Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effect of Kinesio Taping on Lower Trunk Range of Motions

The purpose of the study was to determine the effects of kinesio taping (KT) on trunk flexion, extension, and lateral flexion. Thirty healthy subjects with no history of lower trunk or back issues participated in the study. Subjects performed two experimental measurements of range of motion (with and without the application of KT) in trunk flexion, extension, and right lateral flexion. A dependent t test was used to compare the range of motion measurements before and after the application of KT. Through evaluation of the sum of all scores, KT in flexion produced a gain of 17.8 cm compared with the non-kinesiotape group (t (29) = 2.51, p < 0.05). No significant difference was identified for extension (−2.9 cm; t (29) = −0.55, p > 0.05) or lateral flexion (3 cm; t (29) = −1.25, p > 0.05). Based on the findings, we determined that KT applied over the lower trunk may increase active lower trunk flexion range of motion. Further investigation on the effects of KT is warranted.
Chemical Compensation of Mitochondrial Phospholipid Depletion in Yeast and Animal Models of Parkinson’s Disease

We have been investigating the role that phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) and phosphatidylcholine (PC) content plays in modulating the solubility of the Parkinson’s disease protein alpha-synuclein (α-syn) using Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Caenorhabditis elegans. One enzyme that synthesizes PE is the conserved enzyme phosphatidylserine decarboxylase (Psd1/yeast; PSD-1/worms), which is lodged in the inner mitochondrial membrane. We previously found that decreasing the level of PE due to knockdown of Psd1/psd-1 affects the homeostasis of α-syn in vivo. In S. cerevisiae, the co-occurrence of low PE and α-syn in psd1Δ cells triggers mitochondrial defects, stress in the endoplasmic reticulum, misprocessing of glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored proteins, and a 3-fold increase in the level of α-syn. The goal of this study was to identify drugs that rescue this phenotype. We screened the Prestwick library of 1121 Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs using psd1Δ + α-syn cells and identified cyclosporin A, meclofenoxate hydrochloride, and sulfaphenazole as putative protective compounds. The protective activity of these drugs was corroborated using C. elegans in which α-syn is expressed specifically in the dopaminergic neurons, with psd-1 depleted by RNAi. Worm populations were examined for dopaminergic neuron survival following psd-1 knockdown. Exposure to cyclosporine, meclofenoxate, and sulfaphenazole significantly enhanced survival at day 7 in α-syn-expressing worm populations whereby 50–55% of the populations displayed normal neurons, compared to only 10–15% of untreated animals. We also found that all three drugs rescued worms expressing α-syn in dopaminergic neurons that were deficient in the phospholipid cardiolipin following cardiolipin synthase (crls-1) depletion by RNAi. We discuss how these drugs might block α-syn pathology in dopaminergic neurons.
On Investment and Profitability : an Empirical Study Using Generalized Linear Mixed Models in Non-financial Brazilian Companies *

In this study we used a wide class of statistical models (generalized linear mixed models – GLMM) to examine empirically the relation between past investment and profitability (measured by and Tobin ́s q), considering five scenarios with different periods of investment. These models enabled to consider a structure of correlation for the profitability observed over time and to use a distribution of different probability for and Tobin ́s q coefficient. Data from the financial statements of non-financial companies listed on Brazilian Stock Exchange were collected (2001-2011), resulting in the unbalanced sample of 1,484 company-year observations. Regarding , the results showed a positive relation between contemporary investment and profitability, and a negative relation between past investment and profitability. The relation of past investment with the profitability (using Tobin ́s q) was positive. These relations were slightly weaken, which suggests that investments have their profitability reduced over time.
MYOTONIC DYSTROPHY IN INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD.

Myotonic dystrophy is more often symptomatic in infancy and early childhood than previously supposed, seven definite and two possible cases having come to our attention during a single year. In all but one case the disease was present, though unrecognized, in one or more members of preceding generations. At least three patterns of expression of the disease are suggested. (1) The most common clinical syndrome (five cases) begins at birth or in early infancy with difficulty in nursing, attributable to bilateral facial weakness. Generalized myopathic weakness and hypotonia and variable degrees of retarded motor development are encountered during infancy. In one case there was no difficulty with bulbar musculature and only the limb muscles were involved. No evidence of a progressive loss of motor function has been observed during early childhood, but the pattern of greater proximal than distal weakness of extremities appears to become reversed gradually until the tyical adult distribution of weakness and atrophy is seen. The less common clinical syndromes, which include the two possible cases of myotonic dystrophy, are: (2) almost pure myotonia, symptomatic from early infancy (one case) or evident only on electromyography (one case) and (3) isolated congenital ptosis (one case). Percussion myotonia or myotonia of grasp or both is usually present if looked for. Electromyographic evidence of myotonia has been found in every case and was of great help in establishing the diagnosis. Myopathic changes were identified in three of the five available muscle biopsies. Mental defect was an associated finding in onethird of the cases in the present series.
Pushdown Systems for Monotone Frameworks

Monotone frameworks is one of the most successful frameworks for intraprocedural data flow analysis extending the traditional class of bitvector frameworks (like live variables and available expressions). Weighted pushdown systems is similarly one of the most general frameworks for interprocedural analysis of programs. However, it makes use of idempotent semirings to represent the sets of properties and unfortunately they do not admit analyses whose transfer functions are not strict (e.g., classical bitvector frameworks). This motivates the development of algorithms for backward and forward reachability of pushdown systems using sets of properties forming so-called flow algebras that weaken some of the assumptions of idempotent semirings. In particular they do admit the bitvector frameworks, monotone frameworks, as well as idempotent semirings. We show that the algorithms are sound under mild assumptions on the flow algebras, mainly that the set of properties constitutes a join semi-lattice, and complete provided that the transfer functions are suitably distributive (but not necessarily strict).
Integration between Mathematical Programming and Fuzzy Logic to Optimize Consumers Behavior

The concept of utility is used as a decision tool for consumers to choose a commodity. Analyzing consumer behavior is complicated due to the qualitative nature of the utility. Hence, this paper investigates a quantitative method to evaluate the utility of consumers. The methodology is based on linguistic expressions of fuzzy logic. Initially, the authors identify different parameters being effective on utility of a consumer. Then, using fuzzy linguistic expressions the quantitative value of utility are determined. Also some statistical analyses are set to investigate the effective parameters on the utility. Consequently, the optimization is done applying mathematical nonlinear programming. Some analysis is performed as sensitivity study. A case study is conducted to verify the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed methodology.
Исследование некоторых психологических показателей у больных с патологией желудочно-кишечного тракта

In patients with some diseases of the digestion organs is installed role in an actual conflict, both significants psychic traumas, and small muddles (micro traumas) that confirms the attribute them to the psychosomatic frustration. In sick persons with a pathology of the gastrointestinal tract are revealled the psychasthenia, high levels of introversion, anxiety, neurotism, high factors of the actual abilities "body/sensations" in the manner of "escape" ("flight") to its body (a "care" in disease the psychosomatic disorder), "politeness" as hiding aggression on social ambience, bring about alert. The offered algorithm of the using to positive psychotherapy in the general medical practice allows to perfect the psychological factors in examined gastrointestinal patients, gives him hope, positive installation on prospect.
Computational auditory scene analysis

Abstract Although the ability of human listeners to perceptually segregate concurrent sounds is well documented in the literature, there have been few attempts to exploit this research in the design of computational systems for sound source segregation. In this paper, we present a segregation system that is consistent with psychological and physiological findings. The system is able to segregate speech from a variety of intrusive sounds, including other speech, with some success. The segregation system consists of four stages. Firstly, the auditory periphery is modelled by a bank of bandpass filters and a simulation of neuromechanical transduction by inner hair cells. In the second stage of the system, periodicities, frequency transitions, onsets and offsets in auditory nerve firing patterns are made explicit by separate auditory representations. The representations, auditory maps , are based on the known topographical organization of the higher auditory pathways. Information from the auditory maps is used to construct a symbolic description of the auditory scene. Specifically, the acoustic input is characterized as a collection of time-frequency elements, each of which describes the movement of a spectral peak in time and frequency. In the final stage of the system, a search strategy is employed which groups elements according to the similarity of their fundamental frequencies, onset times and offset times. Following the search, a waveform can be resynthesized from a group of elements so that segregation performance may be assessed by informal listening tests. The system has been evaluated using a database of voiced speech mixed with a variety of intrusive noises such as music, "office" noise and other speech. A technique for quantitative evaluation of the system is described, in which the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is compared before and after the segregation process. After segregation, an increase in SNR is obtained for each noise condition. Additionally, the performance of our system is significantly better than that of the frame-based segregation scheme described by Meddis and Hewitt (1992).
Pointless tainting?: evaluating the practicality of pointer tainting

This paper evaluates pointer tainting, an incarnation of Dynamic Information Flow Tracking (DIFT), which has recently become an important technique in system security. Pointer tainting has been used for two main purposes: detection of privacy-breaching malware (e.g., trojan keyloggers obtaining the characters typed by a user), and detection of memory corruption attacks against non-control data (e.g., a buffer overflow that modifies a user's privilege level). In both of these cases the attacker does not modify control data such as stored branch targets, so the control flow of the target program does not change. Phrased differently, in terms of instructions executed, the program behaves 'normally'. As a result, these attacks are exceedingly difficult to detect. Pointer tainting is considered one of the onlymethods for detecting them in unmodified binaries. Unfortunately, almost all of the incarnations of pointer tainting are flawed. In particular, we demonstrate that the application of pointer tainting to the detection of keyloggers and other privacybreaching malware is problematic. We also discuss whether pointer tainting is able to reliably detect memory corruption attacks against non-control data. Pointer tainting generates itself the conditions for false positives. We analyse the problems in detail and investigate various ways to improve the technique. Most have serious drawbacks in that they are either impractical (and incur many false positives still), and/or cripple the technique's ability to detect attacks. In conclusion, we argue that depending on architecture and operating system, pointer tainting may have some value in detecting memory orruption attacks (albeit with false negatives and not on the popular x86 architecture), but it is fundamentally not suitable for automated detecting of privacy-breaching malware such as keyloggers.
Developmental sport and exercise psychology: A lifespan perspective

Developmental Sport and Exercise Psychology: Research Status on Youth and Directions Toward a Lifespan Perspective Lifespan Development in Sport and Exercise Psychology: Theoretical Perspectives Some Methodological Considerations in Developmental Sport and Exercise Psychology Developmental Perspectives on Self-Perceptions in Children and Adolescents Parental Influences on Youth Involvement in Sports A Little Friendly Competition: Peer Relationships and Psychosocial Development in Youth Sport and Physical Activity Contexts Emotional Experience in Youth Sport The Why of Youth Sport Involvement: A Developmental Perspective on Motivational Processes Self-Regulation Skills for Children and Adolescents Seeing Isn't Always Believing: Self-Perceptions and Physical Activity Behaviours in Adults Social Influence on the Psychological Dimensions of Adult Physical Activity Involvement Emotion in Sport Across Adulthood Motivational Processes Among Older Adults in Sport and Exercise Settings Self-Regulation Skills in Young, Middle, and Older Adulthood Development of Expertise in Sport Psychosocial Factors and Disability: Effects of Physical Activity and Sport A Lifespan View of Moral Development in Physical Activity Gender and Cultural Diversity Across the Lifespan A Developmental Perspective on Transitions Faced by Athletes From Skinned Knees and Pee Wees to Menisci and Masters: Developmental Sport Injury Psychology.
Neural plasticity and treatment-induced recovery of sentence processing and production in agrammatism

Six agrammatic speakers were trained on production and processing of object-relative sentence structures, resulting in generalization to less complex sentence structures. The acquired structure-building process reflected by this generalization was shown to be supported by changes in neuronal activation patterns underlying syntactic task execution, as measured with pre and post training functional MRIs. The most prominent neuronal activity upregulation was seen in posterior temporoparietal cortical areas, outside of the core network activated in a group of healthy control subjects during complex syntactic processing.
Combining Adult Learning Theory with Occupational Therapy Intervention for Bladder and Bowel Management after Spinal Cord Injury: A Case Report

ABSTRACT Bladder and bowel management is an important goal of rehabilitation for clients with spinal cord injury. Dependence is these areas have been linked to a variety of secondary complications, including decreased quality of life, urinary tract infections and pressure ulcers (Hammell, 2010; Hicken et al, 2001). Occupational therapists have been identified as important members of the health care team in spinal cord injury rehabilitation; however, specific roles and interventions have not been clearly described. This case report will describe occupational therapy interventions embedded with principles of adult learning theory to address bladder and bowel management with an adult client who sustained an incomplete thoracic level spinal cord injury.
TREASURY WORKING PAPER 01 / 15 Towards an Inclusive Economy The Treasury

There has recently been a rapid growth in international literature and research on the links between economic growth and social capability and their impact upon well-being. This paper draws on that literature to build upon previous Treasury work at the intersection of economic and social policy. It examines the relationship between a productive economy and a society that enjoys high levels of participation, connection and cohesion, and their combined impact of peoples’ well-being. It suggests that the objective in an inclusive economy is to improve the well-being of New Zealanders by directing policy to ensure that there are broad based opportunities to participate in society and the economy. The paper notes the ‘virtuous’ and ‘vicious’ circles that can occur when positive or negative interrelationships arise as a result of the above links. It suggests that there are five broad policy themes that are particularly important for building a more inclusive New Zealand economy. In particular there are a small number of policy areas where there appear to be opportunities for gains in equity and participation while being neutral or even positive for growth. These opportunities lie in focusing on education and jobs in the lower part of the distribution of attainment and skills; on strengthening Maori institutions and governance; and improving understanding of and reporting of the results of government action. Three Treasury companion papers to this one expand on particular aspects of the inclusive economy. They are Reducing Disparities in an Inclusive Economy (forthcoming), Human Capital and the Inclusive Economy and Geography and the Inclusive Economy: A Regional Perspective. JEL classification: A1 General economics, H0 Public economics general, O2 Development planning and policy, R1 General special economics
Preservation of peritoneal morphology and function by pentoxifylline in a rat model of peritoneal dialysis: molecular studies.

BACKGROUND High-glucose (HG) content of dialysate accelerated peritoneal fibrosis. We investigated in vitro mechanisms and the in vivo potential of pentoxifylline (PTX) to prevent this fibrogenic process. METHODS For human peritoneal mesothelial cell (HPMC) culture, a normal-glucose (NG, 5.5 mM) or HG (138 mM) medium was established through pilot experiments. The rat peritoneal dialysis (PD) model consists of four groups (n = 8): group 1, intraperitoneal (IP) HG (4.25%) solution; group 2, as group 1 plus daily IP PTX (4 mg/in 1 h); group 3, IP PTX and group 4 as control. RESULTS In HPMC culture, PTX significantly prevented HG-stimulated gene and protein production of collagen and transforming growth factor-beta1 (TGF-ss1) (reduction rate of 72-81%). The p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway was activated significantly in HG-treated HPMCs. Blockade of p38 MAPK by SB203580 (25 microM) or PTX (300 microg/ml) resulted in an effective suppression of collagen and TGF-ss1 gene expression in HG-cultured HPMCs. In PD experimental animals, peritoneal thickness and collagen expression in the peritoneum were significantly increased in HG-treated rats, and was attenuated by PTX (P < 0.01). Impaired peritoneal ultrafiltration (1.9 +/- 0.5 ml versus 2.4 +/- 0.4 ml, P < 0.05) and stimulated proinflammatory IL-6, MCP-1 and TGF-beta1 activation were observed in HG-treated rats. PTX well preserved the functional characteristics of peritoneum and cytokine profiles. CONCLUSIONS These in vitro and in vivo data suggest that PTX may have therapeutic benefits for the prevention or retardation of peritoneal fibrosis.
Asymmetric Clustering using a Register Cache

Conventional register files spread porting resources uniformly across all registers. This paper proposes a method called Asymmetric Clustering using a Register Cache (ACRC). ACRC utilizes a fast register cache that concentrates valuable register file ports to the most active registers thereby reducing the total register file area and power consumption. A cluster of functional units and a highly ported register cache execute the majority of instructions, while a second cluster with a full register file having fewer read ports processes instructions with source registers not found in the register cache. An ‘in-cache’ marking system tracks the contents of the register cache and routes instructions to the correct cluster. This system utilizes logic similar to the ‘ready’ bit system found in wake-up and select logic keeping the additional logic required to a minimum. When using a 256-entry register file, this design reduces the total register file area by an estimated 65% while exhibiting similar IPC performance compared to a non-clustered 8-way processor. As the feature size becomes smaller and processor clocks become faster, the number of clock cycles needed to access the register file will increase. Therefore, the smaller register file area requirement and subsequent smaller register file delay of ACRC will lead to better IPC performance than conventional processors.
Nonlinear measures: a new approach to exponential stability analysis for Hopfield-type neural networks

In this paper, a new concept called nonlinear measure is introduced to quantify stability of nonlinear systems in the way similar to the matrix measure for stability of linear systems. Based on the new concept, a novel approach for stability analysis of neural networks is developed. With this approach, a series of new sufficient conditions for global and local exponential stability of Hopfield type neural networks is presented, which generalizes those existing results. By means of the introduced nonlinear measure, the exponential convergence rate of the neural networks to stable equilibrium point is estimated, and, for local stability, the attraction region of the stable equilibrium point is characterized. The developed approach can be generalized to stability analysis of other general nonlinear systems.
Systematic discovery of functional modules and context-specific functional annotation of human genome

MOTIVATION The rapid accumulation of microarray datasets provides unique opportunities to perform systematic functional characterization of the human genome. We designed a graph-based approach to integrate cross-platform microarray data, and extract recurrent expression patterns. A series of microarray datasets can be modeled as a series of co-expression networks, in which we search for frequently occurring network patterns. The integrative approach provides three major advantages over the commonly used microarray analysis methods: (1) enhance signal to noise separation (2) identify functionally related genes without co-expression and (3) provide a way to predict gene functions in a context-specific way. RESULTS We integrate 65 human microarray datasets, comprising 1105 experiments and over 11 million expression measurements. We develop a data mining procedure based on frequent itemset mining and biclustering to systematically discover network patterns that recur in at least five datasets. This resulted in 143,401 potential functional modules. Subsequently, we design a network topology statistic based on graph random walk that effectively captures characteristics of a gene's local functional environment. Function annotations based on this statistic are then subject to the assessment using the random forest method, combining six other attributes of the network modules. We assign 1126 functions to 895 genes, 779 known and 116 unknown, with a validation accuracy of 70%. Among our assignments, 20% genes are assigned with multiple functions based on different network environments. AVAILABILITY http://zhoulab.usc. edu/ContextAnnotation.