Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Headache Chronification: Screening and Behavioral Management of Comorbid Depressive and Anxiety Disorders

A growing body of literature implicates comorbid psychopathology as a risk factor for chronification of headache. Despite their prevalence, comorbid psychiatric conditions are not routinely assessed among headache patients. Consequently, efforts to manage such conditions are not commonplace either. The present article briefly reviews a variety of strategies and measures for psychiatric screening among headache patients, focusing primarily on those that have been validated in medical settings, that can be administered quickly, and that involve minimal associated costs. We also describe basic strategies for behavioral management of comorbid depression and anxiety in headache patients.
The Relationship Between EABR and Auditory Performance and Speech Intelligibility Outcomes in Pediatric Cochlear Implant Recipients.

PURPOSE The primary purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between postimplant electrically evoked auditory brainstem response (EABR) measures (wave V threshold, wave V latency, input-output functions) and auditory performance and speech intelligibility outcomes measured using parental rating scales, such as Categories of Auditory Performance (CAP; Archbold, Lutman, & Marshall, 1995) and the Speech Intelligibility Rating scale (SIR; Allen, Nikolopoulos, Dyar, & O'Donoghue, 2001), respectively. The secondary purpose was to evaluate the relationship between age at implantation and ratings on the CAP and SIR. METHOD Forty children with congenital sensorineural hearing loss participated. Preimplant parental ratings on the CAP and SIR were obtained, and all the children underwent cochlear implantation. Intracochlear EABRs were recorded postimplantation. Postimplant parental ratings on the CAP and SIR were obtained. The relationships between EABR parameters and auditory performance and speech intelligibility outcomes were studied. The effect of age at implantation on auditory performance and speech intelligibility outcomes was also investigated. RESULTS A significant negative correlation was found between EABR wave V thresholds and SIR growth (r = -.415, p = .016). Children with better CAP growths tended to have lower wave V thresholds than those with poorer CAP growths. Age at implantation had an effect on the auditory performance as measured using the CAP. CONCLUSIONS The present study provides evidence for the relationship between wave V thresholds of the intracochlear EABR and auditory performance and speech intelligibility outcomes measured using parental rating scales in pediatric cochlear implant recipients. Data also indicate that early intervention has a positive impact on auditory performance outcomes.
Somatic mutations of JAK2 exon 12 as a molecular basis of erythrocytosis

The human erythron is a highly specialized tissue that is responsible for oxygen transport. [1][1] It includes the erythroid marrow, where red cells are produced, circulating red cells, the reticuloendothelial system, where red cells are phagocytosed at the end of their life span, and the
Modeling and identification of nonlinear distributed parameter dynamics of the micro-cantilever

The micro-cantilever used in atomic force microscopy is a spatially distributed and flexible mechanical system. An accurate model of the micro-cantilever is essential for the accurate tip positioning and force sensing. Traditional lumped parameter model will lose the spatial dynamics. There are also some unknown nonlinear dynamics in the nominal Euler-Bernoulli distributed parameter model. In this study, an intelligent distributed parameter modeling approach is proposed for the micro-cantilever. A nominal Euler-Bernoulli beam model is derived first. To compensate unknown nonlinear dynamics, a nonlinear term is added in the nominal model. To implement numerically, the infinite-dimensional partial differential equation (PDE) model is reduced into a finite-dimensional ordinary differential equation (ODE) model based on the Galerkin method. Finally, a neural network based intelligent learning approach is developed to learn the unknown nonlinearities from the input-output data. The effectiveness of the proposed intelligent modeling approach is verified by the simulations.
Difference images calculated from ictal and interictal technetium-99m-HMPAO SPECT scans of epilepsy.

UNLABELLED Image processing techniques were applied to SPECT brain images to aid in the localization of epileptic foci. METHODS Ictal and interictal cerebral perfusion SPECT images were acquired from 12 epilepsy patients (6 temporal, 6 extratemporal) after injection of 20 mCi 99mTc-HMPAO. Each ictal scan was registered to the same patient's interictal scan. Normalization of the three-dimensional data was applied to account for global percent brain uptake and total injected activity. After registration, normalization and subtraction of the SPECT images and functional difference images were computed. Difference images were calculated, which give a quantitative measure of perfusion alterations during ictus. The resulting difference images were also registered with each patient's MRI scan which permits localization of perfusion changes onto anatomical structures. RESULTS Areas in the brain where significant perfusion increases occur correlate with areas confirmed to be seizure foci. Four of the six patients with known temporal lobe seizure foci exhibited significant perfusion increases on the difference images. These areas demonstrate a percent increase of perfusion larger than 40%. For the extratemporal seizure patients, four of the four confirmed seizure sites were diagnosed with difference images. Results on the remaining two patients were inconclusive. CONCLUSION When compared to side-by-side visual interpretation of the ictal and interictal SPECT images, registration of SPECT and MR images together with calculated difference maps greatly enhances the ability to localize epileptic seizure foci. This offers the potential to locate epileptic seizure foci using a noninvasive, inexpensive imaging procedure and data processing algorithm.
Cost-Effectiveness of a Lottery for Increasing Physicians’ Responses to a Mail Survey

To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of a lottery on physicians’ responses to a mail survey, a randomized controlled trial was conducted with a random sample of 1,000 members of the Quebec Federation of General Practitioners in 1997. For the first mailing of this survey, each respondent was randomly assigned to the control or experimental group, which was offered participation in a lottery upon return of the questionnaire. Response rate was 41.2% in the experimental group and 34.8% in the control group, a 6.4% difference (CI95%: 0.6% – 12.6%). The additional cost of the lottery was about Can$500, giving an incremental cost of Can$16 per questionnaire returned. In conclusion, a lottery resulted in a small but statistically significant increase in the response rate of physicians to a mail survey. This method may be a cost-effective option when applied to large surveys.
Parameter Estimation of Virtual Musical Instrument Synthesizers

A method has been developed for estimating the parameters of virtual musical instrument synthesizers to obtain isolated instrument sounds without distortion and noise. First, a number of instrument sounds are generated from randomly generated parameters of a synthesizer. Lowlevel acoustic features and their delta features are extracted for each time frame and accumulated into statistics. Multiple linear regression is used to model the relationship between the acoustic features and instrument parameters. Experimental evaluations showed that the proposed method estimated parameters with a best case error of 0.004 and signal-to-distortion ratio of 17.35 dB, and reduced noise to smaller distortions in several cases.
A new efficient method for substrate-aware device-level placement

The performance of high-frequency mixed-signal and analog designs heavily relies on the actual layout of the circuit components on device level. Substrate coupling has been recognized as one of the major physical design bottlenecks in this field. To deal with this problem in an efficient way, a new technique is proposed based on the sequence pair structure and corner stitching. Performance gain is guaranteed at the cost of O(M) run-time complexity, which is optimal. Simulations with randomly generated problem instances show that practical run-times are indeed linear in the size of the problem instance, thus enabling other design optimization algorithms to incorporate the proposed method without increasing run-time complexity.
Establishing 177Lu-PSMA-617 Radioligand Therapy in a Syngeneic Model of Murine Prostate Cancer

Clinical 177Lu-PSMA-617 radioligand therapy (RLT) is applied in advanced-stage prostate cancer. However, to the best of our knowledge murine models to study the biologic effects of various activity levels have not been established. The aim of this study was to optimize specific and total activity for 177Lu-PSMA-617 RLT in a syngeneic model of murine prostate cancer. Methods: Murine-reconstituted, oncogene-driven prostate cancer cells (0.1 × 106) (RM1), transduced to express human prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA), were injected into the left flank of C57Bl6 immunocompetent mice. RLT was performed by administering a single tail vein injection of 177Lu-PSMA-617 at different formulations for specific (60 MBq at high, 62 MBq/nmol; intermediate, 31 MBq/nmol; or low 15 MBq/nmol specific activity) or total activity (30, 60, or 120 MBq). Organ distribution was determined by ex vivo γ-counter measurement. DNA double-strand breaks were measured using anti–gamma-H2A.X (phospho S139) immunohistochemistry. Efficacy was assessed by serial CT tumor volumetry and 18F-FDG PET metabolic volume. Toxicity was evaluated 4 wk after the start of RLT. Results: Mean tumor-to-kidney ratios ± SEM were 19 ± 5, 10 ± 5, and 2 ± 0 for high, intermediate, and low (each n = 3) specific activity, respectively. Four of 6 (67%) mice treated with intermediate or high specific activity and none of 6 (0%) mice treated with low specific activity or formulation demonstrated significant DNA double-strand breaks (≥5% γ-H2A.X–positive cells). High when compared with intermediate or low specific activity resulted in a lower mean ± SEM tumor load by histopathology (vital tissue, 4 ± 2 vs. 8 ± 3 mm2; n = 3 vs. 6), day-4 18F-FDG PET (metabolic volume, 87 ± 23 vs. 118 ± 14 mm3; n = 6 vs. 12), and day-7 CT (volume, 323 ± 122 vs. 590 ± 46 mm3; n = 3 vs. 6; P = 0.039). 177Lu-PSMA-617 (120 MBq) with high specific activity induced superior tumor growth inhibition (P = 0.021, n = 5/group) without subacute hematologic toxicity (n = 3/group). Conclusion: 177Lu-PSMA-617 (120 MBq) and high specific activity resulted in the highest efficacy in a syngeneic model of murine prostate cancer. The model will be useful for studying the effects of PSMA-directed RLT combined with potentially synergistic pharmacologic approaches.
Context Virtualizer: A Cloud Service for Automated Large-scale Mobile App Testing under Real-World Conditions

Scalable and comprehensive testing of mobile apps is extremely challenging. Every test input needs to be run with a variety of contexts, such as: device heterogeneity, wireless network speeds, locations, and unpredictable sensor inputs. The range of values for each context, e.g. location, can be very large. In this paper we present a one of a kind cloud service, called ConVirt, to which app developers can submit their apps for testing. It leverages two key techniques to make app testing more tractable: (i) pruning the input space into representative contexts, and (ii) prioritizing the context test space to quickly discover failure scenarios for each app. We have implemented ConVirt as a cluster of VMs that can each emulate various combinations of contexts for tablet and phone apps. We evaluate ConVirt by testing 230 commercially available mobile apps based on a comprehensive library of real-world conditions. Our results show that ConVirt leads to an 11.4x improvement in the number of crashes discovered during testing compared to conventional UI automation (i.e., monkey-testing.)
Synthesis of Chiral Aziridines Through Decarboxylative Generation of Sulfur Ylides and Their Reaction with Chiral Sulfinyl Imines

Abstract Reaction of sulfur ylides with a series of aryl substituted chiral nonracemic sulfinyl imines afforded the corresponding aziridines in good yields with good stereoselectivity. The sulfur ylides were generated by the thermally induced decarboxylation of carboxymethylsulfonium betaines. A drop in the diastereomeric ratio was observed when going from electron-deficient to electron-releasing aryl substituted imines. S-Methylene aziridinations involving the decarboxylation of carboxymethylsulfonium betaine functionality complements existing technologies with the advantages of the reaction protocol, levels of conversion, and scope.
Development of the Bélanger Equation and Backwater Equation by Jean-Baptiste Bélanger (1828)

A hydraulic jump is the sudden transition from a high-velocity to a low-velocity open channel flow. The application of the momentum principle to the hydraulic jump is commonly called the Belanger equation, but few know that Belanger's (1828) treatise was focused on the study of gradually varied open channel flows. Further, although Belanger understood the rapidly-varied nature of the jump flow, he applied incorrectly the Bernoulli principle in 1828, and corrected his approach 10 years later. In 1828, his true originality lay in the successful development of the backwater equation for steady, one-dimensional gradually-varied flows in an open channel, together with the introduction of the step method, distance calculated from depth, and the concept of critical flow conditions.
The World of Funds of Funds.

In this paper we provide a review of developments in the fund of funds (FoF) industry as well as related academic research work. Since the genesis of this sort of financial product in the 1960s, huge capital inflows have generated a total of US $1,200 billion of worldwide FoF assets under management as of year-end 2007. Being portfolios built out of other portfolios and assets, FoFs are a special type of investments and therefore have distinct advantages and disadvantages in comparison with other investment vehicles. When reviewing both the academic research related to the unique, or at least distinct, features of FoFs and discussing market developments, we address a good number of interesting questions and challenges. Specifically, we find that classical methods of research and assessment may be insufficient to address these questions in both theoretical and quantitative aspects. The need for a distinct treatment of FoFs is even more evident when focusing on the dynamic nature of financial market developments and increasing global competitiveness. As past research work on FoFs is scarce, especially when being compared to the amount of research work on funds, we conclude that further investigation of this sort of financial asset is necessary.
DC rejection and deblocking in multichannel bioelectric recordings

Multichannel instrumentation for the recording of bioelectric events should have provisions to reject the relatively large DC voltages which are produced by the electrodes involved. Active DC rejection is a suitable high pass filtering technique preserving the common mode rejection ratio of the preamplifiers. High pass filtering may lead to very slow responses of the instrumentation after overload, which can be handled by deblocking. A method to use the DC information of the rejected signal in a multichannel system is presented.
Spectroscopy of TOI-1259B - an unpolluted white dwarf companion to an inflated warm Saturn

TOI-1259 consists of a transiting exoplanet orbiting a main sequence star, with a bound outer white dwarf companion. Less than a dozen systems with this architecture are known. We conduct follow-up spectroscopy on the white dwarf TOI-1259B using the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) to better characterise it. We observe only strong hydrogen lines, making TOI-1259B a DA white dwarf. We see no evidence of heavy element pollution, which would have been evidence of planetary material around the white dwarf. Such pollution is seen in $\sim 25-50{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ of white dwarfs, but it is unknown if this rate is higher or lower in TOI-1259-like systems that contain a known planet. Our spectroscopy permits an improved white dwarf age measurement of $4.05^{+1.00}_{-0.42}$ Gyrs, which matches gyrochronology of the main sequence star. This is the first of an expanded sample of similar binaries that will allow us to calibrate these dating methods and provide a new perspective on planets in binaries.
Observations on the content of ATP and ADP in bull spermatozoa using the firefly luciferase system.

The development of a method to measure small amounts of nucleotides would be of considerable value in experiments concerned with metabolism in mammalian spermatozoa. As the adenine nucleotides have been shown to be the predominant nucleotides in mammalian spermatozoa (Brooks, 1970), measurement of ATP and ADP by the luciferin-luciferase system appeared to be a method ideally suited to this purpose. Ejaculated bull semen, collected by artificial vagina, was used in the present work. The measurement of ATP was carried out in a Packard Model 3380 liquid scintillation spectrometer calibrated according to Stanley & Williams (1969). The phosphate buffer described by these workers was altered to include 2 mm-EDTA and 2 mm-2-mercaptoethanol. In addition, the luciferin\x=req-\ luciferase preparation made up in arsenate buffer was incubated with apyrase to reduce background luminescence (Lyman & DeVincenzo, 1967). ADP was measured as the increase in luminescence after conversion to ATP (Holmsen, Holmsen & Bernhardsen, 1966). The conversion was achieved by incubating sample aliquots in vials in which the phosphate buffer contained 2 \g=m\leach of pyruvate kinase suspension (The Boehringer Corporation) and 10 mm-phosphoenolpyruvate. The conversion was complete in 10 min at room temperature, and finally the enzyme was inhibited by addition of the arsenate buffer. Preliminary experiments were carried out to compare two methods of nucleotide extraction as applicable to small samples (1 ml) of semen. (i) The semen was added directly to 1 ml of ice-cold 20% trichloroacetic acid (TCA) in
Elevated Serum Levels of Antibodies to Carbonic Anhydrase I and II in Patients with Chronic Pancreatitis

An immune-mediated reaction to pancreatic structures has been postulated for the pathogenesis of chronic pancreatitis (CP). Several reports demonstrate the presence of antibodies to the pancreatic ductal epithelium in some patients suffering from CP. Serum antibodies to carbonic anhydrase I (anti-CA I) and II (anti-CA II) are present in patients affected by idiopathic CP. The aim of this study was to evaluate the presence of anti-CA I and anti-CA II in a series of patients with CP. We studied 78 consecutive CP patients (62 male, 16 female; mean age 48.6 ± 10.2 years) referred to the Verona University Center for the Study of the Pancreas. As a control group, we studied 26 healthy subjects recruited from among the medical and nursing staff of the center. Serum anti-CA I and anti-CA II levels were quantified by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay using a standard method with minor modifications. The mean absorbance of antibodies was higher in CP patients than in control subjects (anti-CA I: 0.064 ± 0.042 vs. 0.047 ± 0.015, p = 0.051; and anti-CA II: 0.038 ± 0.02 vs. 0.029 ± 0.014, p = 0.033). Positive results were arbitrarily defined as absorbance values >0.067 for anti-CA I and 0.047 for anti-CA II. We found anti-CA I and anti-CA II positivity in 21 of 78 (27%) and 20 of 78 (26%) of CP patients, respectively, and in only two of 26 control subjects (7.7%) (p = 0.032 and 0.039). Twenty-two of 26 subjects in the control group (84.6%) and 48 of 78 patients (61.5%) in the CP group tested negative for both antibodies (p = 0.03). None of the control subjects and 12 of 78 (16.6%) of the CP patients tested positive for both anti-CA I and anti-CA II. We observed a significant correlation between anti-CA I and anti-CA II serum levels in control subjects (R = 0.423;p = 0.016) and in CP patients (R = 0.584;p < 0.0001). No correlation was found between serum antibody levels and any of the following variables: length of disease, alcohol consumption, smoking habits, pancreatic surgery, pancreatic calcifications, diabetes, and steatorrhea. Serum levels of anti-CA I and anti-CA II are elevated in some patients suffering from CP.
Euclid preparation. XX. The Complete Calibration of the Colour--Redshift Relation survey: LBT observations and data release

The Complete Calibration of the Color-Redshift Relation survey (C3R2) is a spectroscopic programme designed to empirically calibrate the galaxy color-redshift relation to the Euclid depth (I_E=24.5), a key ingredient for the success of Stage IV dark energy projects based on weak lensing cosmology. A spectroscopic calibration sample as representative as possible of the galaxies in the Euclid weak lensing sample is being collected, selecting galaxies from a self-organizing map (SOM) representation of the galaxy color space. Here, we present the results of a near-infrared H- and K-bands spectroscopic campaign carried out using the LUCI instruments at the LBT. For a total of 251 galaxies, we present new highly-reliable redshifts in the 1.3<= z<=1.7 and 2<= z<=2.7 ranges. The newly-determined redshifts populate 49 SOM cells which previously contained no spectroscopic measurements and almost double the occupation numbers of an additional 153 SOM cells. A final optical ground-based observational effort is needed to calibrate the missing cells in particular in the redshift range 1.7<= z<=2.7 that lack spectroscopic calibration. In the end, Euclid itself will deliver telluric-free NIR spectra that can complete the calibration.
Susceptibilities of Oral and Nasal Isolates ofStreptococcus mitis and Streptococcus oralis to Macrolides and PCR Detection of Resistance Genes

ABSTRACT The susceptibility of viridans group streptococci to macrolides was determined. Thirteen isolates (17%) were resistant to erythromycin. Five strains carried an erm gene that was highly homologous to that in Tn917. Four strains had mefE genes that coded erythromycin efflux ability.
Magnetite as a precursor for green rust through the hydrogenotrophic activity of the iron‐reducing bacteria Shewanella putrefaciens

Magnetite (FeIIFeIII2O4) is often considered as a stable end product of the bioreduction of FeIII minerals (e.g., ferrihydrite, lepidocrocite, hematite) or of the biological oxidation of FeII compounds (e.g., siderite), with green rust (GR) as a mixed FeII‐FeIII hydroxide intermediate. Until now, the biotic transformation of magnetite to GR has not been evidenced. In this study, we investigated the capability of an iron‐reducing bacterium, Shewanella putrefaciens, to reduce magnetite at circumneutral pH in the presence of dihydrogen as sole inorganic electron donor. During incubation, GR and/or siderite (FeIICO3) formation occurred as secondary iron minerals, resulting from the precipitation of FeII species produced via the bacterial reduction of FeIII species present in magnetite. Taking into account the exact nature of the secondary iron minerals and the electron donor source is necessary to understand the exergonic character of the biotic transformation of magnetite to GR, which had been considered to date as thermodynamically unfavorable at circumneutral pH. This finding reinforces the hypothesis that GR would be the cornerstone of the microbial transformations of iron‐bearing minerals in the anoxic biogeochemical cycle of iron and opens up new possibilities for the interpretation of the evolution of Earth's history and for the understanding of biocorrosion processes in the field of applied science.