Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sex, apolipoprotein E epsilon 4 status, and hippocampal volume in mild cognitive impairment.

BACKGROUND Subjects with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) have been shown to have reduced hippocampal volumes relative to normal elderly control subjects. The presence of the apolipoprotein E epsilon4 (APOE*E4) allele has been associated with greater hippocampal atrophy in women than in men with Alzheimer disease. This relationship has not been demonstrated in MCI. OBJECTIVE To examine the relationship between APOE genotype and hippocampal volume in men and women with MCI. DESIGN This study evaluated MCI in 193 subjects (86 women and 107 men) participating in a multicenter clinical trial, all of whom underwent magnetic resonance imaging at their baseline visit. We evaluated the association among the number of APOE*E4 alleles, memory performance, and hippocampal volume in men and women with tests of means and multiple linear regressions. RESULTS Compared with MCI subjects with no APOE*E4 alleles, women with 1 or 2 APOE*E4 alleles were found to have significantly reduced hippocampal volume, whereas men only showed a significant reduction in hippocampal volume when carrying 2 APOE*E4 alleles. Worsening of performance on a delayed word recall task (Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale cognitive subscale) showed an identical pattern in association with APOE*E4 allele dose and sex. Furthermore, when controlling for memory performance on delayed word recall, the APOE*E4 effect on hippocampal volumes was attenuated in men, but remained significant in women. CONCLUSION The APOE*E4 genotype status appears to have a greater deleterious effect on gross hippocampal pathology and memory performance in women than in men.
The Antioxidant and Free Radical Scavenging Activities of Chlorophylls and Pheophytins

Chlorophylls are important antioxidants found in foods. We explored the mechanisms through which the a and b forms of chlorophyll and of pheophytin (the Mg-chelated form of chlorophyll) reduce oxidation: we used comet assay to measure prevention of H2O2 DNA damage; we tested for quenching of 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH); we measured the ability to chelate Fe(II); and, we tested their ability to prevent formation of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) during Cu-mediated peroxidation of low density lipoprotein (LDL) in a chemical assay. All chlorophylls and pheophytins showed significant dose-dependent activity in the assays, with the pheophytins being the strongest antioxidants. Thus, these chemicals can prevent oxidative DNA damage and lipid peroxidation both by reducing reactive oxygen species, such as DPPH, and by chelation of metal ions, such as Fe(II), which can form reactive oxygen species.
Simultaneous estimation of confidence and error cause in speech recognition using discriminative model

Since recognition errors are unavoidable in speech recognition, conﬁdence scoring, which accurately estimates the reliability of recognition results, is a critical function for speech recognition engines. In addition to achieving accurate conﬁdence estimation, if we are to develop speech recognition systems that will be widely used by the public, speech recognition engines must be able to report the causes of errors properly, namely they must offer a reason for any failure to recognize input utterances. This paper proposes a method that simultaneously estimates both conﬁdences and causes of errors in speech recognition results by using discriminative models. We evaluated the proposed method in an initial speech recognition experiment, and conﬁrmed its promising performance with respect to conﬁ-dence and error cause estimation.
An aging-aware battery charge scheme for mobile devices exploiting plug-in time patterns

The aging of a rechargeable battery is mainly due to stress during charge-discharge cycles. Although the discharge phase is difficult to control, the charging phase can be performed in a specific way in order to mitigate the aging of the battery during its usage. It therefore becomes important to select the correct charging algorithm. In the case of mobile systems, equipped mainly with lithiumion batteries, the standard widely adopted for charging a battery is the typical constant current/constant voltage (CC-CV) protocol usually based on a linearly regular charge process. In this work, we propose a charging protocol based on the standard CC-CV method in which the charge start time and the value of the charging current can be programmed in such a way that the aging of the battery is mitigated. To validate this charging scheme we use an aging model that includes the charge/discharge current among the major parameters, and an analytical macro-model for the CC-CV charge time analysis.
Enhancing total nitrogen removal from wastewater of a science and industrial park using entrapped biomass

This study employed entrapped biomass technology to augment the conventional activated sludge process with anoxic–oxic (AO)/anaerobic–anoxic–oxic (A2O) functions for the removal of total nitrogen (TN) from wastewater of a science and industrial park in Taiwan. The entrapped biomass unit was fabricated in the format of carrier plates on which microbial cells were entrapped. Due to mass transport limitations, anoxic and anaerobic conditions were created within the bioplates that enabled denitrification to occur. The treatment basin incorporated an equivalent amount of 1300–2400 mg MLSS/L of activated sludge on the bioplates at packing ratios of 10–30% (volume ratio of bioplates to basin) operating with the addition of sodium carbonate for alkalinity and methanol for the electron donor. The results showed nearly 90% of ammonia nitrogen being converted to nitrate and 63% of TN removal, in comparison with typically 10% of TN removal in traditional activated sludge process of domestic wastewater plants.
Delivery of Dendritic Cells Engineered to Secrete IFN-α into Central Nervous System Tumors Enhances the Efficacy of Peripheral Tumor Cell Vaccines: Dependence on Apoptotic Pathways1

We tested whether modulation of the CNS-tumor microenvironment by delivery of IFN-α-transduced dendritic cells (DCs: DC-IFN-α) would enhance the therapeutic efficacy of peripheral vaccinations with cytokine-gene transduced tumor cells. Mice bearing intracranial GL261 glioma or MCA205 sarcoma received peripheral immunizations with corresponding irradiated tumor cells engineered to express IL-4 or GM-CSFs, respectively, as well as intratumoral delivery of DC-IFN-α. This regimen prolonged survival of the animals and induced tumor-specific CTLs that expressed TRAIL, which in concert with perforin and Fas ligand (FasL) was involved in the tumor-specific CTL activity of these cells. The in vivo antitumor activity associated with this approach was abrogated by administration of neutralizing mAbs against TRAIL or FasL and was not observed in perforin−/−, IFN-γ−/−, or FasL−/− mice. Transduction of the tumor cells with antiapoptotic protein cellular FLIP rendered the gene-modified cells resistant to TRAIL- or FasL-mediated apoptosis and to CTL killing activity in vitro. Furthermore, the combination therapeutic regimen was ineffective in an intracranial cellular FLIP-transduced MCA205 brain tumor model. These results suggest that the combination of intratumoral delivery of DC-IFN-α and peripheral immunization with cytokine-gene transduced tumor cells may be an effective therapy for brain tumors that are sensitive to apoptotic signaling pathways.
Toward Interpretation of Complex Structural Models

The interpretation of complex structural models is facilitated by a variety of operations that can be carried out by a computer. Several of these involve partitions on a reachability matrix, which describes a contextual relation among the elements of the system under study. When partitioning of the reachability matrix in various ways does not permit adequate interpretation, cycles are usually the source of difficulty. A weighting matrix applied to the elements of a maximal cycle set permits a set of digraphs to be developed, which allows for more detailed interpretation of a cycle. When still further development is needed, the maximal cycle sets can be identified and placed in a hierarchy based on an inclusion relation. This hierarchy suggests a natural order of study of the system proceeding from the least complex maximal cycle sets to the most complex sets.
LPS stimulates IgM production in vivo without help from non-B cells

Gram-negative bacterial LPS induce murine B-cell activation and innate (polyclonal) Ab production. Mouse B cells express the LPS signaling receptor (TLR4), yet how LPS activates B-cell responses in vivo is not known. Can LPS directly stimulate B cells to induce innate Ab production? Is activation of non-B cells also required? To address these questions, we transfused LPS-responsive (Tlr4+/+) or non-responsive (Tlr4−/−) B cells into LPS-responsive or non-responsive mice. Increased expression of the early activation markers CD69 and CD86 could be induced on transfused Tlr4−/− B cells by injecting LPS subcutaneously into Tlr4+/+ mice, demonstrating indirect activation of B cells by TLR4-responsive non-B cells in vivo, but the Tlr4−/− B cells did not increase serum IgM levels. In contrast, when Tlr4−/− recipients were transfused with Tlr4+/+ B cells, LPS induced large amounts of serum IgM and LPS could also enhance specific Ab production to a protein that was co-injected with it (adjuvant response). Thus, LPS-exposed non-B cells mediated increased surface expression of early B-cell activation markers, but this response did not predict innate Ab responses or LPS adjuvanticity in vivo. Direct stimulation of B cells by LPS via TLR4 was necessary and sufficient to induce B cells to produce Ab in vivo.
Monitoring plan execution in partially observable stochastic worlds

This thesis presents two novel algorithms for monitoring plan execution in stochastic partially observable environments. The problems can be formulated as partially-observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs). Exact solutions of POMDP problems are difficult to find due to the computational complexity, so many approximate solutions are proposed instead. These POMDP solvers tend to generate an approximate policy at planning time and execute the policy without any change at run time. Our approaches will monitor the execution of the initial approximate policy and perform plan modification procedure to improve the policy’s quality at run time. This thesis considers two approximate POMDP solvers. One is a translation-based POMDP solver which converts a subclass of POMDP, called quasi-deterministic POMDP (QDET-POMDP) problems into classical planning problems or Markov decision processes (MDPs). The resulting approximate solution is either a contingency plan or an MDP policy that requires full observability of the world at run time. The other is a point-based POMDP solver which generates an approximate policy by utilizing sampling techniques. Study of the algorithms in simulation has shown that our execution monitoring approaches can improve the approximate POMDP solvers overall performance in terms of plan quality, plan generation time and plan execution time.
Immigration and generational trends in body mass index and obesity in the United States: results of the National Latino and Asian American Survey, 2002-2003.

OBJECTIVES We examined patterns of body mass index (BMI) and obesity among a nationally representative sample of first-, second-, and third-generation Latinos and Asian Americans to reveal associations with nativity or country of origin. METHODS We used data from the National Latino and Asian American Survey (2002-2003) to generate nationally representative estimates of mean BMI and obesity prevalence and explored changes in the distribution of BMI by generational status. Analyses tested the association between generational status and BMI and examined whether this association varied by ethnicity, education, or gender. RESULTS We found substantial heterogeneity in BMI and obesity by country of origin and an increase in BMI in later generations among most subgroups. The data suggest different patterns for Latinos and Asian Americans in the nature and degree of distributional changes in BMI with generational status in the United States. CONCLUSIONS Generational status is associated with increased BMI and obesity among Latinos and Asian Americans. Aggregate estimates not accounting for nativity and country of origin may mask significant heterogeneity in the prevalence of obesity and patterns of distributional change, with implications for prevention strategies.
Likelihood ratio tests for maternal and fetal genetic effects on obstetric complications

It is well recognized that both maternal and fetal genes could contribute to susceptibility for obstetric complications. Logistic regression models are usually adopted to model the separate or joint action of maternal and fetal loci with case‐control data. The standard likelihood ratio tests (LRTs) can be used to test the significance of appropriate odds ratio parameters. This method, although simple to implement, fails to exploit a unique feature of genetic epidemiology studies of obstetric complications. Specifically, it does not take into consideration the correlation between the maternal and offspring genomes. We propose novel LRT that take advantage of this information by incorporating the fact that half of a child's genome is inherited from the mother. Our methods have substantially improved power for detecting marginal, main, and interactive maternal and fetal genotype effects, as evidenced by results from extensive simulation studies. We demonstrate our new methods by applying them to the analysis of data from a pilot study of preeclampsia. Genet. Epidemiol. 33:526–538, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Neonatal diabetes mellitus: a rare but important diagnosis in the critically ill infant

Diabetes mellitus is a heterogeneous disorder that may occur at any age. Neonatal diabetes mellitus, defined as hyperglycaemia presenting within the first 6 weeks of life in term infants, is a rare disorder that may result in permanent or transient diabetes mellitus. Although reported in paediatric diabetes literature, there are no reports of this condition in emergency medicine journals and these children may present to emergency departments with a picture mimicking sepsis. We report the case of a 5-week-old infant with diabetes mellitus who presented with diabetic ketoacidosis and review the literature surrounding this rare condition.
Long‐term follow‐up among Danish transfusion recipients identified in the national hepatitis C lookback

BACKGROUND: In 1996, a national lookback study was performed in Denmark identifying 1018 patients exposed to hepatitis C virus (HCV) by transfusion before 1991. The objective of this study was to describe morbidity and mortality during extended follow‐up among patients in the Danish HCV lookback cohort alive in 1996.
18F-FDG Pet-Guided External Beam Radiotherapy in Iodine-Refractory Differentiated Thyroid Cancer: A Pilot Study

Introduction To evaluate the clinical response rate after a postoperative 18F-FDG PET/CT guided external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) in Iodine-refractory differentiated thyroid cancer. Material and Methods Patients with thyroid cancer locally recurrent after total thyroidectomy plus metabolic radiotherapy and treated with radical EBRT were included. Inclusion criteria were detectable thyroglobulin (Tg), negative postmetabolic radiotherapy whole body scintigraphy, and no surgical indications. The pretreatment 18F-FDG PET/CT resulted positive in all cases (loggia, lymph nodes, and lung). EBRT was delivered with IMRT-SIB technique. A 18F-FDG PET/CT revaluation and Tg dosage were performed 3 months after the treatment. Results Sixteen consecutive patients were included in this analysis (median follow-up: 6–44 months). Post-EBRT 18F-FDG PET/CT showed CR in 43.7%, PR in 31.2%, SD in 25.0% patients, and PD due to lung metastases in 12.5%. Overall response rate was 75.0% (CI 95%: 41.4–93.3%). Tg levels decreased in 75.0% with a median Δ of 68.0%. Two-year PFS and OS rates were 80.0% and 93.0%, respectively. Acute G3 toxicity occurred in 18.7% and late G2 toxicity in 12.5%. Conclusions 18F-FDG PET/CT was useful in target definition for radiotherapy planning, identifying positive areas not detected with 131I scintigraphy. IMRT based EBRT was feasible and our results encourage future prospective studies. This clinical trial is registered with ID: NCT03191643.
Three-Tesla Imaging of the Pituitary and Parasellar Region: T1-Weighted 3-Dimensional Fast Spin Echo Cube Outperforms Conventional 2-Dimensional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Objective We explored how a novel T1-weighted 3-dimensional (3D) fast spin echo (FSE) sequence (Cube; GE, Waukesha, Wis) might outperform conventional 2-dimensional (2D) FSE techniques for contrast-enhanced imaging of the pituitary and parasellar region. Methods Ninety-one patients were imaged with 3D Cube and conventional 2D FSE on a 3.0-T magnetic resonance scanner. Two neuroradiologists independently assessed images for anatomical delineation (infundibulum, optic apparatus, and cavernous sinus), degree of artifact, and confidence in lesion definition or exclusion using a 5-point scale. In addition, the readers were asked to rank overall preference. Results Readers A and B found 3D Cube to be better or equal to 2D FSE in 84% and 86% of the cases. Three-dimensional Cube provided significantly better images than 2D FSE with respect to delineation of the infundibulum (P < 0.0001), cavernous sinus (P < 0.0001), optic apparatus (P = 0.002 for reader A and P = 0.265 for reader B), and fewer artifacts at the sellar floor (P < 0.0001). Three-dimensional Cube provided greater lesion conspicuity or confidence in lesion exclusion (P < 0.0001). Conclusions Three-dimensional Cube provides superior quality with thinner slices as well as diminished artifact and can replace conventional 2D FSE sequences for routine evaluations of the pituitary and parasellar region.
Classification of non-speech human sounds: Feature selection and snoring sound analysis

Human sounds can be roughly divided into two categories: speech and non-speech. Traditional audio scene analysis research puts more emphasis on the classification of audio signals into human speech, music, and environmental sounds. We take a different perspective in this paper. We are mainly interested in the analysis of non-speech human sounds, including laugh, scream, sneeze, and snore. Toward this goal, we investigate many commonly used acoustic features and select useful ones for classification using multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) and support vector machine (SVM). To evaluate the robustness of the selected features, we also perform extensive simulations to observe the effect of noise on the accuracy of the classification. Finally, for the class of snoring sounds, we propose a robust approach to further categorize them into simple snores and snores of subjects with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).
Reduction of Reaction due to Iron Dextran Infusion using Chloroquine

The use of promethazine and chloroquine sulphate to reduce reaction to total dose infusion of iron dextran (Imferon) is described. The patients chosen for the investigation were anaemic pregnant African women living in the coastal region of East Africa where malaria due to Plasmodium falciparum is holoendemic. The results show that promethazine has little value in the reduction of reactions whereas chloroquine appears to be effective.
Applications of LAMP Based Diagnostic Kits in Crop Management

Human population is increasing at exponential growth in all parts of the world. Based on the recent report on food security released in 2010 [1]. Requirement of food will increase due to continuous increase in the human population leading to 70% more food requirement by 2050 [1]. Vegetarian population of the world is estimated to be 1.5 billion in 2010 [2]. Apart from the humans all the feedstock animals also rely on food produced by the plants. The demand of food is higher than the supply because of continuous decrease in the agricultural land. Under such circumstance, effective crop management is essential. The crop losses due to pathogenic infection was around 20-40% [3]. Rice, wheat, barley, maize and soybean are majorly consumed crop globally which was reduced by 12% due to plant diseases. Whereas the crop yield of groundnuts and potatoes were affected around 24% and of wheat and cotton around 50% and 80% [4]. Economic losses due to pathogens in US only was estimated to be 40 billion dollars so worldwide loses can be imagined [5,6]. With the evolution of science, researchers have found numerous techniques to identify pathogens but all of them require high initial cost, hi-tech infrastructure facility and experienced researchers. Therefore, these technologies are confined to the laboratories or research institutes located in cities. There is an urgent need to develop and popularize technologies that are suitable to the rural areas for speedy testing of pathogens to avoid epidemics and for launching crop protection measures to manage pathogens [7-29].
Connections between Transcription Downstream of Genes and cis-SAGe Chimeric RNA

cis-Splicing between adjacent genes (cis-SAGe) is being recognized as one way to produce chimeric fusion RNAs. However, its detail mechanism is not clear. Recent study revealed induction of transcriptions downstream of genes (DoGs) under osmotic stress. Here, we investigated the influence of osmotic stress on cis-SAGe chimeric RNAs and their connection to DoGs. We found, the absence of induction of at least some cis-SAGe fusions and/or their corresponding DoGs at early time point(s). In fact, these DoGs and their cis-SAGe fusions are inversely correlated. This negative correlation was changed to positive at a later time point. These results suggest a direct competition between the two categories of transcripts when total pool of readthrough transcripts is limited at an early time point. At a later time point, DoGs and corresponding cis-SAGe fusions are both induced, indicating that total readthrough transcripts become more abundant. Finally, we observed overall enhancement of cis-SAGe chimeric RNAs in KCl-treated samples by RNA-Seq analysis.
Implementations of hardware acceleration for MD4-family algorithms based on GPU

The MD4-family algorithms have been widely applied in cryptographic field. Nowadays, it is discovered that MD4-family algorithms are also suitable for random number generators. Since the MD4-family algorithms are computing intensive, they can be accelerated on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to generate massive high-quality random numbers. This paper presents acceleration of MD4-family algorithms based on GPU, and the results show that these implementations achieve 100 times speedup over AMD Sempron Processor LE-1200 CPU.
Nonlinear Control and Stability of Approximately Symmetric Systems of Coordinating Robotic Agents Bill Goodwine

Stability and convergence properties of control and other algorithms in robotics are essential aspects of the development of truly autonomous and deployable real-world robotic systems. Because of the desire for flexible, adaptive and reactive robotic systems, i.e., global operation, nonlinear analyses and tools are especially important in robotics. Hence, Lyapunov methods are at the core of many critical robotics methodologies. This paper considers Lyapunov stability for approximately symmetric robotic systems. Many robotic systems, such as swarms and fleets of mobile robots, distributed sensor networks, etc., are comprised many identical interacting agents. Our prior work has considered stability aspects of control and dynamics of such systems. This paper extends those results to the important case where all the agents are not identical, which is important for real-world applications where it is not possible to have exactly identical agents. Importantly, these results do not require the components to have small differences. However, the bounds on the nature of the solutions will obviously depend on how different the agents are.