Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fatty acid and phospholipase A2 plasma levels in children with autism.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate fatty acid plasma levels, phospholipase A2 activity, and the developmental profiles of children with autism vs. control subjects. METHODS Twenty four children with autism underwent laboratory analysis for fatty acid quantification using gas chromatography and PLA2 activity determination by fluorometric assay. RESULTS No correlation was observed between the developmental quotient and fatty acid plasma levels. Phospholipase A2 activity was significantly higher among autistic children compared with controls. CONCLUSION The study did not show a correlation between fatty acid and phospholipase A2 plasma levels and the developmental profile of children with autism.
Toxicity and Residual Effectiveness of Insecticides on Insecticide-Treated Spheres for Controlling Females of Rhagoletis pomonella (Diptera: Tephritidae)

Abstract This study evaluated the toxicity of five technical-grade insecticides of four different classes to apple maggot females, Rhagoletis pomonella (Walsh), following a 10-min exposure period in insecticide-coated glass jars, with or without a feeding stimulant (sucrose) present. According to LC90 values for toxicity by ingestion and tarsal contact, imidacloprid was 1.5 times more toxic than dimethoate or abamectin, diazinon was less toxic, and phloxine B (a phototoxic dye) least toxic. Based on LC90 values for tarsal contact alone, dimethoate was 2.3, 4.0, and 18.4 times more toxic than imidacloprid, abamectin, and diazinon, respectively. Contact alone with phloxine B caused no mortality. When exposure was assessed using spheres coated with a latex paint mixture containing sucrose and formulated dimethoate (Digon 400 EC) or imidacloprid (Provado 1.6 F) at concentrations ranging from 5 to 70 g (AI)/cm2, both insecticides showed reduced effectiveness compared with toxicities from glass jar tests, with Digon two times more toxic than Provado. After exposure to artificial rainfall and retreatment with sucrose, Digon- and Provado-treated spheres exhibited greatest residual effectiveness, with diazinon-treated spheres less effective. Spheres treated with formulated abamectin (Agri-Mek 0.15 EC) at 1.0% (AI) performed only slightly better than phloxine B-treated spheres, which completely lost effectiveness after exposure to rainfall. Spheres treated with formulated imidacloprid (Merit 75 WP) at 1.5% (AI) showed equal or better residual efficacy in killing apple maggot flies (>80% mortality, shorter lethal duration of feeding) over a 12-wk exposure period to outdoor weather than spheres treated with Digon at 1.0% (AI) after both types were retreated with sucrose. Our results indicate that imidacloprid is a promising safe substitute for dimethoate as a fly killing agent on lure-kill spheres. Imidacloprid formulated as Merit 75 WP had greater residual efficacy than imidacloprid formulated as Provado 1.6 F.
Development and Implementation of a Quality Improvement Process for Echocardiographic Laboratory Accreditation

We describe our process for quality improvement (QI) for a 3‐year accreditation cycle in echocardiography by the Intersocietal Accreditation Commission (IAC) for a large group practice. Echocardiographic laboratory accreditation by the IAC was introduced in 1996, which is not required but could impact reimbursement. To ensure high‐quality patient care and community recognition as a facility committed to providing high‐quality echocardiographic services, we applied for IAC accreditation in 2010. Currently, there is little published data regarding the IAC process to meet echocardiography standards. We describe our approach for developing a multicampus QI process for echocardiographic laboratory accreditation during the 3‐year cycle of accreditation by the IAC. We developed a quarterly review assessing (1) the variability of the interpretations, (2) the quality of the examinations, (3) a correlation of echocardiographic studies with other imaging modalities, (4) the timely completion of reports, (5) procedure volume, (6) maintenance of Continuing Medical Education credits by faculty, and (7) meeting Appropriate Use Criteria. We developed and implemented a multicampus process for QI during the 3‐year accreditation cycle by the IAC for Echocardiography. We documented both the process and the achievement of those metrics by the Echocardiography Laboratories at the Ochsner Medical Institutions. We found the QI process using IAC standards to be a continuous educational experience for our Echocardiography Laboratory physicians and staff. We offer our process as an example and guide for other echocardiography laboratories who wish to apply for such accreditation or reaccreditation.
Candida albicans identification: comparison among nine phenotypic systems and a multiplex PCR.

BACKGROUND Candida albicans is the most common fungal pathogen isolated from clinical samples and is also the most common yeast species carried as a commensal by healthy individuals although some non-C. albicans species account for an important number of infections. OBJECTIVES To compare nine phenotypic systems for C. albicans identification [API 20C AUX; RapID Yeast Identification panel (RYIP); Vitek2 ID-YST system; chromogenic media, CHRO-Magar, Oxoid Chromogenic Candida Agar (OCCA), Candida ID2, Candida Identification Agar, CandiSelect 4, and Chromalbicans Agar] with multiplex PCR. PATIENTS/METHODS A collection of 390 yeast strains was obtained by routine isolation from oral and vaginal swabs. All of the yeasts isolated were tested for germ tube formation, and then submitted to a multiplex PCR protocol tested in previous studies, and to nine phenotypical commercial methods, together with the reference ATCC strains. Comparison was limited to the ability of the tests to identify C. albicans. RESULTS 253 isolates were provisionally identified as C. albicans by germ tube, and their identities were further confirmed with the multiplex PCR. Sensitivity of phenotypical systems ranged from 81.9% (Vitek2) to 87.7% (Candida ID2 e CHROMagar). For specificity, the highest value was 96.8% for Candida ID2, and the lowest value (75.1%) was for Chromalbicans Agar. CONCLUSIONS Although with differences in discriminatory power, the methods tested showed overall acceptable levels of sensitivity and specificity respect to the multiplex PCR; therefore, all could be useful for C. albicans identification where molecular differentiation is not available.
Choice of The Optimum Fiscal Rule - The Long Run Perspective

Paper examines the problem of choice of an optimal fiscal rule in the long run. An ideal rule would typically assure fair distribution of utility over generations, while allowing to maintain the sustainable fiscal position. Three commonly used types: debt, deficit and expenditure rules are considered. The main conclusion is that only the modified deficit rule fulfils the assumptions. The rule requires that government’s policy should aim at keeping the debt-to-GDP ratio constant over the economic cycle. The analysis is extended by taking into account the specific situation of the developing countries. An optimum fiscal constraint is then the Modified Golden Rule, according to which the public assets-to-GDP ratio should be held constant over the cycle.
Characterization of DNA Topoisomerase-1 in Spodoptera exigua for Toxicity Evaluation of Camptothecin and Hydoxy-Camptothecin

Camptothecin (CPT), a plant alkaloid originally isolated from the native Chinese tree, Camptotheca acuminate, exerts the toxic effect by targeting eukaryotic DNA topoisomerase 1 (DNA Topo1). Besides as potent anti-cancer agents, CPT and its derivatives are now being explored as potential pesticides for insect control. In this study, we assessed their toxicity to an insect homolog, the Topo1 protein from beet armyworms (Spodoptera exigua Hübner), a worldwide pest of many important crops. The S. exigua Topo1 gene contains an ORF of 2790 base pairs that is predicted to encode a polypeptide of 930 amino acids. The deduced polypeptide exhibits polymorphism at residue sites V420, L530, A653 and T729 (numbered according to human Topo1) among insect species, which are predicted to confer sensitivity to CPT. The DNA relaxation activity of this protein was subsequently examined using a truncated form that contained the residues 337–930 and was expressed in bacteria BL21 cells. The purified protein retained the ability to relax double-stranded DNA and was susceptible to CPT and its derivative hydroxy-camptothecin (HCPT) in a dose-dependent manner. The same inhibitory effect was also found on the native Topo1 extracted from IOZCAS-Spex-II cells, a cell line established from beet armyworms. Additionally, CPT and HCPT treatment reduced the steady accumulation of Topo1 protein despite the increased mRNA expression in response to the treatment. Our studies provide information of the S. exigua Topo1 gene and its amino acid polymorphism in insects and uncover some clues about potential mechanisms of CPT toxicity against insect pests. These results also are useful for development of more effective Topo1-targeted CPT insecticides in the future.
Phosphorylated MAP1B is induced in central sprouting of primary afferents in response to peripheral injury but not in response to rhizotomy

A peripheral nerve lesion induces sprouting of primary afferents from dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons into lamina II of the dorsal horn. Modifications of the environment in consequence to the axotomy provide an extrinsic stimulus. A potential neuron‐intrinsic factor that may permit axonal sprouting is microtubule‐associated protein 1B (MAP1B) in a specific phosphorylated form (MAP1B‐P), restricted to growing or regenerating axons. We show here that both in rat and mouse, a sciatic nerve cut is rapidly followed by the appearance of MAP1B‐P expression in lamina II, increasing to a maximum between 8 and 15 days, and diminishing after three months. Evidence is provided that sprouting and induction of MAP1B‐P expression after peripheral injury are phenomena concerning essentially myelinated axons. This is in accordance with in situ hybridization data showing especially high MAP1B‐mRNA levels in large size DRG neurons that give rise to myelinated fibers. We then employed a second lesion model, multiple rhizotomy with one spared root. In this case, unmyelinated CGRP expressing fibers do indeed sprout, but coexpression of MAP1B‐P and CGRP is never observed in lamina II. Finally, because a characteristic of myelinated fibers is their high content in neurofilament protein heavy subunit (NF‐H), we used NF‐H‐LacZ transgenic mice to verify that MAP1B‐P induction and central sprouting were not affected by perturbing the axonal organization of neurofilaments. We conclude that MAP1B‐P is well suited as a rapidly expressed, axon‐intrinsic marker associated with plasticity of myelinated fibers.
Asymptotic enumeration of Minimal Automata

We determine the asymptotic proportion of minimal automata, within n-state accessible deterministic complete automata over a k-letter alphabet, with the uniform distribution over the possible transition structures, and a binomial distribution over terminal states, with arbitrary parameter b. It turns out that a fraction ~ 1-C(k,b) n^{-k+2} of automata is minimal, with C(k,b) a function, explicitly determined, involving the solution of a transcendental equation.
CodeX: Combining an SVM Classifier and Character N-gram Language Models for Sentiment Analysis on Twitter Text

This paper briefly reports our system for the SemEval-2013 Task 2: sentiment analysis in Twitter. We first used an SVM classifier with a wide range of features, including bag of word features (unigram, bigram), POS features, stylistic features, readability scores and other statistics of the tweet being analyzed, domain names, abbreviations, emoticons in the Twitter text. Then we investigated the effectiveness of these features. We also used character n-gram language models to address the problem of high lexical variation in Twitter text and combined the two approaches to obtain the final results. Our system is robust and achieves good performance on the Twitter test data as well as the SMS test data.
Loss Through the Lens of Attachment to God

This article explores the experience of loss in part through the lens of “attachment to God. ” While attachment theory is a familiar frame for understanding loss, the area of attachment to God is still largely neglected. After an overview of attachment theory and a summary of contemporary work done on attachment to God, this article presents two case vignettes in order to highlight possible spiritual implications of an “attachment to God” framework for working with those who have experienced significant loss.
Children’s Attributions of Community Violence Exposure and Trauma Symptomatology

This study examines the association between community violence exposure and trauma symptomatology among young children (6–16 years; N = 120). Further, the study explores whether children’s attributions of violence mediate the relationship between their exposure and their trauma symptoms. Youth completed the Kid-SAVE measure of exposure to violence, the CAPS measure of attributions/perceptions, and the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC). Multiple regression analyses supported the expectation that exposure to violence would produce more negative perceptions and were associated with higher TSCC symptom scores. Exposure to violence both directly and indirectly (through the negative attributions) led to higher symptom reports, and this effect was separate from the child’s report of having been a victim of aggression or violence. Implications of this study include targeting children’s attributions within treatment modalities for youth to reduce distress and post-traumatic stress symptomatology.
Activation of p38 Kinase in the Gerbil Hippocampus Showing Ischemic Tolerance

Ischemic tolerance is a phenomenon in which brief episodes of ischemia protect against the lethal effects of subsequent periods of prolonged ischemia. The authors investigated the activation of p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (p38) in the gerbil hippocampus by Western blotting and immunohistochemistry to clarify the role of p38 kinase in ischemic tolerance. After the 2-minute global ischemia, immunoreactivity indicating active p38 was enhanced at 6 hours of reperfusion and continuously demonstrated 72 hours after ischemia in CA1 and CA3 neurons. Pretreatment with SB203580, an inhibitor of active p38 (0–30 μmol/L), 30 minutes before the 2-minute ischemia reduced the ischemic tolerance effect in a dose-dependent manner. Immunoblot analysis indicated that alteration of the phosphorylation pattern of p38 kinase in the hippocampus after subsequent lethal ischemia was induced by the preconditioning. These findings suggest that lasting activation of p38 may contribute to ischemic tolerance in CA1 neurons of the hippocampus and that components of the p38 cascade can be target molecules to modify neuronal survival after ischemia.
Opening Up the Innovation Process: Towards an Agenda

The author reflects on the trends and streams of open innovation. Various perspectives of opening up the innovation process includes: globalization of innovation, early supplier integration, user innovation, and external commercialization and application of technology. Globalization favors open innovation models because they achieve economies of scale more swiftly and promote more powerful standards and dominant designs.
Central Corneal Thickness in Children: Racial Differences (Black vs. White) and Correlation With Measured Intraocular Pressure

PurposeTo test the hypotheses that the mean central corneal thickness (CCT) of healthy black children is thinner than that of healthy white children and to confirm the relationship between increased CCT and measured intraocular pressure (IOP) in children. MethodsThis prospective observational case series included 178 eyes of 92 children aged 9 months to 17 years without anterior segment abnormalities or a clinical diagnosis of glaucoma. CCT was measured by ultrasonic pachymetry and IOP was measured by Goldmann or Tono-pen technique. ResultsThe mean CCT for the 102 eyes of 52 white children was 562±35 μm versus 543±37 μm for the 66 eyes of 35 black children (P=0.02). There was a positive relationship between CCT and IOP (P=0.0002). For every 100 μm increase in CCT, the IOP increased by 2.2±0.6 mm Hg. ConclusionsThe mean CCT of black children is thinner than that of white children. There is a positive relationship between increasing measured IOP and CCT among children with normal corneas and anterior segments. The interpretation of elevated IOP in eyes with abnormal anterior segment anatomy and thickened corneas awaits further study.
An ultra-tiny fiber probe Bragg grating temperature sensor

We experimentally demonstrate an all-silica microfiber Bragg grating for high-temperature sensing by focused ion beam machining in a tapered fiber probe with a sharp profile. This 11-period FBG is ultra-tiny with deep grooves and high efficiency. Its temperature sensitivity is ∼ 22 pm/°C near the wavelength of 1570 nm.
Development of three dimensional binary patterns for local bone structure analysis

Three dimensional (3D) bone structure is important to assess the bone strength in a disease like osteoporosis. Conventionally, 3D bone structure has been modeled by “rod” and “plate” descriptors. However, subtle bone growth or resorption process occurring in the early stage of bone diseases may not be detected by this conventional model. In this paper, we describe a 3D local binary pattern (3dLBP) descriptor that should be particularly suitable for comparing the change of 3D local bone patterns in longitudinal studies. Individual 3dLBPs were designed on the basis of 6 neighbors in the 3D lattice. As a preliminary study, the difference between the cortical and trabecular bone patterns were investigated using of 3D human mandible images (n=9) obtained by cone beam computed tomography (CBCT). The cortical bones showed higher occurrences of “corner” and “edge” like local structures and higher heterogeneity in its 3D intensity distribution compared to the trabecular bones (Wilcoxon pairwise signed rank test, p<0.05). The trabecular bones showed higher occurrences of “surface” like local structures and higher local uniformity in its intensity distribution (p<0.05). Finally, 3d images were successively eroded to simulate the bone loss. The occurrence of “corner” like structures in the cortical bone was increased (Pearson's analysis, rho=0.8, p<0.01), while all other descriptors showed the changes to more homogeneous local structures during successive erosions. These results support that 3dLBP descriptors should be useful in comparing the local 3D structure changes that may occur during the bone loss.
Building a composite factorial score for the assessment of quality of parent–child relationships in adolescence

The quality of parent–child relationships has important implications for adolescent development and well-being. However, whereas numerous measures of specific dimensions contributing to quality of parent–child relationships are available, scales that provide a global assessment of this content are scarce. Consequently, the assessment of quality of parent–child relationships poses a challenge to the researcher, especially when the need exists to consider its main aspects but long instruments can not be used due to diverse circumstances. This paper presents a composite factorial score on quality of parent–child relationships developed from four short measures of affection, communication, parental knowledge and family satisfaction that can contribute to solving some of those difficulties. This composite score can be a useful tool to assess quality of parent–child relationships, especially for studies devoted to the study of the relationships between experiences within the family and the adolescent's well-being.
A 250 mV, 352 $\mu$W GPS Receiver RF Front-End in 130 nm CMOS

A fully integrated CMOS GPS receiver RF front-end is presented. Systematic circuit optimizations for ultra-low voltage operation including subthreshold biasing, a novel mixer-VCO interface, and charge neutralization enable the supply voltage to be dramatically reduced as a means to save power. The 250 mV supply is the lowest ever reported for any integrated receiver RF front-end to date. Its 352 μW power consumption represents a three times power savings compared to the prior lowest GPS receiver RF front-ends reported in the literature. The prototype was fabricated in a 1P8M 130 nm CMOS process and includes a variable gain LNA, a quadrature VCO, quadrature mixers, and all required bias circuitry. The system has a measured gain of 42 dB, a noise figure of 7.2 dB, and an oscillator phase noise of - 112.4 dBc/Hz at a 1 MHz offset, resulting in a VCO FoM of 187.4 dBc/Hz.
The Delta-t transport protocol: features and experience

With the advent of new high performance networks and distribution systems there is renewed interest in transport protocol designs that can support both request/response and stream styles of communication. The author examines Delta-t, a transport protocol designed to meet such goals. Delta-t's main contribution is in the area of connection management, where it achieves hazard-free connection management without explicit packet exchanges. The author reviews Delta-t's features and connection management in general and outlines some lessons useful for the implementation of high-performance networks. <<ETX>>
Review: A Literature Survey on Text Segmentation in Handwritten Punjabi Documents

Gurumukhi script is used for Punjabi language, which is a two dimensional composition of symbols with connected and disconnected diacritics. Handwritten Gurumukhi script has some complexities like connected, overlapped text lines, words and characters. It is one of the foremost issues for errors during the recognition process. Text segmentation is a challenging job in unconstrained writer independent handwritten document image processing. There is a huge need for research in the domain of Punjabi handwriting recognition to resolve these challenging problems. In this paper we have done a review on various methods for line, word and character segmentation in handwritten Punjabi document.
Defending flooding attack in Delay Tolerant Networks

In Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs), routing protocols work in an environment where there is no guarantee of end to end path between source and destination. Mobility of nodes is an important factor that helps to deliver packets in DTN. Intermediate nodes receive, store and forward packets to other intermediate nodes or destination. The packets are stored in entirety at intermediate nodes even if intermediate nodes may not have path to destination. Since mobile nodes have limited buffer space and are connected intermittently, therefore, finding a node that is a good forwarder is important for delivery of messages. Probabilistic routing protocols suggest predictability measure on information stored to know which node in contact is potential forwarder in terms to deliver message to destined node. However, any malicious node in network may inject other nodes with bogus messages in order to degrade network performance. This paper presents updated metric called reputation of node which captures predictability as well as enables node in network to decide whether to accept messages from node in contact or not. When node transfers genuine messages it gains reputation as well as predictability with respect to destined node. Simulation results show that algorithm prevents flow of bogus messages in the network and thereby increases message delivery and reduces overhead in presence of malicious nodes.