Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Structural and functional hippocampal changes in multiple sclerosis patients with intact memory

Purpose: To investigate changes in hippocampal functional connectivity and structural measures of hippocampal damage in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients with intact spatial memory, a cognitive domain frequently aff ected in progressive MS. Materials and Methods: Th e study protocol was approved by the institutional ethics review board and all subjects gave written informed consent prior to participation. Twenty-fi ve MS patients with intact spatial memory function were compared to 30 ageand sex-matched controls. Hippocampal volume diff erences, based on manually drawn masks, were evaluated using the Student’s t-test. Additionally, focal hippocampal lesions and mean diff usivity were obtained as descriptive measures of structural hippocampal damage. Multiple regression analyses of the resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were performed for each subject using hippocampal time series. Between-group analyses were conducted with a mixed eff ects model, corrected for multiple comparisons by a cluster defi ning threshold of Z=2 and a corrected cluster size signifi cance level of p<0.05. Results: Right hippocampal was signifi cantly lower in MS patients as compared to controls (p<0.01). Left hippocampal volume was also less in MS patients compared to controls, but not signifi cantly so (p=0.09). Resting state functional connectivity between the hippocampus and its anatomical input or target areas, among which the anterior cingulate gyrus, thalamus and prefrontal cortex, were signifi cantly decreased in MS patients. Decreased hippocampal functional connectivity was more pronounced in a subgroup of MS patients with hippocampal atrophy, although subtle decreases of functional connectivity were also found in patients with normal hippocampal volume. Conclusion: In MS patients, signifi cant abnormalities of hippocampal functional connectivity are already present before spatial memory function is impaired, especially in those patients with more pronounced hippocampal atrophy. Longitudinal studies should now assess whether these functional connectivity and structural changes may precede memory impairment in MS. Structural and functional hippocampal changes in multiple sclerosis patients with intact memory | 99
Degradation of the endothelial glycocalyx is associated with chylomicron leakage in mouse cremaster muscle microcirculation

Summary A thick endothelial glycocalyx contributes to the barrier function of vascular endothelium in macro- and microcirculation. We hypothesised in the current study that diet-induced hyperlipidaemia perturbs the glycocalyx, resulting in decreased dimensions of this layer and increased transendothelial lipoprotein leakage in capillaries. Glycocalyx thickness was measured in mouse cremaster muscle capillaries by intravital microscopy from the distance between flowing red blood cells and the endothelial surface. In control C57BL/6 mice on standard chow, glycocalyx thickness measured 0.58 ± 0.01 (mean ± SEM) μm, and no lipo-proteins were observed in the tissue. After three months administration of an either mild or severe high-fat / high-cholesterol diet (HFC) to C57BL/6 and ApoE3-Leiden mice, circulating large lipoproteins appeared into the subendothelial space in an increasing proportion of cre-master capillaries, and these capillaries displayed reduced glycocalyx dimensions of 0.40 ± 0.02 and 0.30 ± 0.01 μm (C57BL/6 mice), and 0.37 ± 0.01 and 0.28 ± 0.01 μm (ApoE3-Leiden mice), after the mild and severe HFC diet, respectively. The chylomicron nature of the accumulated lipoproteins was confirmed by observations of subendothelial deposition of DiI-labeled chylomicrons in capillaries after inducing acute glycocalyx degradation by heparitinase in normolipidaemic C57BL/6 mice. It is concluded that while under control conditions the endothelial glycocalyx contributes to the vascular barrier against transvascular lipoprotein leakage in the microcirculation, diet-induced hyperlipidaemia reduces the thickness of the glycocalyx, thereby facilitating leakage of chylomicrons across the capillary wall.
Direct Extraction of InP/GaAsSb/InP DHBT Equivalent-Circuit Elements From $S$-Parameters Measured at Cut-Off and Normal Bias Conditions

A unique direct parameter extraction method for the small-signal equivalent-circuit model of InP/GaAsSb/InP double heterojunction bipolar transistors (DHBTs) is presented. S-parameters measured at cut-off bias are used, at first, to extract the distribution factor X0 for the base-collector capacitance at zero collector current and the collector-to-emitter overlap capacitance Cceo present in InP DHBT devices. Low-frequency S-parameters measured at normal bias conditions then allows the extraction of the external access resistances Rbx, Re, and Rcx as well as the intrinsic HBT elements of the device. The terminal inductances of the device are extracted from high frequency S-parameters by employing the intrinsic HBT elements extracted at low-frequency. Compared to other published direct parameter extraction techniques the proposed method is developed specifically for III-V based HBTs and avoids S-parameters measured at the critical open-collector bias condition. The method is applied to an 1.5 μm emitter width InP/GaAsSb/InP DHBT device and leads to excellent prediction of the measured S-parameters in the 250 MHz - 65 GHz frequency range.
Polarization Reconfigurable Antennas Using Graphene for Microwave Applications

This paper presents a simulation-based study of using graphene in polarization reconfigurable antennas for wireless communication applications in the microwave regime. Two scenarios are analysed and simulated based on the square patch antenna made of copper or a hybrid transparent film where the truncated corners are replaced by graphene extensions. The graphene extensions are activated or deactivated by applying two different DC bias voltages. This design allows one antenna to switch dynamically between any linear and circular polarizations to cover digital audio broadcast (DAB), global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), unknown antenna orientation, and either line-of sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) conditions.
Combining computational and analytic model descriptions for evaluating embedded real-time systems

Industrial embedded real-time systems such as cabin communication systems (CCS) of modern (passenger) aircrafts [20], are highly complex. Verification of such complex systems is either hampered by the state space explosion problem, –attached to state-based verification,– or lacks a high-degree of detail, –due to the usage of some analytic method. For achieving a detailed analysis of system components, but still maintaining scalability of the procedure for computing overall properties of a system, our current research tackles the combination of executable and analytic model descriptions for the joint analysis of embedded real-time systems. As first step this report focuses on a combination of Timed Automata [2] with the MPA-method [8], where the latter is a relatively new compositional, analytical performance evaluation method based on the well-known Network Calculus [7]. As major outcome we present an efficient approach for converting analytic (sub)model descriptions of the MPA-method into networks of interacting Timed Automata.
Stiffness in stochastic chemically reacting systems: The implicit tau-leaping method

We show how stiffness manifests itself in the simulation of chemical reactions at both the continuous-deterministic level and the discrete-stochastic level. Existing discrete stochastic simulation methods, such as the stochastic simulation algorithm and the (explicit) tau-leaping method, are both exceedingly slow for such systems. We propose an implicit tau-leaping method that can take much larger time steps for many of these problems.
Breif Announcement: A Calculus of Policy-Based Routing Systems Breif Announcement: A Calculus of Policy-Based Routing Systems

Abstract The BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) is the single inter-domain routing protocol that enables network operators within each autonomous system (AS) to influence routing decisions by independently setting local policies on route filtering and selection. This independence leads to fragile networking and makes analysis of policy configurations very complex. To aid the systematic and efficient study of the policy configuration space, this paper presents a reduction calculus on policy-based routing systems. In the calculus, we provide two types of reduction rules that transform policy configurations by merging duplicate and complementary router configurations to simplify analysis. We show that the reductions are sound, dual of each other and are locally complete. The reductions are also computationally attractive, requiring only local configuration information and modification. These properties establish our reduction calculus as a sound, efficient, and complete theory for scaling up existing analysis techniques.
An Overview of the Philips Research System for Large Vocabulary Continuous Speech Recognition

This paper gives an overview of a research system for phoneme based, large vocabulary continuous speech recognition. The system to be described has been applied to the SPICOS task, the DARPA RM task and a 12000 word dictation task. Experimental results for these three tasks will be presented. Like many other systems, the recognition architecture is based on an integrated statistical approach. In this paper, we describe the characteristic features of the system as opposed to other systems: (1) The Viterbi criterion is consistently applied both in training and testing. (2) Continuous mixture densities are used without any tying or smoothing; this approach can be viewed as a sort of ‘statistical template matching’. (3) Time-synchronous beam search is used consistently throughout all tasks; extensions using a tree organization of the vocabulary and phoneme lookahead are presented so that a 12000 word task can be handled.
Measuring quality of life in evaluating clinical interventions: an overview

Health professionals provide care with some purpose in mind. It is reasonable to assume that they are therefore interested in observing and measuring health outcomes. In the recent past, it has become fashionable to describe health outcomes in terms of their impact on ‘quality of life’, a widely used term that is usually left undefined. Measures of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) are now in common usage in clinical studies. The construction of both generic and condition-specific measures of HRQoL relies heavily on the choice of descriptive domains, a process that often reflects the personal values of the developer of the instrument. Subjective valuation is a recurring phenomenon in the construction and application of HRQoL measures. These values should not be restricted to the private judgement of the clinician alone. The challenge for those evaluating clinical interventions is to make such values explicit and to extend the franchise to society as a whole.
MAC rate region of low resolution ADC digital and hybrid beamforming massive MIMO UL

For 5G it will be important to leverage the available millimeter wave spectrum. To achieve an approximately omnidirectional coverage with a similar effective antenna aperture, an antenna array is required at both the mobile and basestation. Due to the large bandwidth and inefficient amplifiers available in CMOS for mmWave, the analog front-end of the transceiver with a large number of antennas is especially power hungry. Two main solutions exist to reduce the power consumption: Hybrid BeamForming (HBF) and Digital BeamForming (DBF) with low resolution ADC. This work compares the uplink rate region for both systems assuming a basestation with a large number of antennas. We show, that in the low SNR regime, the performance of DBF even with about 1–2 bits of resolution outperforms the one of HBF in terms of the achievable sum rate. The higher the SNR, the higher also the required resolution of the ADC to achieve a similar performance compared to HBF. If there is a large spread in receive power of the signal from different users, systems with very low resolution (1–3 bit) suffer from a performance loss.
Upper bounds on the capacity of 2-layer N-relay symmetric Gaussian network

The Gaussian parallel relay network, in which two parallel relays assist a source to convey information to a destination, was introduced by Schein and Gallager. An upper bound on the capacity can be obtained by considering broadcast cut between the source and relays and multiple access cut between relays and the destination. Niesen and Diggavi derived an upper bound for Gaussian parallel N-relay network by considering all other possible cuts and showed an achievability scheme that can attain rates close to the upper bound in different channel gain regimes thus establishing approximate capacity. In this paper we consider symmetric layered Gaussian relay networks in which there can be many layers of parallel relays. The channel gains for the channels between two adjacent layers are symmetrical (identical). Relays in each layer broadcast information to the relays in the next layer. For 2-layer N-relay Gaussian network we give upper bounds on the capacity. Our analysis reveals that for the upper bounds, joint maximization over correlation coefficients is not necessary for obtaining stronger results.
Reduced cerebellar vermis activation during urinary storage and micturition in multiple system atrophy: 99mTc‐labelled ECD SPECT study

Single‐photon emission computed tomography brain imaging with special reference of bladder function was performed in eight multiple system atrophy (MSA) patients (two men, six women; mean age, 61 years) and age‐matched five normal control subjects (three men, two women; 62 years). In both groups imagings were obtained in three conditions; empty bladder, storage, and micturition. [99mTc]‐labelled ECD (555 MBq) was intravenously injected, which was immediately trapped and stabilized within the brain. Using NEUROSTAT software, which could also cancel morphologic differences between MSA and canonical brain, statistical difference between normalized mean tracer counts of both groups in each phase was calculated and visualized. In the storage phase, there was a significant decrease in tracer activity in bilateral cerebellar vermis, particularly of the right side in the MSA group (P < 0.05), which is also known to be involved in the neural control of micturition. In the micturition phase, the area of decrease in tracer activity in the cerebellar vermis became wider in the MSA group. In the resting state, no statistically significance was seen between both groups. In conclusion, it is suggested that the decrease in tracer activity in the cerebellar vermis during urinary storage and micturition is contributing to the micturitional disturbance in this disorder.
The Impact of Application System Messages on the Usability of Healthcare Software Applications

The quality and impact of application system messages (ASMs) is an important yet neglected area of human computer interaction (HCI) in healthcare. Complex, technical, uninformative ASMs contribute towards user frustration, lack of acceptance, may lead to interruptions in healthcare workflow, and impact patient safety. ASMs refer to messages displayed within a software application and includes error messages, alerts, reminders and exception technical error messages. We report on a usability evaluation and users' attitudes to system messages in order to inform recommendations for ASM design. A descriptive two part study incorporates a questionnaire and a system usability evaluation of 23 error messages, sourced from four healthcare software applications. The majority of participants (56%) indicate that constructive advice within ASMs is insufficient and 48% experience an interruption to workflow as a consequence of the delivery and display of ASMs. Messages evaluated are explicit (95%) and visible (90%) while consistency (68%) and politeness (48%) could be improved. The ASMs encountered lack constructive advice (32%), are imprecise (23%) and do not attempt to reduce workload. All respondents agree that there is a need for system consistency and 92% have preference for consistency of ASM presentation. We conclude that the elimination of inappropriate interruptions to users will improve healthcare efficiency, and reduce risks to patient safety. A healthcare application that relays constructive advice, is consistent in the implementation of ASMs and is considerate of workflow should ensure a more positive user experience, and improve technology acceptance among healthcare professionals.
NetCodCCN: A network coding approach for content-centric networks

Content-Centric Networking (CCN) naturally supports multi-path communication, as it allows the simultaneous use of multiple interfaces (e.g. LTE and WiFi). When multiple sources and multiple clients are considered, the optimal set of distribution trees should be determined in order to optimally use all the available interfaces. This is not a trivial task, as it is a computationally intense procedure that should be done centrally. The need for central coordination can be removed by employing network coding, which also offers improved resiliency to errors and large throughput gains. In this paper, we propose NetCodCCN, a protocol for integrating network coding in CCN. In comparison to previous works proposing to enable network coding in CCN, NetCodCCN permits Interest aggregation and Interest pipelining, which reduce the data retrieval times. The experimental evaluation shows that the proposed protocol leads to significant improvements in terms of content retrieval delay compared to the original CCN. Our results demonstrate that the use of network coding adds robustness to losses and permits to exploit more efficiently the available network resources. The performance gains are verified for content retrieval in various network scenarios.
A C‐terminal EGF‐like domain governs BAD1 localization to the yeast surface and fungal adherence to phagocytes, but is dispensable in immune modulation and pathogenicity of Blastomyces dermatitidis

BAD1, an adhesin and immune modulator of Blastomyces dermatitidis, is an essential virulence factor that is released extracellularly before association with the yeast surface. Here, deletion of the C‐terminal EGF‐like domain profoundly affected BAD1 function, leading to non‐association with yeast, extracellular accumulation and impaired yeast adherence to macrophages. In equilibrium binding assays, ΔC‐term BAD1, lacking an EGF‐like domain, bound poorly to BAD1 null yeast, yielding a low affinity (Kd, 3 × 10−7 M versus 5 × 10−8 M) and Bmax (1.9 × 105 versus 7.9 × 105) compared with BAD1. Similar protein binding profiles were observed using chitin particles, reinforcing the notion that chitin fibrils are a receptor for BAD1, and that the EGF‐like domain is critical for BAD1 interactions with chitin on yeast. ΔC‐term strains bound poorly to macrophages, compared with parental or BAD1‐reconstituted null strains. However, ΔC‐term strains and the purified protein itself sharply suppressed tumour necrosis factor (TNF)‐α release by phagocytes in vitro and in lung in vivo, and the strains retained pathogenicity in a murine model of blastomycosis. Our results illustrate the previously undefined role of the EGF‐like domain for BAD1 localization to yeast surfaces during cell wall biogenesis. They also demonstrate that the requirements for host cell binding and immune modulation by BAD1 can be dissociated from one another, and that the former is unexpectedly dispensable in the requisite role of BAD1 in pathogenesis.
Dynamic path analysis – a useful tool to investigate mediation processes in clinical survival trials

When it comes to clinical survival trials, regulatory restrictions usually require the application of methods that solely utilize baseline covariates and the intention‐to‐treat principle. Thereby, much potentially useful information is lost, as collection of time‐to‐event data often goes hand in hand with collection of information on biomarkers and other internal time‐dependent covariates. However, there are tools to incorporate information from repeated measurements in a useful manner that can help to shed more light on the underlying treatment mechanisms. We consider dynamic path analysis, a model for mediation analysis in the presence of a time‐to‐event outcome and time‐dependent covariates to investigate direct and indirect effects in a study of different lipid‐lowering treatments in patients with previous myocardial infarctions. Further, we address the question whether survival in itself may produce associations between the treatment and the mediator in dynamic path analysis and give an argument that because of linearity of the assumed additive hazard model, this is not the case. We further elaborate on our view that, when studying mediation, we are actually dealing with underlying processes rather than single variables measured only once during the study period. This becomes apparent in results from various models applied to the study of lipid‐lowering treatments as well as our additionally conducted simulation study, where we clearly observe that discarding information on repeated measurements can lead to potentially erroneous conclusions. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Finite Element Analysis of Eccentrically Braced Frames with Removable Link

Steel eccentrically braced frames (EBFs) are expected to sustain damage during an ultimate limit state design level earthquake through repeated cyclic plastic deformation of the active link. Traditionally the active link has been integral with the collector beam, but following the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquakes, the benefit of having a readily replaceable active link became apparent. The development of this was undertaken by New Zealand Heavy Engineer Research Association (HERA) and Steel Construction New Zealand (SCNZ), with input from the University of Auckland. This paper describes the finite element analyses performed to determine the behaviour of the system including the bolted endplate connections through the range of inelastic cyclic loading expected. The numerical simulations answer a number of questions, like at which loading cycle the von Mises stress is above 300MPa in collector beam adjacent to the removable link; history of all bolt forces; component forces (shear) in slab and removable link; rotation of the link versus cycles; equivalent plastic strain contour for the last cycle and others. This paper also describes how the interaction with the concrete slab was modelled in the elastic and inelastic range.