Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Autonomic nervous system balance in children and adolescents with craniopharyngioma and hypothalamic obesity.

OBJECTIVE Dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system is thought to be involved in craniopharyngioma-related hypothalamic obesity (CRHO). Increased parasympathetic activity and decreased sympathetic activity have been suggested. We aimed to study autonomic activity using heart rate variability (HRV) and biochemical measures in youth with CRHO compared with controls and to explore relationships between obesity and autonomic indices. DESIGN A cross-sectional study of 16 youth with CRHO and 16 controls matched for sex, age, and BMI. METHODS Anthropometrics, fasting blood-work, resting energy expenditure (REE), 24-h HRV, and 24-h urine catecholamines were assessed. Quality of life, sleepiness, and autonomic symptoms were evaluated. Power spectral analysis of the HRV was performed. RESULTS HRV power spectral analysis parameters of both parasympathetic activity (mean high frequency (HF (ms(2))) 611±504 vs 459±336, P=0.325) and sympathetic activity (median low frequency/HF 1.62 (1.37, 2.41) vs 1.89 (1.44, 2.99), P=0.650) did not differ between the groups. Parasympathetic activity negatively correlated with central adiposity in both groups (r=-0.53, P=0.034 and r=-0.54, P=0.029) and sympathetic activity positively correlated with central adiposity in CRHO (r=0.51, P=0.043). Youth with CRHO had significantly lower REE; lower health and activity scores in the quality of life questionnaires, and higher sleepiness scores. CONCLUSIONS Autonomic activity was similar in CRHO and control subjects. The degree of central adiposity correlated negatively with parasympathetic activity and positively with sympathetic activity in children with CRHO. These results provide a new perspective regarding autonomic balance in this unique patient population.
Head-Free, Remote Eye-Gaze Detection System Based on Pupil-Corneal Reflection Method With Easy Calibration Using Two Stereo-Calibrated Video Cameras

We have developed a pupil-corneal reflection method-based gaze detection system, which allows large head movements and achieves easy gaze calibration. This system contains two optical systems consisting of components such as a camera and a near-infrared light source attached to the camera. The light source has two concentric LED rings with different wavelengths. The inner and outer rings generate bright and dark pupil images, respectively. The pupils are detected from a difference image created by subtracting the bright and dark pupil images. The light source also generates the corneal reflection. The 3-D coordinates of the pupils are determined by the stereo matching method using two optical systems. The vector from the corneal reflection center to the pupil center in the camera image is determined as r. The angle between the line of sight and the line passing through the pupil center and the camera (light source) is denoted as θ. The relationship θ = k | \bm r | is assumed, where k is a constant. The theory implies that head movement of the user is allowed and facilitates the gaze calibration procedure. In the automatic calibration method, k is automatically determined while the user looks around on the PC screen without fixating on any specific calibration target. In the one-point calibration method, the user is asked to fixate on one calibration target at the PC screen in order to correct the difference between the optical and visual axes. In the two-point calibration method, in order to correct the nonlinear relationship between θ and | r |, the user is asked to fixate on two targets. The experimental results show that the three proposed calibration methods improve the precision of gaze detection step by step. In addition, the average gaze error in the visual angle is less than 1° for the seven head positions of the user.
The Economics of Low Stabilization: Model Comparison of Mitigation Strategies and Costs

This study gives a synthesis of a model comparison assessing the technological feasibility and economic consequences of achieving greenhouse gas concentration targets that are sufficiently low to keep the increase in global mean temperature below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. All five global energy-environment-economy models show that achieving low greenhouse gas concentration targets is technically feasible and economically viable. The ranking of the importance of individual technology options is robust across models. For the lowest stabilization target (400 ppm CO2 eq), the use of bio-energy in combination with CCS plays a crucial role, and biomass potential dominates the cost of reaching this target. Without CCS or the considerable extension of renewables the 400 ppm CO2 eq target is not achievable. Across the models, estimated aggregate costs up to 2100 are below 0.8% global GDP for 550 ppm CO2 eq stabilization and below 2.5% for the 400 ppm CO2 eq pathway.
Bioavailability of magnesium in beef cattle fed magnesium oxide or magnesium hydroxide.

Two experiments were conducted to compare Mg bioavailability from Mg oxide (MgO) vs Mg hydroxide (Mg(OH)2) fed in either a completely mixed diet or a mineral supplement. In Exp. 1, these Mg sources were incorporated into completely mixed diets and offered to 15 steers (282 kg) allotted to three treatments: control diet containing . 19% Mg, control plus . 2% added Mg as MgO, or control plus . 2% added Mg as Mg(OH)2. Each calf was fed 5 kg/d of the respective diet during 10-d adjustment and 7-d collection periods. Blood samples were collected on d 1, 3 and 7. Mg supplementation increased (P less than .01) fecal and urinary Mg excretions, whereas apparent Mg absorption (%) and retention were similar (P greater than .10) for all treatments. Plasma Mg concentrations were similar (P less than .10) for calves supplemented with MgO and Mg(OH)2 but were higher (P less than .05) for Mg supplemented than for control calves on d 7. In Exp. 2, these Mg sources were incorporated into mineral supplements and offered free choice to 30 spring-calving beef cows gazing tetany-inducing pastures from March 6 to May 1. Each of three groups of 10 cows was assigned to a 5.7-ha tall fescue pasture and offered either a control supplement or a supplement containing 40% MgO or Mg(OH)2. Blood samplers were collected on d 0, 7, 14, 28, 42 and 56. Plasma Mg concentrations were not different (P greater than .10) for cows offered MgO and Mg(OH)2 but were higher (P less than .01) for Mg-supplemented than for control cows on d 28, 42 and 56. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Construction of Ontology Based Semantic-Linguistic Feature Vectors for Searching: The Process and Effect

Search is among the most frequent activities on the Web. However, the search activity still requires extra efforts in order to get satisfactory results. One of the reasons is heterogeneous information resources and exponential growth of information. The problem of heterogeneity arises as a result of discipline specific language used even in domain specific documents. This particular problem we tackle in this paper. We propose an approach to construct semantic-linguistic feature vectors (FV). The FVs are built based on domain semantics encoded in an ontology and enhanced by a relevant terminology from documents on the Web. Semantic information from the ontologies is also used to expand the user queries and the FVs are used to filter and rank the retrieved documents. The strength of this approach is twofold. First, it is grounded on relevant semantics from an ontology, and second, it accounts for statistically significant collocations of other terms and phrases in relation to the ontology entities. In this paper, we explain how these FVs are constructed and what effect they have on search performance.
Passive Haptic Data-Compression Methods With Perceptual Coding for Bilateral Presence Systems

In this paper, lossy compression methods for haptic (velocity and force) data as exchanged in telepresence or virtual reality systems are introduced. Based on the proposed interpolative and extrapolative compression strategies, arbitrary passive compression algorithms can be implemented. The derived algorithms do not affect the stability of the presence system. Two algorithms were implemented and experimentally evaluated. The results show that constant data rate savings of 89% still lead to a perceptually transparent presence system.
Phase-based reboot: Reusing operating system execution phases for cheap reboot-based recovery

Although operating systems (OSes) are crucial to achieving high availability of computer systems, modern OSes are far from bug-free. Rebooting the OS is simple, powerful, and sometimes the only remedy for kernel failures. Once we accept reboot-based recovery as a fact of life, we should try to ensure that the downtime caused by reboots is as short as possible. This paper presents “phase-based” reboots that shorten the downtime caused by reboot-based recovery. The key idea is to divide a boot sequence into phases. The phase-based reboot reuses a system state in the previous boot if the next boot reproduces the same state. A prototype of the phase-based reboot was implemented on Xen 3.4. 1 running para-virtualized Linux 2.6. 18. Experiments with the prototype show that it successfully recovered from kernel transient failures inserted by a fault injector, and its downtime was 34.3 to 93.6% shorter than that of the normal reboot-based recovery.
Total IgE Distribution in Food Allergy Suspected Patients in Republic of Macedonia (2001-2011)

BACKGROUND: IgE may be considered the hallmark of allergic disorders. It is easily detected in serum and can be measured as total IgE and as allergen-specific IgE. In fact, the serum IgE assay is used to diagnose an allergy. AIM: The aim of this study is to evaluate, investigate and present the distribution of total serum IgE levels, determined with UniCap system, in food-allergy suspected patients in a Republic of Macedonia. MATERIAL AND METHODS: In this study we analyzed retrospectively 8898 consecutive patients that were admitted for allergy testing at the Institute of Immunobiology and Human Genetics during the ten year period between 01.01. 2001 and 01.01. 2011. Total IgE levels in patient sera were detected with the in vitro system UniCAP100 (Pharmacia, Uppsala, Sweden). RESULTS: When we analyzed the number of patients according to the total IgE groups, we noted that most of the patients have normal levels of total IgE in serum. However, we also discovered a group of patients with elevated levels of total IgE that are greater than 200 kU/L. The average concentration of total serum IgE is higher in women in the age group 6 (6-7 years), followed by a steep decrease in the age group 9 (9-10 years), and after that the average concentrations of total IgE were mostly constant with the exception of a partial increase in the age group 21 (65-69 years). For men, the average serum concentrations of total IgE were highest in the age group of 6 (6-7 years), which was significantly higher than the average concentrations of total IgE in all other age groups. CONCLUSION: The large number of enrolled patients, a particular strength of this study, revealed that average concentrations of total IgE in men are higher than in women and that total IgE did not decrease with age. On the contrary, increased total IgE levels were found in patients aged 65 and 69 of both genders. We continue our work with analyses of the specific IgE antibodies values toward food and the correlation with total IgE values.
Output voltage characteristics analysis of a power quality disturbance generator suitable for high power applications

This paper deals with output voltage variation of a power quality disturbance generator. The generator is used for the test of high power custom power devices such as DVR, SSTS, SVC, STATCOM, dynamic UPS, etc. The major components of the generator are transformers and SCR thyristors, which guarantees high reliability, high efficiency, and cost-effective implementation. However, it is inevitable to have some voltage drop at the output terminal because of the impedance of the series transformers. The voltage drop depends on the magnitude of output current and load power factor. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the generator output voltage characteristics according to the load power condition. Simulations and experiments are carried out with scaled down system of 10 [KVA] generator, and it is found that the voltage drop is 3.7 [%] at 0.8 lagging power factor. It is expected that the analysis result is helpful for the design of transformer based power quality disturbance generator.
A Comparative Study of the Efficacy of Group Equine Assisted Counseling With At-Risk Children and Adolescents

ABSTRACT This study demonstrates the efficacy of Equine Assisted Counseling (EAC) by comparing EAC to classroom-based counseling. Students (n = 164) identified as being at high risk for academic and/or social failure participated in 12 weekly counseling sessions. Within-group paired sample t-test results comparing pre- and post-treatment scores for externalizing, internalizing, maladaptive, and adaptive behaviors determined that the EAC made statistically significant improvements in 17 behavior areas, whereas the RD group showed statistically significant improvement in 5 areas. Between-groups ANCOVA results indicated that the EAC showed statistically significant improvement in 7 areas when compared directly to RD. Repeated measures ANOVA of the EAC participants' social behavior ratings showed statistically significant improvement with increases in positive behaviors and decreases in negative behaviors.
Linguistic Basicness and Colour Information Processing

Abstract Berlin and Kay's notion of basicness was defined by a combination of linguistic and psychological criteria. but they suggested that the psychological criteria might be extended. The experiments reported here were designed to explore a possible extension by searching for perceptual effects of basicness. Russian speakers who have two basic terms for the blue region of colour space were compared with English speakers who have only one basic term for the same region on two perceptual tasks. The first two experiments sought for greater Stroop interference for the Russians than for the English for the critical “blue” stimuli, and the third experiment sought greater perceptual differentiation for the Russians in the blue region. All experiments clearly replicated standard findings, but all singularly failed to find the predicted differences between the two groups. It is argued that whilst the results are consistent with there being no psychological effect of basicness, it is necessary to search for poss.
Aalborg Universitet Persuasive Design in Teaching and Learning

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Global and Ocular Hypothermic Preconditioning Protect the Rat Retina from Ischemic Damage

Retinal ischemia could provoke blindness. At present, there is no effective treatment against retinal ischemic damage. Strong evidence supports that glutamate is implicated in retinal ischemic damage. We investigated whether a brief period of global or ocular hypothermia applied 24 h before ischemia (i.e. hypothermic preconditioning, HPC) protects the retina from ischemia/reperfusion damage, and the involvement of glutamate in the retinal protection induced by HPC. For this purpose, ischemia was induced by increasing intraocular pressure to 120 mm Hg for 40 min. One day before ischemia, animals were submitted to global or ocular hypothermia (33°C and 32°C for 20 min, respectively) and fourteen days after ischemia, animals were subjected to electroretinography and histological analysis. Global or ocular HPC afforded significant functional (electroretinographic) protection in eyes exposed to ischemia/reperfusion injury. A marked alteration of the retinal structure and a decrease in retinal ganglion cell number were observed in ischemic retinas, whereas global or ocular HPC significantly preserved retinal structure and ganglion cell count. Three days after ischemia, a significant decrease in retinal glutamate uptake and glutamine synthetase activity was observed, whereas ocular HPC prevented the effect of ischemia on these parameters. The intravitreal injection of supraphysiological levels of glutamate induced alterations in retinal function and histology which were significantly prevented by ocular HPC. These results support that global or ocular HPC significantly protected retinal function and histology from ischemia/reperfusion injury, probably through a glutamate-dependent mechanism.
España y Europa: cuando la solución es el problema

El problema de la crisis desatada por los efectos de la Europa del Euro en Espana no se puede analizar sin tener en cuenta que confluyen dos problemas diferentes que hay que resolver. El uno remite a un problema especificamente espanol que tiene que ver con la transicion a la democracia, con el modelo de la Constitucion del 78 y con todos los avatares vividos en los ultimos anos en torno al laicismo, el republicanismo y el federalismo. El segundo remite a nuestro encaje en el modelo europeo y a la propia pervivencia del proyecto europeo.
Efficient image tamper detection and recovery technique using dual watermark

In this paper, we proposed an efficient dual watermark scheme for image tamper detection and recovery. In the proposed watermarking algorithm each block in the image contains watermark of other two blocks, i.e. two copies of watermark of the whole image is maintained and second chance for block recovery is provided in case one copy is destroyed. The algorithm proposed by Lee and Shinfeng [1] is unable to detect the tamper in the watermarked image, if any one bit or more than one bit in 5-MSBs (most significant bits) is changed. In this paper we demonstrated the attacks and concluded that there is a flaw in their watermarking technique and the attacker can tamper a watermarked image easily without being detected and results are compared. Experimental results show that our proposed dual watermark technique is efficient.
Preparation of curcumin loaded poly(ε-caprolactone)-poly(ethylene glycol)-poly(ε-caprolactone) nanofibers and their in vitro antitumor activity against Glioma 9L cells.

The purpose of this work was to develop implantable curcumin-loaded poly(ε-caprolactone)-poly(ethylene glycol)-poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL-PEG-PCL, PCEC) nanofibers, which might have potential application in cancer therapy. Curcumin was incorporated into biodegradable PCEC nanofibers by electrospinning method. The surface morphology of the composite nanofibers was characterized on Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The average diameter of the nanofibers was 2.3-4. 5μm. In vitro release behavior of curcumin from the fiber mats was also studied in detail. The in vitro cytotoxicity assay showed that the PCEC fibers themselves did not affect the growth of rat Glioma 9L cells. Antitumor activity of the curcumin-loaded fibers against the cells was kept over the whole experiment process, while the antitumor activity of pure curcumin disappeared within 48 h. These results strongly suggested that the curcumin/PCEC composite nanofibers might have potential application for postoperative chemotherapy of brain cancers.
[Effect of DJ-1 siRNA on biological behavior of human lung squamous carcinoma SK-MES-1 cells].

OBJECTIVE RNA interference technology (siRNA) was used to inhibit the expression of DJ-1 gene in lung squamous cell carcinoma SK-MES-1 cells, and the cell biological behaviors were investigated to explore the function of DJ-1 gene. METHODS A targeted DJ-1 siRNA lentiviral vector with a green fluorescent protein (GFP) as a reporter was constructed. The constructed DJ-1 siRNA and control-siRNA vectors were infected into SK-MES-1 cells as experimental (DJ-1 siRNA) and control (Control siRNA) groups, respectively. The DJ-1 protein expression was determined by Western blot. The cell proliferation capability was measured with methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium (MTT). The cell cycle was analyzed by flow cytometry. The capability of cell migration was determined by Transwell method. RESULTS Compared with control-siRNA and blank-control groups, the protein expression of DJ-1 gene was down-regulated, the capability of cell proliferation was obviously inhibited (P<0.01), the cell cycle was arrested with increased number of G1- and G2-phase cells and reduced number of S-phase cells, and the capability of cell migration was significantly decreased (P<0.01) in the DJ-1 siRNA-infected cells. CONCLUSION DJ-1 gene might play a role in promoting cell proliferation and cell migration capability in vitro in lung cancer SK-MES-1 cells.
Querying structured documents based on human visual memory

Current information retrieval (IR) is mainly focused on retrieving documents that have not been read before, and to our knowledge, no research has been conducted for querying against already read documents. For such documents, querying based on visual memory is often helpful. In this paper, a framework for querying structured documents by making use of human visual memory is proposed, and an index structure suitable for such a framework is presented. Specifically, we discuss our proposal in the context of personalization, where a vast amount of primary source documents are reconstructed for end-users reflecting their preferences. We also mention some clues to implement our framework as well as future directions.
Recombination in Avian Gamma-Coronavirus Infectious Bronchitis Virus

Recombination in the family Coronaviridae has been well documented and is thought to be a contributing factor in the emergence and evolution of different coronaviral genotypes as well as different species of coronavirus. However, there are limited data available on the frequency and extent of recombination in coronaviruses in nature and particularly for the avian gamma-coronaviruses where only recently the emergence of a turkey coronavirus has been attributed solely to recombination. In this study, the full-length genomes of eight avian gamma-coronavirus infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) isolates were sequenced and along with other full-length IBV genomes available from GenBank were analyzed for recombination. Evidence of recombination was found in every sequence analyzed and was distributed throughout the entire genome. Areas that have the highest occurrence of recombination are located in regions of the genome that code for nonstructural proteins 2, 3 and 16, and the structural spike glycoprotein. The extent of the recombination observed, suggests that this may be one of the principal mechanisms for generating genetic and antigenic diversity within IBV. These data indicate that reticulate evolutionary change due to recombination in IBV, likely plays a major role in the origin and adaptation of the virus leading to new genetic types and strains of the virus.