Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Americleft Speech Project: A Training and Reliability Study

Objective To describe the results of two reliability studies and to assess the effect of training on interrater reliability scores. Design The first study (1) examined interrater and intrarater reliability scores (weighted and unweighted kappas) and (2) compared interrater reliability scores before and after training on the use of the Cleft Audit Protocol for Speech–Augmented (CAPS-A) with British English-speaking children. The second study examined interrater and intrarater reliability on a modified version of the CAPS-A (CAPS-A Americleft Modification) with American and Canadian English-speaking children. Finally, comparisons were made between the interrater and intrarater reliability scores obtained for Study 1 and Study 2. Participants The participants were speech-language pathologists from the Americleft Speech Project. Results In Study 1, interrater reliability scores improved for 6 of the 13 parameters following training on the CAPS-A protocol. Comparison of the reliability results for the two studies indicated lower scores for Study 2 compared with Study 1. However, this appeared to be an artifact of the kappa statistic that occurred due to insufficient variability in the reliability samples for Study 2. When percent agreement scores were also calculated, the ratings appeared similar across Study 1 and Study 2. Conclusion The findings of this study suggested that improvements in interrater reliability could be obtained following a program of systematic training. However, improvements were not uniform across all parameters. Acceptable levels of reliability were achieved for those parameters most important for evaluation of velopharyngeal function.
A Visualization Tool for Learning Statistical Analysis in Multi Tabular Datasets

The ability of the human mind to perceive visual informationmakes visualization not only useful, but a powerful toolfor information discovery. Answering questions about complexrelationships requires the analyst to choose a statistical analysistechnique that makes relationships visually discernible. Oftenthe proper technique is dependent on the characteristics of thedataset, such as dependency among variables, sample size, andtypes of data (ordinal or categorical). In this work, we proposea web based interface approach that visualizes various statisticaltests and displays the distributions of data using color codingschemes. With our system, a user can select multiple variablesinteractively, and the resulting selections will be visualized tohelp the user understand the data and statistical formulas used toshow it. This capability allows a user to quickly evaluate differentsubsets of a large, complex dataset for statistical correlations. Tovalidate our approach, we performed a controlled user study toevaluate the ease of use of our system, and to test the effectivenessof our interface. We see our system as directly applicable to dataanalytical tasks, as well as a useful teaching tool for those learningdata analytics.
Utilization and cost of health care services for children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

BACKGROUND Despite an increasing prevalence of diagnosed attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) among children, the impact of ADHD on utilization and costs of health care services is largely unknown. OBJECTIVE To examine differences in health care utilization and costs between children with and without ADHD. DESIGN Retrospective matched cohort study conducted from January 1 to December 31, 1997. Setting. Health maintenance organization in western Washington State. PARTICIPANTS Children aged 3 through 17 years who were continuously enrolled in the health maintenance organization and used services during 1997 were eligible. Children were identified with ADHD if they had a diagnosis of ADHD or a prescription for a stimulant medication using automated patient files. Children without ADHD were randomly selected as controls and matched 4:1 to children with ADHD on age and sex. OUTCOME MEASURE Utilization and costs of specific categories of health care services. Results. A total of 2992 children (5.2%) were identified with ADHD. Children with ADHD incurred significantly greater per capita total costs ($1465 vs $690) than children without ADHD. Children with ADHD had 9.9 times more outpatient mental health visits (1.35/year vs 0.14/year), 3.4 times more pharmacy fills (11.25/year vs 3.30/year), and 1.6 times more primary care visits (3.84/year vs 2.36/year) than children without ADHD. The adjusted incremental costs were estimated to be $375 (95% confidence interval: $336-$416) for children with ADHD alone and $812 (95% confidence interval: $671-$973) for children with ADHD plus coexisting mental health disorders. CONCLUSIONS Children with ADHD use significantly more health care resources and incur significantly higher costs than children without ADHD. Coexisting mental health disorders substantially increase the cost of treating ADHD. Resource allocation decisions should consider the contributions of primary care, outpatient mental health, and pharmacy costs to the overall costs of care for children with ADHD.
Dietary saturated and unsaturated fats as determinants of blood pressure and vascular function

The amount and type of dietary fat have long been associated with the risk of CVD. Arterial stiffness and endothelial dysfunction are important risk factors in the aetiology of CHD. A range of methods exists to assess vascular function that may be used in nutritional science, including clinic and ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, pulse wave analysis, pulse wave velocity, flow-mediated dilatation and venous occlusion plethysmography. The present review focuses on the quantity and type of dietary fat and effects on blood pressure, arterial compliance and endothelial function. Concerning fat quantity, the amount of dietary fat consumed habitually appears to have little influence on vascular function independent of fatty acid composition, although single high-fat meals postprandially impair endothelial function compared with low-fat meals. The mechanism is related to increased circulating lipoproteins and NEFA which may induce pro-inflammatory pathways and increase oxidative stress. Regarding the type of fat, cross-sectional data suggest that saturated fat adversely affects vascular function whereas polyunsaturated fat (mainly linoleic acid (18 : 2n-6) and n-3 PUFA) are beneficial. EPA (20 : 5n-3) and DHA (22 : 6n-3) can reduce blood pressure, improve arterial compliance in type 2 diabetics and dyslipidaemics, and augment endothelium-dependent vasodilation. The mechanisms for this vascular protection, and the nature of the separate physiological effects induced by EPA and DHA, are priorities for future research. Since good-quality observational or interventional data on dietary fatty acid composition and vascular function are scarce, no further recommendations can be suggested in addition to current guidelines at the present time.
Constrained Visual Servoing based on Reachable Sets for Systems with Bounded Disturbance

Visual servoing (VS) has so many advantages and potentialities in applications that it has been studied intensively from several viewpoints. To realize VS, we have to deal with constraints necessary for VS such as keeping all features of moving target in the field of view and avoiding saturation of manipulator torque limitation. In this paper, we propose a new method to construct VS system taking the constraints for VS into account explicitly based on reachable sets for systems with bounded disturbance. We propose also a switching strategy to get the controller more high performance in addition to constraint fulfillment. We demonstrate efficacies of this method by performing experiment of VS using 6link manipulator PA10
Different effects of abciximab and cytochalasin D on clot strength in thrombelastography

Summary. Maximum amplitude (MA) in thrombelastography (TEG) consists of a plasmatic and a platelet component. To assess the magnitude of the plasmatic component, pharmacological approaches have been proposed to eliminate the platelet component. We evaluated the individual and combined effects of abciximab and cytochalasin D on the MA of TEG. Whole blood, platelet‐rich plasma (PRP) and homologous platelet‐poor plasma (PPP) from 20 healthy volunteers were spiked with abciximab or cytochalasin D or a combination of both and TEGs performed. Abciximab and cytochalasin D decreased MA in all samples. MA of whole blood (18.6 ± 3.1 mm) and PRP (33.7 ± 3.5 mm) spiked with abciximab or cytochalasin D alone (15.0 ± 2.9 mm and 25.0 ± 4.0 mm) were significantly higher when compared with abciximab and cytochalasin D combined (10.4 ± 3.0 and 20.2 ± 3.5 mm). While MA of PRP and homologous PPP were significantly (P < 0.001) different after individual administration of abciximab and cytochalasin D, combination of both abolished this difference (20.2 ± 3.5 mm and 20.4 ± 3.7 mm, P = 0.372). In whole blood of critically ill patients or patients undergoing major surgery there was also a significant difference of MA between abciximab alone and in combination with cytochalasin D (16.5 ± 11.3 mm and 11.3 ± 7.7 mm, P < 0.001). This indicates that in contrast to individual administration of abciximab or cytochalasin D, a combination of both compounds eliminates the platelet‐specific effect on MA of TEG tracings.
The impact of scaling-up combination antiretroviral therapy on patterns of mortality among HIV-positive persons in British Columbia, Canada

Despite the tremendous improvements in survival, some groups of people living with HIV (PLHIV) continue to have lower survival rates than the overall HIV‐positive population. Here, we characterize the evolving pattern of mortality among PLHIV in British Columbia since the beginning of the expansion of antiretroviral treatment in 2003.
Fusion of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks for Land Cover Classification of High-Resolution Imagery

Deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) have recently emerged as the highest performing approach for a number of image classification applications, including automated land cover classification of high-resolution remote-sensing imagery. In this letter, we investigate a variety of fusion techniques to blend multiple DCNN land cover classifiers into a single aggregate classifier. While feature-level fusion is widely used with deep neural networks, our approach instead focuses on fusion at the classification/information level. Herein, we train three different DCNNs: CaffeNet, GoogLeNet, and ResNet50. The effectiveness of various information fusion methods, including voting, weighted averages, and fuzzy integrals, is then evaluated. In particular, we used DCNN cross-validation results for the input densities of fuzzy integrals followed by evolutionary optimization. This novel approach produces the state-of-the-art classification results up to 99.3% for the UC Merced data set and the 99.2% for the RSD data set.
Membrane potentials and microenvironment of rat dorsal vagal cells in vitro during energy depletion.

1. Brainstem slices were taken from mature rats. In the dorsal vagal nucleus (DVNX), membrane potentials (Em) of neurons (DVNs) and glia, as well as extracellular oxygen, K+ and pH (Po2, aKo, pHo), were analysed during metabolic disturbances. 2. Postsynaptic potentials of DVNs, elicited by repetitive electrical stimulation of the solitary tract (TS), led to a secondary glial depolarization of up to 25 mV, a fall in Po2 of up to 150 mmHg, a rise in extracellular aKo of up to 9 mM, and a fall in pHo of about 0.2 pH units. 3. Hypoxic superfusates produced tissue anoxia, leading to an aKo increase of less than 2 mM and a pHo fall of 0.24 +/‐ 0.04 pH units (mean +/‐ S.D.). Glucose‐free solution evoked, after a delay of more than 8 min, a slow rise in aKo of 1.9 +/‐ 0.8 mM, accompanied by a mean increase in pHo of 0.24 +/‐ 0.13 pH units. After pre‐incubation in glucose‐free solution, anoxia elevated aKo by up to 15 mM, whereas the anoxia‐induced pHo decrease was completely blocked. 4. In 45 of 118 DVNs, anoxia elicited a persistent hyperpolarization of 15.6 +/‐ 5.0 mV. In the remaining DVNs, anoxic exposure either did not produce a change in Em (37%) or led to a depolarization of less than 10 mV (25%). A stable depolarization of 9 +/‐ 3.8 mV was detected in glial cells during anoxia. Similar responses were revealed in oxygenated glucose‐free solution after a delay of 12‐60 min. 5. The metabolism‐related hyperpolarizations were blocked by 100‐500 microM tolbutamide or 20‐100 microM glibenclamide, leading to recovery of spontaneous (0.5‐6 Hz) spike discharge. In these cells, 400‐500 microM diazoxide evoked hyperpolarizations and blockade of spontaneous activity. 6. In DVNs and glial cells, a progressive depolarization of up to 40 mV in amplitude developed during anoxic exposure after pre‐incubation in glucose‐free solution. 7. The results show that oxygen or glucose depletion does not impair the viability of DVNX cells. The contribution of neuronal ATP‐sensitive K+ (KATP) channels to this tolerance is discussed.
The Role of Histidines in the Acetate Kinase fromMethanosarcina thermophila *

The role of histidine in the catalytic mechanism of acetate kinase from Methanosarcina thermophila was investigated by diethylpyrocarbonate inactivation and site-directed mutagenesis. Inactivation was accompanied by an increase in absorbance at 240 nm with no change in absorbance at 280 nm, and treatment of the inactivated enzyme with hydroxylamine restored 95% activity, results that indicated diethylpyrocarbonate inactivates the enzyme by the specific modification of histidine. The substrates ATP, ADP, acetate, and acetyl phosphate protected against inactivation suggesting at least one active site where histidine is modified. Correlation of residual activity with the number of histidines modified, as determined by absorbance at 240 nm, indicated that a maximum of three histidines are modified per subunit, two of which are essential for full inactivation. Comparison of the M. thermophila acetate kinase sequence with 56 putative acetate kinase sequences revealed eight highly conserved histidines, three of which (His-123, His-180, and His-208) are perfectly conserved. Diethylpyrocarbonate inactivation of the eight histidine → alanine variants indicated that His-180 and His-123 are in the active site and that the modification of both is necessary for full inactivation. Kinetic analyses of the eight variants showed that no other histidines are important for activity. Analysis of additional His-180 variants indicated that phosphorylation of His-180 is not essential for catalysis. Possible functions of His-180 are discussed.
Alcohol and cardiovascular diseases: where do we stand today?

For centuries, multiple medical risks of heavy alcohol drinking have been evident with simultaneous awareness of a less harmful or sensible drinking limit. The increased risks of heavy drinking, defined as three or more standard‐sized drinks per day, are both cardiovascular (CV) and non‐CV. The CV risks include the following: (i) alcoholic cardiomyopathy (ACM), (ii) systemic hypertension, (iii) atrial arrhythmias, (iv) haemorrhagic stroke and, probably, ischaemic stroke. By contrast, modern epidemiological studies have shown lower morbidity and mortality amongst light–moderate drinkers, due mostly to a reduced risk of coronary artery disease (CAD), with contributions from ischaemic stroke and heart failure (HF). A low level of alcohol drinking has no clear relation to increased risk of any CV condition, except for haemorrhagic stroke. There is good evidence that supports the existence of mechanisms by which alcohol might protect against CAD, but the mechanisms for other alcohol–CV associations remain unclear. Interrelationships amongst the CV conditions affect the individual alcohol–disease relationships; for example, lower CAD risk in light–moderate drinkers is to a large extent responsible for the reduced HF risk. International comparison data plus the presence of proposed beneficial nonalcohol components in wine (particularly in red wine) suggest that this beverage type might afford extra CAD protection. However, the effect of beverage choice is confounded by a healthier drinking pattern and more favourable risk traits in wine drinkers. Debate persists about methodological and public health issues related to the epidemiology of alcohol‐related CV disease.
Use of Serum Biochemistry to Evaluate Nutritional Status and Health of Incubating Common Eiders (Somateria mollissima) in Finland

During 1997–1999, we collected serum samples from 156 common eider (Somateria mollissima) females incubating eggs in the Finnish archipelago of the Baltic Sea. We used serum chemistry profiles to evaluate metabolic changes in eiders during incubation and to compare the health and nutritional status of birds nesting at a breeding area where the eider population has declined by over 50% during the past decade, with birds nesting at two areas with stable populations. Several changes in serum chemistries were observed during incubation, including (1) decreases in serum glucose, total protein, albumin, β‐globulin, and γ‐globulin concentrations and (2) increases in serum uric acid, creatine kinase, and β‐hydroxybutyrate concentrations. However, these changes were not consistent throughout the 3‐yr period, suggesting differences among years in the rate of carbohydrate, lipid, and protein utilization during incubation. The mean serum concentrations of free fatty acids, glycerol, and albumin were lowest and the serum α‐ and γ‐globulin levels were highest in the area where the eider population has declined, suggesting a role for nutrition and diseases in the population dynamics of Baltic eiders.
Human T cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV‐1) proviral load of HTLV‐associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP) patients according to new diagnostic criteria of HAM/TSP

A high human T‐cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV‐1) proviral load is described in HTLV‐1‐associated diseases, especially HAM/TSP. However, the cut‐off value to define high levels of HTLV‐1 proviral load is not well established. 281 HTLV‐1‐infected patients from the HTLV reference center in Salvador, Brazil, were followed from 2005 to 2008. Patients were classified as asymptomatic, possible‐, probable‐, and definite‐HAM/TSP, in accordance with diagnostic criteria proposed by De Castro‐Costa et al. (2006): AIDS Res Hum Retroviruses 22:931–935. HTLV‐1 proviral load was determined using real‐time PCR. A receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve was constructed using only asymptomatic individuals and definite‐HAM/TSP patients. The ROC curve was used to predict the proviral load level that differentiates these two groups. Out of 281 patients, 189 were asymptomatic and 92 were diagnosed with HAM/TSP (22 possible, 23 probable, 47 definite). The mean HTLV‐1 proviral load was higher in possible‐ (89,104 ± 93,006 copies/106 PBMC), ‐probable (175,854 ± 128,083 copies/106 PBMC), and definite‐HAM/TSP patients (150,667 ± 122,320 copies/106 PBMC), when compared to asymptomatic individuals (27,178 ± 41,155 copies/106 PBMC) (P < 0.0001). A comparison of all HAM/TSP groups showed the highest proviral loads in probable‐HAM/TSP patients, yet the differences in mean values were not statistically significant. The ROC curve suggested a value of 49,865 copies/106 PBMC, with 87% sensitivity (95% CI = 74–95) and 81% specificity (95% CI = 75–86), as the best proviral load cut‐off point to differentiate definite HAM/TSP patients from asymptomatic individuals. HTLV‐1 proviral loads are higher in groups of infected patients with neurological symptoms and may represent a relevant biological marker of disease progression. J. Med. Virol. 83:1269–1274, 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Fall risk increasing drugs and injuries of the frail elderly — evidence from administrative data

Society benefits on a large scale from improved medical care and pharmaceuticals. The prescription of pharmaceuticals, however, also carries risks such as the possibility of an increased hazard of falls, which may lead to severe injuries and increased health expenditures associated with these injuries. This study investigates the relationship of several fall risk increasing drugs (FRIDs) and injuries of elderly persons using multivariate regression models.
Cross-linked actin networks (CLANs) are present in lamina cribrosa cells

Aims A study was undertaken to determine and compare the F-actin staining patterns in the cells of the lamina cribrosa (LC) of normal, dexamethasone (DEX)-treated and glaucomatous dissected tissue and cell cultures. Methods About 30 dissected donor eyes and nine cell lines provided the human specimens; 25 eyes and 20 primary cell cultures provided the bovine material. Appropriate samples were exposed to 1×10−7 M DEX for up to 14 days. LC tissue and cells were stained with Phalloidin-Alexa 488 to identify F-actin, and all samples were examined by confocal or epifluorescent microscopy. Results Both in the LC tissue and LC cell cultures the dominant actin arrangement was bundles of stress fibres. However, cross-linked actin networks (CLANs) were identified in the tissue and in culture. These were markedly increased by steroid treatment and were particularly large and abundant in cultures from glaucoma donors. CLANs were not associated with optic nerve head astrocytes. Conclusions The presence of abundant stress fibres in situ and in vitro highlights the biomechanical contribution of LC cells. However, the identification of CLANs in these cells shows that they are not exclusive to the trabecular meshwork, the only other place they have been found, and may have a role in glaucoma pathology.
Supplemental Material : Finding Group Interactions in Social Clutter

To apply branch-and-bound algorithm to minimize the quality function (6) in the main paper, we first specify the spaces where Ts and Te may take a value. We denote the length of the shortest exemplar activity as Tmin, then we assume 1 ≤ Ts ≤ T − Tmin + 1 and Tmin + 1 ≤ Te ≤ T . Additional constraint may be imposed, such as Tmin ≤ Te − Ts. Given these information, the temporal branch-and-bound algorithm, as a companion to the 2-D case studied in [2], can be derived as in Algorithm 1. In this algorithm, f̂(Ts,low, Ts,upp, Te,low, Te,upp) is a lower bound of the values of the quality function evaluated on all intervals enclosed in [Ts,low, Ts,upp]× [Te,low, Te,upp]. To calculate this lower bound, we define