Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Auditory brainstem implantation in 12- to 18-year-olds.

OBJECTIVE To assess the effects of the side of implantation (first-side vs second-side vestibular schwannoma); the presence of nonauditory sensations; the general health, expectations, and motivation of the patients; and a support group on the use of a multichannel auditory brainstem implant (ABI) in 12- to 18-year-old patients with neurofibromatosis 2. DESIGN Since 1992, 21 individuals (age range, 12-18 years) who were deafened by neurofibromatosis 2 have undergone implantation with a multichannel ABI at the House Ear Institute, Los Angeles, Calif. The patients were categorized regarding side of implantation, presence of remaining hearing (in first-side implant recipients), incidence of nonauditory sensations, and ABI use or nonuse. They were also rated on factors of general health, personal motivation, expectations, and family support. RESULTS Nineteen (95%) of 20 teenagers tested received hearing sensations from their ABIs. Eleven teenagers used their ABIs regularly, but 8 did not. Of the nonusers, 2 had good remaining hearing on the side with the second vestibular schwannoma, 2 had persistent nonauditory sensations, and 4 became program dropouts. None of the dropouts had remaining hearing, significant nonauditory sensations, or poor health; however, they generally rated poorly in terms of personal motivation, expectations, and family support. One patient with good family support returned with excellent ABI results after 4 years' absence. CONCLUSIONS The multichannel ABI is an effective means of providing hearing sensations to young patients deafened by neurofibromatosis 2. Preoperative counseling regarding the importance of such factors as expectations, personal motivation, and family support is invaluable and can promote successful adaptation to the device. With patience and support, even young nonusers (including program dropouts) can become successful device users.
DNA barcodes successfully identified Macaronesian Lotus (Leguminosae) species within early diverged lineages of Cape Verde and mainland Africa

Plant barcoding uses short DNA sequences to identify unknown samples at species level. This technique relies on the universality of these gene regions and the existence of enough variation among species to allow discrimination. Island radiations pose one challenging scenario where insufficient variation has accumulated in recently diverged groups to allow species identification. In this work we tested whether six gene regions are suitable for barcoding such a radiation in the Macaronesian Lotus. We found high levels of species discrimination in lineages of 3.5 Mya old or older and that the efficiency drastically reduces for younger radiations.
Antimicrobial Effects of Lavandula angustifolia Mill, Artemisia sieberi Besser, Cinnamomum verum J. Presl and Myrtus communis L. Encapsulated Essential Oils Against Prevalent Microorganisms Causing Sinusitis

Background: Sinusitis is one of the most prevalent infectious diseases among those who visit doctor, which requires antibiotic intervention. The most common types of bacteria causing this disease are Streptococcus pneumonia, Streptococcus pyogenes, Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeroginosa. Nonetheless due to dangerous side effects of chemical drugs on body and increased drug resistance of bacteria, new alternative therapeutic method, such as nano-encapsulating herbal essences is considered to augment effectiveness of treatment as well as bacterial sensitivity. Objectives: In this study, the antimicrobial effects of four encapsulated essential oils including Lavandula angustifolia Mill, Cinnamomum verum J. S. Persl, Artemisia sieberi Besser and Myrtus communis L. were evaluated on microorganisms of S. pneumonia , S. pyogenes, S. aureus and P. aeroginosa, which are among the most common factors for sinusitis. Materials and Methods: First, the Minimum Inhibitory Concentration and Minimum Bactericidal Concentration quantitative tests followed by qualitative test (disk diffusion) were performed to examine drug sensitivity. Results: The quantitative result in examined encapsulated essential oils was 0.097 µg/mL for S. pneumonia with Lavander nano-essence, 0.097 µg/mL, for S. pyogenes with Artemisia and Lavander nano-essences, 1.562 µg/mL for S. aureus with Artemisia nano-essence and 3.215 µg/mL for P. aeroginosa with Artemisia and Lavander nano-essences. Moreover, the results of the disk diffusion test showed that nano-essences did not have the ability to be released from paper disks and diffuse in solid environment. Conclusions: The results show proper effects of encapsulated essential oils on the four leading causes of sinusitis microorganisms (P ≥ 0.01) and also the findings indicate that the essential oils can be used to make more effective drugs with herbal resources and fewer side effects for destroying these microorganisms.
Crowding in visual acuity tests : unravelling the relative roles of optotype separation, gaze control and attention in children and adults

The measurement of visual acuity in children is important to detect visual anomalies including amblyopia. The use of visual acuity tests that induce ‘crowding’ are often recommended despite little standardization of the features in such tests. In addition, crowding in children’s foveal vision is known to be greater in extent than in adults and to be influenced by the nature of the flankers. This thesis presents new evidence that foveal crowding in children and amblyopic adults with strabismus is greater for letter acuity tests which require accurate gaze control and where the similarity of target and flankers imposes a greater attention demand. A slower maturation of crowded than single optotype acuity in young children is also shown. Using commercially available children’s acuity tests, the first study of this thesis showed that greater foveal crowding occurred with smaller inter-optotype spacing and with letter rather than picture optotypes. A decrease in crowding, resulting in improved visual acuity between the ages of 4 and 9 was also shown. In order to follow up these initial results, custom-designed visual acuity tests were produced to disentangle the contributions of contour interaction, eye movements and attention to the overall crowding effect. The second study in this thesis showed that crowding is greater with linear rather than single letter presentation and with letter rather than bar flankers in young children (aged 4-6), but not in adult controls. In a further study using a sample of amblyopic adults with strabismus more crowding was observed with linear presentation of letters and letter rather than bar flankers, a result consistent with the results seen in young children. These findings improve our understanding of crowding in children and in strabismic amblyopia and can be used to improve the standardizing of crowded acuity measurement and have the potential to increase the sensitivity of visual screening for amblyopia.
Shor's Algorithm from the Mindset of Quantum Oracles

The aim of this work is to show a brand-new way of making deterministic Quantum Computing (short QC), in the sense of Theory of Calculability, by meaning of unitary evolution. We start from the original Shor's Algorithm to explain how the newest one works, at least compared to theory. We will give a new conceptual foundation of QC, resulting from a set of conventional and well known results of Calculability and Quantum Mechanics. In the practice, if that can be used in its general sense, we will show an inaccessible relativized process which let us able to obtain same results with the same outlay in the time resource as the Shor's one for factorizing a given number n. Then the QO-system will be a prototype way giving to the relativized calculus the possibility to put in to practice an oracle, kind of object having till now abstract nature. The basic physical tool of our theorization, we call Quantum State Selection, consists in the twin-combined measurement process through positive valued measure operator (POVM), needed to provide the quantum oracle's answer.
The effect of bilingualism on amnestic mild cognitive impairment.

OBJECTIVES Previous reports have found that lifelong bilingualism is associated with a delay in the onset of dementia, including Dementia of the Alzheimer's Type (DAT). Because amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) is often a transition stage between normal aging and DAT, our aim in this paper was to establish whether this delay in symptom onset for bilinguals would also be seen in the onset of symptoms of aMCI and whether this delay would be consistent in different subtypes of aMCI. METHOD We examined the effect of bilingualism on the age of diagnosis in individuals with single- or multiple-domain aMCI who were administered a battery of neuropsychological tests and questionnaires about their language and social background. RESULTS Our results showed an interaction between aMCI type and language history. Only individuals diagnosed with single-domain aMCI demonstrated a later age of diagnosis for bilinguals (M = 79.4 years) than monolinguals (M = 74.9 years). DISCUSSION This preliminary evidence suggests that the early protective advantage of bilingualism may be specific to single-domain aMCI, which is the type of aMCI most specifically associated with progression to DAT.
Concatenation Method for High-temporal Resolution SSVEP-BCI

Electroencephalographic (EEG) signals are generally non-stationary, however, nearly stationary brain responses, such as steady-state visually evoked potentials (SSVEP), can be recorded in response to repetitive stimuli. Although Fourier transform has precise resolution with long time windows (5 or 10 s for instance) to extract SSVEP response (1-100 Hz ranges), its resolution with shorter windows decreases due to the Heisenberg-Gabor uncertainty principle. Therefore, it is not easy to extract evoked responses such as SSVEP within short EEG epochs. This limits the information transfer rate of SSVEP-based brain-computer interfaces. In order to circumvent this limitation, we concatenate EEG signals recorded simultaneously from different channels, and we Fourier analyze the resulting sequence. From this constructed signal, high frequency resolution can be obtained with time epochs as small as only 1 s, which improves SSVEPs classification. This method may be effective for high-speed brain computer interfaces (BCI).
Active matching for patch adaptivity in nonlocal means image denoising

Baseline nonlocal means denoising scheme may be improved by incorporating more adaptivity, like locally varying filtering window, smoothing constants and patch size or shape. In this paper, we presents a novel adaptive nonlocal means filtering scheme, the key idea of which is that before computing the similarity between two pixels, active matching is performed to determine optimally matched patch shape and size. Systematic analysis and detailed simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves excellent trade-off between bias and variance, and obtains superior denoising performance compared with the state of the art.
Courseware evaluation : where ' s the intelligence ? * 1

Questions are explored that courseware evaluators may pose in establishing the extent to which 'intelligence' is present in Intelligent Computer Assisted Instruction and Intelligent Tutoring Systems. The focus is on key features of intelligent systems including a knowledge base which grows, knowledge of student progress and interaction style, feedback or self-reflection of activities, tolerance of user input errors, learner control, and resources for attaining higher cognitive states. Ways in which courseware evaluators may establish the presence of these features are examined.
Multirate Throughput Optimization With Fairness Constraints in Wireless Local Area Networks

In 802.11-based wireless local area networks (WLANs), it is difficult to simultaneously attain both high throughput and fairness for multirate traffic. There is a performance anomaly when there are stations whose data rates are much lower than the other stations, in which the aggregate throughput of the high-rate stations drastically degrades. The problem of maximizing the total throughput while maintaining time fairness among the competing stations was studied previously by the same authors. However, our previous solution sacrificed the throughput of low-rate stations. In this paper, we extend our previous work by solving the same optimization problem while maintaining both time fairness and throughput fairness. The optimization problem is formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem. The two fairness constraints are maintained by means of changing the channel access probability and transmission time among the competing stations, which can be realized by adjusting their minimum contention window sizes and medium access control (MAC) frame sizes, respectively. A penalty function accompanied with a gradient-based approach is used to solve the problem, and its effectiveness is verified by computational experiments. The proposed solution is also compared with our previous solution in terms of convergence speed and total throughput.
Reliable streaming protocol for lossy networks

This paper introduces Rest, a reliable streaming protocol for lossy networks. Rest ensures full reliability while recovering losses as soon as possible thanks to the proactive injection of redundancy packets encoded following an on-the-fly scheme. It dynamically adapts the sending of codes depending on the estimation of the packet error rate with periodic acknowledgments to limit feedback dependency and protocol overhead. Results show that data are smoothly delivered to the receiving application with minimum overhead when errors are uniform. For systems with limited processing capacity, we propose to use a bounded encoding window to deliver data more uniformly while limiting decoding matrices size. We study the performance of Rest under different network conditions and highlight the underlying trade-offs behind each system parameter. We show that an optimal acknowledgement frequency can be estimated to minimize overhead while meeting system requirements in terms of delivery delay and computational power.
Clinical and molecular characterization of a Brazilian cohort of campomelic dysplasia patients, and identification of seven new SOX9 mutations

Campomelic dysplasia (CD) is an autosomal, dominantly inherited, skeletal abnormality belonging to the subgroup of bent bone dysplasias. In addition to bowed lower limbs, CD typically includes the following: disproportionate short stature, flat face, micrognathia, cleft palate, bell-shaped thorax, and club feet. Up to three quarters of 46, XY individuals may be sex-reversed. Radiological signs include scapular and pubic hypoplasia, narrow iliac wings, spaced ischia, and bowed femora and tibiae. Lethal CD is usually due to heterozygous mutations in SOX9, a major regulator of chondrocytic development. We present a detailed clinical and molecular characterization of nine Brazilian CD patients. Infants were either stillborn (n = 2) or died shortly after birth and presented similar phenotypes. Sex-reversal was observed in one of three chromosomally male patients. Sequencing of SOX9 revealed new heterozygous mutations in seven individuals. Six patients had mutations that resulted in premature transcriptional termination, while one infant had a single-nucleotide substitution at the conserved splice-site acceptor of intron 1. No clear genotype-phenotype correlations were observed. This study highlights the diversity of SOX9 mutations leading to lethal CD, and expands the group of known genetic alterations associated with this skeletal dysplasia.
Social Interactions Representation as Users Behavioral Contingencies and Evaluation in Social Networks

In social network analysis, models for the representation of user's interactions do not explain which actions are performed during social interactions, and which types of media are used in the interactions. We present a novel technique for the representation of social interactions as users' behavioral contingencies in the form of if-then rules, and for the evaluation of the contingencies using data mining procedures. We present the results of applying our technique in a group of Facebook users, identifying the social interactions in which users were more involved the most.
Verification of Business Process Quality Constraints Based on Visual Process Patterns

Business processes usually have to consider certain constraints like domain specific and quality requirements. The automated formal verification of these constraints is desirable, but requires the user to provide an unambiguous formal specification. In particular since the notations for business process modeling are usually visual flow-oriented languages, the notational gap to the languages usually employed for the formal specification of constraints, e.g., temporal logic, is significant and hard to bridge. Thus, our approach relies on UML Activities as a single language for the specification of both business processes and the corresponding constraints. For the expression of such constraints, we have provided a process pattern definition language based on specialized Activities. In this paper, we describe how model checking can be employed for formal verification of business processes against such patterns. For this, we present an automated transformation of the business process and the corresponding patterns into a transition system and temporal logic, respectively.
Investigation of a New Topology of Hybrid-Excited Flux-Switching Machine With Static Global Winding: Experiments and Modeling

This paper presents a new structure for a hybrid excitation, flux-switching synchronous machine. The particularity of this machine is its global excitation winding component that creates a three-dimensional (3-D) excitation flux path to control the global air gap flux. Both 3-D finite-element analysis and a comparison with experimental results are provided. This model makes it possible to: show the excitation flux path, explore the flux-regulation capability of a new structure, and identify the influence of material characteristics. The experimental performance of this machine in a dc generator is presented and compared with simulation output.
A Novel Subspace Coherent Signal Processing Algorithm For High-Resolution DOA Estimation

In this paper, a novel subspace coherent signal processing algorithm for high-resolution direction of arrival (DOA) estimation is proposed, which is based on forward-backward averaging and subspace eigendecomposition, the FB-SED algorithm for short. The forward-backward averaging matrix is employed as the preprocessor for the linear arrays, and then the invariance property of noise subspace to power emitters is used to estimate the directions of the coherent sources. The simulation results indicate that the FB-SED algorithm provides higher resolution performance for two closely spaced coherent sources estimation compared to conventional forward backward spatial smoothing MUSIC (FBSS-MUSIC). Finally, it is shown that FB-SED algorithm is more robust than FBSS-MUSIC when there are array errors in the practical linear array
Birth weight and parental BMI predict overweight in children from mothers with gestational diabetes.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the growth of children from pregnancies with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and its association with antenatal maternal, fetal, and recent anthropometric parameters of mother and father. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS In 324 pregnancies of Caucasian women with GDM, BMI before pregnancy, maternal glycemic values, and measurements of the fetal abdominal circumference were recorded. The weight and height of infants were measured at birth and at follow-up at 5.4 years (range 2.5-8.5). In addition, somatic data from routine examinations at 6, 12, and 24 months and the BMI of parents at follow-up were obtained. BMI standard deviation scores (SDSs) were calculated based on age-correspondent data. RESULTS At all time points, BMI was significantly above average (+0.82 SDS at birth; +0.56 at 6, +0.35 at 12, and +0.32 at 24 months; and +0.66 at follow-up; P < 0.001). BMI at birth was related to BMI at follow-up (r = 0.27, P < 0.001). The rate of overweight at follow-up was 37% in children with birth BMI > or =90th percentile and 25% in those with normal BMI at birth (P < 0.05). Abdominal circumference of third trimester and postprandial glucose values were related to BMI at follow-up (r = 0.22 and r = 0.18, P < 0.01). Recent maternal, paternal, and birth BMI were independent predictors of BMI at follow-up (r = 0.42, P < 0.001). Sixty-nine percent of children of parents with BMI > or =30 kg/m(2) were overweight at follow-up compared with 20% of those with parental BMI <30 kg/m(2) (P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS Children of mothers with GDM have a high rate of overweight that is associated both with intrauterine growth and parental obesity.
Identification of a Potential Susceptibility Locus for Macular Telangiectasia Type 2

Macular Telangiectasia type 2 (MacTel) is a relatively rare macular disease of adult onset presenting with distortions in the visual field and leading to progressive loss of visual acuity. For the purpose of a gene mapping study, several pedigrees were ascertained with multiple affected family members. Seventeen families with a total of 71 individuals (including 45 affected or possibly affected) were recruited at clinical centers in 7 countries under the auspices of the MacTel Project. The disease inheritance was consistent with autosomal dominant segregation with reduced penetrance. Genome-wide linkage analysis was performed, followed by analysis of recombination breakpoints. Linkage analysis identified a single peak with multi-point LOD score of 3.45 on chromosome 1 at 1q41-42 under a dominant model. Recombination mapping defined a minimal candidate region of 15.6 Mb, from 214.32 (rs1579634; 219.96 cM) to 229.92 Mb (rs7542797; 235.07 cM), encompassing the 1q41-42 linkage peak. Sanger sequencing of the top 14 positional candidates genes under the linkage peak revealed no causal variants in these pedigrees.
Rayleigh scattering: blue sky thinking for future CMB observations

Rayleigh scattering from neutral hydrogen during and shortly after recombination causes the CMB anisotropies to be significantly frequency dependent at high frequencies. This may be detectable with Planck, and would be a strong signal in any future space-based CMB missions. The later peak of the Rayleigh visibility compared to Thomson scattering gives an increased large-scale CMB polarization signal that is a greater than 4% effect for observed frequencies ν ≳ 500GHz. There is a similar magnitude suppression on small scales from additional damping. Due to strong correlation between the Rayleigh and primary signal, measurement of the Rayleigh component is limited by noise and foregrounds, not cosmic variance of the primary CMB, and should observable over a wide range of angular scales at frequencies 200GHz ≲ ν ≲ 800GHz. I give new numerical calculations of the temperature and polarization power spectra, and show that future CMB missions could measure the temperature Rayleigh cross-spectrum at high precision, detect the polarization from Rayleigh scattering, and also accurately determine the cross-spectra between the Rayleigh temperature signal and primary polarization. The Rayleigh scattering signal may provide a powerful consistency check on recombination physics. In principle it can be used to measure additional horizon-scale primordial perturbation modes at recombination, and distinguish a significant tensor mode B-polarization signal from gravitational lensing at the power spectrum level.