Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of a Smartphone-Based Architecture with Multiple Mobility Sensors for Fall Detection

During the last years, many research efforts have been devoted to the definition of Fall Detection Systems (FDSs) that benefit from the inherent computing, communication and sensing capabilities of smartphones. However, employing a smartphone as the unique sensor in a FDS application entails several disadvantages as long as an accurate characterization of the patient’s mobility may force to transport this personal device on an unnatural position. This paper presents a smartphone-based architecture for the automatic detection of falls. The system incorporates a set of small sensing motes that can communicate with the smartphone to help in the fall detection decision. The deployed architecture is systematically evaluated in a testbed with experimental users in order to determine the number and positions of the sensors that optimize the effectiveness of the FDS, as well as to assess the most convenient role of the smartphone in the architecture.
Early effects on the intestinal barrier and pancreatic function after enteral stimulation with protease or kidney bean lectin in neonatal rats

Abstract Gut maturation naturally accelerates at weaning in altricial mammalian species, such as the rat. Mimicking this, gut development can also be induced precociously, 3–4 d earlier than it would occur naturally, by enteral exposure to phytohaemagglutinin (PHA), or various proteases. We investigated the early effects of gut provocation on intestinal barrier and pancreatic functions, to get a better understanding of the mechanisms that initiate gut maturation. The effects of oral administration of protease (trypsin) or PHA to 14-d-old suckling rats were studied during 24 h in comparison with water-fed controls. Intestinal in vivo permeability was assessed by oral administration of different-sized marker molecules and measuring their passage into the blood or urine 3 h later. A period of 24 h following oral administration, both PHA and protease provocation stimulated small intestinal (SI) growth and pancreatic secretion, as indicated by decreased pancreatic trypsin and increased luminal enzyme content. Within 1 h of oral administration, both treatments prevented the absorption of macromolecules to blood that was observed in controls. PHA treatment hindered the passage of fluorescein isothiocyanate-dextran (FD) 4 to blood, whereas protease treatment temporarily increased plasma levels of FD4, and the urine lactulose:mannitol ratio, indicating increased intestinal leakiness. Following protease treatment, fluorescence microscopy showed decreased vesicular uptake of FD70 in the proximal SI and increased epithelial fluorescence in the distal SI. In conclusion, PHA and protease differed in their early effects on the intestinal barrier; both exerted a blocking effect on epithelial endocytosis, whereas protease treatment alone temporarily increased epithelial leakiness, which seemed to be confined to the distal SI.
Hemodynamic, respiratory and neorophysiological reactions after high : Velocity behind armor blunt trauma

This thesis is addressing Behind Armor Blunt Trauma (BABT), defined as the nonpenetrating injury resulting from a ballistic impact on personal body armor. The protective vest may impede the projectile, but some of the kinetic energy is transferred to the body, causing effects such as pulmonary contusion, apnea, hypotension and occasionally death. Our aims of these studies have been to investigate physiological responses after highvelocity BABT, including EEG (study I). Furthermore, the safety criterion of 44 mm for protective vests (study II), effects of vagotomy (study III), and fluid resuscitation (study IV) has been evaluated. Anaesthetized pigs, wearing body armor on the right side of thorax, were shot with a standard 7.62 mm assault rifle (velocity approx. 800 m/s). We used body armors corresponding to 28 mm impression in clay placed behind the vest (study I and III), 34 mm and 40 mm (study II), and 42 mm (study IV). Several physiological parameters were thereafter monitored during two hours after the shot. Experimental protocol was similar in all studies, except from study III (in which one group received bilateral cervical vagotomy) and study IV, in which 2 groups received Ringer s acetate (RA) or hypertonic saline with dextrane (HSD). In all studies we observed an immediate drop of blood pressure, desaturation, increased pressure in the lung circulation, suppressed EEG-pattern and pulmonary contusion. In study II and IV, severe hyperkalemia was seen early after the trauma and several animals had serious arrhythmias. Our observed EEG-changes indicate that highvelocity BABT induces brain dysfunction, for at least a couple of minutes. Based on our results, the safety criteria of 44 mm should be considered insufficient when a vest is exposed to high-velocity bullets. Our results show that apnea after BABT is a vagally mediated reflex, that can be inhibited by vagotomy. Fluid resuscitation has limited effects on physiological parameters in our model, although HSD induces less edema formation and a tendency to improved saturation compared to RA.
Early Glaucoma Surgery in Primary Open Angle Glaucoma

Purpose: to evaluate the efficacy of early primary glaucoma surgery in primary open angle(POAG). Methods: This study performed on 50 eyes of 29 patients with POAG in Menoufia University hospital outpatient ophthalmology clinic were divided to group A 25 cases "primary surgery after diagnosis" and group B 25 cases "controlled cases with medical treatment". Results: follow up period up in group A,revealed significant reduction in intraocular pressure (IOP) as pvalue <. 0.001 after 3 months with sustained control over one year with complete success in 68 % of cases while qualified success in 32% of cases, Visual field stability occurred in majority of cases with primary surgical interference. In addition to low intraoperative complication rate including ocular hypotony in 2 cases (8%) and hyphema in 2 cases (8%). Conclusion: The results of the study comparing early primary surgery (without waiting results of medications) with conventional treatment for POAG have demonstrated the role of the primary surgery for more safety and visual field preservation due to reaching a target pressure and lessens IOP fluctuations. [Faried M. Wagdy, Saber H. Elsayed, Hoda M. Elsobky and Doaa F. Eldegwy. Early Glaucoma Surgery in Primary Open Angle Glaucoma. Life Sci J 2014;11(1):18-26]. (ISSN:1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite. com. 3
Composite features for automatic diagnosis of intervertebral disc herniation from lumbar MRI

Lower back pain is widely prevalent in the world today, and the situation is aggravated due to a shortage of radiologists. Intervertebral disc disorders like desiccation, degeneration and herniation are some of the major causes of lower back pain. In this paper, we propose a robust computer-aided herniation diagnosis system for lumbar MRI by first extracting an approximate Region Of Interest (ROI) for each disc and then using a combination of viable features to produce a highly accurate classifier. We describe the extraction of raw, LBP (Local Binary Patterns), Gabor, GLCM (Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrix), shape, and intensity features from lumbar SPIR T2-weighted MRI and also present a thorough performance comparison of individual and combined features. We perform 5-fold cross validation experiments on 35 cases and report a very high accuracy of 98.29% using a combination of features. Also, combining the desired features and reducing the dimensionality using LDA, we achieve a high sensitivity (true positive rate) of 98.11%.
Balancing Energy and Performance in Dense Linear System Solvers for Hybrid ARM+GPU platforms

The high performance computing community has traditionally focused uniquely on the reduction of execution time, though in the last years, the optimization of energy consumption has become a main issue. A reduction of energy usage without a degradation of performance requires the adoption of energy-ecient hardware platforms accompanied by the development of energy-aware algorithms and computational kernels. The solution of linear systems is a key operation for many scientific and engineering problems. Its relevance has motivated an important amount of work, and consequently, it is possible to find high performance solvers for a wide variety of hardware platforms. In this work, we aim to develop a high performance and energy-ecient linear system solver. In particular, we develop two solvers for a low-power CPU-GPU platform, the NVIDIA Jetson TK1. These solvers implement the Gauss-Huard algorithm yielding an ecient usage of the target hardware as well as an ecient memory access. The experimental evaluation shows that the novel proposal reports important savings in both time and energy-consumption when compared with the state-of-the-art solvers of the platform.
Decompressive Craniectomy in Diffuse Traumatic Brain Injury: An Industrial Hospital Study

Context: High intracranial pressure is the most frequent cause of mortality and disability after severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) which is treated by first-line therapeutic measures. When these measures fail, second-line therapies are started. Among second-line therapies, decompressive craniectomy (DC) has been used. It improves the functional outcome in these patients. Aim: This study aims to analyze the clinicoradiological factors associated with the prognosis of severe TBI in patients undergoing DC. Settings and Design: It was a retrospective case series study from April 2014 to March 2016. Subjects and Methods: A total of 85 patients (admitted at Tata Main Hospital, Jamshedpur) with severe diffuse TBI with clinical and radiological evidence of intracranial hypertension who were refractory to first-tier therapies and required DC were included in our study. Cases excluded were patients with age <10 years and polytrauma patients. Results: Out of 85 cases, 55 were males, and thirty were females (male:female = 1.8:1) with the age ranging from 17 to 68 years. Road traffic accident was the leading cause of injury in 69.5% cases. A total of 49 (58%) patients were of Glasgow coma scale (GCS) 4–6 whereas 36 (42%) patients had GCS 7–8. Computed tomography (CT) scan brain was classified as per Marshall CT classification. Bifrontotemporal DC was done in 29% cases, and unilateral frontotemporoparietal craniectomy was done in 71%. Conclusions: Patients with younger age, early surgical intervention, better preoperative GCS score, and with low Marshall CT score have better prognosis.
Efficient Soft-Output Gauss–Seidel Data Detector for Massive MIMO Systems

For massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, linear minimum mean-square error (MMSE) detection has been shown to achieve near-optimal performance but suffers from excessively high complexity due to the large-scale matrix inversion. Being matrix inversion free, detection algorithms based on the Gauss–Seidel (GS) method have been proved more efficient than conventional Neumann series expansion-based ones. In this paper, an efficient GS-based soft-output data detector for massive MIMO and a corresponding VLSI architecture are proposed. To accelerate the convergence of the GS method, a new initial solution is proposed. Several optimizations on the VLSI architecture level are proposed to further reduce the processing latency and area. Our reference implementation results on a Xilinx Virtex-7 XC7VX690T FPGA for a 128 base-station antenna and eight user massive MIMO system show that our GS-based data detector achieves a throughput of 732 Mb/s with close-to-MMSE error-rate performance. Our implementation results demonstrate that the proposed solution has advantages over the existing designs in terms of complexity and efficiency, especially under challenging propagation conditions.
A ug 2 00 7 Link-space formalism for network analysis

David M.D. Smith, Chiu Fan Lee, Jukka-Pekka Onnela, and Neil F. Johnson Physics Department, Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford University, Oxford OX1 3PU, U.K. Said Business School, Oxford University, Oxford OX1 1HP, U.K. Laboratory of Computational Engineering, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland and Physics Department, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida FL 33124, USA (Dated: March 2, 2008)
Effects of hydroxycinnamic acids (Ferulic and p-coumaric acids) in barley cultivars on cell wall components degradability in rumen

Barley grain contains hydroxycinnamic acids especially Ferulic (FA) and p-Coumaric acid (pCA) become cross-linked to cell wall polysaccharids as lignification commences that are the major inhibiting factors of biodegradability of plant cell walls in the rumen. Chemical characteristics, FA and pCA content of 11 Iranian barley cultivars determined. Using 3 fistulated ewes, the effects of FA and pCA content on ruminal degradation of dry matter (DM), neutral and acid detergent fiber (NDF and ADF) and lignin were studied. In barley cultivars, DM varied from 82.52 to 90.90 %; NDF varied from 9.64 to 27.34 % DM; ADF varied from 2.03 to 8.13 % DM and lignin varied from 0.87 to 3.03 % DM. The FA content ranged from 151.2 to 354.2 μg/g; and pCA content ranged from 114.5 to 444.4 μg/g of DM. Ruminal degradation parameters for DM, NDF, ADF and lignin were different between barley cultivars. The soluble fraction, slowly degradable, potential degradable, and undegradable fraction of DM were 2.92 to 56.33%; 42.64 to 91.45%; 65.68 to 98.97%, and 1.02 to 34.31%, respectively. The rate of ruminal degradation for DM varied among barley cultivars from 3.64 to 27.81% h. The FA was related to rumen indigestible DM, NDF, ADF and lignin, while pCA correlated with ADF. Using multi-regression, FA and pCA were inhibiting factors of ruminal degradability for DM and cell wall components; and FA was the most effective factor to predict DM degradability, while both FA and pCA affected NDF and ADF ruminal degradability.
The differentiated effects of lyrical and non-lyrical music on reading comprehension

iii List of Figures v List of Tables vi Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Chapter 2: Literature Review 3 2.1 Music and Cognitive Ability 3 2.2 Distractors and Processing Resources 6 2.3 Music and Reading Comprehension 11 Chapter 3: Methods 17 3.1 Subjects 17 3.2 Variables 17 3.3 Procedures 18 3.4 Statistical Analysis 20 Chapter 4: Results 22 Chapter 5: Discussion 26 5.1 Conclusions 26 5.2 Limitations 28 5.3 Future Directions 29 5.4 Closing Throughts 30 References 32
Investigation on Wall Panel Sandwiched With Lightweight Concrete

The rapid population growth and urbanization have made a massive demand for the shelter and construction materials. Masonry walls are the major component in the housing sector and it has brittle characteristics and exhibit poor performance against the uncertain loads. Further, the structure requires heavier sections for carrying the dead weight of masonry walls. The present investigations are carried out to develop a simple, lightweight and cost effective technology for replacing the existing wall systems. The lightweight concrete is developed for the construction of sandwich wall panel. The EPS (Expanded Polystyrene) beads of 3 mm diameter size are mixed with concrete and developed a lightweight concrete with a density 9 kN/m3. The lightweight sandwich panel is cast with a lightweight concrete inner core and ferrocement outer skins. This lightweight wall panel is tested for in-plane compression loading. A nonlinear finite element analysis with damaged plasticity model is carried out with both material and geometrical nonlinearities. The experimental and analytical results were compared. The finite element study predicted the ultimate load carrying capacity of the sandwich panel with reasonable accuracy. The present study showed that the lightweight concrete is well suitable for the lightweight sandwich wall panels.
Performance of the Pentagon Drawing test for the screening of older adults with Alzheimer's dementia

ABSTRACT The Pentagon Drawing Test (PDT) is a common cognitive screening test. Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate performance properties of a specific PDT scoring scale in older adults with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and healthy controls. Methods: A cross-sectional study of 390 elderly patients, aged 60 years or older with at least two years of education was conducted. All participants completed clinical and neuropsychological evaluations, including the Cambridge Cognitive Examination, the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), and the Clock Drawing Test. All PDT were blindly scored with the scale of Bourke et al. Results: PDT analyses of the binary score on the MMSE (0 or 1 point) did not discriminate AD from controls (p = 0.839). However, when PDT was analyzed using the Bourke et al. scale, the two groups could be distinguished (p <0.001). PDT was not affected by education, showed sensitivity of 85.5% and specificity of 66.9%, discriminated different clinical stages of dementia, and correlated with the other cognitive tests (p <0.001). A 1-point difference on the Bourke et al. scale was associated with an odds ratio of 3.46 for AD. Conclusion: PDT can be used as a cognitive screen for suspected cases of dementia, especially AD, irrespective of educational level.
The case for spatial pooling in deep convolutional sparse coding

The sparse representation framework is a popular approach due to its desirable theoretical guarantees and the use of sparse representations as feature vectors in machine learning problems. Another seemingly unrelated line of research is deep learning and, in particular, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) which perform extremely well on various machine learning benchmarks. Recently, in [1], a connection between CNNs and convolutional sparse coding (CSC) was established using a simplified CNN model. Motivated by the use of spatial pooling in practical CNN implementations, we investigate the effect of using spatial pooling in the CSC model. We show that the spatial pooling operations do not hinder the performance and can introduce additional benefits.
Inter-Rater Reliability of Cyclotorsion Measurements Using Fundus Photography

Abstract Background The foveo-papillary angle (FPA) on fundus photographs is the accepted standard for the measurement of ocular cyclotorsion. We assessed the inter-rater reliability of this method in healthy subjects and in patients with trochlear nerve palsies. Patients and Methods In this methodological study, fundus photographs of healthy subjects and of patients with trochlear nerve palsies were made with a fundus camera (Zeiss Fundus Camera FF 450 plus, Jena, Germany). Three independent observers measured the FPA on the fundus photographs of all subjects in synedra View (synedra View 16, Version 16.0.0.11, Innsbruck, Austria). Results One hundred and four eyes of 52 subjects (26 healthy controls and 26 patients) were assessed. The mean FPA of the healthy controls was 5.80 degrees (°) [± 0.44 standard error of the mean (SEM)] compared to 11.55° (± 0.80 SEM) for patients with trochlear nerve palsies. The inter-rater reliability of all measured FPAs showed an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.98 (95% CI 0.97 – 0.98). Conclusions The inter-rater reliability of objective cyclotorsion measurements using fundus photographs was very high.
Impact of a ‘School-Based’ Nutrition Intervention on Anthropometric Parameters and the Metabolic Syndrome in Spanish Adolescents

Background/Aims: In adolescents, overweight and obesity are associated with an increased cardiovascular risk. The aim of this study was to determine the impact of a school-based nutritional education program (NEP) on lifestyle changes in Spanish adolescents. Methods: We selected 263 secondary school students (127 males) aged 12–16 years from Granada (Spain), who were followed up throughout 1 school year (2009–2010). At the beginning and end of the school year, data were gathered on the food consumption frequency, and anthropometric and biochemical profile. The NEP comprised a class on nutritional recommendations every 15 days, and administration of a daily breakfast of 275–350 kcal. Results: After the intervention, the prevalence of overweight and obesity decreased among both male and female students (p < 0.001) and there was also a global reduction in the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome (MS) from 32.2 to 19.7% (p < 0.001); in addition, body mass index was significantly decreased in normal weight, overweight and obesity groups (p = 0.001 and p = 0.02, respectively), and high-density-lipoprotein cholesterol and lean body mass was increased in all groups (p = 0.001). Conclusion: The NEP achieved a medium-term reduction in the prevalence of overweight and obesity and had a significant and positive effect on MS components in all groups.
Neurodevelopment and Schizophrenia

Developmental changes in the brain are now a central feature of most etiological theories of schizophrenia. From the fetal period, in which vulnerability is presumed to originate, to the emergence of clinical illness in adolescence, brain changes are setting the stage for the first episode of psychosis. A host of factors that have the ability to alter fetal brain development have been linked with schizophrenia. Heritable genetic factors may increase risk for aberrant fetal brain development, and molecular genetic studies are now revealing mutations and epigenetic events that can also derail normal developmental processes. Prenatal complications also are now known to be associated with vulnerability. Later, adolescence and early adulthood are the critical periods for the onset of the prodrome, the period of decline before illness onset, and then the clinical syndrome. Here we summarize hypothesized elements of the neurodevelopmental process in schizophrenia in a model that spans both the prenatal and adolescent/young-adult periods. It is likely that future models will be much more complex as epigenetic processes and gene–environment interactions are incorporated.
The mechanism of lauric acid-modified protein nanocapsules escape from intercellular trafficking vesicles and its implication for drug delivery

Abstract Protein nanocapsules have exhibited promising potential applications in the field of protein drug delivery. A major issue with various promising nano-sized biotherapeutics including protein nanocapsules is that owing to their particle size they are subject to cellular uptake via endocytosis, and become entrapped and then degraded within endolysosomes, which can significantly impair their therapeutic efficacy. In addition, many nano-sized biotherapeutics could be also sequestered by autophagosomes and degraded through the autolysosomal pathway. Thus, a limiting step in achieving an effective protein therapy is to facilitate the endosomal escape and auto-lysosomal escape to ensure cytosolic delivery of the protein drugs. Here, we prepared a protein nanocapsule based on BSA (nBSA) and the BSA nanocapsules modified with a bilayer of lauric acid (LA-nBSA) to investigate the escape effects from the endosome and autophagosome. The size distribution of nBSA and LA-nBSA analyzed using DLS presents a uniform diameter centered at 10 nm and 16 nm. The data also showed that FITC-labeled nBSA and LA-nBSA were taken up by the cells mainly through Arf-6-dependent endocytosis and Rab34-mediated macropinocytosis. In addition, LA-nBSA could efficiently escape from endosomal before the degradation in endo-lysosomes. Autophagy could also sequester the LA-nBSA through p62 autophagosome vesicles. These two types of nanocapsules underwent different intracellular destinies and lauric acid (LA) coating played a vital role in intracellular particle retention. In conclusion, the protein nanocapsules modified with LA could enhance the protein nanocapsules escape from intercellular trafficking vesicles, and protect the protein from degradation by the lysosomes.