Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Factors limiting the application of electrical impedance tomography for identification of regional conductivity changes using scalp electrodes during epileptic seizures in humans

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) has the potential to produce images during epileptic seizures. This might improve the accuracy of the localization of epileptic foci in patients undergoing presurgical assessment for curative neurosurgery. It has already been shown that impedance increases by up to 22% during induced epileptic seizures in animal models, using cortical or implanted electrodes in controlled experiments. The purpose of this study was to determine if reproducible raw impedance changes and EIT images could be collected during epileptic seizures in patients who were undergoing observation with video-electroencephalography (EEG) telemetry as part of evaluation prior to neurosurgery to resect the region of brain causing the epilepsy. A secondary purpose was to develop an objective method for processing and evaluating data, as seizures arose at unpredictable times from a noisy baseline. Four-terminal impedance measurements from 258 combinations were collected continuously using 32 EEG scalp electrodes in 22 seizure episodes from 7 patients during their presurgical assessment together with the standard EEG recordings. A reliable method for defining the pre-seizure baseline and recording impedance data and EIT images was developed, in which EIT and EEG could be acquired simultaneously after filtering of EIT artefact from the EEG signal. Fluctuations of several per cent over minutes were observed in the baseline between seizures. During seizures, boundary voltage changes diverged with a standard deviation of 1–54% from the baseline. No reproducible changes with the expected time course of some tens of seconds and magnitude of about 0.1% could be reliably measured. This demonstrates that it is feasible to acquire EIT images in parallel with standard EEG during presurgical assessment but, unfortunately, expected EIT changes on the scalp of about 0.1% are swamped by much larger movement and systematic artefact. Nevertheless, EIT has the unique potential to provide invaluable neuroimaging data for this purpose and may still become possible with improvements in electrode design and instrumentation.
Cardiac Function and Outcome in Patients with Cardio-Embolic Stroke

Background The relationship between whole spectrum of Ejection fraction (EF) and cardioembolic stroke (CES) outcome has not been fully described yet. Notably, it remains unclear whether borderline EF (41∼49%) is related with poor outcome after CES. We sought to evaluate whether lower ejection fraction and borderline EF could predict the outcome in patients with CES. Method and Results We evaluated the relationship between EF and functional outcome in 437 consecutive patients with CES. EF was introduced as continuous and categorical (EF≤40%, EF 41∼49%, EF≥50%) variable. Patients with CES and the subgroup with AF were evaluated separately. Poor short-term outcome (modified Rankin Score≥3at discharge or death within 90 days after stroke onset) and long-term mortality were evaluated. A total of 165 patients (37.8%) had poor short-term outcomes. EF tends to be lower in patients with poor short-term outcome (56.8±11.0 vs. 54.8±12.0, p-value 0.086). Overall cumulative death was136 (31.1%) in all CES patients and 106 (31.7%) in the AF subgroup. In a multivariable model adjusted for possible covariates, the hazard ratio for mortality significantly decreased by 3% for every 1% increase in ejection fraction in CES patients and 2% for every 1% increase in the AF subgroup. Reduced EF (EF≤40%) showed higher mortality (HR 2.61), and those with borderline EF (41∼49%) had a tendency of higher mortality (HR 1.65, p-value 0.067)compared with those with normal EF. Conclusion We found a strong association between lower EF and CES outcome. Echocardiographic evaluation helps to better determine the prognosis in CES patients, even in subgroup of patients with AF.
Application of Stochastic Gradient Kernel in Watershed Segmentation to be used in Noisy Environment

Morphological image processing has been widely used for segmentation of binary, grayscale and color images. To extend the concept of segmentation, an ordering of the data is required. In this research paper, an effective methodology for digital color image segmentation has been publicized with stochastic gradients and watershed algorithm. The results demonstrate that combining of these two strategies has been very helpful for image segmentation and for computer vision, even in noisy images. The efficiency of the proposed methodology has been explained by experimental results and statistical measurements.
Phenol Coefficient as Measure of Practical Value of Disinfectants

The phenol coefficient test has been employed for determining the germicidal efficiency of disinfectants for over thirty years, since Rideal and Walker developed their original method in 1903. The Hygienic Laboratory Method (1921) is a modification of the Rideal-Walker Method, and the Food and Drug Administration test (1931) is a combination of the best features of both. The phenol coefficient technique as employed today does not differ fundamentally from the original test as described by Rideal and Walker, and, in one form or another, it is being used as a means of testing disinfectants in every civilized country in the world. For approximately twenty years the United States Department of Agriculture has used the phenol coefficient test in the regulation of disinfectants in this country, and it is still the most satisfactory method available for this purpose. In addition to being a satisfactory index of the germicidal value of phenol-like disinfectants, the phenol coefficient is used as a basis for determining the dilutions which may safely be employed in practice. This dilution is calculated by multiplying the phenol coefficient by twenty, which will give a germicidal efficiency equal to 5 per cent carbolic acid. Since, in this country, 5 per cent carbolic acid is accepted as the standard of excellence for general disinfection, phenol-like compounds must be recommended for general use in dilutions equal to 5 per cent phenol in germicidal efficiency. This method of
Developmental Changes in Endothelial Vasoactive and Angiogenic Growth Factors in the Human Perinatal Lung

Little is known of the mechanisms underlying the marked fall in pulmonary vascular resistance that occurs at birth, but changes in the expression of endothelial vasoactive and angiogenic factors during lung development might play a key role. Nitric oxide, endothelin-1, and vascular endothelial growth factor have critical effects on vascular tone and cell growth. Here, we investigated the protein expression of endothelial nitric oxide synthase, endothelin-1 and its receptors, and vascular endothelial growth factor in pulmonary necropsy samples from 14 fetuses of different gestational ages and from 5 infants. Expression of endothelin-1 and its receptor endothelin-A was strong and stable. In contrast, expression of the endothelin-B receptor was weak in early gestation, then increased markedly in mid-gestation and remained high thereafter. The expression of endothelial nitric oxide synthase and vascular endothelial growth factor fell markedly after mid-gestation and remained low thereafter. These data point to a discrepancy between maturational and functional changes in human pulmonary vascular structures. The weak perinatal expression of endothelial nitric oxide could suggest that other potent vasodilatory mediators are responsible for the marked vasodilation observed at birth.
Automatic segmentation of lung fields in chest radiographs.

The delineation of important structures in chest radiographs is an essential preprocessing step in order to automatically analyze these images, e.g., for tuberculosis screening support or in computer assisted diagnosis. We present algorithms for the automatic segmentation of lung fields in chest radiographs. We compare several segmentation techniques: a matching approach; pixel classifiers based on several combinations of features; a new rule-based scheme that detects lung contours using a general framework for the detection of oriented edges and ridges in images; and a hybrid scheme. Each approach is discussed and the performance of nine systems is compared with interobserver variability and results available from the literature. The best performance is obtained by the hybrid scheme that combines the rule-based segmentation algorithm with a pixel classification approach. The combinations of two complementary techniques leads to robust performance; the accuracy is above 94% for all 115 images in the test set. The average accuracy of the scheme is 0.969 +/- 0.0080, which is close to the interobserver variability of 0.984 +/- 0.0048. The methods are fast, and implemented on a standard PC platform.
Disruption of clh-1, a chloride channel gene, results in a wider body of Caenorhabditis elegans.

We cloned the clh-1 gene coding for a putative ClC chloride channel in Caenorhabditis elegans. The gene product exhibited a high degree of homology with human ClC-1 and ClC-2. The clh-1 gene was predominantly expressed in the hypodermis, including seam cells. Null mutations of clh-1 caused a significantly wider body and an abnormal alae structure. High osmolarity in the culture medium restored the normal body width of the clh-1 mutants. These results suggest that the clh-1 gene contributes to maintenance of the body width through regulation of osmolarity.
Small hepatocellular carcinoma: treatment with radio-frequency ablation versus ethanol injection.

PURPOSE To compare the effectiveness of radio-frequency (RF) ablation with that of percutaneous ethanol injection in the treatment of small hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). MATERIALS AND METHODS Eighty-six patients with 112 small (< or = 3-cm-diameter) HCCs underwent RF ablation (42 patients with 52 tumors) or percutaneous ethanol injection (44 patients with 60 tumors). Therapeutic efficacy was evaluated with dual-phase spiral computed tomography performed at least 4 months after treatment. RESULTS Complete necrosis was achieved in 47 of 52 tumors with RF ablation (90%) and in 48 of 60 tumors with percutaneous ethanol injection (80%). These results were obtained with an average of 1.2 sessions per tumor with RF ablation and 4.8 sessions per tumor with percutaneous ethanol injection. One major complication (hemothorax that required drainage) and four minor complications (intraperitoneal bleeding, hemobilia, pleural effusion, cholecystitis) occurred in patients treated with RF ablation; no complications occurred in patients treated with percutaneous ethanol injection. CONCLUSION RF ablation results in a higher rate of complete necrosis and requires fewer treatment sessions than percutaneous ethanol injection. However, the complication rate is higher with RF ablation than with percutaneous ethanol injection. RF ablation is the treatment of choice for most patients with HCC.
The Effects of the Alveolar Recruitment Maneuver and Positive End-Expiratory Pressure on Arterial Oxygenation During Laparoscopic Bariatric Surgery

Abnormalities in gas exchange that occur during anesthesia are mostly caused by atelectasis, and these alterations are more pronounced in morbidly obese than in normal weight subjects. Sustained lung insufflation is capable of recruiting the collapsed areas and improving oxygenation in healthy patients of normal weight. We tested the effect of this ventilatory strategy on arterial oxygenation (Pao2) in patients undergoing laparoscopic bariatric surgery. After pneumoperitoneum was accomplished, the recruitment group received up to 4 sustained lung inflations with peak inspiratory pressures up to 50 cm H2O, which was followed by ventilation with 12 cm H2O positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP). The patient's lungs in the control group were ventilated in a standard fashion with PEEP of 4 cm H2O. Variables related to gas exchange, respiratory mechanics, and hemodynamics were compared between recruitment and control groups. We found that alveolar recruitment effectively increased intraoperative Pao2 and temporarily increased respiratory system dynamic compliance (both P < 0.01). The effects of alveolar recruitment on oxygenation lasted as long as the trachea was intubated, and lungs were ventilated with high PEEP, but soon after tracheal extubation, all the beneficial effects on oxygenation disappeared. The mean number of vasopressor treatments given during surgery was larger in the recruitment group compared with the control group (3.0 versus 0.8; P = 0.04). In conclusion, our data suggest that the use of alveolar recruitment may be an effective mode of improving intraoperative oxygenation in morbidly obese patients. Our results showed the effect to be short lived and associated with more frequent intraoperative use of vasopressors.
Language Identification using Acoustic Models and Speaker Compensated Cepstral-Time Matrices

This work presents two contributions to language identification. The first contribution is the definition of a set of properly selected time-frequency features that are a valid alternative to the commonly used shifted delta cepstral features. As a second contribution, we show that significant performance improvement in language recognition can be obtained estimating a subspace that represents the distortions due to inter-speaker variability within the same language, and compensating these distortions in the domain of the features. Experiments on the NIST 1996 and 2003 Language Recognition Evaluation data have been successfully used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques.
The glutamate/GABA‐glutamine cycle: aspects of transport, neurotransmitter homeostasis and ammonia transfer

Neurons are metabolically handicapped in the sense that they are not able to perform de novo synthesis of neurotransmitter glutamate and γ‐aminobutyric acid (GABA) from glucose. A metabolite shuttle known as the glutamate/GABA‐glutamine cycle describes the release of neurotransmitter glutamate or GABA from neurons and subsequent uptake into astrocytes. In return, astrocytes release glutamine to be taken up into neurons for use as neurotransmitter precursor. In this review, the basic properties of the glutamate/GABA‐glutamine cycle will be discussed, including aspects of transport and metabolism. Discussions of stoichiometry, the relative role of glutamate vs. GABA and pathological conditions affecting the glutamate/GABA‐glutamine cycling are presented. Furthermore, a section is devoted to the accompanying ammonia homeostasis of the glutamate/GABA‐glutamine cycle, examining the possible means of intercellular transfer of ammonia produced in neurons (when glutamine is deamidated to glutamate) and utilized in astrocytes (for amidation of glutamate) when the glutamate/GABA‐glutamine cycle is operating. A main objective of this review is to endorse the view that the glutamate/GABA‐glutamine cycle must be seen as a bi‐directional transfer of not only carbon units but also nitrogen units.
Merging Belief Propagation and the Mean Field Approximation: A Free Energy Approach

We present a joint message passing approach that combines belief propagation and the mean field approximation. Our analysis is based on the region-based free energy approximation method proposed by Yedidia et al. We show that the message passing fixed-point equations obtained with this combination correspond to stationary points of a constrained region-based free energy approximation. Moreover, we present a convergent implementation of these message passing fixed-point equations provided that the underlying factor graph fulfills certain technical conditions. In addition, we show how to include hard constraints in the part of the factor graph corresponding to belief propagation. Finally, we demonstrate an application of our method to iterative channel estimation and decoding in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing system.
Factors of the Social Stratification of Young People in the Spheres of Education, the Labor Market, and Consumption

In Russian society today, social stratification is reproduced due not only to the distribution of property ownership and power but also to people’s access to intellectual resources. These latter constitute a vitally important element of the structure of transformation, and social stratification reflects its qualities. From this it follows that the problem of educational stratification is closely linked to social and economic changes, on the one hand, and to society’s self-development under the conditions of the fundamental changes that are taking place, on the other hand. As M. Weber has remarked, people’s ability to accept radical changes in public life and their readiness to behave appropriately
Modulation of Stat-1 in Human Macrophages Infected with Different Species of Intracellular Pathogenic Bacteria

The infection of human macrophages by pathogenic bacteria induces different signaling pathways depending on the type of cellular receptors involved in the microorganism entry and on their mechanism(s) of survival and replication in the host cell. It was reported that Stat proteins play an important role in this process. In the present study, we investigate the changes in Stat-1 activation (phosphorylation in p-tyr701) after uptake of two Gram-positive (Listeria monocytogenes and Staphylococcus aureus) and two Gram-negative bacteria (Salmonella typhimurium and Legionella pneumophila) characterized by their varying abilities to enter, survive, and replicate in human macrophages. Comparing the results obtained with Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria, Stat-1 activation in macrophages does not seem to be related to LPS content. The p-tyr701Stat-1 expression levels were found to be independent of the internalized bacterial number and IFN-γ release. On the contrary, Jak/Stat-1 pathway activation only occurs when an active infection has been established in the host macrophage, and it is plausible that the differences in the expression levels of p-tyr701Stat-1 could be due to different survival mechanisms or to differences in bacteria life cycles within macrophages.
Astrocyte-neuron interactions

AQP4= : aquaporin-4; ATP= : adenosine triphosphate; EAAT= : excitatory amino acid transporter; GABA= : γ-aminobutyric acid; Pg= : prostaglandin; TNF= : tumor necrosis factor. Astrocytes provide metabolic support to neurons and are critical for homeostasis of the neuronal microenvironment, including maintenance of a low interstitial glutamate concentration and control of the volume of brain interstitial volume, extracellular potassium (K+) concentration, and local blood flow. Bidirectional communication between neurons and astrocytes at the synapses may have a critical role in regulating chemical neurotransmission. Whereas the initial concepts on astrocyte signaling were based on studies on cultured astroglia, new imaging and electrophysiologic methods applied to brain slices and the development of genetically modified mice models have provided further insight into mechanisms of the reciprocal neuron-astrocyte interactions. Given their critical role in maintenance of neuronal microenvironment and modulation of excitatory synapses, astrocytes have been implicated in mechanisms of neuronal and neuronal network hyperexcitability underlying epilepsy. These topics have been covered in several recent excellent reviews.1–9,24 ### Structural interactions among astrocytes, synapses, and blood vessels. Astrocytes are the predominant type of glial cell in the CNS. There are many distinct subsets of astrocytes that can be distinguished on the basis of their morphology, biochemical, physiologic, and pharmacologic characteristics, and interactions with the local environment.1,10 Individual astrocytes occupy distinct, nonoverlapping domains and extend thousands of fine membranous processes that ensheathe synapses and fine blood vessels. It has been estimated that a process from a single astrocyte can envelop approximately 140,000 synapses and that more than 99% of cerebrovascular surface is ensheathed by astrocytic processes.11,12 This close coupling among neurons, glia, and blood vessels has been termed the neurovascular unit and is critical for regulation of local blood flow.12–14 Astrocytic processes are coupled through gap junctions formed by connexins 43 and 32 to form large intercellular networks. The extent of gap junction coupling between astrocytes depends on the type of astrocyte and the level of neuronal activity.15 Perivascular astroglial metabolic networks allow activity-dependent …
H-SIR:Heterogeneous Source Initiated Reactive Protocol for Wireless Sensor Network

The impact of energy based heterogeneity is investigated through Source Initiated Reactive algorithmfor event driven applications to understandthe impact of heterogeneous network on energy efficiency and network lifetime. Based on the simulated experimental and numerical results, it is found that the energy efficiency performance is enhanced by 24% for correlated and 40% for uncorrelated event detection by interposing heterogeneity. Withthe aid of these observations,one can say that this novel approach can help us contribute in the energy-efficiency context, and future solutions can take advantage of the proposed algorithms and observations.
Pre-school children with and without developmental delay: behaviour problems and parenting stress over time.

BACKGROUND Children with intellectual disability are at heightened risk for behaviour problems and diagnosed mental disorder. METHODS The present authors studied the early manifestation and continuity of problem behaviours in 205 pre-school children with and without developmental delays. RESULTS Behaviour problems were quite stable over the year from age 36-48 months. Children with developmental delays were rated higher on behaviour problems than their non-delayed peers, and were three times as likely to score in the clinical range. Mothers and fathers showed high agreement in their rating of child problems, especially in the delayed group. Parenting stress was also higher in the delayed group, but was related to the extent of behaviour problems rather than to the child's developmental delay. CONCLUSIONS Over time, a transactional model fit the relationship between parenting stress and behaviour problems: high parenting stress contributed to a worsening in child behaviour problems over time, and high child behaviour problems contributed to a worsening in parenting stress. Findings for mothers and fathers were quite similar.