Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Systematic review of disease-modifying therapies to assess unmet needs in multiple sclerosis: tolerability and adherence

Reviews of therapeutic drugs usually focus on the highly selected and closely monitored patient populations from randomized controlled trials. The objective of this study was to review systematically the tolerability and adherence of multiple sclerosis disease-modifying therapies, using data from both randomized controlled trials and observational settings. Relevant literature was identified using predefined search terms, and adverse event and study discontinuation data were extracted and categorized according to study type (randomized controlled trial or observational) and study duration. A total of 151 papers were selected for analysis; 33% were classified as randomized controlled trials and 62% as observational studies. Most of the papers concerned interferon preparations and glatiramer acetate; the limited available information on mitoxantrone and natalizumab precluded extensive examination of these. The most common adverse events were flu-like symptoms (interferon therapies only) and injection-site reactions. Mean discontinuation rates ranged from 16% to 27%. There were no marked differences in tolerability or adherence data from randomized controlled trials and observational studies, but the incidence of adverse events remained high in lengthy studies and discontinuations accumulated with time. The present systematic review of randomized clinical trial and observational data highlights the tolerability and adherence issues associated with commonly used first-line multiple sclerosis treatments.
Redistribution of fodrin (a component of the cortical cytoplasm) accompanying capping of cell surface molecules.

Fodrin, a protein composed of two polypeptides with molecular weights of 250,000 and 240,000, is concentrated in the cortical cytoplasm of neurons, and moves down the axons by the process of axonal transport. We have used immunofluorescence techniques to determine whether fodrin antigens also move in non-neuronal cells when cell surface ligands are induced to redistribute by crosslinking them. A redistribution of fodrin antigens occurred in the following instances: (i) when 3T3 cells were incubated with concanavalin A and anti-concanavalin A, surface concanavalin A receptors formed aggregates and fodrin antigens formed corresponding intracellular aggregates; (ii) when B lymphocytes were incubated with anti-Ig, the surface Ig formed caps and fodrin antigens formed intracellular subcaps; (iii) when T lymphocytes were treated with anti-H-2 followed by a secondary antibody, the H-2 antigen formed caps and fodrin formed corresponding subcaps. These observations show that fodrin antigens can move within non-neuronal cells, as well as in axons, and that their organization can be regulated by interaction between surface proteins and environmental stimuli. They also raise the possibility that fodrin, together with other proteins that form subcaps in lymphocytes (e.g., actin, myosin, and alpha-actinin) is a component of the cellular machinery responsible for the capping process. We consider whether the similarities between the movements of fodrin in lymphocyte capping and axonal transport may indicate that certain aspects of these two processes are related.
Sex-Specific Parent-of-Origin Allelic Expression in the Mouse Brain

Parental Influences Genomic imprinting results in the preferential expression of either the paternally or the maternally inherited allele of certain genes. Two papers by Gregg et al. (p. 643, published online 8 July; and p. 682, published online 8 July; see the Perspective by Wilkinson) use a genome-wide approach to characterize the repertoire of genes with parent-of-origin allelic effects in the mouse embryonic and adult brain. The studies uncovered over 1300 loci with maternal or paternal allelic bias. Comparison of the parent-of-origin allelic expression bias in the adult hypothalamus and cortex, and in the developing brain, revealed spatiotemporal, sex-specific, and isoform-specific regulation. Parent-of-origin effects thus represent a major and dynamic mode of epigenetic regulation of gene expression in the brain. The relative contributions of the paternal and maternal genomes differ in distinct brain regions and also in males and females. Genomic imprinting results in preferential gene expression from paternally versus maternally inherited chromosomes. We used a genome-wide approach to uncover sex-specific parent-of-origin allelic effects in the adult mouse brain. Our study identified preferential selection of the maternally inherited X chromosome in glutamatergic neurons of the female cortex. Moreover, analysis of the cortex and hypothalamus identified 347 autosomal genes with sex-specific imprinting features. In the hypothalamus, sex-specific imprinted genes were mostly found in females, which suggests parental influence over the hypothalamic function of daughters. We show that interleukin-18, a gene linked to diseases with sex-specific prevalence, is subject to complex, regional, and sex-specific parental effects in the brain. Parent-of-origin effects thus provide new avenues for investigation of sexual dimorphism in brain function and disease.
Biological, Chemical, and Electronic Applications of Nanofibers

L. T. H. Nguyen NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering (NGS), National University of Singapore, 28 Medical Drive, Singapore 117456, Singapore E-mail: hienluong@nus.edu. sg S. Chen, N. K. Elumalai, Prof. S. Ramakrishna Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore, 9 Engineering Drive 1, Singapore 117576, Singapore S. Chen, N. K. Elumalai, Dr. Y. Zong, Dr. C. Vijila Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, A STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research), 3 Research Link, Singapore 117602, Singapore Dr. M. P. Prabhakaran Faculty of Engineering, Center for Nanofibers and Nanotechnology, Nanoscience, and Nanotechnology Initiative, National University of Singapore, 2 Engineering Drive 3, Singapore 117576, Singapore Dr. S. I. Allakhverdiev Institute of Plant Physiology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Botanicheskaya Street 35, Moscow 127276, Russia, and Institute of Basic Biological Problems, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pushchino, Moscow Region 142290, Russia Prof. S. Ramakrishna King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia E-mail: seeram@nus.edu. sg
Building the Ferretome

Databases of structural connections of the mammalian brain, such as CoCoMac (cocomac.g-node.org) or BAMS (brancusi.usc.edu), are valuable resources for the analysis of brain connectivity and the modeling of brain dynamics in species such as the non-human primate or the rodent, and have also contributed to the computational modeling of the human brain. Another model species that is widely used in electrophysiological or developmental studies is the ferret; however, no systematic compilation of brain connectivity is currently available for this species. Thus, we have started developing a database of anatomical connections and architectonic features of the ferret brain (the Ferretome, www.ferretome.org). The main goals of this database project are: (1) to assemble structural information on the ferret brain that is currently widely distributed in the literature or in different in-house laboratory databases into a single resource which is open to the scientific community; (2) to try and build an extendable community resource that is beneficial to researchers in neuroinformatics and computational neuroscience, as well as to neuroanatomists, by adding value to their data through algorithms for efficient data representation, analysis and visualization; (3) to create techniques for the representation of quantitative and raw data; and (4) to expand existing database ontologies in order to accommodate further neuroarchitectural information for identifying essential relations between brain structure and connections. The Ferretome database has adapted essential features of the CoCoMac methodology and legacy. In particular, its data model is derived from CoCoMac. It also uses a semantic parcellation of ferret brain regions as well as a logical brain maps transformation algorithm (objective relational transformation, ORT). The database is being developed in MySQL and has been populated with literature reports on tract tracing observations in the ferret brain using a custom-designed web interface that allows efficient and validated simultaneous input and proofreading by multiple curators. The database is also equipped with a web interface for generating output data that was designed with non-computer science specialist users in mind. This interface can be extended to produce connectivity matrices in several formats including a graphical representation superimposed on established ferret brain maps. An important feature of the Ferretome database is the possibility to trace back entries in connectivity matrices to the original studies archived in the system. Currently, the Ferretome contains 50 reports on connections comprising 20 injection reports with more than 150 labeled source and target areas, the majority reflecting connectivity of subcortical nuclei. We hope that the Ferretome database will become a useful resource for neuroinformatics and neural modeling, and will support studies of the ferret brain as well as facilitate advances in comparative studies of mesoscopic brain connectivity.
CALLING IS AN HONEST INDICATOR OF PATERNAL GENETIC QUALITY IN POISON FROGS

Abstract Several competing hypotheses have been put forward to explain why females of many species mate preferentially with males possessing the most conspicuous signals (e.g., ornaments, displays, or songs). We performed a laboratory experiment using two species of poison frogs, Dendrobates leucomelas and Epipedobates tricolor, to test the hypothesis that male calling performance is an honest indicator of parental quality. Our analyses are based on data from behavioral observations of mating activities of captive-reared individuals (and their offspring) that were housed in terraria for four consecutive breeding seasons. Male mating success increased with male calling rate and chirp duration in both species, suggesting that females preferred males with more elaborate calls. Because calling performance improved with age in D. leucomelas, female poison frogs that prefer males with more elaborate calls in the wild may end up mating with older males that have already proven their ability to survive. Females that mated with good callers obtained higher quality offspring. Eggs fertilized by males with high calling rates and long chirp durations had higher hatching success and produced tadpoles that were more likely to metamorphose into surviving frogs. As a consequence, females that mated with males with high calling performance obtained more surviving offspring per egg, compared to females that mated with poor callers. Collectively, our findings comply with the notion that female poison frogs prefer to mate with good callers because calling performance is a reliable predictor of offspring quality. The possible influence of maternal allocation and reasons for the strong effect size compared to previous studies are discussed.
Measuring privacy loss in statistical databases

Protection of privacy in databases has become of increasing importance. While a number of techniques have been proposed to query databases while preserving privacy of individual records in the database, very little is done to define a measure on how much privacy is lost after statistical releases. We suggest a definition based on information theory. Intuitively, the privacy loss is proportional to how much the descriptional complexity of a record decreases relative to the statistical release. There are some problems with this basic definition and we suggest ways to address these problems.
Compiler support for lightweight concurrency

This paper describes the design of a direct-style, λ-calculus-based compiler intermediate representation (IR) suitable for implementing a wide range of surface-language concurrency features while allowing flexibility in the back-end implementation. The features that this IR includes to support concurrency include a weak but inexpensive form of continuations and primitives for thread creation, scheduling, and termination. Although this work has been done in the context of implementing concurrency for the MOBY programming language, the model is general and could be used in the context of other languages. In this paper, we describe the IR’s continuations and thread manipulation primitives and illustrate their expressiveness with examples of various concurrency operations. We define an operational semantics to specify the operations precisely and to provide a tool for reasoning about the correctness of implementations. To illustrate the flexibility of our the approach, we describe two existing implementations of the threading model — one based on a one-to-one mapping of language threads to POSIX threads and one based on a many-to-many mapping.
A 50V input range 14bit 250kS/s ADC with 97.8dB SFDR and 80.2dB SNR

A 50V input range, common-mode and differential, 14bit 2-step SAR ADC is presented. The ADC operating at 250kS/s for a 50VPP input signal on a 15V common-mode voltage achieves 97,8dB SFDR and 80:2dB SNR, while consuming 4.29mW from a single 3.3V supply. The 2-step architecture accomplishes an increase in resolution by reusing conversion residue, with a time-shared configurable amplifier/comparator block and SAR hardware. The high SFDR figure achieved without trimming, calibration or tuning asserts the linearity of the implemented high-voltage bootstrapped switch and the capacitive DAC array. The ADC provides an alternative, lower-power solution to high voltage data acquisition, by removing the need for off chip or silicon expensive components.
PEF Assisted Thermal Sterilization (PEF-ATS) Process-Inactivation of Geobacillus sterothermophilus Spores

: An improvement to existed methods of microbial spore inactivation is presented in this paper. A treatment chamber was designed to hold elevated temperatures (above 100 °C) and pressure in the range of (3 atm). The innovative thermal assisted pulsed electric fields (PEF-ATS) processing was applied to inactivate Geobacillus sterothermophilus ATCC 10149 spores suspended in simulated milk ultrafiltrate (SMUF) of 50% (wt/wt) concentration. G. stearothermophilus spores are extremely resistant to high temperature and are also proven to be resistant to PEF processing in the range of 35 kv/cm. However, the combination of PEF and high temperature treatment conducted in this work shows significant inactivation of the G. stearothermophilus spores. A processing temperature/time of 115 °C/3.7 sec with an electric field intensity of 45 kv/cm showed 4.1 logmicrobial reductions, which are significantly less than usually obtained in thermal treatment alone.
Laurent Polynomials and Superintegrable Maps

This article is dedicated to the memory of Vadim Kuznetsov, and begins with some of the author's recollections of him. Thereafter, a brief review of Somos sequences is provided, with particular focus being made on the integrable structure of Somos-4 recurrences, and on the Laurent property. Subsequently a family of fourth-order recurrences that share the Laurent property are considered, which are equivalent to Poisson maps in four dimensions. Two of these maps turn out to be superintegrable, and their iteration furnishes infinitely many solutions of some associated quartic Diophantine equations.
Selective detection of AC transport current distributions in GdBCO coated conductors using low temperature scanning Hall probe microscopy

We studied the distribution of the current density and its magnetic-field dependence in GdBCO coated conductors with AC bias currents using low temperature scanning Hall probe microscopy. We selectively measured magnetic field profiles from AC signal obtained by Lock-in technique and calculated current distributions by inversion calculation. In order to confirm the AC measurement results, we applied DC current corresponding to RMS value of AC current and compared distribution of AC and DC transport current. We carried out the same measurements at various external DC magnetic fields, and investigated field dependence of AC current distribution. We notice that the AC current distribution unaffected by external magnetic fields and preserved their own path on the contrary to DC current.
Sex differences in knee joint loading: Cross‐sectional study in geriatric population

This study investigated sex differences in knee biomechanics and investigated determinants for difference in a geriatric population. Age‐matched healthy volunteers (42 males and 42 females, average age 65 years) without knee OA were included in the study. Subjects underwent physical examination on their knee and standing full‐limb radiography for anthropometric measurements. Linear, kinetic, and kinematic parameters were compared using a three‐dimensional, 12‐camera motion capture system. Gait parameters were evaluated and determinants for sex difference were evaluated with multiple regression analysis. Females had a higher peak knee adduction moment (KAM) during gait (p = 0.004). Females had relatively wider pelvis and narrower step width (both p < 0.001). However, coronal knee alignment was not significantly different between the sexes. Multiple regression analysis revealed that coronal alignment (b = 0.014, p < 0.001), step width (b = −0.010, p = 0.011), and pelvic width/height ratio (b = 1.703, p = 0.046) were significant determinants of peak KAM. Because coronal alignment was not different between the sexes, narrow step width and high pelvic width/height ratio of female were the main contributors to higher peak KAM in females. Sex differences in knee biomechanics were present in the geriatric population. Increased mechanical loading on the female knee, which was associated with narrow step width and wide pelvis, may play an important role in future development and progression of OA. © 2016 Orthopaedic Research Society. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res 35:1283–1289, 2017.
The mechanisms of recovery from cerebellar infarction: an fMRI study

Patients with cerebellar infarction frequently make an excellent functional recovery. However, the mechanisms of functional recovery from cerebellar infarction remain unclear. Thus, functional MRI was used to investigate these mechanisms in six right-handed patients with complete recovery after cerebellar infarction, and nine right-handed normal subjects. The non-infarcted side of the cerebellum and the sensorimotor cortex contralateral to the non-infarcted side of the cerebellum were significantly activated during the infarcted-side hand movement. In the infarcted side of the cerebellum, intact regions were activated. Our results indicate that recovery from cerebellar infarction depends on reorganization in the infarcted side of the cerebellum, and recruitment of the cerebellocortical loop involving the cerebrum ipsilateral to the movement and the cerebellum contralateral to the movement.
A 65nm CMOS front-end LNA for medical ultrasound imaging with feedback employing noise and distortion cancellation

A 70μW low power front-end Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) for ultrasound applications is proposed. The amplifier utilizes a balun based on a common-gate (CG) and a common-source (CS) combination. The CS-amplifier performs error correction, and thus cancels distortion and noise from the CG-amplifier. The amplifier is optimized towards low noise and low power consumption, and is a capacitive micro machined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) tailored LNA. The LNA is design and simulated under 65nm CMOS technology, achieving a noise figure (NF) of only 2.98dB with a total power consumption of only 70μW. The amplifier is tuned towards an CMUT impedance of 10k/ -60° at a center of frequency 5MHz, with a input impedance of 3. 8kΩ. Moreover, sporting a dynamic range (DR) of 50.53dB.
Impact of irradiations performed at liquid helium temperatures on the operation of 0.7 /spl mu/m CMOS devices and read-out circuits

Abstmct-It has become clear that the effeet of total ionizing dose (TID) and displacement damage on device performance strongly depends on its operation temperature. It i s the aim of this paper to describe a dedicated set-up for executing biased irradiation testing at low temperatures. As a test vehide prototype chips for the HERSCHEL mission, fabricated in a standard 0.7 pm CMOS technology, have been used. In order to get a better insight in the fundamental radiation damage mechanisms, also simple test structures (transistors) have been exposed to the same radiation dose of @CO y’s or 60 MeV protons. it i s shown that from a viewpoint of TID damage the read-out circuits will survive the mission’s estimated total dose. There is a good agreement between the observed circuit performance shift and the parameter shift derived from the nand pMOSFETs.
A Structure-Shared Trie Compression Method

Trie, a well-known searching algorithm, is a basic and important part of various computer applications such as information retrieval, natural language processing, database system, compiler, and computer network. Although a merit of trie structure is its searching speed, the naive version of trie structure size may not be acceptable when the key set is very large. To reduce its size, several methods were proposed. This paper proposes an alternative approach using a new tie structure called, structure-shared trie (SS-trie). The main idea is to reduce unused space using shared common structure and bit compression. Three techniques are used: (1) path compression, (2) structure sharing, and (3) node compression. A number of experiments are conducted to investigate trie size, sharing rate, and average depth of the proposed method in comparison with binary search, naive trie, PAT, and LC-trie. The result shows that our method outperforms other methods.
ThermalPlot: Visualizing Multi-Attribute Time-Series Data Using a Thermal Metaphor

Multi-attribute time-series data plays a vital role in many different domains, such as economics, sensor networks, and biology. An important task when making sense of such data is to provide users with an overview to identify items that show an interesting development over time, including both absolute and relative changes in multiple attributes simultaneously. However, this is not well supported by existing visualization techniques. To address this issue, we present <italic>ThermalPlot</italic>, a visualization technique that summarizes combinations of multiple attributes over time using an items position, the most salient visual variable. More precisely, the x-position in the <italic> ThermalPlot</italic> is based on a user-defined degree-of-interest (DoI) function that combines multiple attributes over time. The y-position is determined by the relative change in the DoI value (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Delta$</tex-math><alternatives> <inline-graphic xlink:type="simple" xlink:href="stitz-ieq1-2513389.gif"/></alternatives></inline-formula>DoI) within a user-specified time window. Animating this mapping via a moving time window gives rise to circular movements of items over time—as in thermal systems. To help the user to identify important items that match user-defined temporal patterns and to increase the technique's scalability, we adapt the level of detail of the items’ representation based on the DoI value. Furthermore, we present an interactive exploration environment for multi-attribute time-series data that ties together a carefully chosen set of visualizations, designed to support analysts in interacting with the <italic>ThermalPlot</italic> technique. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our technique by means of two usage scenarios that address the visual analysis of economic development data and of stock market data.