Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Diagnosis and treatment of viral encephalitis

Acute encephalitis constitutes a medical emergency. In most cases, the presence of focal neurological signs and focal seizures will distinguish encephalitis from encephalopathy. Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis is a non-infective inflammatory encephalitis that may require to be treated with steroids. Acute infective encephalitis is usually viral. Herpes simplex encephalitis (HSE) is the commonest sporadic acute viral encephalitis in the Western world. Magnetic resonance imaging of brain is the investigation of choice in HSE and the diagnosis may be confirmed by the polymerase chain reaction test for the virus in the cerebrospinal fluid. In this article, we review the diagnosis, investigations, and management of acute encephalitis. With few exceptions (for example, aciclovir for HSE), no specific therapy is available for most forms of viral encephalitis. Mortality and morbidity may be high and long term sequelae are known among survivors. The emergence of unusual forms of zoonotic encephalitis has posed an important public health problem. Vaccination and vector control measures are useful preventive strategies in certain arboviral and zoonotic encephalitis. However, we need better antiviral therapy to meet the challenge of acute viral encephalitis more effectively.
Optimizing an Utility Function for Exploration / Exploitation Trade-off in Context-Aware Recommender System

In this paper, we develop a dynamic exploration/ exploitation (exr/exp) strategy for contextual recommender systems (CRS). Specifically, our methods can adaptively balance the two aspects of exr/exp by automatically learning the optimal tradeoff. This consists of optimizing a utility function represented by a linearized form of the probability distributions of the rewards of the clicked and the non-clicked documents already recommended. Within an offline simulation framework we apply our algorithms to a CRS and conduct an evaluation with real event log data. The experimental results and detailed analysis demonstrate that our algorithms outperform existing algorithms in terms of click-through-rate (CTR).
Reconnection with the Ideal Tree: A New Approach to Real-Time Search

Many applications, ranging from video games to dynamic robotics, require solving single-agent, deterministic search problems in partially known environments under very tight time constraints. Real-Time Heuristic Search (RTHS) algorithms are specifically designed for those applications. As a subroutine, most of them invoke a standard, but bounded, search algorithm that searches for the goal. In this paper we present FRIT, a simple approach for single-agent deterministic search problems under tight constraints and partially known environments that unlike traditional RTHS does not search for the goal but rather searches for a path that connects the current state with a so-called ideal tree T. When the agent observes that an arc in the tree cannot be traversed in the actual environment, it removes such an arc from T and then carries out a reconnection search whose objective is to find a path between the current state and any node in T. The reconnection search is done using an algorithm that is passed as a parameter to FRIT. If such a parameter is an RTHS algorithm, then the resulting algorithm can be an RTHS algorithm. We show, in addition, that FRIT may be fed with a (bounded) complete blind-search algorithm. We evaluate our approach over grid pathfinding benchmarks including game maps and mazes. Our results show that FRIT, used with RTAA*, a standard RTHS algorithm, outperforms RTAA* significantly; by one order of magnitude under tight time constraints. In addition, FRIT(daRTAA*) substantially outperforms daRTAA*, a state-of-the-art RTHS algorithm, usually obtaining solutions 50% cheaper on average when performing the same search effort. Finally, FRIT(BFS), i.e., FRIT using breadth-first-search, obtains best-quality solutions when time is limited compared to Adaptive A* and Repeated A*. Finally we show that Bug2, a pathfinding-specific navigation algorithm, outperforms FRIT(BFS) when planning time is extremely limited, but when given more time, the situation reverses.
“Everybody gets one or two chances in life, this is my second!”: Risk and the construction of (mature) students’ biographies

This article presents preliminary findings from a PhD study that began in September 2001. It seeks to outline provisional thoughts as to how the notion of risk influences the construction of biographies for mature students on an Access course at a Further Education college in the South West of England. Extracts from interviews undertaken with students are used in an effort to ground the theory in personal experience. The fear of failing the course thus reinforcing previous negative experiences of the education system and further damaging an already low self esteem are paramount for some of the cohort. Others meanwhile express worries over how non academic issues including family or monetary pressures and uncertainty about the future may jeopardise their chances of success.
Unspanned Stochastic Volatility and the Pricing of Commodity Derivatives

We conduct a comprehensive analysis of unspanned stochastic volatility in commodity markets in general and the crude-oil market in particular. We present model-free results that strongly suggest the presence of unspanned stochastic volatility in the crude-oil market. We then develop a tractable model for pricing commodity derivatives in the presence of unspanned stochastic volatility. The model features correlations between innovations to futures prices and volatility, quasi-analytical prices of options on futures and futures curve dynamics in terms of a low-dimensional affine state vector. The model performs well when estimated on an extensive panel data set of crude-oil futures and options.
A low-cost embedded IDS to monitor and prevent Man-in-the-Middle attacks on wired LAN environments

A man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack is, in the scope of a LAN, a technique where an attacker is able to redirect all traffic between two hosts of that same LAN for packet sniffing or data manipulation, without the end hosts being aware of it. Usually these attacks exploit security flaws in the implementation of the ARP protocol at hosts. Up to now, detecting such attacks required setting up a machine with special-purpose software for this task. As an additional problem, few intrusion detection systems (IDS) are able to prevent MitM attacks. In this work we present a low-cost embedded IDS which, when plugged into a switch or hub, is able to detect and/or prevent MitM attacks automatically and efficiently. Since our system is limited to a micro-controller and a network interface, it can be produced at a very low cost, which is attractive for large scale production and deployment.
Book review: Emma Rich, Lee F Monaghan and Lucy Aphramor (eds), Debating Obesity: Critical Perspectives

Research on risk perception aims to identify the broad array of factors and processes that shape the manner in which health risks are perceived and managed by individuals and societies. Among the diverse fields having contributed to the body of research in this area, psychology has provided some important findings. There is no doubt that this is largely attributable to the work of Paul Slovic and his colleagues. Through several years of work based on the psychometric paradigm, these researchers have helped to establish that individuals’ perceptions of health risks not only reflect probabilistic judgments but also their evaluations of more qualitative aspects of health risks, such as the degree of dread and uncertainty these generate (Slovic, 1987). In doing so, Slovic and his colleagues have begun to widen the scope of research in this area from the purely cognitive to the sociocultural domain. In his first book on the topic, The Perception of Risk, Slovic (2000) outlined the history of research on risk perception, with its basis in the environmentalism of the 1970s, and presented seminal work in this area. As put by the author himself, The Feeling of Risk: New Perspectives on Risk Perception ‘picks up where the last one left off, and describes the extension of risk-perception research into the first decade of the new century’ (p. xix). A compilation of papers co-authored by Slovic over the past 10 years, the book is organized into four sections on (1) Risk as Feelings, (2) Culture, Cognition and Risk, (3) Psychometric Studies and (4) Risk Knowledge and Communication, which are prefaced by a brief introduction. In the ‘Risk as Feelings’ section, Slovic begins by presenting the results of several studies that demonstrate the importance of affect in individuals’ ability to assign meaning to and make decisions among gambles. This work sets the stage for a discussion on the interplay of rationality and affect as systems involved in individuals’ judgements of risk. Additional papers presented in this section provide examples of the way affect may account for behavioural phenomena in various risk contexts, including the greater tendency for individuals to make charitable donations when victims are identifiable rather than statistical and the reasons they start smoking despite being aware of its associated health risks. Broadening the scope, Slovic closes this section by presenting the results of two studies that demonstrate how large-scale risk events, such as a tsunami disaster, may come to have wider societal impacts through their more immediate effects on individuals’ emotions and responses. The section on ‘Culture, Cognition and Risk’ introduces work on the general tendency of white males to perceive risks to be lower compared to other socio-demographic groups (deemed the ‘white male effect’). In a series of papers by Dan M Kahan and others, the argument is made that individuals adopt Book reviews 473063 HPQ18810.1177/1359105312473063Journal of Health PsychologyBook reviews 2013
MRT-basierte Morphometrie zur Darstellung der Gehirnatrophie in frühen Stadien des Morbus Huntington - Vergleich einer manuellen und einer automatisierten Methode

Objectives: To find a non-invasive method to analyse the grey matter changes in early stages of Huntington"s disease (HD) and to determine statistically how these changes correlate to clinical features and the CAG (cytosine-adenosine-guanosine) -repeat length. Methods: High resolution volume rendering MRI Scans (MP-RAGE) of 44 patients in early stages of HD and 28 healthy volunteers were acquired. The imaging software Analyze® was used to determine manually the absolute volume of nucleus caudatus and putamen in 12 HD patients compared to 6 healthy controls. Without predefined cerebral regions the data of 44 patients was analysed by the automatic voxel-wise comparison technique of voxel based morphometry (VBM) and compared to an age-matched database, using statistical parametric mapping (SPM99). To visualise the influence of clinical severity on the degree of the cerebral atrophy an additional VBM and covariance analysis (ANCOVA) was done. Results: With Analyze® a decreased volume of the striatum in affected patients and an atrophy progress with more severe clinical impairment was demonstrated. With VBM a significant decrease in grey matter density was found in HD patients compared to the control population. The changes were most consistent bilaterally in the striatal regions. A covariance analysis showed that scores of clinical severity correlate strongly with the atrophy. Higher CAG-repeat numbers and advanced clinical stages showed more extensive striatal involvement. Conclusions: Without preselection of specific cerebral regions, VBM is able to show even small changes in grey matter density associated with HD and its covariation with clinical severity and CAG repeat length. Analyze® is a complementary method to obtain absolute volume but is time consuming and investigator dependent. VBM may have the potential to monitor the progressive changes of HD in future longitudinal intervention studies or preclinical investigations.
Phytochemical screening and antimicrobial activities of the methanolic leaf extract of Jacaranda mimosifolia D . DON and Sansevieria liberica THUNB

In this study, the phytochemical screening and antimicrobial activities of the methanolic leaf extract of Jacaranda mimosifolia D. Don (Bignoniaceae) and Sansevieria liberica Thunb (Asparagaceae) were carried out. The phytochemical screening revealed the presence of carbohydrate, flavonoids and cardiac glycosides; absence of anthraquinones and alkaloids in both plants. However tannins, saponins and steroids were present in J. mimosifolia which were found to be absent in S. liberica but there is the presence of triterpenes in S. liberica. The methanolic leaf extracts of these two plants were also subjected to antimicrobial screening in accordance with agar well diffusion method. The extracts were tested against clinical isolates of Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhi, Bacillus cereus and Staphylococcus aureus with ciprofloxacin as a positive control. The zone of inhibition, Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) and Minimum Bactericidal Concentration (MBC) were determined. The result showed that all the test organisms were sensitive to the standard drug (control) as well as the methanolic leaf extract of J. mimosifolia though varied at different concentration of the extract. The result also showed that Bacillus cereus and Staphylococcus aureus were sensitive to the methanolic extract of S. liberica while Salmonella typhi and Escherichia coli were resistant to the
Differential Contributions of the Basolateral and Central Amygdala in the Acquisition and Expression of Conditioned Relapse to Cocaine-Seeking Behavior

The amygdala is known to be a critical mediator of emotional learning in aversive and appetitive conditioning. Here we show for the first time that distinct subregions of the amygdala play unique roles in the acquisition and expression of cocaine-seeking behavior maintained by drug-paired cues in a model of relapse. Reversible inactivation of the basolateral amygdala with the sodium channel blocker tetrodotoxin disrupted both the acquisition and expression of the conditioned reinforcing effects maintained by drug-paired stimuli. However, inactivation of the central amygdala disrupted only the expression, but not the acquisition, of the conditioned reinforcing effects of drug-paired stimuli. Our results demonstrate that these nuclei participate as components of an amygdalar circuit to drive cocaine-seeking behavior produced by stimulus-reinforcement associations.
The ubiquity of phenotypic plasticity in plants: a synthesis

Adaptation to heterogeneous environments can occur via phenotypic plasticity, but how often this occurs is unknown. Reciprocal transplant studies provide a rich dataset to address this issue in plant populations because they allow for a determination of the prevalence of plastic versus canalized responses. From 31 reciprocal transplant studies, we quantified the frequency of five possible evolutionary patterns: (1) canalized response–no differentiation: no plasticity, the mean phenotypes of the populations are not different; (2) canalized response–population differentiation: no plasticity, the mean phenotypes of the populations are different; (3) perfect adaptive plasticity: plastic responses with similar reaction norms between populations; (4) adaptive plasticity: plastic responses with parallel, but not congruent reaction norms between populations; and (5) nonadaptive plasticity: plastic responses with differences in the slope of the reaction norms. The analysis included 362 records: 50.8% life-history traits, 43.6% morphological traits, and 5.5% physiological traits. Across all traits, 52% of the trait records were not plastic, and either showed no difference in means across sites (17%) or differed among sites (83%). Among the 48% of trait records that showed some sort of plasticity, 49.4% showed perfect adaptive plasticity, 19.5% adaptive plasticity, and 31% nonadaptive plasticity. These results suggest that canalized responses are more common than adaptive plasticity as an evolutionary response to environmental heterogeneity.
A Glitch in an Anomalous X-Ray Pulsar

We report the detection of a sudden spin-up of the 11 s anomalous X-ray pulsar 1RXS J170849.0-400910 in regular timing observations made with the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer. The event, which occurred between MJD 51,446 (1999 September 25) and 51,472 (1999 October 21), is well characterized by an increase in the rotational frequency of magnitude, |Δν/ν| = (6.2 ± 0.3) × 10-7, and an increase in the rate of spin down, |Δ/| = (1.38 ± 0.25) × 10-2. These values are very similar to those of glitches observed in the Vela radio pulsar and other young radio pulsars. The event therefore suggests that the internal structure of this anomalous X-ray pulsar is similar to those of the radio pulsars. In particular, it implies that the fractional moment of inertia in neutron superfluid that is not corotating with the crust is ≥1%. The detection of a glitch in this anomalous X-ray pulsar constrains models for the origin of glitches in neutron stars. Most notably, it challenges models that preclude glitches in long-period pulsars and, under the magnetar hypothesis, suggests that large glitches can occur in hot neutron stars. The glitch is consistent with the predictions of the magnetar model for anomalous X-ray pulsars, but accretion-powered scenarios cannot be excluded using our observations alone.
Normal FDG distribution patterns in the head and neck: PET/CT evaluation.

PURPOSE To retrospectively evaluate the distribution of fluorine 18 fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) in the head and neck region with combined positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET/CT) in patients with no known abnormality in this region. MATERIALS AND METHODS The institutional review board allowed a retrospective review of PET/CT images obtained in 78 patients with non-head and neck cancer and waived the requirement for informed consent. The accumulation of FDG in 11 normal head and neck structures was visually and quantitatively assessed retrospectively. Positive rate percentage (PRP) was defined as the sum of the percentages of patients with grade 2 and grade 3 tracer uptake intensity. Standardized uptake values (SUVs) were calculated for quantitative analysis. Mean SUVs were compared between the male and female patients by using the unpaired t test, and the correlation between FDG uptake and patient age was assessed by using the Pearson correlation coefficient test. RESULTS Intense tracer uptake was usually seen in the palatine tonsils (PRP, 98%; mean SUV, 3.48), soft palate (PRP, 96%; mean SUV, 3.13), and lingual tonsils (PRP, 96%; mean SUV, 3.11). In the inferior concha (PRP, 4%; mean SUV, 1.56), thyroid gland (PRP, 3%; mean SUV, 1.31), and tongue (PRP, 1%; mean SUV, 1.39), uptake was typically minimal. FDG accumulation was variable in the sublingual glands (PRP, 72%; mean SUV, 2.93), spinal cord (PRP, 64%; mean SUV, 2.12), submandibular glands (PRP, 53%; mean SUV, 2.11), parotid glands (PRP, 51%; mean SUV, 1.90), and vocal cords (PRP, 19%; mean SUV, 1.77). The mean normal-tissue SUV in the soft palate was higher in male than in female patients (P <.01). A negative correlation between age and physiologic FDG uptake was seen in the palatine tonsils (r=-0.51, P <.001) and sublingual glands (r=-0.70, P <.001). CONCLUSION Intense FDG uptake was usually observed in the palatine tonsils, lingual tonsils, and soft palate, whereas uptake in the major salivary glands was variable.
Short Term Memory Quantifications in Input-Driven Linear Dynamical Systems

We investigate the relation between two quantitative mea- sures characterizing short term memory in input driven dynamical systems, namely the short term memory capacity (MC) (2) and the Fisher memory curve (FMC) (1). We show that under some assumptions, the two quan- tities can be interpreted as squared 'Mahalanobis' norms of images of the input vector under the system's dynamics and that even though MC and FMC map the memory structure of the system from two quite different perspectives, they can be linked by a close relation. Input driven dynamical systems play an important role as machine learning models when data sets exhibit temporal dependencies, e.g. in prediction or control. In an attempt to characterize dynamic properties of such systems, measures have been suggested to quantify how well past information can be represented in the system's internal state. In this contribution we investigate two such well known measures, namely the short term memory capacity spectrum MCk (2) and the Fisher memory curve J(k) (1). The two quantities map the memory structure of the system under investigation from two quite different perspectives. So far their relation has not been closely investigated. In this paper we take the first step to bridge this gap and show that under some conditions MCk and J(k) can be related in an interpretable manner. 2 Background We study linear input driven state space models with N-dimensional state space and univariate inputs and outputs. Such systems can be represented e.g. by linear Echo State Networks (ESN) (3) with N recurrent (reservoir) units. The activations of the input, internal (state), and output units at time step t are de- noted by s(t), x(t), and y(t), respectively. The input-to-recurrent and recurrent- to-output unit connections are given by N-dimensional weight vectors v and u, respectively; connections between the internal units are collected in an NN weight matrix W. We assume there are no feedback connections from the output to the reservoir and no direct connections from the input to the output. Under
Conversion Chemotherapy for Technically Unresectable Colorectal Liver Metastases

Abstract The response rate of patients with unresectable liver-limited metastases of colorectal cancer can be improved by converting inoperable disease to operable disease. However, the benefits of conversion chemotherapy for survival are still controversial. Patients considered to have technically inoperable disease by a multidisciplinary team were retrospectively analyzed. Patients were stratified based on the treatment they received, into the chemotherapy only (G1), chemotherapy plus bevacizumab (G2), or chemotherapy plus cetuximab (G3) groups. The primary endpoint was the resection rate. The secondary endpoint was the overall survival (OS), according to both the treatment received and liver surgery status. In total, 104 patients were included: 30 in the G1, 39 in the G2, and 35 in the G3 groups. All G3 patients had the wild-type KRAS exon 2. The surgical resection rates for patients in the G1, G2, and G3 groups were 43.3% (13/30), 30.7% (12/39), and 51.4% (18/35), respectively. Disease-free survival did not show significant differences among the 3 groups. The median OS was 35.2 months in the G1, 28.8 months in the G2, and 42.1 months in the G3 (P = 0.25) groups. The OS was significantly higher in patients who underwent surgical resection than those who did not. The median OS was 28.4 months in patients who did not undergo resection, whereas it had not been reached after a median follow-up period of 37.5 months for patients who underwent surgical resection (events: 21/43). Our data confirmed that the conversion of initially inoperable disease to operable disease conferred a survival benefit, even in patients who relapsed after surgery. The addition of cetuximab to chemotherapy improved the objective response and resection rates, conferring a potential survival benefit even in patients whose diseases were not converted to operable disease, compared to chemotherapy alone or in combination with bevacizumab.