Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neuropsychological test performance and CSF levels of monoamine metabolites in healthy volunteers and patients with Alzheimer's dementia

Fifteen patients (51–78 yrs) with mild to moderately severe Alzheimer's dementia and 18 healthy subjects of the same age were examined by clinical rating scales and a battery of neuropsychological tests. Levels of the monoamine metabolites homovanillic acid (HVA), 3‐methoxy‐4‐hydroxyphenyl glycol (MHPG) and 5‐hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5‐HIAA) were determined in the lumbar cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Correlations between clinical, psychological and biochemical measures were calculated in order to elucidate whether monoaminergic mechanisms are of importance for the maintenance of cognitive abilities in normal and pathological aging. The patients’ performance was severely impaired in all neuropsychological tests. The mean levels of monoamine metabolites, however, did not differ between patients and volunteers. The correlations between psychological test scores and CSF metabolite levels were generally low, but mostly negative, associating a poor performance to a high activity of brain monoaminergic neurons. Thus, among the volunteers high 5‐HIAA and MHPG levels correlated with poor performance in the Picture completion and the Trail making tests ‐ measures of visuo‐perceptual and visuo‐motor skills. In the demented patients poor performance in the memory tests was associated with high levels of HVA and 5‐HIAA. The results indicate that monoamine neuron acticity is not a primary determinant for cognitive abilities in healthy elderly subjects or in demented patients. The slight negative correlation between cognitive function and metabolite concentrations in the patients may reflect a disturbance in a dopaminergic‐cholinergic balance due to degenerative changes of central cholinergic pathways.
Retreatment efficacy and safety of tocilizumab in patients with rheumatoid arthritis in recurrence (RESTORE) study

ObjectivesTo evaluate the safety and efficacy of retreatment with tocilizumab (TCZ) in patients who had participated in the DREAM study (Drug free remission/low disease activity after cessation of tocilizumab [Actemar] monotherapy study) and had experienced loss of efficacy.MethodsPatients were retreated with TCZ or other disease modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs). Disease activity was measured using the 28-joint disease activity score (DAS28) for 12 weeks.ResultsA total of 164 eligible patients, including 161 who experienced loss of efficacy within 52 weeks of the DREAM study, resumed treatment: 157 with TCZ and 7 with DMARDs and/or infliximab. Of TCZ-treated patients, 88.5 % (139 patients) achieved DAS28 <2.6 within 12 weeks, whereas among patients treated with DMARDs and/or infliximab only 14.3 % (1 patient) achieved DAS28 <2.6. Adverse events were observed in 70 TCZ-treated patients (44.0 %), but no serious infusion reactions were observed.ConclusionsRetreatment with TCZ was well-tolerated and effective in patients who had responded to the preceding TCZ monotherapy but had experienced loss of efficacy after cessation of TCZ.
Case studies of early years settings

This longitudinal study assesses the attainment and development of children followed from the age of 3 until the end of Key Stage 1. Over 700 children were recruited to the study during 1998 and 1999 from 80 preschool centres in Northern Ireland. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are used to explore the effects of pre-school experience on children's cognitive attainment and social/behavioural development at entry to school and any continuing effects on such outcomes up to 8 years of age. In addition to the effects of preschool experience, the study investigates the contribution to children's development of individual and family characteristics such as gender, family size, parental education and employment. This overview describes the research design and discusses a variety of research issues (methodological and practical) in investigating the impact of pre-school provision on children's developmental progress.
Improving Context Aware Recommendation Performance by Using Social Networks

Ecommerce systems employ recommender systems to enhance the customer loyalty and hence increasing the cross-selling of products. In collaborative filtering-as the most popular method in recommender systems-an implicit network is formed among all the people. In any network, there are some individuals who have some inspirational power over the others leading them to influence their decisions and behaviours. But it seems that these methods do not support context awareness in mobile commerce environments. Furthermore, they lack high accuracy and also require high volume of computations due to not distinguish between neighbours as a friend or a stranger. This paper proposes a new model for recommender systems which are based on mobile data. This model uses these data to extract current users' context and also to identify individuals with the highest influence. Then, the system uses the information of these identified impressive users in the current context existed in the social networks for making recommendations. Beside of achieving higher accuracy, the proposed model has resolved cold start problem in collaborative filtering systems.
A study of neural network control of robot manipulators

Summary The basic robot control technique is the model based computer-torque control which is known to suffer performance degradation due to model uncertainties. Adding a neural network (NN) controller in the control system is one effective way to compensate for the ill effects of these uncertainties. In this paper a systematic study of NN controller for a robot manipulator under a unified computed-torque control framework is presented. Both feedforward and feedback NN control schemes are studied and compared using a common back-propagation training algorithm. Effects on system performance for different choices of NN input types, hidden neurons, weight update rates, and initial weight values are also investigated. Extensive simulation studies for trajectory tracking are carried out and compared with other established robot control schemes.
A comparison of online superpage promotion mechanisms

The amount of data that a typical translation lookaside bu er (TLB) can map has not kept pace with the growth in cache sizes and application footprints. As a result, the cost of handling TLB misses limits the performance of an increasing number of applications. The use of superpages, multiple adjacent virtual memory pages that can be mapped with a single TLB entry, extends a TLB's reach without signi cantly increasing its size or cost. The diÆculty of identifying what sets of pages should be promoted to superpages combined with the overhead of performing these promotions restricts superpage use almost exclusively to wired system data structures. Previous studies have shown that simple online policies that decide to create superpages dynamically can be e ective in reducing TLB penalties. In this paper we analyze the performance of online superpage promotion for nine benchmarks on a simulated HP PA-RISC system running a BSD Unix kernel. We extend previous work in two ways. First, we study the impact of creating superpages dynamically by remapping pages at the memory controller instead of copying pages to make them contiguous. The use of such a hardware mechanism a ects the choice between two previously described superpage promotion policies. Previous work has shown that an online approximation to a competitive policy is the best choice. Our results show that having hardware support makes a greedy policy perform equally well. Second, we use execution-driven simulation, whereas previous studies have used trace-driven simulation. Our results show that the di erences in accuracy are signi cant, especially when studying complex interactions between operating systems and modern architectures.
Meta-Analysis of Mandibular Distraction Osteogenesis: Clinical Applications and Functional Outcomes

Background: Mandibular distraction osteogenesis has been used effectively to treat syndromic craniofacial deformities. In recent years, its scope of application has widened to include treatment of airway obstruction in adults and children and nonsyndromic class II mandibular hypoplasia. So far, there has been no evidence-based review of mandibular distraction osteogenesis for mandibular lengthening. Methods: Two rounds of searches were performed by two independent assessors. The first-round PubMed search used the keywords “mandible” and “distraction osteogenesis. ” In the second-round search, the reference lists of the articles were retrieved. For both rounds, abstracts and then full articles were reviewed and selected on the basis of a set of inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results: The 178 retrieved articles yielded 1185 mandibular distraction osteogenesis patients: 539 received unilateral mandibular distraction osteogenesis and 646 received bilateral mandibular distraction osteogenesis. Mandibular distraction osteogenesis was reported to improve facial asymmetry and retrognathia (50.1 percent), correct the slanted lip commissure (24.7 percent), and improve or level the mandibular occlusal plane (11.1 percent) in unilateral asymmetry cases, whereas bilateral mandibular distraction osteogenesis was shown to be effective in preventing tracheostomies for 91.3 percent of neonates or infants with respiratory distress, and in relieving symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea for 97.0 percent of children and 100 percent of adult patients. Conclusions: Mandibular distraction osteogenesis is effective in treating craniofacial deformities, but further clinical trials are required to assess the long-term stability and to compare the treatment with conventional treatment methods, especially in cases of obstructive sleep apnea or class II mandibular hypoplasia.
A Cloud Computing Based Real Time Financial System

The “Cloud Computing” is becoming an increasingly popular term. The new “XaaS” category of services introduced will slowly replace many types of computational resources currently used. In this perspective, grid computing, the basic element for the large scale supply of cloud services, will play a fundamental role in defining how those services will be provided. This paper is concerned with the study and preliminary design of a real time financial system based on cloud computing technologies that enable macroeconomic analysis and forecasts of the financial markets and their instruments. Cloud and Grid paradigms can generate different added values which are examined in detail in the paper. This work utilises the results obtained during the Cybersar Project managed by the COSMOLAB Consortium (Italy). The system analyzed and described herein will be implemented in the Cybersar Computational Grid by autumn 2009.
Bayesian Online Learning of the Hazard Rate in Change-Point Problems

Change-point models are generative models of time-varying data in which the underlying generative parameters undergo discontinuous changes at different points in time known as change points. Change-points often represent important events in the underlying processes, like a change in brain state reflected in EEG data or a change in the value of a company reflected in its stock price. However, change-points can be difficult to identify in noisy data streams. Previous attempts to identify change-points online using Bayesian inference relied on specifying in advance the rate at which they occur, called the hazard rate (h). This approach leads to predictions that can depend strongly on the choice of h and is unable to deal optimally with systems in which h is not constant in time. In this letter, we overcome these limitations by developing a hierarchical extension to earlier models. This approach allows h itself to be inferred from the data, which in turn helps to identify when change-points occur. We show that our approach can effectively identify change-points in both toy and real data sets with complex hazard rates and how it can be used as an ideal-observer model for human and animal behavior when faced with rapidly changing inputs.
Gender and Age Differences in the Importance of Physical Attractiveness: Advertising Presentations and Motives For Comparison For Pre-Adolescent Children'

The study investigates the importance of physical attractiveness across the sexes, focusing on possible differences in the motives for social comparison held by first andfifth grade males andfemales when they view advertisements with attractive models. In-depth interviews were conducted with 90 children, and differences across both sex and age were observed. Younger females and males in both age groups were less likely to compare socially at all, in large parr due to less similarity being perceived between themselves and the models. Self-evaluation (with the commonly associated negative consequences, i.e., loss of self-esteem) was observed only infith grade females. SeY-evaluation among younger children was more positive, as the perceived similarity to models represented their "'growing up. " Self-improvement for young children
Relationship between Families Perception of Health and Support in the Care of Vulnerable Children

Introduction: The role of family support in the care of vulnerable children is rarely discussed, yet has a major impact on family health. How family members’ perceptions of their own health affect their vulnerable children has not been previously explored. Purpose: The objectives of the study were to assess and compare the health status of perception using the Duke Health Profile (DUKE) and perceptions family support using the family APGAR (FAPGAR) across groups-families of children with muscular dystrophy, attention deficit hyperactivity disorders (ADHD), and chromosomal abnormality (Turner syndrome or Klinefelter syndrome, TS/KS). Methods: The participants of the study were 286 from three cross-sectional studies from a southern medical hospital in Taiwan. Results: This manuscript investigated the relationship between families’ perception of health and support in the care of vulnerable children with DMD/SMA, ADHD, or TS/KS. By using multiple comparison, correlation and regression analysis, the authors reported that Duke Health Profile was significantly correlated with family support. Additionally, social health, age, marital status, and vulnerable status as predictors accounted for 35.3% of the variance in family support. Discussion: Data suggest the efficacy to care for families of children as show in the DMD/SMA group, compared to ADHD and chromosome abnormality groups. The authors indicate that family support is critical in the care of vulnerable children. This study did provide some new information in the related field.
Nanoemulsion gel-based topical delivery of an antifungal drug: in vitro activity and in vivo evaluation

Abstract Objective: In this study, attempt has been focused to prepare a nanoemulsion (NE) gel for topical delivery of amphotericin B (AmB) for enhanced as well as sustained skin permeation, in vitro antifungal activity and in vivo toxicity assessment. Materials and methods: A series of NE were prepared using sefsol-218 oil, Tween 80 and Transcutol-P by slow spontaneous titration method. Carbopol gel (0.5% w/w) was prepared containing 0.1% w/w AmB. Furthermore, NE gel (AmB-NE gel) was characterized for size, charge, pH, rheological behavior, drug release profile, skin permeability, hemolytic studies and ex vivo rat skin interaction with rat skin using differential scanning calorimeter. The drug permeability and skin irritation ability were examined with confocal laser scanning microscopy and Draize test, respectively. The in vitro antifungal activity was investigated against three fungal strains using the well agar diffusion method. Histopathological assessment was performed in rats to investigate their toxicological potential. Results and discussion: The AmB-NE gel (18.09 ± 0.6 µg/cm2/h) and NE (15.74 ± 0.4 µg/cm2/h) demonstrated the highest skin percutaneous permeation flux rate as compared to drug solution (4.59 ± 0.01 µg/cm2/h) suggesting better alternative to painful and nephrotoxic intravenous administration. Hemolytic and histopathological results revealed safe delivery of the drug. Based on combined results, NE and AmB-NE gel could be considered as an efficient, stable and safe carrier for enhanced and sustained topical delivery for AmB in local skin fungal infection. Conclusion: Topical delivery of AmB is suitable delivery system in NE gel carrier for skin fungal infection.
Messenger RNA Expression of Leptin and Leptin Receptors and their Prognostic Value in 322 Human Primary Breast Cancers

Purpose: Leptin and obesity are clearly related, and obesity is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. We therefore measured the expression of leptin and its two main receptor isoforms, OBR-L and OBR-S, in 322 breast cancers. We analyzed their relations with the classical prognostic factors and with survival to establish their links with breast cancer. Experimental Design: The expression of leptin and its receptors was quantified by real-time reverse transcription-PCR, using TaqMan fluorogenic probes and an ABI PRISM 7700 sequence detector system (Applied Biosystems, Courtaboeuf, France). TATA box binding protein was used to normalize expression. The human breast cancer cell, SK-BR-3, expressing the three targets, was chosen as the calibrator sample (i.e., target expression = 1). Results: All the tumors expressed both receptors, and 318 of 322 expressed leptin. These three variables correlated positively with each other and with estradiol and progesterone receptors, whereas they correlated negatively with histoprognostic grading and tumor diameter. OBR-L/OBR-S expression was inversely correlated with progesterone receptors. Patients with elevated OBR-S expression had longer relapse-free survival (P = 0.008), whereas high OBR-L/OBR-S was associated with a shorter relapse-free survival (P = 0.05). In Cox multivariate analyses, OBR-S maintained its prognostic value (P = 0.02; relative risk, 0.51). Conclusions: This study shows that (a) almost all of the breast cancers coexpress leptin and its two main isoforms of receptors, suggesting that the human epithelial breast cancer cells respond to leptin acting via an autocrine pathway; (b) high expression levels of leptin and leptin receptors are biological markers of a more differentiated phenotype; and that (c) OBR-S is an independent prognostic factor.
Looking for motor synergies in Darwin-OP biped robot

In humans, the system that controls several biomechanical tasks has a modular organization (muscle synergies). While the muscle synergies in human walking were already studied deeply, this phenomenon in robotic system is not so explored and could bring simpler controllers requiring a minor number of parameters. So, the purpose of this work is to acquire and interpret synergies from selected joint signals in order to answer some specific research questions regarding the verification of synergistic control of a biped robot in a walking activity, e.g, the number of synergies, their activation profiles, their mechanical role, their quality to reproduce/control walking motions, etc. The selected robotic system was the Darwin-OP robot when walking both with a model based and a bio-inspired controller. Tests were performed with the simulated and real robot. The results appear to suggest that the extraction of synergies are quite useful for the robotic locomotion, since with only 2 synergies, is possible to reconstruct the signals of the studied joints. The biomechanical role for each determined synergy is described based on the functional transformation between sensorimotor signals and biomechanical output. Besides, the robustness of the determined synergies is verified in the locomotor activation pattern across strides and across speeds when the mechanical requirements do not change to a large extent.
Two Homologous ATP-Binding Cassette Transporter Proteins, AtMDR1 and AtPGP1, Regulate Arabidopsis Photomorphogenesis and Root Development by Mediating Polar Auxin Transport1

Light and auxin control many aspects of plant growth and development in an overlapping manner. We report here functional characterization of two closely related ABC (ATP-binding cassette) transporter genes, AtMDR1 and AtPGP1, in light and auxin responses. We showed that loss-of-function atmdr1 and atpgp1 mutants display hypersensitivity to far-red, red, and blue-light inhibition of hypocotyl elongation, reduced chlorophyll and anthocyanin accumulation, and abnormal expression of several light-responsive genes, including CAB3, RBCS, CHS, and PORA, under both darkness and far-red light conditions. In addition, we showed that the atmdr1-100 and atmdr1-100/atpgp1-100 mutants are defective in multiple aspects of root development, including increased root-growth sensitivity to 1-naphthalene acetic acid (1-NAA), and decreased sensitivity to naphthylphthalamic acid (NPA)-mediated inhibition of root elongation. Consistent with the proposed role of AtMDR1 in basipetal auxin transport, we found that expression of the auxin responsive DR5::GUS reporter gene in the central elongation zone is significantly reduced in the atmdr1-100 mutant roots treated with 1-NAA at the root tips, compared to similarly treated wild-type plants. Moreover, atmdr1-100, atpgp1-100, and their double mutants produced fewer lateral roots, in the presence or absence of 1-NAA or NPA. The atmdr1-100 and atmdr1-100/atpgp1-100 mutants also displayed enhanced root gravitropism. Genetic-epistasis analysis revealed that mutations in phyA largely suppress the randomized-hypocotyl growth and the short-hypocotyl phenotype of the atmdr1-100 mutants under far-red light, suggesting that phyA acts downstream of AtMDR1. Together, our results suggest that AtMDR1 and AtPGP1 regulate Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) photomorphogenesis and multiple aspects of root development by mediating polar auxin transport.
A Multiple QoS Constrained Scheduling Strategy of Multiple Workflows for Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has gained popularity in recent times. As a cloud must provide services to many users at the same time and different users have different QoS requirements, the scheduling strategy should be developed for multiple workflows with different QoS requirements. In this paper, we introduce a Multiple QoS Constrained Scheduling Strategy of Multi-Workflows (MQMW) to address this problem. The strategy can schedule multiple workflows which are started at any time and the QoS requirements are taken into account. Experimentation shows that our strategy is able to increase the scheduling success rate significantly.