Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Both somatic and psychological / psychiatric factors contribute to severe distress and poor health related quality of life ( HRQL )

Obesity treatment is finalized to increase physical and psychological health, by reducing body weight, but management of therapy should consider the baseline conditions. We tested the psychological profile of morbid obese patients seeking medical treatment, as a basis for developing more specific therapeutic protocols. 135 consecutive patients with a BMI>40 mg/kg admitted to an outpatient program of cognitive-behavioural treatment (CBT) were investigated. At enrolment, the patients filled in a series of self-administered questionnaires on binge eating (Binge Eating Scale, BES), depression symptoms (Beck Depression Inventory, BDI), obesity-specific quality of life (Obesity-Related Well Being-97, Orwell-97), and generic health-related quality of life (HRQL) (Psychological General, Well-Being, PGWB), where psychological distress is clustered in six domains related to mood states. The results show that 27% of cases had a BES score ≥ 17, indicative of possible binge eating, and 13% had a BES ≥ 27, largely indicative of binge eating, with a higher prevalence in females. The BDI score was above normal in 30% of males and 45% of females, and 13% of females were in the range of moderatesevere depression. BES and BDI were significantly correlated with each other. Orwell-97 was much higher in females, and similarly the generic PGWB was indicative of a poorer HRQL in females. PGWB was positively associated with age, without any effect of BMI. The association with age was maintained in female, not in males. Both the Orwell-97 and the PGWB were associated with both BES and BDI in both genders. Psychological distress is common and largely variable in patients attending CBT for morbid obesity. This data should be considered for individual treatment protocols, and should be compared with similar series of patients enrolled for bariatric surgery.
A Parabolic System Model for the Formation of Porous Silicon: Existence, Uniqueness, and Stability

In this paper, a nonlinear weakly coupled parabolic system is constructed to model porous silicon formation. The model considers physical and chemical factors such as charge carriers transport, ions transport, electrochemical reactions, and material balance. In order to prove the existence of a unique solution for the proposed parabolic model with zero Neumann boundary, we use a monotone method based on the upper and lower solutions. The asymptotic stability of the steady-state solution is also demonstrated, and the behavior of this model is shown for specific cases where the analytical stationary solution is known. Finally, a discussion of the results is carried out, and we conclude that the proposed model reproduces important qualitative features which are observed experimentally.
Matrix metalloproteinase activities are altered in the heart and plasma during endotoxemia

Objective:To investigate whether myocardial and plasma matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) activities are altered during endotoxemia. Design:Prospective randomized, animal study. Setting:University research laboratory. Subjects:Male Sprague-Dawley rats, 250–300 g. Interventions:Rats were administered either bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or vehicle (pyrogen-free water). Groups of LPS-administered animals were killed at 0.5, 1, 3, 6, 12, and 24 hrs postinjection. Vehicle injected animals were killed at 6 hrs. Blood pressure was recorded before kill. Heart and plasma samples were analyzed by gelatin zymography and immunoblot. Measurements and Main Results:Blood pressure was significantly depressed at 3–24 hrs post-LPS injection; however, overt symptoms of endotoxemia and reduction in blood pressure were most significant 6–12 hrs post-LPS. Heart samples from control rats revealed MMP-2 activity but no MMP-9 activity. MMP-2 activity was significantly depressed when overt symptoms of endotoxemia peaked at 6–12 hrs. Plasma MMP-2 activity significantly decreased 3–12 hrs after LPS injection. This loss of activity was associated with a loss of MMP-2 protein. In contrast, plasma MMP-9 activities were rapidly elevated following LPS injection, peaking between 1 and 12 hrs. MMP-9 activity correlated inversely with blood pressure. Conclusions:Endotoxemia induced rapid changes in MMP activity in both the myocardium and plasma. An increase in circulating MMP-9 activity may contribute to endotoxemic cardiovascular dysfunction.
Response to an unsolicited intervention offer to persons aged ≥ 75 years after screening positive for depressive symptoms: a qualitative study

ABSTRACT Background: Screening can increase detection of clinically relevant depressive symptoms, but screen-positive persons are not necessarily willing to accept a subsequent unsolicited treatment offer. Our objective was to explore limiting and motivating factors in accepting an offer to join a “coping with depression” course, and perceived needs among persons aged ≥75 years who screened positive for depressive symptoms in general practice. Methods: In a randomized controlled trial, in which 101 persons who had screened positive for depressive symptoms were offered a “coping with depression” course, a sample of 23 persons were interviewed, of whom five (22%) accepted the treatment offer. Interview transcripts were coded independently by two researchers. Results: All five individuals who accepted a place on the course felt depressed and/or lonely and had positive expectations about the course. The main reasons for declining to join the course were: not feeling depressed, or having negative thoughts about the course effect, concerns about group participation, or about being too old to change and learn new things. Although perceived needs to relieve depressive symptoms largely matched the elements of the course, most of those who had been screened were not (yet) prepared to accept an intervention offer. Many expressed the need to discuss this treatment decision with their general practitioner. Conclusions: Although the unsolicited treatment offer closely matched the perceived needs of people screening positive for depressive symptoms, only those who combined feelings of being depressed or lonely with positive expectations about the offered course accepted it. Treatment should perhaps be more individually tailored to the patient's motivational stage towards change, a process in which general practitioners can play an important role.
Mucosal cytokine imbalance in irritable bowel syndrome

Objective. To systematically examine mucosal biopsies for differences in cytokine gene expression and protein secretion. Material and methods. The study included 59 females with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and 39, otherwise healthy, female volunteers presenting for colonoscopy. Colonic biopsies from subsets were studied by microarray analysis (IBS, n=9; controls, n=8), quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) (IBS, n=22; controls, n=21), and ex vivo biopsy culture (IBS, n=28, controls, n=10). Biopsies from patients with active colitis were used as inflammatory disease controls. Results. While gene array analysis revealed extensive overlapping between controls and IBS patients, reduced expression of genes linked to chemokine function was evident among the IBS patients alone. Differential expression was confirmed by qRT-PCR or ex vivo biopsy culture for 5 out of 6 selected genes. Reduced secretion of chemokines (IL-8, CXCL-9 and MCP-1) but not pro-inflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-1β) was established on the basis of the ex vivo biopsy cultures. These findings were in marked contrast to the IBD patients who demonstrated increased production of both chemokines and pro-inflammatory cytokines. Conclusions. Despite the expected heterogeneity of the disorder, differences in mucosal chemokine signalling were evident in this cross-sectional study of IBS patients at the level of both gene expression and protein secretion, with IBS patients demonstrating a consistent deficit in the expression and secretion of chemokines known to play a critical role in mucosal defence.
Beta Is Still Alive ! ∗

This paper investigates whether beta can predict the expected return after controlling for the beta instability resulting from shift in the covariance structure. Such a shift is driven by idiosyncratic volatility’s clientele effect: speculative investors prefer stocks with high idiosyncratic volatility. Consequently, these stocks tend to have low future returns from overpricing, and high beta because clientele-based trading also contains systematic component. Indeed, we find that the beta estimate of the current period is positively related to the beta estimate and negatively related to the idiosyncratic volatility measure of the last period. More important, different from existing studies, we find that beta estimates of the current period can significantly explain the cross-sectional differences in future returns of individual stocks, when allowing for an interaction between the current idiosyncratic volatility and the beta estimates. We also show that our simple model can predict the historical expected return well. All results are robust with respect to different measures of beta and idiosyncratic volatility and to different subsamples.
A review of breast density classification methods

Breast cancer is the most common life-threatening disease found in women in the developed countries. The risk factor of breast cancer is related to breast density, which is estimated with the help of mammography. Breast density can be evaluated by qualitative as well as quantitative methods. Few CAD systems have been designed for the automated classification of breast density. These CAD system designs have either used the segmented breast tissue or a predefined ROI; therefore these CAD designs can be broadly classified as Segmentation-based approaches or ROI-based approaches as described in this article. After that the BI-RADS classification is performed based on the extracted texture features.
Effective Corpus Virtualization

In this paper we describe an implementation of corpus virtualization within the Manatee corpus management system. Under corpus virtualization we understand logical manipulation with corpora or their parts grouping them into new (virtual) corpora. We discuss the motivation for such a setup in detail and show space and time efficiency of this approach evaluated on a 11 billion word corpus of Spanish.
An Iterative Cancellation Technique for Adjacent Channel Interference Induced by Amplifier Nonlinearity in 60GHz Band Wireless Communication Systems

This paper proposes an iterative cancellation technique for adjacent channel interference (ACI), induced by amplifier nonlinearity in millimeter wave (mmW) communication systems. In mmW communications, a large spectrum leak is expected because of the amplifier nonlinearity, and such a spectrum leak disturbs multichannel utilization. In order to mitigate the ACI, iterative interference cancellation in the receiver side is designed in this paper. Typically, iterative interference cancellation is conducted by generating a soft replica of interference from the feedback of the decoder, and subtracting the replica from the received signals. In this case, the canceller must know the amplifier nonlinearity in order to regenerate a soft replica of ACI. In this paper, amplifier nonlinearity is estimated by subjecting the received pilot signals to polynomial regression. We reveal that using only pilot signals in estimating amplifier nonlinearity is insufficient for guaranteeing replica accuracy. To address this issue, the proposed scheme exploits the detected data sequence in the regression analysis. We demonstrate that the proposed ACI cancellation technique can effectively mitigate ACI in multichannel utilization. key words: millimeter wave, amplifier nonlinearity, adjacent channel interference, iterative canceller, nonlinearity estimation, multichannel access
A Diffusion Based Wave Computing Algorithm for Real Time Edge detection

In this paper, a new wave computing algorithm for edge detection in real images is introduced. This algorithm is suitable for real time applications due to the parallel processing capabilities of CNN. The new algorithm is based on the wave computing concept, using diffusion for noise reduction and weak edge elimination and trigger wave to emphasize the strong edges in the image. The proposed algorithm finds edge maps in eight directions and these maps are summed to produce final edge map. The performance of our proposed algorithm is evaluated and compared with different diffusion models using the Berkeley dataset BSDS300 with its benchmark. Experimental results demonstrate superiority of our proposed for real images. Keywords— Cellular Neural network (CNN), Wave Computing, Diffusion, Real Time Edge Detection.
Implementation of symmetric cryptography in embedded systems for secure measurement systems

The paper presents the implementation of the symmetric cryptography in the distributed measurement system. Firstly, reasons for increasing the security in such systems are presented. Then, fundamentals of cryptography from the measuring systems' point of view are introduced. Role and structure of embedded systems in modern distributed environments is explained. As the example of presented problems, implementation of the AES system on the Compact RIO module is presented and tested for both efficiency and accuracy. The paper is supplemented with conclusions and future prospects.
Fast finger selection for GRAKE

This paper presents a low complexity finger selection method for the generalized RAKE receiver (GRAKE). GRAKE is an attractive receiver for CDMA systems, exhibiting nice gains over the standard RAKE receiver in dispersive channels, while maintaining the same structure. GRAKE is a linear whitening receiver, treating various sources of interference as colored noise. A GRAKE receiver makes use of so-called noise fingers (i.e. fingers not aligned with multipath delays) to effect interference suppression. Our method focuses on the selection of a subset of noise fingers to combine along with the standard signal fingers. We derive an exact expression for the SNR increment due to the placement of an extra finger, and an easily computed approximation to that expression. We describe two variants of a simple search algorithm based on the approximate SNR increment. We test the performance of our algorithm for the WCDMA system. Our simulation results show that GRAKE with our method exhibits gains of about 2 dB over RAKE. Our method also matches the performance of the more complex ML search algorithm, and it comes within 1/2 dB of an idealized GRAKE receiver.
Utilizing Interactive Whiteboards in the Classroom

Using interactive white boards in the classroom has been determined as one of the means in which an increase in student achievement and motivation. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between the integration of interactive white boards and student achievement in different content areas. Six high school level classrooms with varying content areas and their use of interactive white board technology were utilized in this study. Information on individual student motivation compared among different classrooms, both with and without interactive whiteboards, qualitative survey responses from instructors' and students' views, as well as looking at different student assessments compared to those in a classroom with and without interactive whiteboards. An analysis of the data displayed a correlation between the improvement of both student motivation and achievement when a student participated in a highly interactive class utilizing an interactive white board. Students in the classroom that utilized the technology in an interactive way performed higher academically and demonstrated more favorable views of their content areas and the interactive white board. Document Type Thesis Degree Name MS in Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education First Supervisor Diane Barrett Second Supervisor Bernard Ricca This thesis is available at Fisher Digital Publications: http://fisherpub.sjfc. edu/mathcs_etd_masters/98 Utilizing Interactive Whiteboards in the Classroom By Jeffrey Decker Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree M.S. Mathematics, Science and Technology Education Supervised by Dr. Diane Barrett and Dr. Bernard Ricca School of Arts and Sciences St. John Fisher College
Prevalence of select vector-borne disease agents in owned dogs of Ghana.

Ticks, sera and ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) blood were collected from dogs evaluated at the Amakom Veterinary Clinic in Kumasi, Ghana. Sera were evaluated for Dirofilaria immitis antigen and antibodies against Borrelia burgdorferi, Anaplasma phagocytophilum and Ehrlichia canis. Conventional polymerase chain reaction assays designed to amplify the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of Ehrlichia spp. or Anaplasma spp. or Neorickettsia spp. or Wolbachia spp. , Babesia spp. , Rickettsia spp. , Hepatozoon spp. , Bartonella spp. and the haemoplasmas were performed on DNA extracted from EDTA blood and all positive amplicons were sequenced. This small survey shows that the following vector-borne pathogens are present in urban Ghanian dogs: Ehrlichia canis, Hepatozoon canis,Dirofilaria immitis and Anaplasma platys. Bartonella henselae was isolated from ticks but not from the dogs.
Application Level Optimizations for Energy Efficiency and Thermal Stability

As part of our Green Software project we investigate whether application-level software optimization can improve energy efficiency and thermal behavior. We use both direct measurements and modeling to quantify power, energy, and temperature for a given software method. We introduce a new power estimator for multicore systems developed by regressing measurements from a suite of customdesigned microbenchmarks. We use our evaluation methodology on a real-life multicore system to explore two issues: (i) software tuning to improve scalability and energy-efficiency, and (ii) the effect of temperature optimization on system-level energy consumption.
Impaired platelet function in a patient with P2Y12 deficiency caused by a mutation in the translation initiation codon

Summary. In this study, we have identified a patient (OSP‐1) with a congenital P2Y12 deficiency showing a mild bleeding tendency from her childhood and examined the role of P2Y12 in platelet function. At low concentrations of agonists OSP‐1 platelets showed an impaired aggregation to several kinds of stimuli, whereas at high concentrations they showed a specifically impaired platelet aggregation to adenosine diphosphate (ADP). ADP normally induced platelet shape change and failed to inhibit PGE1‐stimulated cAMP accumulation in OSP‐1 platelets. Molecular genetic analysis revealed that OSP‐1 was a homozygous for a mutation in the translation initiation codon (ATG to AGG) in the P2Y12 gene. Heterologous cell expression of wild‐type or mutant P2Y12 confirmed that the mutation was responsible for the deficiency in P2Y12. OSP‐1 platelets showed a markedly impaired platelet spreading onto immobilized fibrinogen. Real‐time observations of thrombogenesis under a high shear rate (2000 s−1) revealed that thrombi over collagen were small and loosely packed and most of the aggregates were unable to resist against high shear stress in OSP‐1. Our data suggest that secretion of endogenous ADP and subsequent P2Y12‐mediated signaling are critical for platelet aggregation, platelet spreading, and as a consequence, for stabilization of thrombus.
Children born with very low birth weight show difficulties with sustained attention but not response inhibition

Children born with very low birth weight perform poorly on executive function and attention measures. Any difficulties with sustained attention may underpin impairments in performance on tasks measuring higher order cognitive control. Previous sustained attention research in very low birth weight cohorts has used tasks that involve arousing stimuli, potentially spoiling the measure of sustained attention. The aim of this study was to compare the performance of very low birth weight and normal birth weight children on a well-controlled task of sustained attention. The Fixed and Random versions of the Sustained Attention to Response Task were given to 17 very low birth weight and 18 normal birth weight children. The very low birth weight group performed the Fixed and Random Sustained Attention to Response Tasks in a similar manner as the normal birth weight group on all measures except for the omission error and Slow Frequency Area under the Spectra variables on the Fixed Sustained Attention to Response Task. These measures index lapses in sustained attention that may be underpinned by declining arousal. The very low birth weight group showed no response inhibition deficits. Omission errors and slow-timescale response-time variability on predictable tasks may thus present sensitive indices of difficulties with sustained attention and arousal associated with premature birth and low birth weight.
Transcribing broadcast data using MLP features

This paper describes incorporating discriminative features from a multi layer perceptron (MLP) into a state-of-the-art Arabic broadcast data transcription system based on cepstral features. The MLP features are based on a recently proposed Bottle-Neck architecture with long-term warped LPTRAP speech representation at the input. It is shown that the previously reported improvements on a development Arabic transcription system carry through to a full system at a state-ofthe-art level. SAT, CMLLR and MLLR adaptation techniques are shown to be useful for both MLP and combined features, though to a lesser degree than for PLPs. Without adaptation, MLP features obtain superior performance to cepstral features in all test conditions, and with adaptation both feature sets give comparable results. Combining the features, either by feature concatenation or system hypotheses, gives significant gains. Gains from MMI model training seem to be additive to the gain coming from discriminative MLP features.
Robust Page Segmentation Based on Smearing and Error Correction Unifying Top-down and Bottom-up Approaches

In this paper we present a robust multi-pass page segmentation algorithm. The first pass uses a modified smearing algorithm and the second pass performs a hybrid of bottom-up and top-down segmentation on the output of the first pass. Unlike traditional approaches, the bottom-up and top-down steps are based on primitive results of a smearing based page segmentation algorithm. Therefore, "split" and "merge" processes start with text blocks that are mostly true text blocks but a few of them are either touching or broken. We present experimental results on newspaper and journal documents from different languages to demonstrate the robustness and language independence of our approach.
Cutpoint Selection for Categorizing a Continuous Predictor

Summary. This article presents a new approach for choosing the number of categories and the location of category cutpoints when a continuous exposure variable needs to be categorized to obtain tabular summaries of the exposure effect. The optimum categorization is defined as the partition that minimizes a measure of distance between the true expected value of the outcome for each subject and the estimated average outcome among subjects in the same exposure category. To estimate the optimum partition, an efficient nonparametric estimate of the unknown regression function is substituted into a formula for the asymptotically optimum categorization. This new approach is easy to implement and it outperforms existing cutpoint selection methods.