand searches on Chinese journals and conference proceedings. Date of last search was April 2004. No language restriction was used. SELECTION CRITERIA Randomised trials of herbal medicines (with at least two months treatment duration) compared with placebo, pharmacological or non-pharmacological interventions were included. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS Data were extracted independently by two reviewers. The methodological quality of trials was evaluated using the parameters of randomisation, allocation concealment, double blinding, and drop-out rates. Meta-analyses were performed where data were available. MAIN RESULTS Sixty-six randomised trials, involving 8302 participants, met the inclusion criteria. Methodological quality was generally low. Sixty-nine different herbal medicines were tested in the included trials, which compared herbal medicines with placebo, hypoglycaemic drugs, or herbal medicines plus hypoglycaemic drugs. Compared with placebo, Holy basil leaves, Xianzhen Pian, Qidan Tongmai, traditional Chinese formulae (TCT), Huoxue Jiangtang Pingzhi, and Inolter showed significantly hypoglycaemic response. Compared with hypoglycaemic drugs including glibenclamide, tolbutamide, or gliclazide, seven herbal medicines demonstrated a significant better metabolic control, including Bushen Jiangtang Tang, Composite Trichosanthis, Jiangtang Kang, Ketang Ling, Shenqi Jiangtang Yin, Xiaoke Tang, and Yishen Huoxue Tiaogan. In 29 trials that evaluated herbal medicines combined with hypoglycaemic drugs, 15 different herbal preparations showed additional better effects than hypoglycaemic drugs monotherapy. Two herbal therapies combined with diet and behaviour change showed better hypoglycaemic effects than diet and behaviour change alone. No serious adverse effects from the herbal medicines were reported. REVIEWERS' CONCLUSIONS Some herbal medicines show hypoglycaemic effects in type 2 diabetes. However, these findings should be carefully interpreted due to the low methodological quality, small sample size, and limited number of trials. In the light of some positive findings, some herbal medicines deserve further examination in high-quality trials.