Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Improvement of mood and sleep alterations in posttraumatic stress disorder patients by eye movement desensitization and reprocessing

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients exhibit depressive and anxiety symptoms, in addition to nightmares, which interfere with sleep continuity. Pharmacologic treatment of these sleep problems improves PTSD symptoms, but very few studies have used psychotherapeutic interventions to treat PTSD and examined their effects on sleep quality. Therefore, in the present study, we sought to investigate the effects of Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing therapy on indices of mood, anxiety, subjective, and objective sleep. The sample was composed of 11 healthy controls and 13 PTSD patients that were victims of assault and/or kidnapping. All participants were assessed before, and 1 day after, the end of treatment for depressive and anxiety profile, general well-being and subjective sleep by filling out specific questionnaires. In addition, objective sleep patterns were evaluated by polysomnographic recording. Healthy volunteers were submitted to the therapy for three weekly sessions, whereas PTSD patients underwent five sessions, on average. Before treatment, PTSD patients exhibited high levels of anxiety and depression, poor quality of life and poor sleep, assessed both subjectively and objectively; the latter was reflected by increased time of waking after sleep onset. After completion of treatment, patients exhibited improvement in depression and anxiety symptoms, and in quality of life; with indices that were no longer different from control volunteers. Moreover, these patients showed more consolidated sleep, with reduction of time spent awake after sleep onset. In conclusion, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing was an effective treatment of PTSD patients and improved the associated sleep and psychological symptoms.
A motion sickness maximum around the 0.2 Hz frequency range of horizontal translational oscillation.

BACKGROUND Low frequency translational oscillation can provoke motion sickness in land vehicles, ships and aircraft. Although controlled motion experiments indicate a progressive increase in nauseogenicity as frequency decreases toward 0.2 Hz, few data are available on the existence of a definite maximum nauseogenic potential of motion around 0.2 Hz, or decreased nauseogenicity below this frequency. HYPOTHESIS Nauseogenicity should be maximal around 0.2 Hz. METHODS We selected 12 subjects for high motion sickness susceptibility, and they were exposed to horizontal sinusoidal motion (1.0 m.s(-2) peak acceleration) at 3 different frequencies (0.1, 0.2 and 0.4 Hz), at 1-wk intervals at the same time of day, according to a factorial design. Subjects were seated comfortably in the upright position with head erect. Fore-aft motion was through the body and head X-axis. Motion was stopped (motion endpoint) at moderate nausea or after 30 min. RESULTS The proportion of subjects experiencing moderate nausea was maximal at the intermediate frequency: 8/12 at 0.1 Hz, 12/12 at 0.2 Hz, 7/12 at 0.4 Hz. The mean time to motion endpoint was significantly (p < 0.01) shorter at the intermediate frequency: 18.0 min at 0.1 Hz; 11.2 min at 0.2 Hz; 20.2 min at 0.4 Hz. Similar frequency patterns emerged for other sickness ratings. The equivalent times to achieve moderate nausea using estimated values to correct for subjects who reached the 30 min time cut-off were: 22.7 min at 0.1 Hz; 11.2 min at 0.2 Hz; 28.1 min at 0.4 Hz. CONCLUSIONS A maximum nauseogenic potential around 0.2 Hz was substantiated.
Biomedical Activity of Chitin/Chitosan Based Materials—Influence of Physicochemical Properties Apart from Molecular Weight and Degree of N-Acetylation

The physicochemical nature of chitin and chitosan, which influences the biomedical activity of these compounds, is strongly related to the source of chitin and the conditions of the chitin/chitosan production process. Apart from widely described key factors such as weight-averaged molecular weight (MW) and degree of N-acetylation (DA), other physicochemical parameters like polydispersity (MW/MN), crystallinity or the pattern of acetylation (PA) have to be taken into consideration. From the biological point of view, these parameters affect a very important factor—the solubility of chitin and chitosan in water and organic solvents. The physicochemical properties of chitosan solutions can be controlled by manipulating solution conditions (temperature, pH, ionic strength, concentration, solvent). The degree of substitution of the hydroxyl and the amino groups or the degree of quaternization of the amino groups also influence the mechanical and biological properties of chitosan samples. Finally, a considerable research effort has been directed towards developing safe and efficient chitin/chitosan-based products because many factors, like the size of nanoparticles, can determine the biomedical characteristics of medicinal products. The influence of these factors on the biomedical activity of chitin/chitosan-based products is presented in this report in more detail.
Preoperative Evaluation Clinic Visit Is Associated with Decreased Risk of In-hospital Postoperative Mortality

Background:As specialists in perioperative medicine, anesthesiologists are well equipped to design and oversee the preoperative patient preparation process; however, the impact of an anesthesiologist-led preoperative evaluation clinic (PEC) on clinical outcomes has yet to be fully elucidated. The authors compared the incidence of in-hospital postoperative mortality in patients who had been evaluated in their institution’s PEC before elective surgery to the incidence in patients who had elective surgery without being seen in the PEC. Methods:A retrospective review of an administrative database was performed. There were 46 deaths from 64,418 patients (0.07%): 22 from 35,535 patients (0.06%) seen in PEC and 24 from 28,883 patients (0.08%) not seen in PEC. After propensity score matching, there were 13,964 patients within each matched set; there were 34 deaths (0.1%). There were 11 deaths from 13,964 (0.08%) patients seen in PEC and 23 deaths from 13,964 (0.16%) patients not seen in PEC. A subanalysis to assess the effect of a PEC visit on deaths as a result of failure to rescue (FTR) was also performed. Results:A visit to PEC was associated with a reduction in mortality (odds ratio, 0.48; 95% CI, 0.22 to 0.96, P = 0.04) by comparison of the matched cohorts. The FTR subanalysis suggested that the proportion of deaths attributable to an unanticipated surgical complication was not significantly different between the two groups (P = 0.141). Conclusions:An in-person assessment at the PEC was associated with a reduction in in-hospital mortality. It was difficult to draw conclusions about whether a difference exists in the proportion of FTR deaths between the two cohorts due to small sample size.
Character-based search with data confidentiality in the clouds

Recently, searching over encrypted data has become a hot research topic. Basic idea of privacy enhanced search is to generate an intermediate representation of the original text data and use it to perform the search. Prior research has used hash maps, tries, and other data structures to create the intermediate representation. We use a texture scheme for representing the characters. To enhance the privacy the textures are split and noise is added to each of the portions such that all portions of a texture needs to be collected to recover the original data in an unambiguous manner. One of the key advantages of our scheme is the ability to implement most of the search schemes (e.g., wildcard searches) that are performed with plain text searches. This paper fully describes our data representation scheme and presents the experimental data we gathered by implementing the scheme in a server cluster.
Study of Coffee Grounds Oil Action in PVC Matrix Exposed to Gamma Radiation: Comparison of Systems in Film and Specimen Forms

The poly (vinyl chloride), PVC, undergoes changes in its physicochemical properties when it is exposed to gamma radiation. Thus, the radiolytic stabilization of PVC is one way for obtain a material with radiation resistance. In this work, we studied the coffee grounds oil as PVC radiolytic protection in two systems forms: PVC film and PVC specimen. The systems were irradiated at sterilization dose of medical devices and viscosity measurements were performed. According to viscosity assays of PVC films, there was a 67% protection in polymer matrix promoted by the oil. On the other hand, the mean viscosity molar mass (Mv) of PVC specimens increased about 13%, indicating predominance of crosslinking effect, however samples containing the oil showed no Mv significant changes. Therefore, the oil can be considered a PVC radio stabilizing substance and open a way for use of sustainable additive in PVC industry.
On the Dimensionality of Wireless Connectivity Traces

Routing efficiency in wireless networks can be greatly improved by matching mobile host connectivity patterns. To this end, over the past few years considerable effort has been invested in developing predictors of mobility patterns that is, models of mobile host movement so that for a specific sequence of recorded locations to predict the most likely subsequent location. In this paper, I initiate a study of the structure of the connectivity space itself. I analyze samples from the Dartmouth data set1 and conduct an exploratory study of the structure of the underlying space. In particular, I compute the singular values of the timeweighted connectivity matrix, and relate this result to principal component analysis. Initial findings indicate that the degrees of freedom of the space induced by the connectivity matrix is very low with respect to the number of access points and mobile hosts involved; that the dimensionality of the underlying space grows slowly with the size of the sample; and, that the distribution of its eigenfrequencies follows a power law.
Antitumor activity of murine tumor necrosis factor (TNF) against transplanted murine tumors and heterotransplanted human tumors in nude mice

The antitumor activity of highly purified tumor necrosis factor (TNF) was tested against eight kinds of murine tumor and five kinds of human tumor heterotransplanted into nude mice. Mice were treated by intravenous or intratumoral injection of TNF, commencing when the tumors were well established. TNF showed an excellent curative effect against all kinds of murine and human tumors tested. Meth A sarcoma, Colon 26, Ehrlich, sarcoma 180, MM 46, MH 134, B16 melanoma, and Lewis lung tumors transplanted into mice underwent tumor necrosis and regression following a single injection of TNF. Sometimes a complete cure was observed in Meth A sarcoma, sarcoma 180, Ehrlich, and MM 46 tumors. Human cancers, SEKI, HMV‐I, KATO‐III, MKN 45, or KB, heterotransplanted into nude mice, also exhibited tumor necrosis and regression in size following several intratumoral injections of TNF. A great difference in curative effects of TNF was observed in Meth A sarcomas between those transplanted into BALB/c nu/+and into BALB/c nu/numice: following a single intravenous administration the effect was stronger in BALB/c nu/+ than in nu/nu mice. In contrast, tumor necrosis was almost the same in nu/+ and nu/nu mice following intratumoral administration. The present results thus indicate that TNF from mice had an antitumor activity against not only murine tumors but also human tumors. In addition to direct cytotoxicity against tumor cells, TNF induced a host‐mediated factor which contributed to the antitumor effects.
The deformation and fracture of human cortical bone across multiple length-scales

The complex structure of human cortical bone evolves over multiple length-scales from its basic constituents of collagen molecules and hydroxyapatite crystals at the nanoscale to the osteonal structures at near-millimeter dimensions. There is a need to understand how all levels of the structure contribute to the deformation and fracture resistance of cortical bone under physiological loading conditions and how structural changes due to aging and disease lead to diminished mechanical properties. The first part of this thesis addresses the latter by using non-enzymatic crosslinking measurements and in situ small- and wide-angle x-ray scattering/diffraction to characterize changes in the bone structure at sub-micron dimensions, while synchrotron x-ray computed micro-tomography and in situ fracture-toughness measurements in the scanning electron microscope were performed to characterize corresponding changes at micron-scale dimensions. This multi-scale analysis allows us to better understand how load is transferred across multiple length-scales and how biological aging impacts energy absorption throughout the structure. The second part of this thesis addresses the fracture toughness of human cortical bone under multiaxial loading. Most studies to date have only considered the toughness of bone under mode I (tensile) loading conditions; however, due to the complex, anisotropic structure of cortical bone, the mode I fracture toughness is not necessarily the limiting value. Thus, this research investigates the effects of combined tensile and shear loading at the crack tip on the initiation and crack-growth toughnesses to better understand how bone fractures under physiologically relevant loading conditions.
Demand for Organic Salmon in the European Union

This paper provides an analysis of the market potential for organic salmon, primarily in the European Union. There has been a substantial growth in the demand for organic food products in industrialised countries in the course of the past decade. Legislation for organic production is now being extended to aquaculture, and limited quantities of certified organic salmon have been marketed in the European Union. We examine the experience gained in other organic food markets, and draw some conclusions from these markets with relevance to salmon. Organic salmon fills a dietary need among organic consumers, but at the same time it has some characteristics which may present obstacles to successful marketing. We analysed price premiums for organic salmon compared to conventional salmon. Positive price premiums were found, but it is hard to predict how they will evolve when the supply of organic salmon is expanded. Experience from other organic foods that are supplied in large volumes suggests that it may be possible to obtain price premiums even with substantially higher production.
Replica compensated linear regulators for supply-regulated phase-locked loops

Supply-regulated phase-locked loops rely upon the VCO voltage regulator to maintain a low sensitivity to supply noise and hence low overall jitter. By analyzing regulator supply rejection, we show that in order to simultaneously meet the bandwidth and low dropout requirements, previous regulator implementations used in supply-regulated PLLs suffer from unfavorable tradeoffs between power supply rejection and power consumption. We therefore propose a compensation technique that places the regulator's amplifier in a local replica feedback loop, stabilizing the regulator by increasing the amplifier bandwidth while lowering its gain. Even though the forward gain of the amplifier is reduced, supply noise affects the replica output in addition to the actual output, and therefore the amplifier's gain to reject supply noise is effectively restored. Analysis shows that for reasonable mismatch between the replica and actual loads, regulator performance is uncompromised, and experimental results from a 90 nm SOI test chip confirm that with the same power consumption, the proposed regulator achieves at least 4 dB higher supply rejection than the previous regulator design. Furthermore, simulations show that if not for other supply rejection-limiting components in the PLL, the supply rejection improvement of the proposed regulator is greater than 15 dB.
Combining Nanoplasmonics and Nanofluidics for Single Particle Catalysis

Nanoparticles are, due to their large exposed surface area, widely used in the field of heterogeneous catalysis where they accelerate and steer chemical reactions. Although catalysis has been known about for centuries, the scrutiny of catalysts under realistic application conditions is still a major challenge. This difficulty originates from the fact that real catalyst materials are very complex, often consisting of large ensembles of nanoparticles that all are unique. Furthermore, the typically used macroscopic reactors in catalysis studies gives rise to locally, at the level of the active site, ill-defined reactant concentrations and diffusion limitations. To overcome these limitations, on one hand, techniques are being developed that are sensitive enough to probe individual catalytic particles and that at the same time can operate under realistic reaction conditions. On the other hand, strategies to more carefully control the amount and structure of catalyst material, as well as to precisely control mass transport to and from the active catalyst, are being investigated by scaling down the size of the used chemical reactor. To further push the limit of downsizing, in this thesis, I present a miniaturized reactor platform based on nanofluidic channels that have been carefully decorated with catalytic nanoparticles, and that is integrated with plasmonic nanospectroscopy readout. This optical technique relies on the nanoscale phenomenon known as the Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance (LSPR) and enables the study of individual metal nanoparticles in operando by means of dark-field scattering spectroscopy. As the first step in this development, we constructed a nanofluidic device with integrated plasmonic nanoparticles to detect minute changes in the liquid flowing through the channels, as well as molecules binding to the nanoparticles. As the second step, we developed the nanofluidic system with an integrated heater and to facilitate gas flow through the nanochannels with the possibility to connect to a mass spectrometer for on-line product analysis. This system was then successfully used to correlate activity with surface and bulk oxidation state changes taking place on individual catalytic Cu and Pt nanoparticles during CO oxidation, measured by means of plasmonic nanospectroscopy. To this end, in a separate study, I also employed the plasmonic approach to study the oxidation process of Cu nanoparticles both experimentally and by electrodynamics simulations.
Intrinsic Representation of Hyperspectral Imagery for Unsupervised Feature Extraction

Unsupervised feature extraction from hyperspectral images (HSIs) relies on efficient data representation. However, classical data representation techniques, e.g., principal component analysis and independent component analysis, do not reflect the intrinsic characteristics of HSI, and as such, they are less efficient for producing discriminative features. To address this issue, we have developed an intrinsic representation (IR) approach to support HSI classification. Based on the linear spectral mixture model, the IR approach explains the underlying physical factors that are responsible for generating HSI. Moreover, it addresses other important characteristics of HSI, i.e., the noise variance heterogeneity effect in the spectral domain and the spatial correlation effect in image domain. The IR model is solved iteratively by alternating the estimation of IR coefficients given IR bases and the update of IR bases given the coefficients. The resulting IR coefficients are discriminative, compact, and noise resistant, thereby constituting powerful features for improved HSI classification. The experiments on both simulated and real HSI demonstrate that the features extracted by the IR model are more capable of boosting the classification performance than the other referenced techniques.
Effect on mood of subthalamic DBS for Parkinson’s disease A consecutive series of 24 patients

A series of 24 consecutive PD patients were prospectively studied prior to and within 6 months postoperatively for mood, motor, and cognitive status to investigate the effects on mood of subthalamic deep brain stimulation (DBS) in PD. In six patients (25%), mood state worsened significantly, and three were transiently suicidal despite clear motor improvement. Caregivers and patients should be educated about the potential impact of this neurosurgical procedure on mood.
Localization and organization of actin in melanophores

Melanophores of the angelfish, Pterophyllum scalare, were studied in an attempt to demonstrate the existence of actin in these cells although microfilaments had previously not been found. By use of a variety of procedures, including immunofluorescence microscopy of intact and detergent-extracted cells, transmission electron microscopy, high voltage electron microscopy of whole-mount preparations, and labeling with heavy meromyosin-subfragment 1, the presence of a loose cortical mesh of actin filaments is demonstrated. In addition, a more parallel array of filaments is detected in microspike- and microvillus-like surface projections. There seem to be no changes in the arrangement of these filaments as a function of the state of pigment distribution. No actin filaments could be found in association with pigment granules or microtubules in more central cell portions. For reasons presently unknown, the preservation of the cortical filament network in lysed cell preparations depends strongly on the presence of an intact microtubular system. The involvement of this subplasmalemmal actin filament network in pigment granule transport remains unclear.
Primary pulmonary large B‐cell lymphoma—mediastinal type?

Sir: Primary pulmonary lymphomas are uncommon. Most cases (70–90%) are represented by extranodal marginal zone lymphoma of mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue, and diffuse large B-cell lymphomas (DLBCLs) account for only 5–20% of cases. We report an unusual case of the latter lymphoma type, to raise the hypothesis that mediastinal-type DLBCL can arise in sites other than the mediastinum. The 39-year-old male patient, a non-smoker, presented with persistent cough and haemoptysis. Imaging studies revealed a rapidly enlarging mass involving the lower lobe and part of the upper lobe of the right lung. There was no evidence of a mediastinal mass, enlarged nodes or distant metastasis on computed tomography scan and positron emission tomography– magnetic resonance imaging scan. Following a frozen section diagnosis of malignancy, a right pneumonectomy was performed to achieve complete tumour resection. The patient declined adjuvant chemotherapy after the surgery, and developed bilateral adrenal spread after 3 months. The resected right lung showed a large, lobulated, pinkish tumour measuring 13 · 11.5 cm (Figure 1A). The histological features were those of a large-cell lymphoma, but some features were highly reminiscent of primary mediastinal large B-cell lymphoma (PMBL), namely the presence of ample cytoplasm and compartmentalizing sclerosis (Figure 1B,C). Immunostaining showed that the lymphoma cells were CD20, CD3, CD5, CD10, BCL6, MUM1, BCL2 and CD30 (focal), and were also positive for several markers known to be frequently expressed in PMBLs but rarely expressed in other DLBLCs: CD23, MAL and interleukin-4-induced gene-1 (Figure 1D,E). Thus, a diagnosis of primary pulmonary DLBCL, PMBL-type, was made. The subsequent dissemination of disease to the adrenals also