Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comorbid Auditory Processing Disorder in Developmental Dyslexia

Objective The primary objective of this study was to investigate the extent of comorbid auditory processing disorder (APD) in a group of adults with developmental dyslexia. An additional objective was to compare performance on auditory tasks to results from standardized tests of reading in an attempt to generate a clinically useful profile of developmental dyslexics with comorbid APD. Design A group of eleven persons with developmental dyslexia and 14 age- and intelligence-matched controls participated in the study. Behavioral audiograms, 226-Hz tympanograms, and word recognition scores were obtained binaurally from all subjects. Both groups were administered the frequency-pattern test (FPT) and duration-pattern test (DPT) monaurally (30 items per ear) in both the left and right ear. Gap detection results were obtained in both groups (binaural presentation) using narrowband noise centered at 1 kHz in an adaptive two-alternative forced-choice (2-AFC) paradigm. The FPT, DPT, and gap detection results were analyzed for interaural (where applicable), intergroup, and intragroup differences. Correlations between performance on the auditory tasks and the standardized tests of reading were examined. Additive logistic regression models were fit to the data to determine which auditory tests proved to be the best predictors of group membership. Results The persons with developmental dyslexia as a group performed significantly poorer than controls on both the FPT and DPT. Furthermore, the group differences were significant in both monaural conditions. On the FPT and DPT, five of the eleven participants with dyslexia performed below the widely used clinical criterion for APD of 70% correct in either ear. All five of these participants performed below criterion on the FPT, whereas four of the five additionally performed below 70% on the DPT. The data also were analyzed by fitting a series of stepwise logistic regression models, which indicated that gap detection did not significantly predict group membership, whereas the FPT and DPT were significant predictors. The addition of the FPT score after the DPT did not result in a significant change in the residual deviance. Conclusions Approximately half of the participants with developmental dyslexia showed clinically significant diminished performance on the FPT and DPT indicative of APD. These results indicate that the percentage of persons with developmental dyslexia and comorbid APD may be substantial enough to warrant serious clinical considerations.
Oral Microencapsulated Live Saccharomyces cerevisiae Cells for Use in Renal Failure Uremia: Preparation and In Vivo Analysis

Orally administrable alginate-poly-L-lysine-alginate (APA) microcapsules containing live yeast cells was investigated for use in renal failure. At all times, yeast cells remain inside the microcapsules, which are then excreted in the stool. During their gastrointestinal passage, small molecules, like urea, diffuse into the yeast microcapsules where they are hydrolyzed. Orally administrating these microcapsules to uremic rats was found to decrease urea concentrations from 7.29 ± 0.89 mmol/L to 6.12 ± 0.90 mmol/L over a treatment period of eight weeks. After stopping the treatment, the urea concentrations increased back to uremic levels of 7.64 ± 0.77 mmol/L. The analysis of creatinine concentrations averaged 39.19 ± 4.33 μmol/L, 50.83 ± 5.55 μmol/L, and 50.28 ± 7.10 μmol/L for the normal-control, uremic-control and uremic-treatment groups, respectively. While creatinine concentrations for both uremic-control and uremic-treatment groups did not differ among each other (P > .05), they were, however, significantly higher than those of the normal control group (P < .05). Uric acid concentrations averaged 80.08 ± 26.49 μmol/L, 99.92 ± 26.55 μmol/L, and 86.49 ± 28.42 μmol/L for the normal-control, uremic-control and uremic-treatment groups, respectively. There were no significant differences in both calcium and phosphate concentrations among all three groups (P > .05). The microbial populations of five tested types of bacteria were not substantially altered by the presence of the yeast APA encapsulated yeast (P > .05).
Serotype Distribution, Antimicrobial Susceptibility, and Molecular Epidemiology of Streptococcus pneumoniae Isolated from Children in Shanghai, China

Objective Streptococcus pneumoniae is a common pathogenic cause of pediatric infections. This study investigated the serotype distribution, antimicrobial susceptibility, and molecular epidemiology of pneumococci before the introduction of conjugate vaccines in Shanghai, China. Methods A total of 284 clinical pneumococcal isolates (270, 5, 4,3, and 2 of which were isolated from sputum, bronchoalveolar lavage fluid, blood, cerebral spinal fluid, and ear secretions, respectively) from children less than 14 years of age who had not been vaccinated with a conjugate vaccine, were collected between January and December in 2013. All isolates were serotyped by multiplex polymerase chain reaction or quellung reactions and antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed using the broth microdilution method. The molecular epidemiology of S.pneumoniae was analyzed by multilocus sequence typing (MLST). Results Among the 284 pneumococcal isolates, 19F (33.5%), 19A (14.1%), 23F (12.0%), and 6A (8.8%) were the most common serotypes and the coverage rates of the 7-, 10-, and 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCV7, PCV10, and PCV13) were 58.6%, 59.4% and 85.1%, respectively. Antimicrobial susceptibility showed that the prevalence rates of S.pneumoniae resistance to penicillin were 11.3% (32/284). Approximately 88.0% (250/284) of the isolates exhibited multi-drug resistance. MLST analysis revealed a high level of diversity, with 65 sequence types (STs) among 267 isolates. Specifically, the four predominant STs were ST271 (24.3%, 65/267), ST320 (11.2%, 30/267), ST81 (9.7%, 26/267), and ST3173 (5.2%, 14/267), which were mainly associated with serotypes 19F, 19A, 23F, and 6A, respectively. Conclusions The prevalent serotypes among clinical isolates from children were 19F, 19A, 23F, and 6A and these isolates showed high resistance rates to β-lactams and macrolides. The Taiwan19F-14 clone played a predominant role in the dissemination of pneumococcal isolates in Shanghai, China. Therefore, continued and regional surveillance on pneumococcal isolates may be necessary.
Support for the death penalty: Instrumental response to crime, or symbolic attitude?

In this study the instrumental and symbolic perspectives on public support for the death penalty were directly compared within the context of a single survey of citizen attitudes. The results suggest that both instrumental and symbolic concerns influenced death penalty support. When the relative influence of the two factors was directly assessed, the symbolic perspective was found to exercise the major influence upon support for capital punishment, while the influence of instrumental crime-related concerns was small. These results suggest that death penalty support is one aspect of general political-social ideology, rather than a response to crime-related concerns or experiences. Over the past several decades, periodic surveys have questioned the American public on its support for policies involving the sentencing of criminal offenders. The results of these surveys consistently reveal widespread differences of opinion among adult Americans in their support for the death
Advancement of MIMO technology in WiMAX: from IEEE 802.16d/e/j to 802.16m

WiMAX is the first cellular standard that employs OFDMA technology and provides true integrated services for both fixed and mobile broadband access. Among the many new technologies adopted in WiMAX, MIMO antenna technology plays an essential role in delivering fast, rich-content, mobile broadband service reliably over extended coverage areas. In this article we provide a survey on the state of art of MIMO technologies in current WiMAX standards with an emphasis on practical engineering considerations. Moreover, we also briefly discuss the ongoing MIMO technologies in the evolution toward the next-generation WiMAX network.
Virtual Synchronous Generator Control of Full Converter Wind Turbines With Short-Term Energy Storage

One way to incorporate the increasing amount of wind penetration is to control wind turbines to emulate the behavior of conventional synchronous generators. However, the energy balance is the main issue for the wind turbines to be truly dispatchable by the power system operator such as the generators. This paper presents a comprehensive virtual generator control method for the full converter wind turbine, with a minute-level energy storage in the dc link as the energy buffer. The voltage closed-loop virtual synchronous generator control of the wind turbine allows it to work under both grid-connected and stand-alone condition. Power balance of the wind turbine system is achieved by controlling the rotor speed of the turbine according to the loading condition. With the proposed control, the wind turbine system can enhance the dynamic response, and can be dispatched and regulated by the system operator. The sizing design of the short term energy storage is also discussed in this paper. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed control method.
New results on robust stabilization via saturated feedback

In this paper we deal with the problem of stabilization of uncertain systems in the presence of input constraint. First algebraic conditions are derived for input-to-state stability of linear system with saturated linear feedback of low dimension. Then a recursive design procedure is derived for robust stabilization of block upper triangular nonlinear systems with feedforward structure.
Adaptive Predictions in a User-centered Recommender System

The size of available data on Internet is growing faster than human ability to treat it. Therefore, it becomes more and more difficult to identify the most relevant information, even for skilled people using efficient search engines. A way to cope with this problem is to automatically recommend data in accordance with users' preferences. Among others, collaborative filtering processes help users to find interesting items by comparing them with users having the same tastes. This paper describes a new user-centered recommender system relying on collaborative filtering and grid computing. Our model has been implemented in a Peer-to-Peer architecture. It has been especially designed to deal with problems of scalability and privacy. Moreover, it adapts its prediction computations to the density of the user neighborhood.
MRI-based brain morphometry correlates of chronic pain in knee osteoarthritis

Chronic pain is a complex experience that involves sensory, emotional, and cognitive aspects. The neurobiological mechanisms are therefore expected to be complex, widespread and largely maladaptive. Recent research of neuroimaging in chronic pain suggests cerebral re-organization on a structural level as a consequence of chronic pain. However, a combined and large-scale brain morphological profile in chronic pain to investigate its neural substrates has not been elucidated. The research presented aims to investigate morphological brain correlates and putatively related behavioural and cognitive aspects of chronic pain due to primary nociceptive knee osteoarthritic disorder using advanced imaging techniques for manual, voxel-based, and surface-based analysis, and questionnaire-based participants’ characterization. 31 participants with chronic painful knee osteoarthritis (age= 64.6± 8.4 years, 15 females, mean duration of pain=9.6 years) and 22 healthy controls (age= 61.3± 7.5, 13 females) underwent high-resolution anatomical MRI at 3 Tesla, and detailed pain characterization and psychometric assessment. Findings from this thesis challenge the common belief that chronic pain leads to hippocampal volume reduction and allegedly cognitive dysfunction. Indeed, general cognitive function and delayed recall memory were normally preserved in the studied cohort, and moreover the hippocampal volume was significantly enlarged. The volume of the rostral part (emotional) of anterior cingulate showed significant positive correlation with pain catastrophizing behaviour suggesting that it may underlie the pain catastrophizing tendency in patients with chronic knee pain. Higher scores of mechanical pain sensitivity correlated with reduced cortical thickness in the anterior cingulate indicating its potential key role in the process of central pain sensitization. Sufferers of chronic knee OA pain exhibited less grey matter volume in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which has a modulatory role in nociceptive transmission namely, pain perception inhibitory effect. Although the mechanism of this reduction is unknown, such a change may suggest functional disturbance with subsequent aberrant contribution to pain sustainability and chronification. Whole brain cortical thickness was investigated in patients and results revealed wide spread cortical thinning progresses with pain duration, preferentially in females, and in areas largely outside the known pain matrix, but including the posterior default mode network. Finally, preliminary results from investigating the potential mechanism of chronic pain related neocortical plasticity will be presented that may provide framework for future studies.
Responses to requests for clarification by linguistically normal and language-impaired children in conversation.

This study compared the conversational repair strategies employed by 8 language-impaired children (mean chronological age 9:2 years) and their linguistically normal age- and language-matched peers in response to a stacked series of requests for clarification. A 30-min language sample was elicited by an adult examiner from each of the subjects. During the course of the conversation, the examiner initiated 10 stacked request for clarification sequences. Each sequence consisted of three different neutral requests for clarification (Huh? , What? , and I didn't understand that.) and the subject's response to each request. All of the subjects appeared to recognize the obligatory nature of the neutral clarification requests employed. However, there were differences noted in the performance of the three groups. These included differences related to language maturity as well as differences specific to language condition.
Recursive expectation-maximization (EM) algorithms for time-varying parameters with applications to multiple target tracking

We investigate the application of expectation maximization (EM) algorithms to the classical problem of multiple target tracking (MTT) for a known number of targets. Conventional algorithms, which deal with this problem, have a computational complexity that depends exponentially on the number of targets, and usually divide the problem into a localization stage and a tracking stage. The new algorithms achieve a linear dependency and integrate these two stages. Three optimization criteria are proposed, using deterministic and stochastic dynamic models for the targets.
Towards the effective use of formal logic in the teaching of discrete math

Traditionally, the teaching of mathematical logic has treated the subject as an object of study without considering its practical utility for improving effective reasoning and writing of mathematical proofs. The Dijkstra/Scholten equational calculus answers these concerns. Its application has given rise to a style of proving called 'the calculational approach'. Courses on discrete mathematics and algorithm's design have been taught in Colombian higher education institutions with success for more than 3 years. Recently, we have finished the first phase of a software tool for proof processing using this calculus. The goal pursued for this utility is the support of the learning process in these courses as well as to eventually assist in the program design and derivation process. We present instances of the accomplishments of this teaching methodology in terms of elegant proof style; and evidence of the results on teaching quality.
Lost at the Center of a Circle: A Failure Mode and Its Remedy in the Two-Step Weighted Least Squares Method

Two-Step Weighted Least Squares (TSWLS) method (or the Chan method) is a classical TDOA-Based localization algorithm. We find that the Chan method will yield exceptionally large localization error if the target node is near the center of a circle formed by the anchor nodes. We name such a phenomenon Lost at the Center of a Circle (LCC). It is shown that LCC has no connection with the Geometric Dilution of Precision (GDOP). We explore when and why LCC develops utilizing the singular value decomposition (SVD) method. Based on the insight from SVD analysis, we propose a robust positioning algorithm to solve the LCC problem. Computer simulations and field experiments show that the new algorithm has better localization performance than the Chan method.
An electrochemical array sensor with CMOS signal processing circuits integrated on a single chip

We have designed and fabricated a 2×4 electrochemical image sensor with CMOS signal processing circuits integrated on a single chip. Using a well-studied ferricyanide solution, a clear cyclic voltammetry curve was obtained from each working electrode of the array sensor. The external components used include a data generator and a data recorder. This sensor chip is an early prototype of a fully integrated system of a fast-scan electrochemical image sensor that uses microelectrodes.
Involvement of Kallikrein-Related Peptidases in Normal and Pathologic Processes

Human kallikrein-related peptidases (KLKs) are a subgroup of serine proteases that participate in proteolytic pathways and control protein levels in normal physiology as well as in several pathological conditions. Their complex network of stimulatory and inhibitory interactions may induce inflammatory and immune responses and contribute to the neoplastic phenotype through the regulation of several cellular processes, such as proliferation, survival, migration, and invasion. This family of proteases, which includes one of the most useful cancer biomarkers, kallikrein-related peptidase 3 or PSA, also has a protective effect against cancer promoting apoptosis or counteracting angiogenesis and cell proliferation. Therefore, they represent attractive therapeutic targets and may have important applications in clinical oncology. Despite being intensively studied, many gaps in our knowledge on several molecular aspects of KLK functions still exist. This review aims to summarize recent data on their involvement in different processes related to health and disease, in particular those directly or indirectly linked to the neoplastic process.
FIFO is Unstable at Arbitrarily Low Rates ( Even in Planar Networks ) ∗

We prove that the FIFO (First-In-First-Out) protocol is unstable in the standard model of Adversarial Queueing Theory [7] for arbitrarily low rates of packet injection. In order to prove this, we proceed as follows: (1) We first consider the extension of the standard model to networks with dynamic capacities, which was introduced in [8]. We assume that each network link may arbitrarily take on a value in the two-valued integer set {1, C} where C > 4 is an integer parameter (the high capacity). Here, for any r > 0, we construct a FIFO network (whose size is a small polynomial in 1 r ) which is unstable at any rate at least r in this setting. (2) Then, we show how to simulate the construction in (1) in order to produce a FIFO network with all link capacities being now equal to C, which is also unstable at any rate at least r in this setting. (3) Finally, we provide a simple simulation of the construction in (2) in order to produce a FIFO network (whose size is still a small polynomial in 1 r ) with all capacities being now equal to 1, which is similarly unstable. Since all capacities are equal to 1 in the standard model of Adversarial Queueing Theory [7], this implies our main result: FIFO is unstable in the standard model of Adversarial Queueing Theory model for arbitrarily low rates of packet injection. We emphasize that all of our networks are planar; we allow though the paths of packets to have cycles of edges that can be repeated a bounded number of times. Our result closes a major open problem, that of FIFO (in)stability, in the standard model of Adversarial Queueing Theory, which was already posed in the original pioneering work of Borodin et al. [7]. Note: Due to lack of space, many of our proofs are only sketched in this extended abstract; full proofs are included in a clearly marked Appendix that may be read at the discretion of the Program Committee. This work has been accepted for (electronic) publication in Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity (ECCC), ECCC Reports 2003, Technical Report TR03-016, accepted on March 24, 2003. This work has been partially supported by the IST Program of the European Union under contract numbers IST-1999-14186 (ALCOM-FT) and IST-2001-33116 (FLAGS), by funds from the Joint Program of Scientific and Technological Collaboration between Greece and Cyprus, and by funds for the promotion of research at University of Cyprus. † Contact Author. Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics, University of Patras, Rion, 265 00 Patras, Greece, & Computer Technology Institute, 61 Riga Feraiou, P. O. Box 1122, 261 10 Patras, Achaia, Greece. Fax: +30261-0-960442, Email: Dimitrios.Koukopoulos@cti.gr Departemnt of Computer Science, University of Cyprus, 1678 Nicosia, Cyprus. Email: mavronic@ucy.ac. cy Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics, University of Patras, Rion, 265 00 Patras, Greece, & Computer Technology Institute, P. O. Box 1122, 261 10 Patras, Greece. Email: spirakis@cti.gr Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity, Revision 1 of Report No. 16 (2003)
Nitric Oxide Production and Nitric Oxide Synthase Activity in Malaria-Exposed Papua New Guinean Children and Adults Show Longitudinal Stability and No Association with Parasitemia

ABSTRACT Individuals in areas of intense malaria transmission exhibit resistance (or tolerance) to levels of parasitemia in their blood that would normally be associated with febrile illness in malaria-naïve subjects. The resulting level of parasitemia associated with illness (the pyrogenic threshold) is highest in childhood and lowest in adulthood. Clinical parallels between malarial and bacterial endotoxin tolerance have led to the supposition that both share common physiological processes, with nitric oxide (NO) proposed as a candidate mediator. The hypotheses that NO mediates tolerance and blood stage parasite killing in vivo were tested by determining its relationship to age and parasitemia cross-sectionally and longitudinally in a population of 195 children and adults from Papua New Guinea encountering intense malaria exposure. Despite pharmacological clearance of asymptomatic parasitemia, NO production and mononuclear cell NO synthase (NOS) activity were remarkably stable within individuals over time, were not influenced by parasitemia, and varied little with age. These results contrast with previous smaller cross-sectional studies. Baseline NO production and NOS activity did not protect against recurrent parasitemia, consistent with previous data suggesting that NO does not have antiparasitic effects against blood stage infection in vivo. The NO indices studied were markedly higher in specimens from study subjects than in samples from Australian controls, and NOS activity was significantly associated with plasma immunoglobulin E levels, consistent with induction of NO by chronic exposure to other infections and/or host genetic factors. These results suggest that NO is unlikely to mediate killing of blood stage parasites in this setting and is unlikely to be the primary mediator in the acquisition or maintenance of malarial tolerance.