Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Model-free causality analysis of cardiovascular variability detects the amelioration of autonomic control in Parkinson's disease patients undergoing mechanical stimulation

We tested the hypothesis that causality analysis, applied to the spontaneous beat-to-beat variability of heart period (HP) and systolic arterial pressure (SAP), can identify the improvement of autonomic control linked to plantar mechanical stimulation in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). A causality index, measuring the strength of the association from SAP to HP variability, and derived according to the Granger paradigm (i.e. SAP causes HP if the inclusion of SAP into the set of signals utilized to describe cardiovascular interactions improves the prediction of HP series), was calculated using both linear model-based (MB) and nonlinear model-free (MF) approaches. Univariate HP and SAP variability indices in time and frequency domains, and bivariate descriptors of the HP–SAP variability interactions were computed as well. We studied ten PD patients (age range: 57–78 years; Hoehn-Yahr scale: 2–3; six males, four females) without orthostatic hypotension or symptoms of orthostatic intolerance and ‘on-time’ according to their habitual pharmacological treatment. PD patients underwent recordings at rest in a supine position and during a head-up tilt before, and 24 h after, mechanical stimulation was applied to the plantar surface of both feet. The MF causality analysis indicated a greater involvement of baroreflex in regulating HP–SAP variability interactions after mechanical stimulation. Remarkably, MB causality and more traditional univariate or bivariate techniques could not detect changes in cardiovascular regulation after mechanical stimulation, thus stressing the importance of accounting for nonlinear dynamics in PD patients. Due to the higher statistical power of MF causality we suggest its exploitation to monitor the baroreflex control improvement in PD patients, and we encourage the clinical application of the Granger causality approach to evaluate the modification of the autonomic control in relation to the application of a pharmacological treatment, a rehabilitation procedure or external intervention.
Hierarchical Age Estimation based on Dynamic Grouping and OHRank

This paper describes a hierarchical method for image-based age estimation that combines age group classification and age value estimation. The proposed method uses a coarse-to-fine strategy with different appearance features to describe facial shape and texture. Considering the damage to continuity between neighboring groups caused by fixed divisions during age group classification, a dynamic grouping technique is employed to allow non-fixed groups. Based on the given group, an ordinal hyperplane ranking (OHRank) model is employed to transform age estimation into a series of binary enquiry problems that can take advantage of the intrinsic correlation and ordinal information of age. A set of experiments on FG-NET are presented and the results demonstrate the validity of our solution.
Opportunities for Wideband Wavelength Conversion in Foundry-Compatible Silicon Waveguides Covered With Graphene

We numerically examine the opportunities for wideband wavelength conversion through four-wave mixing (FWM) in a foundry-compatible 220-nm-thick silicon-on-insulator (SOI) waveguide covered with the highly nonlinear two-dimensional material of graphene. As a case study, we consider a foundry-compatible SOI waveguide shaped as a double spiral and covered with two separate graphene sheets, which are covered in turn by two solid polymer electrolyte gates. When combining subwatt-level pump powers with a short waveguide length of only a few hundreds of micrometers, “perfectly phase-matched” conversion with significant efficiencies close to -20 dB can be obtained over a more than 40-THz-wide signal band adjacent to the pump frequency. Because of the tunability of the graphene properties using the electrolyte top gates, it is also possible to obtain “quasi-phase matched” FWM conversion through a periodic sign reversal of the graphene third-order nonlinearity along the waveguide. Conversion efficiencies exceeding -30 dB can be achieved over a 3.4-THz-wide signal band that is situated as much as 58 THz away from the pump frequency. Finally, the tunability of the graphene also allows for switching the converter from the perfectly phase-matched to the quasi-phase-matched operation mode.
Quaternary Ammonium Derivative of Lidocaine as a Long‐acting Local Anesthetic

Background Use of long‐acting local anesthetics that elicit complete neural blockade for more than 3 h often is desirable in pain management. Unfortunately, clinically available local anesthetics are in general not suitable for prolonged analgesia. This report describes the organic synthesis and functional testing of a lidocaine derivative that appears to fulfill the criteria of long‐acting local anesthetics.
Pain Physiology Education Improves Health Status and Endogenous Pain Inhibition in Fibromyalgia: A Double-Blind Randomized Controlled Trial

Objectives:There is evidence that education on pain physiology can have positive effects on pain, disability, and catastrophization in patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain disorders. A double-blind randomized controlled trial (RCT) was performed to examine whether intensive pain physiology education is also effective in fibromyalgia (FM) patients, and whether it is able to influence the impaired endogenous pain inhibition of these patients. Methods:Thirty FM patients were randomly allocated to either the experimental (receiving pain physiology education) or the control group (receiving pacing self-management education). The primary outcome was the efficacy of the pain inhibitory mechanisms, which was evaluated by spatially accumulating thermal nociceptive stimuli. Secondary outcome measures included pressure pain threshold measurements and questionnaires assessing pain cognitions, behavior, and health status. Assessments were performed at baseline, 2 weeks, and 3 months follow-up. Repeated measures ANOVAS were used to reveal possible therapy effects and effect sizes were calculated. Results:After the intervention the experimental group had improved knowledge of pain neurophysiology (P<0.001). Patients from this group worried less about their pain in the short term (P=0.004). Long-term improvements in physical functioning (P=0.046), vitality (P=0.047), mental health (P<0.001), and general health perceptions (P<0.001) were observed. In addition, the intervention group reported lower pain scores and showed improved endogenous pain inhibition (P=0.041) compared with the control group. Discussion:These results suggest that FM patients are able to understand and remember the complex material about pain physiology. Pain physiology education seems to be a useful component in the treatment of FM patients as it improves health status and endogenous pain inhibition in the long term.
Cyclothiazide induces robust epileptiform activity in rat hippocampal neurons both in vitro and in vivo

Cyclothiazide (CTZ) is a potent blocker of AMPA receptor desensitization. We have recently demonstrated that CTZ also inhibits GABAA receptors. Here we report that CTZ induces robust epileptiform activity in hippocampal neurons both in vitro and in vivo. We first found that chronic treatment of hippocampal cultures with CTZ (5 μm, 48 h) results in epileptiform activity in the majority of neurons (80%). The epileptiform activity lasts more than 48 h after washing off CTZ, suggesting a permanent change of the neural network properties after CTZ treatment. We then demonstrated in in vivo recordings that injection of CTZ (5 μmol in 5 μl) into the lateral ventricles of anaesthetized rats also induces spontaneous epileptiform activity in the hippocampal CA1 region. The epileptogenic effect of CTZ is probably due to its enhancing glutamatergic neurotransmission as shown by increasing the frequency and decay time of mEPSCs, and simultaneously inhibiting GABAergic neurotransmission by reducing the frequency of mIPSCs. Comparing to a well‐known epileptogenic agent kainic acid (KA), CTZ affects neuronal activity mainly through modulating synaptic transmission without significant change of the intrinsic membrane excitability. Unlike KA, which induces significant cell death in hippocampal cultures, CTZ treatment does not result in any apparent neuronal death. Therefore, the CTZ‐induced epilepsy model may provide a novel research tool to elucidate the molecular and cellular mechanisms of epileptogenesis without any complication from drug‐induced cell death. The long‐lasting epileptiform activity after CTZ washout may also make it a very useful model in screening antiepileptic drugs.
Suicide and attempted suicide in Greenland

Suicidal behaviour in Eskimo populations has changed in pattern and quantity over the last decades. Rates have more than quadrupled and performers now are mainly young persons with obscure motivation. In a study from Greenland's major township all cases of attempted or completed suicide among Greenlanders are analysed for social, emotional, somatic, and environmental predisposing factors in comparison with a non‐psychiatric, never‐suicidal, matching group.
Taming the 1.2 m Telescope

Abstract : Achievable residual jitter on the 1.2 m telescope at MSSS has historically been limited in moderate wind conditions due to the combination of the dynamics associated with the twin telescopes on the common declination axis shaft and the related control system behavior. The lightly damped, low frequency fundamental vibration mode shape of the telescopes rotating out of phase on the common declination axis shaft severely degraded the performance of the prior controllers. The relatively poor historic performance was due to a combination of the low error rejection of external disturbances, and the controller exciting the mode. The new control architecture described in this paper has made it possible to achieve greatly improved pointing performance.
Energy efficient virtual machine consolidation in mobile media cloud

Recently, attracted by the abundant computation and networking resources in the cloud, an increased number of mobile media services have been hosted by the cloud computing platforms. These mobile media clouds (MMCs) run hundreds of thousands of servers and consume megawatts of power with massive carbon emission. Virtualization is adopted to allocate resources elastically from a shared resource pool. Therefore, effective virtual machine (VM) consolidation is of paramount importance to reduce energy consumption. We especially focus on applications with different resource (e.g., CPU, memory, network) demands. In this paper, we formulate this problem as a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problem. We prove that the optimal energy efficiency can be obtained for a homogeneous cloud. Based on this analytical result, we develop an approximation algorithm for VM consolidation and placement which jointly considers CPU and network constraints. Through extensive simulations, we validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
On Hyperbolic Geometry Structure of Complex Networks Wenjie Fang Report of M 1 internship in

Various real world phenomena can be modeled by a notion called complex network. Much effort has been devoted into understanding and manipulating this notion. Recent research hints that complex networks have an underlying hyperbolic geometry that gives them navigability, a highly desirable property observed in many complex networks. In this internship, a parameter called δ-hyperbolicity, which is related to the underlying hyperbolic geometry of a graph, is studied in contrast of navigability. Graph-theorectical and computational properties of δ-hyperbolicity are studied and used to investigate δ-hyperbolicity of several network models. A seemingly gap between δ-hyperbolicity and navigability is found.
EFFECT OF HYPOXIA ON MACROPHAGE INFECTION BY LEISHMANIA AMAZONENSIS

In the present study, we compared the effect of 5% oxygen tension (hypoxia) with a normal tension of 21% oxygen (normoxia) on macrophage infection by the protozoan parasite Leishmania amazonensis. Macrophages from different sources (human cell line U937, murine cell line J774, and murine peritoneal macrophages) exposed to hypoxia showed a reduction of the percentage of infected cells and the number of intracellular parasites per cell. Observations on the kinetics of infection indicated that hypoxia did not depress L. amazonensis phagocytosis but induced macrophages to reduce intracellular parasitism. Furthermore, hypoxia did not act synergistically with γ-interferon and bacterial lipopolysaccharides in macrophages to induce killing of parasites. Experiments also indicated no correlation between nitric oxide production and control of infection in macrophages under hypoxic condition. Thus, we have provided the first evidence that hypoxia, which occurs in various pathological conditions, can alter macrophage susceptibility to a parasitic infection.
Patient Safety at Transitions of Care: Use of a Compulsory Electronic Reconciliation Tool in an Academic Hospital

Medication errors are responsible for most inpatient adverse events. Medication reconciliation emerged as an effective strategy to decrease these problems, enhancing patient safety. Electronic health records with reconciliation tools could improve the process, but many aspects should be considered in order to reach expected outcomes. In this paper we analyzed how a compulsory, electronic reconciliation application was used at Hospital Italiano in Buenos Aires, through admission and discharge processes. We evaluated all medications that were reconciled during patient admission and discharge since its implementation, from February to November 2014. During that period, there were 78,714 reconciled medications regarding 37,741 admissions (2.08 reconciled medications per hospitalization), of 27,375 patients (2.88 medications per patient). At admission, 63% of medications were confirmed and the remaining were paused or deleted. At discharge, 41% of all medications were reconfirmed. In the creation of the best possible medication history, the use of an electronic reconciliation tool would clean overloaded lists, but at the same time medications could be erroneously deleted.
Weakly supervised image parsing by discriminatively semantic graph propagation

In this paper, we concentrate on a challenging problem - image parsing trained on images with weakly supervised information, i.e., image-level labels. Image-level labels are ambiguous and difficult for training. Typically, an affinity graph of superpixels is constructed to provide additional information about labels of the target superpixel. However, existing work constructs affinity graph in a naive manner, L1 reconstruction and k-NN are most used where label co-occurrence is a common phenomenon and degenerates the assignment performance. To overcome above problem, we proposed the use of discriminatively semantic ability between neighbor superpixels and the target superpixel in affinity graph construction. With simpler experiment setup and lower time complexity, our method achieves average per-class accuracy comparable to state-of-the-art performances in weakly-supervised image parsing task on datasets MSRC-21 and PASCAL VOC 2007.
Logistic geographical information detecting unified information system based on Internet of Things

Through analysis on the applications of Internet of Things (IOT), geographical information detection and positioning as well as mobile communication technology in modern logistic technologies, this paper provides solution on mobile logistic geographical information detection and positioning from aspects of logistic IOT information perception and visual management. Logistic Geographical Information Detecting Unified Information System is the integrated geographical information positioning service platform formed by mobile telecom technology, IOT Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Global Positioning System (GPS) and perception technology, it is capable of logistic information realtime perception. By combination of RFID technology and telecom mobile devices, through Internet, IOT network and mobile telecom network, taking advantage of API programmable interface technical specification of Geolocation for World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the system specifically carries out development on browser interface detecting program of GPS, WIFI, GSM/GPRS mobile devices, in order to achieve mobile logistic visual control management. The tests of converged application of the system shows, the design of Logistic Geographical Information Detecting Unified Information System Based on Internet of Things is feasible.
A Survey of Decoding Algorithms in Insertion and Deletion Channels

In this survey, we are going to talk about some algorithms and codes that can make communications on Insertion/Deletion Channel effective. First of all,what is the Insertion/Deletion Channel? Generally speaking, it is a kind of channel that can easily occur errors which may result in loss of synchronization. Insertion errors and deletion errors are typical ones of these errors. In the following step, we are going to show the definition of them. The definition of insertion channel is that: each time we transimit a symbol on the channel,1 bit will be inserted into the transmition sequence with a fixed probability p. The definition of deletion channel is that: each bit we transmit on this channel might be independently deleted with fixed probability p. Here comes a example to make these definition more intuitively: On a channel with both insertion and deletion error, if a sequence of symbols of 11001100 have been transmitted, by inserting a ”1” into the second digit and deleting a ”0” from the third digit, the original sequence we send turn outs to be 11101100. Here comes a question, can we communicate reliablly and effectively on such kind of channels? The answer is yes. By using some specific encoding and decoding algorithms, this goal can be reached. The purpose of this survey is to briefly show the theory of the encoding and decoding algorithms on insertion/deletion channel, and the algorithms(or we can rather call them coding strategy) will be in a increasinig order of the capability of correcting insertion and deletion errors. In section 2, we will first discuss some elements of coding on the insertion/deletion channel, that is the Maximum likelihood decoder, Hamming distance. And by finding out that Hamming distance can only satisfy the requirement of decoding on the channel occurs substitution errors, in the section 3, we introduce a stronger algorithm that fits to decode on the insertion and deletion channel, that is Levenshtein distance. While we again find out that simply use Levenshtein distance may not help much in decoding on the insertion and deletion channels, Greedy algorithm, which is much stronger, will be introduced in section 4, and again we will find out that even Greedy algorithm is a good decoding algorithm, it can not deal with the channels with serious deletion (insertion), then the Jigsaw Puzzles algorithm will be introduced in section 5. At the end of this survey, we will make a conclusion and leave some open questions. This survey takes some older works on codes used in insertion and deletion channels as basic knowledges, such as [2], [5], [15], [16], [19], and [1], [9], [8], [11], [18], [13], [4], [3], [12], [17], [6], [10], [14], [7] are read as backgroud knowledge of the new algorithms such as Greedy algorithm and Jigsaw algorithm, etc. The survey gave by Michael Mitzenmacher [10] really helps in the train of thought of this survey. After all, thanks to the Wikipedia!
The relationship of longitudinal change in reproductive hormones and vasomotor symptoms during the menopausal transition.

CONTEXT The relationship of reproductive hormones to vasomotor symptoms (VMS) has been incompletely explored, although an increase in such symptoms at midlife and their reduction with hormone therapy suggest a strong and direct relationship. Vasomotor symptoms are reported by 65-76% of women traversing the menopausal transition and are a primary reason for medical intervention during this life stage. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this report was to relate longitudinal serum concentrations of the reproductive hormones estradiol (E2), FSH, testosterone (T), dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS), and SHBG and the free hormone indices free E2 index (FEI) and free T index (FTI) with the occurrence of VMS in women traversing the menopausal transition. DESIGN AND SETTING The Study of Women's Health Across the Nation is a multisite, longitudinal, cohort study of the menopausal transition being conducted in community-based groups of women. PARTICIPANTS AND MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES At baseline, 3302 menstruating women who belonged to one of five ethnic/racial groups were recruited and followed up with annual visits. Frequencies of symptoms (hot flashes, night sweats) for the prior 2 wk and measures of other covariates as well as potentially confounding variables were self-reported in the annual interview. Serum was obtained annually, on d 2-5 of a spontaneous cycle in cycling women or within 90 d of the anniversary of the baseline study visit in noncycling women and assayed for FSH, E2, T, SHBG, and DHEAS. FTI and FEI were calculated. This analysis incorporated available longitudinal data from 3293 women, excluding information collected at or after first report of hormone therapy use or hysterectomy. Data were analyzed using longitudinal marginal logistic regression models and a partial proportional odds model. RESULTS After adjusting for age, body mass index, and other related covariates, VMS prevalence increased with higher (log)FSH concentrations, and the increase was greater when blood was drawn more than 5 d after menses began. FSH concentrations were positively associated with the frequency of either hot flashes or night sweats, and higher FSH concentrations were associated with greater odds of reporting more frequent symptoms. Vasomotor symptom prevalence decreased with higher (log)E2, (sqrt)SHBG, and (log)FEI but only when these hormone values were modeled independently of (log)FSH values and the specimens were obtained outside the d 2-5 window. When modeled simultaneously with (log)FSH, (log)E2, (sqrt)SHBG, and (log)FEI were no longer significantly associated with symptom prevalence. (Cubic root)T and (sqrt)DHEAS concentrations and (log)FTI were not associated with the prevalence of VMS. CONCLUSIONS Annual serum FSH concentrations, but not E2, T, DHEAS, FTI, or FEI when collectively modeled longitudinally, are associated with both the prevalence and frequency of VMS in women at midlife.