Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Simultaneous Acquisition of 80 Hz ASSRs and ABRs From Quasi ASSRs for Threshold Estimation

Objectives: Both 80 Hz auditory steady state responses (ASSRs) and tone burst auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) have been shown to provide reasonable estimates of the behavioral thresholds. Although ASSRs provide statistically objective estimates that can be easily automated by computers, they present no information for the neurophysiological interpretation of the results. ABRs, on the other hand, do not provide easily automated information and usually need expert interpretation of the recorded waveforms. A recently developed continuous loop averaging deconvolution algorithm offers an alternative solution by acquiring slightly jittered 80 Hz quasi auditory steady state responses (QASSRs), thus enabling the acquisition of both recordings simultaneously. The purpose of this study is to investigate a specially developed 80 Hz QASSR paradigm for simultaneous acquisition for both responses for threshold detection purposes. Design: Sixteen ears from eight adults with normal hearing were tested. Amplitude modulated QASSRs were obtained using slightly jittered temporal sequences of tone bursts presented at a mean rate of 78.125 Hz. Four carrier frequencies (500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz) at several stimulus intensity levels were monaurally presented and QASSRs to 128 sweeps blocks were recorded. The ABRs were extracted using the CLAD algorithm. Wave V was visually identified and analyzed in the time domain as in everyday clinical practice. In addition, statistically objective ƒMP computation method was used to automatically detect ABR threshold as well. The QASSRs were analyzed in the frequency domain and magnitudes, phase delays, and thresholds were obtained. Phasor (polar plot) diagrams were constructed. QASSR and ABR hearing thresholds were obtained and compared with behavioral thresholds. Results: Study reveals that the QASSR method provides accurate objective estimation of the audiometric thresholds from extracted ASSRs and latency/amplitude information from extracted ABRs. The largest mean threshold difference for QASSR was within 5 dB for all carrier frequencies including 500 Hz. For auditory threshold estimation in adults with normal hearing, the Hotelling’s T-Square test in four dimensions in the frequency domain was more accurate than the ƒMP or visual ABR threshold detection in the time domain. Conclusions: Simultaneously recorded ASSR and ABR from QASSRs provide accurate and effective method for frequency-specific hearing threshold estimation with neurophysiological information in adults with normal hearing. Further research is required for hearing-impaired adults, newborns, and infants.
Characteristics of Deformable Leading Edge for High Performance Rotor

Abstract : The deformable leading edge (DLE) concept to improve the blade capability in lift, drag and pitching moments has been investigated for the purpose of meeting new rotor maneuverability and susceptibility requirements. The advantages and disadvantages of this concept have been carefully examined with limited computational and experimental results. This work showed that this concept achieves a substantial improvement in lift capability and also reduces the drag and pitching moment at the same time. Effects of various parameters, such as Reynolds number, reduced frequency, mean angle of oscillation, and airfoil shape, on the performance of these airfoils were also investigated.
Concentrations of progesterone and luteinizing hormone in the serum of diestrous bitches before and after hysterectomy.

Blood was collected from 6 adult bitches (3 pregnant and 3 nonpregnant) daily for 59 days after the onset of diestrus, and serum progesterone concentrations were determined. The bitches were hysterectomized at various times during diestrus [diestrus day (DD) 5, 15, or 25] to determine whether the uterus has a role in maintaining luteal function in the pregnant or nonpregnant bitch. Concentrations of serum luteinizing hormone (LH) were also measured to determine whether LH concentrations decrease when luteal function abates (experiment 1). All 6 bitches in experiment 1 had progesterone concentrations greater than 1.0 ng/ml during the 2-month period, indicating that neither the pregnant nor nonpregnant uterus was necessary for maintaining luteal function in the bitch. Concentrations of LH appeared to increase in the serum of 5 of the 6 bitches when progesterone concentrations were declining, indicating that cessation of luteal function does not appear to result from a lack of LH. Blood was collected from the 6 bitches used in experiment 1 twice weekly during the 2nd diestrus after hysterectomy (experiment 2) to determine whether alterations in luteal function that might be observed during experiment 1 were due to some aspect of the surgical procedure, rather than to absence of a uterus. Progesterone concentrations in the serum were lower (P less than 0.05) during the 10 days after surgery in the 2 bitches hysterectomized on DD 5 than in the 4 bitches remaining intact during this period (experiment 1). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Adaptive stabilizing and tracking control for a nonlinear inverted-pendulum system via sliding-mode technique

Since the system behaviors of a dual-axis inverted-pendulum mechanism including actuator dynamics are highly nonlinear, it is difficult to design a suitable control system that realizes real-time stabilization and accurate tracking control at all times. In this paper, an adaptive sliding-mode control system is implemented to control a dual-axis inverted-pendulum mechanism that is driven by permanent magnet synchronous motors. First, the energy conservation principle is adopted to build a mathematical model of the motor-mechanism-coupled system. Moreover, an adaptive sliding-mode control system is developed for stabilizing and tracking control of the dual-axis inverted-pendulum system, where an adaptive algorithm is investigated to relax the requirement of the bound of lumped uncertainty in the traditional sliding-mode control. In addition, numerical simulation and experimental results show that the proposed control scheme provides high-performance dynamic characteristics and is robust with regard to parametric variations, various reference trajectories, and different initial states.
Detection and Initial Characterization of Novel Capsular Polysaccharide among Diverse Campylobacter jejuniStrains Using Alcian Blue Dye

ABSTRACT We have recently demonstrated that most strains ofCampylobacter jejuni produce capsular polysaccharide (CPS), which can be detected by immunoblotting with homologous Penner antisera on polyvinylidene difluoride membranes (A. V. Karlyshev, D. Linton, N. A. Gregson, A. J. Lastovica, and B. W. Wren, Mol. Microbiol. 35:529–541, 2000). In this report, we describe a universal and rapid staining procedure using Alcian blue for C. jejuni CPS, which does not rely on the availability of antisera and identifies CPS in untypeable strains. Furthermore, Alcian blue staining identified CPS in its lipid-free form directly on Tricine gels, and we demonstrate that CPS is thermostable and is accumulated in the culture supernatant in a lipid-free form. The identification of a newly described CPS and its lipid-free form in C. jejunishould prove invaluable in studying the pathogenesis and epidemiology of this important pathogen.
Direct Imaging of Reconstructed Atoms on TiO2 (110) Surfaces

Determining the atomic structures of oxide surfaces is critical for understanding their physical and chemical properties but also challenging because the breaking of atomic bonds in the formation of the surface termination can involve complex reconstructions. We used advanced transmission electron microscopy to directly observe the atomic structure of reduced titania (TiO2) (110) surfaces from directions parallel to the surface. In our direct atomic-resolution images, reconstructed titanium atoms at the top surface layer are clearly imaged and are found to occupy the interstitial sites of the TiO2 structure. Combining observations from two orthogonal directions, the three-dimensional positioning of the Ti interstitials is identified at atomic dimensions and allows a resolution of two previous models that differ in their oxygen stoichiometries.
Health literacy and online educational resources: an opportunity to educate patients.

OBJECTIVE Given the increasing accessibility of material on the Internet and the use of these materials by patients as a source of health care information, the purpose of this study was to quantitatively evaluate the level of readability of resources made available on the European Society of Radiology website to determine whether these materials meet the health literacy needs of the general public as set forth by guidelines of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the American Medical Association (AMA). MATERIALS AND METHODS All 41 patient education articles created by the European Society of Radiology (ESR) were downloaded and analyzed with the following 10 quantitative readability scales: the Coleman-Liau Index, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Flesch Reading Ease, FORCAST Formula, Fry Graph, Gunning Fog Index, New Dale-Chall, New Fog Count, Raygor Reading Estimate, and the Simple Measure of Gobbledygook. RESULTS The 41 articles were written collectively at a mean grade level of 13.0 ± 1.6 with a range from 10.8 to 17.2. For full understanding of the material, 73.2% of the articles required the reading comprehension level of, at minimum, a high school graduate (12th grade). CONCLUSION The patient education resources on the ESR website are written at a comprehension level well above that of the average Internet viewer. The resources fail to meet the NIH and AMA guidelines that patient education material be written between the third and seventh grade levels. Recasting these resources in a simpler format would probably lead to greater comprehension by ESR website viewers.
Computerized detection of colonic polyps at CT colonography on the basis of volumetric features: pilot study.

PURPOSE To develop a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) scheme for automated detection of colonic polyps on the basis of volumetric features and to assess its accuracy on the basis of colonoscopy, the standard. MATERIALS AND METHODS Computed tomographic (CT) colonography was performed in patients with use of standard bowel cleansing, air insufflation, and helical scanning in supine and prone positions. The colon was extracted from volumetric data sets generated from transverse CT sections. Volumetric features characterizing polyps were computed at each point in the extracted colon. Polyps were detected by means of hysteresis thresholding and fuzzy clustering followed by a rule-based test on the basis of feature values. Locations of the detected polyps were compared with those detected at conventional colonoscopy. RESULTS Forty-one cases were analyzed: nine cases with polyps and 32 without polyps. Each case with polyps had one polyp of clinically important size (six were 5-9 mm; three, 10 mm). Thus, there were 82 volumetric data sets, 18 included polyps. Eighty-nine percent (16 of 18) of the polyps were detected. Each of the two false-negative findings was detected in the other position; thus, 100% of polyp cases were detected, with 2.5 false-positive findings per patient. The false-positive findings were similar to those due to common perceptual errors. Most of the false-positive findings were easily distinguishable from true polyps by experienced radiologists. CONCLUSION The CAD scheme has the potential to depict polyps with high sensitivity and an acceptable false-positive rate.
A semi-automatic editing method for surgery videos

The editing of a raw surgery video is expensive and time-consuming, for it can take an editor with professional medical knowledge hours. We investigate the possibility of reducing the editing cost and propose a feasible semi-automatic editing method for surgery videos. With our method, the editor just needs to annotate a very small part of the video segments in the raw video. And then a model is trained with the partially labeled segments, which can be used to generate an edited version of the whole video according to the editor's criterion. An active learning strategy is adopted here to reduce the number of video segments that need to be annotated. To verify the function of our method, we build a dataset of two raw surgery videos with their edited versions. It shows that two edited versions of the same raw video can be very different because of different editing criteria. And simulation experiments show that our method is able to generate an edited video meeting the expected editing criteria with limited human annotations.
The Association of Weight Status with Physical Fitness among Macedonian Children

The aim of this research is to determine the fitness level of the Macedonian children, including children from both sexes with different variables of their body mass indexes (BMI). The research has been carried out on 6337 children and students from 19 elementary schools throughout Central and Eastern Macedonia. The sample (average age being 8,7 1,6) was split into two sub-samples in relation to their gender, 3227 being male and 3110 being female respondents. Three anthropometric measurements (IBP methodology) were used in the research, in which the body fitness was analysed using the following parameters: estimating motor skills applying six tests of the Eurofit fitness testing battery; body composition by applying the BIA. The resutls have been statistically analysed using the SPSS, v. 20.0 for Windows (2 test, T-test, one-way analysis of variance, analysis of covariance and Odds ratio (OR) was calculated by Cochran-MantelHaenszel Statistics). The percentage of the overweight and obese children, classified according to the BMI of Macedonian children at the age between 6 and 11-years, reaches up to 35%. Children of both sexes who have moderate or excessive overweight show lower results in the tests long jump in distance, endurance in pull-ups, running 4 x 10 meters and raising the trunk in 30 seconds show similar results in terms of flexibility with respondents who have normaln body weight, but better results in the dinamometry of the palm test. Children of both sexes who belong to the underfed group achieve better results in the test endurance in pull-ups in terms of children with normal body weight. Boys in all tests for estimating the level of the physical fitness show better results except fot the deep sitting bend in which girls show better results.
On steganalysis of plus-minus one embedding of continuous-tone images

In this paper, we examine a method for estimating the embedding rate (or equivalently, the length of the hidden message) for plus-minus one embedding. The plus-minus one method embeds information into the least significant bit of the carrier by either adding or subtracting one from a pixel when the LSB of the pixel value is not equal to the message bit. The decision of adding or subtracting one is determined randomly with equal probability for each case. In this paper, we formulate the plus-minus one embedding procedure as a state transition between two sequences of sets. Given an image that possibly contains plus-minus one embedding, an original image is estimated using an adaptive wavelet denoising algorithm. The stego image is classified into busy and non-busy areas, and then parameters with respect to the state transition are calculated from the non-busy areas in both the stego image and the estimated original image. The embedding rate is then estimated using a symmetric form of divergence (Kullback-Leibler distance). Experimental results using the proposed algorithm are shown.
Diabetes and impaired fasting glucose in Sri Lankan patients with schizophrenia

Background Type 2 diabetes is commoner among South Asians than Europeans. The few studies of South Asian patients with schizophrenia have found increased prevalence of diabetes. Aims To determine prevalence of diabetes and impaired fasting glucose among patients with schizophrenia presenting to an acute psychiatry unit. Methods The sample consisted of all patients with ICD-10 diagnosis of schizophrenia admitted to an acute psychiatry unit during one year. Data was obtained by retrospective review of patients’ records. Diabetes was diagnosed according to the American Diabetes Association criteria when fasting plasma glucose (FPG) was ≥ 7.0 mmol/l. Impaired fasting glucose (IFG) was diagnosed when FPG was ≥5.6 mmol/l but Results Of the 164 patient records reviewed 104 (63.4%) had a recorded FPG level. There was no significant difference in age, gender and treatment between patients tested and not tested. Of the sample 28 (26.9%) were antipsychotic naive and 76 (73.1) had been treated previously. Mean age of the sample was 35.1 years (SD 12.7). Diabetes was diagnosed in 15 patients. Overall prevalence was 14.4% (females 11.4%, males 16.7%). Prevalence of IFG was 26%. Diabetes rates were highest (26.9%) among 30-39 year age group and IFG rates were highest (54.5%) among 50-59 year age group. Conclusions Prevalence of diabetes and IFG is higher compared to the general population of Sri Lanka (10.3% and 11.5%) but similar to that of Caucasian patients with schizophrenia. Due to the high risk of dysglycaemia FPG should be done in all patients with schizophrenia. DOI: 10.4038/sljpsyc.v1i2. 2576 SL J Psychiatry 2010; 1 (2):56-59
Robot-assisted total hip arthroplasty

Precise and accurate biomechanical reconstruction during total hip arthroplasty (THA) is essential for durable long-term survivorship. Accurate fit of cementless hip implants is also crucial to reduce micromotion between the bone-implant interfaces to allow for stable osseointegration. Robotic technology aims to minimize potential human errors and improve implant alignment and fit, and address persisting concerns with modern-day cementless THA. Although robotic THA dates back to the early 1990s, concerns with increased operating times, costs, and complications led to its withdrawal. However, semi-active systems have renewed interest in robot-assisted joint arthroplasty. We reviewed the current technology, its potential benefits, and the reported clinical and radiographic outcomes. Early evidence suggests that robotic use may lead to more accurate reconstruction of radiographic parameters, such as implant positioning, fit, center-of-rotation, and leg-length discrepancy. Further research is needed to determine if these will translate into better outcomes and improved implant longevity to justify increased costs.
Influence of perspective on the neural correlates of motor resonance during natural action observation

We investigated the neural correlates of motor resonance during the observation of natural transitive actions and determined how the observer's perspective modulates the neural activation. Seventeen right-handed participants observed right and left hand tool grasping actions from a first-person or third-person perspective while undergoing fMRI. A two-factorial analysis of variance over the parietal region revealed no main effects of hand identity or perspective, but unveiled a hand by perspective interaction effect. The first-person perspective elicited parietal activation in the hemisphere contralateral to the performing hand as if the modelled action was mimicked with the same anatomical hand. In the third-person perspective, parietal activation ipsilateral to the modelled hand was found, indicating a specular strategy, rather than an anatomical imitation. Motor resonance was maximal in three foci in the superior parietal lobule and intraparietal sulcus that have been associated with prehensile actions. Our results suggest that therapeutic strategies aimed to elicit motor resonance, such as motor imagery and observational modelling, can adjust their spatial frame of reference according to the hemisphere they intend to stimulate.
1 Re-inventing

Scientists often re-invent things which were long known. Here we review these activities as related to the mechanism of producing power law distributions, originally proposed in 1922 by Yule to explain experimental data on the sizes of biological genera, collected by Willis. We estimate that scientists are busy re-discovering America about 2/3 of time.  The book of Ecclesiastes says: “Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? It hath been already of old time, which was before us. ” The job of the scientists is to discover new things, thus they are the most affected. In this paper we report a case study involving the mechanism of generating power-law distributions known as Yule’s process, Simon’s model, Cumulative Advantage, or Preferential Attachment. We also discuss the relation of Yule’s process to GaltonWatson process and to Self-Organized Criticality.
Relationship between aerobic capacity, injury risk and tenure for new-hire delivery drivers

Over a 2-year study period, aerobic capacity was measured at time of hire for 1419 delivery drivers. Injury experience and tenure were then monitored for these new-hires during that same period. Number of strain injuries, time to first strain and time to termination were regressed on aerobic capacity adjusting for tenure. Statistically significant, monotonically changing relationships were found for all three outcome variables. A unit increase in aerobic capacity was predicted to result in a 3.7% decrease in injury rate and a 1.1% decrease in risk of termination. When age was included in the model for time to termination, aerobic capacity was no longer a significant predictor. The findings regarding injury experience and aerobic capacity support National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recommendations that individuals should work at no more than 21–30% of their aerobic capacity. Statement of Relevance: Knowledge of the nature of the relationship between aerobic capacity, injury experience and retention allows the ergonomist to determine whether there is a point of diminishing returns in intervention effectiveness for higher levels of aerobic capacity.