Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Idiopathic intracranial hypertension: any light on the mechanism of the raised pressure?

Everyone knows that no one knows the mechanism of the increase of intracranial pressure in idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH; also called pseudotumour cerebri; see table 1 for diagnostic criteria). Does it much matter? After all, for most affected people IIH is a benign, self limiting condition. However, sometimes it is not,1 and current therapies are unsatisfactory. Medical treatment is poor and of unproved benefit.2 3 Surgical interventions (optic nerve sheath fenestration, lumboperitoneal shunting) have appreciable hazards and failure rates.4-10 Moreover, the mechanism of increase in intracranial pressure in IIH might have relevance to raised intracranial pressure and its management in other situations such as meningitis and hydrocephalus. View this table: Table 1 Modified Dandy criteria for IIH3 79 In normal circumstances intracranial pressure is maintained by cerebral arterial pressure which itself is subject to cerebral autoregulation such that, other things being equal, intracranial pressure remains constant over a wide range of systemic arterial blood pressure. Intracranial pressure is also greatly influenced by cerebral venous pressure. Furthermore, intracranial pressure is determined by CSF formation and absorption, but whether there are any physiological regulatory mechanisms operating at the choroid plexus or arachnoid villi and granulations is unclear. Pressure in CSF varies enormously in the lumbar region and at the vertex depending on posture (reviewed in Fishman11). At a simple level, various perturbations could lead to an increase in intracranial pressure without the development of hydrocephalus or florid visible abnormality on structural imaging. These are summarised in table 2. For any of these mechanisms to be operative, it is necessary that any compensatory processes are no longer functioning. Thus an increase in cerebral volume with an equivalent reduction in CSF volume will obviously not change the status quo. Over the years investigational techniques of every imaginable degree of complexity and invasiveness …
Oxygen Abundances in Unevolved Metal-poor Stars from Near-Ultraviolet OH Lines

We have performed a detailed oxygen abundance analysis of 23 metal-poor (-3.0 < [Fe/H] < -0.3) unevolved halo stars and one giant through the OH bands in the near UV, using high-resolution echelle spectra. Oxygen is found to be overabundant with respect to iron in these stars, with the [O/Fe] ratio increasing from 0.6 to 1 between [Fe/H] = -1.5 and -3.0. The behavior of the oxygen overabundance with respect to [Fe/H] is similar to that seen in previous works based on O I IR triplet data. Contrary to the previously accepted picture, our oxygen abundances, derived from low-excitation OH lines, agree well with those derived from high-excitation lines of the triplet. For nine stars in common with Tomkin et al. we obtain a mean difference of 0.00 ± 0.11 dex with respect to the abundances determined from the triplet using the same stellar parameters and model photospheres. For four stars in our sample we have found measurements of the [O I] λ6300 line in the literature, from which we derive oxygen abundances consistent (average difference 0.09 dex) with those based on OH lines, showing that the long-standing controversy between oxygen abundances from forbidden and permitted lines in metal-poor unevolved stars can be resolved. Our new oxygen abundances show a smooth extension of the Edvardsson and coworkers [O/Fe] versus metallicity curve to much lower abundances, with a slope of -0.31 ± 0.11 (taking into account the error bars in both oxygen abundances and metallicities) in the range -3 < [Fe/H] < -1. The extrapolation of our results to very low metallicities indicates that the first Type II supernovae in the early Galaxy provided oxygen to iron ratios of [O/Fe] ≳ 1. The oxygen abundances of unevolved stars, when compared with values in the literature for giants of similar metallicity, imply that the latter may have suffered a process of oxygen depletion. As a result, unevolved metal-poor stars shall be considered better tracers of the early evolution of oxygen in the Galaxy. The higher [O/Fe] ratios we find in dwarfs has an impact on the age determination of globular clusters, suggesting that current age estimates have to be reduced by about 1-2 Gyr.
A method for decomposing and modeling jitter in expressive speech in Chinese

Jitter is considered as one of the most crucial factors to the aim of synthesizing natural motional speech. Unlike the traditional methods of measuring jitter in emotional speech, this paper propose that the jitter in the speech could be decomposed into two parts, that to say, deterministic jitter and random jitter. Deterministic jitter is associated with certain causes that may be the affect caused by emotion state, while random jitter is the result by random events that have nothing to do with emotion. What is more, two different methods of modeling jitter distribution are described: jitter decomposition is based on the fact that the mixed jitter can be divided into deterministic part and random part, while the algorithm based on GMM tries to simulate the shape of the histogram of jitter distribution. The result makes a qualitative analysis of the two methods. There are still much of works for us to do in the future in order to do more detail analysis and to make quantitative analysis of them.
0 50 50 61 v 2 3 1 Ju l 2 00 5 Noncommutative Kähler-like structures in quantization 1

One introduces the notion of C∗-algebra with polarization which could be considered as the quantum Kähler structure. The connection of these algebras with Kostant-Souriau geometric quantization is shown. The theory of polarized C∗-algebra is investigated by the use of the coherent states method.
Resonant Raman scattering by quadrupolar vibrations of Ni-Ag core-shell nanoparticles

Low-frequency Raman-scattering experiments have been performed on thin films consisting of nickel-silver composite nanoparticles embedded in alumina matrix. It is observed that the Raman scattering by the quadrupolar modes, strongly enhanced when the light excitation is resonant with the surface dipolar excitation, is mainly governed by the silver electron contribution to the plasmon excitation. The Raman results are in agreement with a core-shell structure of the nanoparticles, the silver shell being loosely bonded to the nickel core.
Targeting the INCENP IN-box–Aurora B interaction to inhibit CPC activity in vivo

The chromosome passenger complex (CPC) is an essential regulator of mitosis and cytokinesis. The CPC consists of Aurora B kinase, inner centromere protein (INCENP), and the targeting subunits survivin and borealin/Dasra B. INCENP is a scaffolding subunit for the CPC and activates Aurora B via its conserved IN-box domain. We show that overexpression of soluble IN-box in HeLa cells affects endogenous CPC localization and produces a significant increase in multinucleated and micronucleated cells consistent with CPC loss of function. The dominant-negative effect of soluble IN-box expression depends on residues corresponding to hINCENP W845 and/or F881, suggesting that these are essential for Aurora B binding in vivo. We then screened a targeted library of small (five to nine residues long) circular peptide (CP) IN-box fragments generated using split intein circular ligation of proteins and peptides (SICLOPPS) methodology. We identified a number of CPs that caused modest but reproducible increases in rates of multinucleated and micronucleated cells. Our results provide proof of concept that inhibition of the Aurora B–IN-box interaction is a viable strategy for interfering with CPC function in vivo.
Tearing: Breakthrough in Human Emotional Signaling

Tearing is not a benign secretory correlate of sadness or other emotional state, but a potent visual cue that adds meaning to human facial expression, the tear effect. Although tearing (lacrimation) provides ocular lubrication and is a response to irritation in many animals, emotional tearing may be unique to humans and does not develop until several months after birth. This study provides the first experimental demonstration that tears are a visual signal of sadness by contrasting the perceived sadness of human facial images with tears against copies of those images that had the tears digitally removed. Tear removal produced faces rated as less sad. Anecdotal findings suggest further that tear-removal often produced faces of uncertain emotional valence, perhaps awe, concern, or puzzlement, not just less sad. Tearing signaled sadness and resolved ambiguity. The evolution and development of emotional tearing in humans provide a novel, potent and neglected channel of affective communication.
The Political Economy of Monetary Union: Towards the Euro

This book places the whole issue of monetary union in its wider political economic context. The authors discuss: * the effect of EMU on fiscal and monetary policies * Central bank independence * the impact of EMU on unemployment * ERM II * international perspectives. Drawing on their experience in the European financial markets, the authors use a non-technical approach to discuss these issues - both in a general european sense and more specifically, Germany, the UK and Italy.
Improving knowledge intensive processes through an enterprise knowledge medium

This paper combines three major streams of recent business research and shows how they can complement each other. Specifically, it examines which possibilities exist to improve knowledge intensive processes through new media. Thus, the paper combines arguments from the knowledge management discussion (Davenport/Prusak 1998) with the approach of Business Process Reengineering (Hammer/Champy 1993) and Media Theory (Schmid et al. 1999). The paper answers the following question: “How can the management of knowledge in business processes be organized and supported? ”. The paper argues that knowledge about, within and from processes can be managed in a knowledge medium and illustrates this finding through a case study from the financial industry. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates that the quality of information is a crucial element for such a knowledge medium. A knowledge medium can be defined as a technical and organizational platform of a community for the purpose of knowledge exchange between its agents (Schmid et al. 1999).
Dynamical and chemical evolution of NGC 1569

Blue Compact Dwarf and Dwarf Irregular galaxies are generally believed to be unevolved objects, due to their blue colors, compact appearance and large gas fractions. Many of these objects show an ongoing intense burst of star formation or have experienced it in the recent past. By means of 2-D hydrodynamical simulations, coupled with detailed chemical yields originating from SNeII, SNeIa, and intermediate-mass stars, we study the dynamical and chemical evolution of model galaxies with structural parameters similar to NGC 1569, a prototypical starburst galaxy. A burst of star formation with short duration is not able to account for the chemical and morphological properties of this galaxy. The best way to reproduce the chemical composition of this object is by assuming long-lasting episodes of star formation and a more recent burst, separated from the previous episodes by a short quiescent period. The last burst of star formation, in most of the explored cases, does not affect the chemical composition of the galaxy, since the enriched gas produced by young stars is in a too hot phase to be detectable with the optical spectroscopy. Models assuming the infall of a big cloud towards the center of the galaxy reproduce the chemical composition of the NGC 1569, but the pressure exercised by the cloud hampers the expansion of the galactic wind, at variance with what observed in NGC 1569.
Comparing Action Formalisms : A Preliminary Position Statement

Here are some fairly miscellaneous thoughts about comparing alternative approaches to Reasoning about Action. (Please forgive me for a few fairly blatant attempts to advertise my own work at the same time.) (1) When comparing and evaluating formalisms, we need to be careful not to form too strong associations between particular method-ologies (e.g. deduction and entailment methods, default reasoning techniques) and particular ontologies. I can think of a few occasions when this has happened. For example: (i) At least until Murray Shanahan's 1995 paper [8], the ontology of the Event Calculus was irrevocably linked in many researchers' minds with Logic Programming (and in particular with negation-as-failure), and thus dismissed or attacked on " semantic " grounds. (ii) The methodology of using " action languages " (i.e. the Language A, etc. [1]) has become overly associated with the ontology that the original Language A inherited from the Situation Calculus. (Tony Kakas's and my " Language E " paper [2] has shown that, for better or for worse, the methodology can actually be applied in a wider context.) (iii) It seems to be a commonly held belief that " narrative time " ontologies, such as that of the Event Calculus, demand that planning be done using abduction (as opposed to deduction). (I've shown that this is not the case in [6].) (2) As a community, we should be encouraging work on comparing action formalisms and ontologies, and we should be critical of papers which don't contain adequate comparisons with other work (and especially with work based on different ontologies). There is now a fair body of work exploring how the Event Calculus and the Situation Calculus correspond, so there's really no excuse for lack of comparisons in this case at least. (For formal results, see for example [3], [5], [7], [9] and [2]-the last shows a correspondence between Languages A and E.) (3) In [2], Tony Kakas and I wrote: " We believe that the use of, and comparison between, different on-tolgies is vital in the study of reasoning about action. Central issues
Onset detection using leared dictionary by K-SVD

This paper presents a promising and novel onset detection algorithm. Instead of traditional musical signal processing methods based on orthogonal transform such as Fourier Transform and Wavelet Transform, we focused on sparse representation with learned dictionary by K-SVD. We discussed the theorem and the methods of K-SVD for onset detection. The experimental results indicted that the proposed approach was theoretically feasible and practically effective.
Increasing Network Lifetime by Optimum Placement of Sensors in Wireless Sensor Networks

By omitting sensors which have incorrect action ina wireless sensor network, network is reorganizedagain and it causes the consumption of energy andmay also cause that some parts of the network go outof the coverage. The functionality of the network willbe lowered when a node is thrown out from thenetwork, so designing a sensor network with lowconsumption of energy is one of the prominent trendstoday. In this paper, we suppose that the nodes arearranged in a grid typology, and according to thelimitation of energy for each sensor, we want to coverthe maximum of network with the minimum activesensors. To achieve this goal, we have used a maskwith specific dimensions and features. This mask isplaced on different parts of the network and it createsa division according to the sensor off or on with theaim of increasing the network lifetime and maximizingcoverage of the network. With respect to the mathstructure in the proposed algorithm, the total networklifetime will be considerably maximized.
Relation of extent of extracranial carotid artery atherosclerosis as measured by B-mode ultrasound to the extent of coronary atherosclerosis.

The extent of carotid artery atherosclerosis as measured by B-mode ultrasound has been shown to be strongly and independently correlated with the presence or absence of coronary atherosclerotic disease (CAD), but no studies to date have used carotid B-mode ultrasound to compare the extent of atherosclerotic disease in the two arterial circulations. We used data from a registry of patients undergoing cardiac catheterization and B-mode ultrasound of the carotid arteries to compare the extent of CAD (number of major coronary vessels with 50% or greater stenosis as judged by a consensus interpretation) with the extent of extracranial carotid atherosclerosis. Four hundred thirty-four patients (234 men, 200 women) greater than 40 years of age were stratified by gender and then divided into quartiles on the basis of a B-mode score that was derived by summing arterial wall thickness at nine sites in the left and nine sites in the right carotid arteries. Evaluation of extent of CAD for the four B-mode quartiles showed that men in the lowest B-mode quartile were over six times more likely to have normal coronary arteries than three- to four-vessel CAD, while men in the highest B-mode quartile were over 10 times more likely to have three- to four-vessel CAD than normal coronary arteries. The findings were similar for women but not as dramatic. Gender-specific discriminant function models using traditional risk factors alone or in combination with B-mode score were developed to predict the extent of CAD. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Biologic and quality-of-life outcomes from the Mediterranean Lifestyle Program: a randomized clinical trial.

OBJECTIVE Few multiple lifestyle behavior change programs have been designed to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease in postmenopausal women with type 2 diabetes. This study tested the effectiveness of the Mediterranean Lifestyle Program (MLP), a comprehensive lifestyle self-management program (Mediterranean low-saturated fat diet, stress management training, exercise, group support, and smoking cessation), in reducing cardiovascular risk factors in postmenopausal women with type 2 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Postmenopausal women with type 2 diabetes (n = 279) were randomized to either usual care (control) or treatment (MLP) conditions. MLP participants took part in an initial 3-day retreat, followed by 6 months of weekly meetings, to learn and practice program components. Biological end points were changes in HbA(1c), lipid profiles, BMI, blood pressure, plasma fatty acids, and flexibility. Impact on quality of life was assessed. RESULTS Multivariate ANCOVAs revealed significantly greater improvements in the MLP condition compared with the usual care group on HbA(1c), BMI, plasma fatty acids, and quality of life at the 6-month follow-up. Patterns favoring intervention were seen in lipids, blood pressure, and flexibility but did not reach statistical significance. CONCLUSIONS These results demonstrate that postmenopausal women with type 2 diabetes can make comprehensive lifestyle changes that may lead to clinically significant improvements in glycemic control, some coronary heart disease risk factors, and quality of life.
Rhythmic constraints on stress timing in

Rhythm in speech is interpreted as the hierarchical organization of temporally coordinated prosodic units. This is a departure from conventional phonetic approaches which have focussed on isochrony. Speech Cycling, a novel experimental vehicle for investigating rhythmic constraints, is introduced. In a speech cycling task, subjects repeat a phrase together with a periodic stimulus and the temporal distribution of onset events (beats) is examined. Two speech cycling experiments are presented which probe the degree to which the relative durations of inter-stress intervals within a series of repeated phrases are independent. The data reveal the presence of strong rhythmic constraints on stress timing which have hitherto eluded experimenters. It is argued that these constraints are evidence for a task-speci c dynamical system in which prominent events (stress beats) are constrained to occur at speci c, predictable, phases of an enclosing cycle. The dynamical system is characterized by entrainment between metrical levels, a principle which underlies rhythmic coordination in other activities such as locomotion. It is demonstrated that the hierarchical nesting of metrical levels arises inevitably within a repetition task, and what is more, the construction of individual prosodic units depends to some extent on the resulting rhythmic pattern. By structuring an utterance so that prominent events lie at privileged phases of a higher-level prosodic unit, rhythm is seen as an organizational principle which has its roots in the coordination of complex action and its e ect in the realm of prosodic structure.
Experience report: An industrial experience report on test outsourcing practices

Nowadays, many companies contract their testing functionalities out to third-party IT outsourcing companies. This process referred to as test outsourcing is common in the industry, yet it is rarely studied in the research community. In this paper, to bridge the gap, we performed an empirical study on test outsourcing with 10 interviewees and 140 survey respondents. We investigated various research questions such as the types, the process, and the challenges of test outsourcing, and the differences between test outsourcing and in-house testing. We found customer satisfaction, tight project schedule, and domain unfamiliarity are the top-3 challenges faced by the testers. We also found there are substantial differences between test outsourcing and in-house testing. For example, most of the test outsourcing projects focused on functional test, and rarely did unit test. Also, due to privacy policies of client companies, test outsourcing is performed mainly on the binary distributions of the projects, and rarely the testers can touch the source code. Our findings have implications for future research. For instance, as a starting point, researchers can create automated program comprehension tools which work on binary distributions of projects to help testers better design effective test cases.
A hybrid scheme for temporal video segmentation

Video temporal segmentation is normally the first and important step for content-based video applications. Although existing research on shot cut detection is active and extensive, it still remains a challenge to achieve accurate detection of all types of shot boundaries. In this paper, we propose a hybrid scheme to combine some features and techniques for detecting all sorts of shot cuts inside general videos. The hybrid scheme contains two processing modes, which are unified by a mode-selector to decide which mode the scheme should work on in order to achieve accurate temporal video segmentation. Via using the publicly test data set from Carleton University, we report extensive experimental results to evaluate the proposed algorithm. In comparison with existing algorithms, the experimental results support that the proposed algorithm outperforms the benchmark in terms of the precision-recall rates in detecting all types of shot cuts.
Clinical Ophthalmology Dovepress Dovepress Reproducibility of Retinal Circulation Measurements Obtained Using Laser Speckle Flowgraphy-navi in Patients with Glaucoma

Background: Laser speckle flowgraphy (LSFG) enables noninvasive quantification of the retinal circulation in glaucoma patients. In this study, we tested the intrasession reproducibility of LSFG-NAVI, a modified LSFG technique. Methods: Sixty-five eyes from 33 subjects (male (M):female (F) = 17:16) with a mean age of 49.4 ± 11.2 years were examined in this study. Two parameters indicating reproducibility – the coefficient of variation (COV) and the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) – were analyzed three times on the same day that mean blur rate (MBR) was measured using LSFG-NAVI. The sites analyzed were the retinal artery and vein, the optic disk, and the choroid. Local assessment of the optic disk in normal or glaucoma patients showed that the COVs of the quadrant optic disk areas were best in the temporal area of MBR (3.4%, 4.2%, respectively). Conclusion: LSFG-NAVI showed favorable reproducibility in evaluation of retinal circulation of glaucoma patients, particularly in the optic disk and choroid.