Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Planning Primates - A search for episodic foresight

The ability to plan for future, not currently experienced, mental or physiological states has been regarded as unique to humans. When humans plan for such states it has been hypothesized that they make use of what has been known as episodic foresight. Episodic foresight is a part of the episodic cognitive system, which also includes episodic memory. The defining feature of this system is so-called autonoetic consciousness, which enables a phenomenal, first-person view on events that have happened or might happen. Autonoetic consciousness is constituted by sensorial simulations detached from current sensorial inputs; therefore, the episodic system provides humans with an "inner" sense, making it possible to mentally re- or pre-experience events. Humans who lack this ability (e.g., due to specific brain traumas) cannot remember any personla events, and similarly cannot plan for any future events involving their own person. The episodic system develops late in humans, around the age of three to five years. It is a non-trivial task to detect episodic foresight in non-linguistic creatures. However there exist a few behavioural criteria on what a non-linguistic episodic planner should be able to perform. This thesis includes three empirical studies on foresight in chimpanzees and orangutans. The first is an experimental study performed on both species in a series of four experiments. Its basic aim was to test the subject's ability to exercise self-control in the face of future tool use, and to investigate whether chimpanzees and orangutans are able to select unfamiliar tools for a familiar future task. Self-control is essential for planning, and arguably its essential for episodic planning. The ability to integrate novel features into a foresight is a strong indicator of episodic abilities. The study results are positive in favour of episodic foresights in apes. The second is a pilot study on one orangutan's ability to plan for a future physiological state that currently is satisfied. Again the results are positive. The third is an observational study on one chimpanzee. The results suggest that chimpanzees are capable of calmly planning for an event in which they will become agitated; further that they are able to manufacture tools for use in that future event. The question of episodic foresight in comparative cognition is highly contested. Therefore the thesis also includes two papers that respond to some of the criticisms. The final paper in the thesis speculates how episodic foresight might have influenced the evolution of language in humans, based on archaeological and paleoanthropological findings as interpreted from a cognitive view point. Its conclusion is that symbolic communication might have evolved as early as 2.6 million years ago in the so-called Oldowan culture.
The Use of Gabapentin for Pain and Agitation in Neonates and Infants in a Neonatal ICU.

OBJECTIVES Limited data support how to safely and effectively treat refractory pain and agitation in neonates and infants. Gabapentin has been used in this patient population and has shown promising results, yet there is still a paucity of data about its clinical efficacy. There is a need for a larger evaluation to determine its effectiveness. This study describes one institution's experience with gabapentin for the treatment of refractory pain and agitation in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). METHODS This was a retrospective, observational evaluation of patients who received gabapentin in the level IV NICU at the Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital. Changes in neonatal pain, agitation, and sedation scale (N-PASS) scores and analgesic and sedative medication requirements were analyzed, as were gabapentin dose requirements and adverse reactions. RESULTS Between January 2012 and November 2015, 22 patients received gabapentin and were included in this study. The average gabapentin starting dose was 10.2 mg/kg/day, with maximum doses up to 25.5 mg/kg/day. The median N-PASS score at gabapentin therapy initiation was 3.1 and after gabapentin initiation the last N-PASS score documented was 0 in all but 5 patients. Gabapentin use reduced the need for analgesic or sedative medications. The drug was well tolerated, and only 1 patient experienced an adverse reaction to gabapentin (i.e., nystagmus). CONCLUSIONS Gabapentin was well tolerated and associated with decreases in pain scores. It's use resulted in decreased requirements for analgesic and sedative medications. Gabapentin therapy appears to be an effective option for neonates and infants with refractory pain and agitation.
Phase II study on neoadjuvant hyperthermic‐antiblastic perfusion with doxorubicin in patients with intermediate or high grade limb sarcomas

Background. Locoregional control of soft tissue sarcomas of the limbs is achieved generally using a multidisciplinary approach consisting of conservative surgery combined with radiation therapy, intraarterial chemotherapy, or hyperthermic antiblastic perfusion (HAP). Before surgery, HAP seems to be the more suitable tool in decreasing tumor mass and allowing limb‐sparing surgery. The authors' aim was to ascertain the activity of HAP with doxorubicin against intermediate or high grade limb tumors.
Maternal mRNAs with distinct 3′ UTRs define the temporal pattern of Ccnb1 synthesis during mouse oocyte meiotic maturation

In this study, Yang et al. find that the timing of Ccnb1 mRNA translation in mouse oocytes is dependent on the presence of transcripts with different 3′ UTRs. Their results reveal an additional layer of translation control through alternative polyadenylation usage required to fine-tune the timing of meiosis progression.
Alzheimer β/A4‐Amyloid Precursor Protein: Evidence for Putative Amyloidogenic Fragment

Abstract: Recombinant baculovirus was used to overexpress human Alzheimer β/A4‐amyloid precursor protein (APP) in Spodoptera frugiperda (Sf9) cells. Lysates of these cells were then analyzed for the presence of carboxyl‐terminal fragments of APP by an immuno‐blotting assay using either an antibody against the APP cytoplasmic domain (rabbit anti‐human 695APP645–694 or an antibody against the amino terminus of β/A4‐amyloid (rabbit anti‐human 695APP586–606). Anti‐human 695APP645–694 identified APP holoprotein, a 25‐kDa species, and a prominent group of carboxyl‐terminal fragments of 17, 16, and 14 kDa, whereas anti‐human 695APP586–606 identified APP holoprotein and a single prominent low‐molecular‐mass protein species comigrating with the 17‐kDa carboxyl‐terminal fragment identified by anti‐human 695APP645–694. No immunoreactive species was detected at these molecular mass positions when either antibody was used for analysis of lysates of either uninfected Sf 9 cells or Sf 9 cells infected with wild‐type Autographa californica baculovirus. For each antibody, specific immunoreactivity was abolished by preabsorption with the corresponding peptide immunogen. The incorporation of a β/A4‐amyloid amino‐terminal epitope into a 17‐kDa fragment of APP suggests that, in the baculoviral overexpression system, the electrophoretic microheterogeneity of APP carboxyl‐terminal fragments is due, at least in part, to alternative proteolysis of APP. If such carboxyl‐terminal fragments of APP containing an intact β/A4‐amyloid domain are produced in human brain, then they may represent intermediates in the conversion of APP to deposited β/A4‐amyloid. The identification of potentially amyloidogenic fragments in recom‐binantly engineered Sf 9 cells may provide a useful experimental system for determination of alternative sites of APP proteolysis and investigation of the processing mechanisms involved.
Bias in iterative reconstruction of low-statistics PET data: benefits of a resolution model

Iterative image reconstruction methods such as ordered-subset expectation maximization (OSEM) are widely used in PET. Reconstructions via OSEM are however reported to be biased for low-count data. We investigated this and considered the impact for dynamic PET. Patient listmode data were acquired in [11C]DASB and [15O]H2O scans on the HRRT brain PET scanner. These data were subsampled to create many independent, low-count replicates. The data were reconstructed and the images from low-count data were compared to the high-count originals (from the same reconstruction method). This comparison enabled low-statistics bias to be calculated for the given reconstruction, as a function of the noise-equivalent counts (NEC). Two iterative reconstruction methods were tested, one with and one without an image-based resolution model (RM). Significant bias was observed when reconstructing data of low statistical quality, for both subsampled human and simulated data. For human data, this bias was substantially reduced by including a RM. For [11C]DASB the low-statistics bias in the caudate head at 1.7 M NEC (approx. 30 s) was −5.5% and −13% with and without RM, respectively. We predicted biases in the binding potential of −4% and −10%. For quantification of cerebral blood flow for the whole-brain grey- or white-matter, using [15O]H2O and the PET autoradiographic method, a low-statistics bias of <2.5% and <4% was predicted for reconstruction with and without the RM. The use of a resolution model reduces low-statistics bias and can hence be beneficial for quantitative dynamic PET.
Location Privacy Using User Anonymity and Dummy Locations

This paper concentrates on location privacy, a particular type of information privacy that can be defined as the ability to prevent others from learning one’s current or past location. Here we are proposing a new technique that uses user anonymity and dummy locations for location privacy while using location aware application server. User communicates with the server through a trusted proxy server. It sends dummy locations to the application server with its original position. The user uses temporary pseudonyms that are changed frequently according to some algorithm. Whenever pseudonyms are changed by a user, dummy locations are chosen in a tricky fashion. That makes the task of tracing the user very difficult.
A Binary Convolutional Encoder-decoder Network for Real-time Natural Scene Text Processing

In this paper, we develop a binary convolutional encoder-decoder network (B-CEDNet) for natural scene text processing (NSTP). It converts a text image to a class-distinguished salience map that reveals the categorical, spatial and morphological information of characters. The existing solutions are either memory consuming or run-time consuming that cannot be applied to real-time applications on resource-constrained devices such as advanced driver assistance systems. The developed network can process multiple regions containing characters by one-off forward operation, and is trained to have binary weights and binary feature maps, which lead to both remarkable inference run-time speedup and memory usage reduction. By training with over 200, 000 synthesis scene text images (size of $32\times128$), it can achieve $90\%$ and $91\%$ pixel-wise accuracy on ICDAR-03 and ICDAR-13 datasets. It only consumes $4.59\ ms$ inference run-time realized on GPU with a small network size of 2.14 MB, which is up to $8\times$ faster and $96\%$ smaller than it full-precision version.
Increased expression of activation antigens on CD8+ T lymphocytes in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome: inverse associations with lowered CD19+ expression and CD4+/CD8+ ratio, but no associations with (auto)immune, leaky gut, oxidative and nitrosative stress biomarkers.

BACKGROUND There is now evidence that specific subgroups of patients with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) suffer from a neuro-psychiatric-immune disorder. This study was carried out to delineate the expression of the activation markers CD38 and human leukocyte antigen (HLA) DR on CD4+ and CD8+ peripheral blood lymphocytes in ME/CFS. METHODS Proportions and absolute numbers of peripheral lymphocytes expressing CD3+, CD19+, CD4+, CD8+, CD38+ and HLA-DR+ were measured in ME/CFS (n=139), chronic fatigue (CF, n=65) and normal controls (n=40). RESULTS The proportions of CD3+, CD8+, CD8+CD38+ and CD8+HLA-DR+ were significantly higher in ME/CFS patients than controls, while CD38+, CD8+CD38+, CD8+HLA-DR+ and CD38+HLA-DR+ were significantly higher in ME/CFS than CF. The percentage of CD19+ cells and the CD4+/CD8+ ratio were significantly lower in ME/CFS and CF than in controls. There were highly significant inverse correlations between the increased expression of CD38+, especially that of CD8+CD38+, and the lowered CD4+/CD8+ ratio and CD19+ expression. There were no significant associations between the flow cytometric results and severity or duration of illness and peripheral blood biomarkers of oxidative and nitrosative stress (O&NS, i.e. IgM responses to O&N modified epitopes), leaky gut (IgM or IgA responses to LPS of gut commensal bacteria), cytokines (interleukin-1, tumor necrosis factor-α), neopterin, lysozyme and autoimmune responses to serotonin. CONCLUSIONS The results support that a) increased CD38 and HLA-DR expression on CD8+ T cells are biomarkers of ME/CFS; b) increased CD38 antigen expression may contribute to suppression of the CD4+/CD8+ ratio and CD19+ expression; c) there are different immune subgroups of ME/CFS patients, e.g. increased CD8+ activation marker expression versus inflammation or O&NS processes; and d) viral infections or reactivation may play a role in a some ME/CFS patients.
Spectral estimation for sensor arrays

The array processing problem is briefly discussed and an abstract spectral estimation problem is formulated. This problem involves the estimation of a multidimensional frequency-wave vector power spectrum from measurements of the correlation function and knowledge of the spectral support. The investigation of correlation-matching spectral estimates leads to the extendibility question: does there exist any positive spectrum on the spectral support that exactly matches a given set of correlation samples? In answering this question, a mathematical framework is developed in which to analyze and design spectral estimation algorithms. Pisarenko's method of spectral estimation, which models the spectrum as a sum of impulses plus a noise component, is extended from the time series case to the more general array processing case. Pisarenko's estimate is obtained as the solution of a linear optimization problem, which can be solved using a linear programming algorithm such as the simplex method.
Iron-replete hemodialysis patients do not require higher EPO dosages when converting from subcutaneous to intravenous administration: results of the Italian Study on Erythropoietin Converting (ISEC).

BACKGROUND Previous studies reported significant increases in epoetin dosages when converting hemodialysis patients from subcutaneous (SC) to intravenous (IV) administration. More recent studies that corrected for iron deficiency found a much lower, if any, increase in epoetin dosage and/or decrease in hemoglobin (Hb) level after conversion from SC to IV epoetin administration. Therefore, the matter is still open for debate. METHODS This multicenter observational study evaluated stable hemodialysis patients without iron deficiency who had a stable SC epoetin dosage and Hb level of 10 g/dL or greater (> or =100 g/L) at the time of study enrollment. Data for epoetin dosage, anemia, and inflammatory markers were collected retrospectively during the last 6 months of SC epoetin treatment and prospectively for 6 months after conversion to IV administration. The primary efficacy assessment was difference in Hb levels and epoetin dosages between patients administered epoetin SC and IV. Changes in values for iron stores, C-reactive protein, intact parathyroid hormone, and albumin were monitored as control parameters. RESULTS Data were analyzed for 262 hemodialysis patients from 6 Italian centers. Overall, mean Hb levels were similar with SC and IV epoetin administration (11.49 g/dL [114.9 g/L] and 11.44 g/dL [114.4 g/L]). Mean epoetin dosages also were similar with SC and IV administration (7,185 and 7,270 IU/wk). In patients requiring epoetin dosages of 12,000 IU/wk or greater at study entry, mean dosages tended to decrease after conversion to IV administration. There were no significant changes in control parameters. CONCLUSION Conversion from SC to IV epoetin administration did not result in changes in Hb levels or epoetin dosage requirements in iron-replete hemodialysis patients.
Review of Applications of Ferrous Based Shape Memory Smart Materials in Engineering and in Biomedical Sciences

Shape memory alloys have revolutionized the material engineering sciences as they exhibit exclusive features i.e. shape memory effect and super-elasticity. Shape memory alloys (SMAs) are those alloys that when deformed returns to its pre-deformed shape upon heating, they can also restore their original shape by removing the load. Research on properties of newly advent of many types of iron-based shape memory alloys (Fe-SMAs), shows that they have great-potential to be the counterpart of Nitinol. These Fe-based shape memory alloys have been used and found to be effective because of their low cost, high cold workability, good weldability & excellent characteristics comparing with Nitinol (high processing cost and low cold workability). Some of the Fe-based shape memory alloys show super-elasticity. Iron-based shape memory alloys, especially Fe-Mn-Si alloys have a great-potential for civil engineering structures because of its unique properties e.g. two-way shape memory effect, super elasticity and shape memory effect as well as due to its low cost, high elastic stiffness and wide transformation hysteresis comparative to Nitinol. A detailed review of applications of pre-existing Fe-based SMAs is performed in this paper. Different fields of applications of Fe-based SMA are discussed. These applications are categorised and tabulated in different fields. An analysis is performed that in which field the Fe-based SMA applications are mostly exist. An analysis is performed showing percentage increase in the applications of Fe-based SMA since 1990 to date.
WSN09-3: Fault-tolerant Event Boundary Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks

Event boundary detection is in and of itself a useful application in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Typically, it includes the detection of a large-scale spatial phenomenon such as the transportation front line of a contamination or the diagnosis of network health. In this paper, we present FEBD, a fully distributed and light-weight fault-tolerant event boundary detection scheme. FEBD features an enhanced (nonparametric) statistical model that supports localized detection among neighboring nodes. To enhance detection accuracy, FEBD also introduces an error suppression technique prior to the determination of boundary nodes. The proposed scheme shows a much better detection accuracy and fault tolerance properties as compared to the previous models. The proposed FEBD is evaluated by extensive simulations, and presents very good detection accuracy, even when sensor fault probability is as high as 20%.
Association Between Self-assessed Attention and Objective Neuropsychological Tests in Parkinson Disease

Objective:To examine the relationship between self-assessed attentional skills and objective neuropsychological measures of attention in Parkinson disease (PD) and controls. Background:The reliable self-assessment of one's own cognitive skills and deficits is an important but difficult task, especially in a chronic neurological condition like PD. Theories point out that brain structures involved in a realistic self-appraisal might be affected in PD. No study directly examined the association between self-assessed attentional skills and objective neuropsychological measures of attention in PD. Methods:We applied a case control design with 54 participants in the PD group and 54 healthy controls. PD patients and controls completed questionnaires on depression and self-assessed attention and were examined with computerized tests of attention. Results:PD patients differed from controls in subjective and objective assessment of attention. Depression and self-assessed attention share a significant amount of variance, but are unrelated to objective measures of attention in both groups. In PD patients, there are no associations between functional outcome and objective and subjective measures of attention. Conclusions:Conscious reports in PD patients and controls are based on different processes rather than actual attentional performance. These processes are not differentially affected in PD. Nevertheless, patients' self-assessments are not an accurate indicator of their level of objective attentional functioning. Without a definite validity criterion, it cannot be decided whether the objective or subjective assessment of attention is more valid. Therefore, a multidimensional approach integrating different sources of information is most adequate in the assessment of attentional capacities and their meaning for everyday life in PD patients.
Comfort and Acceptability Study of 3D Devices

This paper describes the implementation of an experimental procedure to study human behavior when confronted with virtual 3D content (e.g. games and movies). The study focus’s mainly on fatigue measurement. The study includes the description of measurement tools, and a definition of survey questionnaires and tests. The aim of the procedure is to standardize rules and recommendations for 3D viewing. Author Keywords
Vestibular Lesion-Induced Developmental Plasticity in Spinal Locomotor Networks during Xenopus laevis Metamorphosis

During frog metamorphosis, the vestibular sensory system remains unchanged, while spinal motor networks undergo a massive restructuring associated with the transition from the larval to adult biomechanical system. We investigated in Xenopus laevis the impact of a pre- (tadpole stage) or post-metamorphosis (juvenile stage) unilateral labyrinthectomy (UL) on young adult swimming performance and underlying spinal locomotor circuitry. The acute disruptive effects on locomotion were similar in both tadpoles and juvenile frogs. However, animals that had metamorphosed with a preceding UL expressed restored swimming behavior at the juvenile stage, whereas animals lesioned after metamorphosis never recovered. Whilst kinematic and electrophysiological analyses of the propulsive system showed no significant differences in either juvenile group, a 3D biomechanical simulation suggested that an asymmetry in the dynamic control of posture during swimming could account for the behavioral restoration observed in animals that had been labyrinthectomized before metamorphosis. This hypothesis was subsequently supported by in vivo electromyography during free swimming and in vitro recordings from isolated brainstem/spinal cord preparations. Specifically, animals lesioned prior to metamorphosis at the larval stage exhibited an asymmetrical propulsion/posture coupling as a post-metamorphic young adult. This developmental alteration was accompanied by an ipsilesional decrease in propriospinal coordination that is normally established in strict left-right symmetry during metamorphosis in order to synchronize dorsal trunk muscle contractions with bilateral hindlimb extensions in the swimming adult. Our data thus suggest that a disequilibrium in descending vestibulospinal information during Xenopus metamorphosis leads to an altered assembly of adult spinal locomotor circuitry. This in turn enables an adaptive compensation for the dynamic postural asymmetry induced by the vestibular imbalance and the restoration of functionally-effective behavior.