Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Towards evidence-based classification in wheelchair sports: Impact of seating position on wheelchair acceleration

Abstract In most Paralympic wheelchair sports, active trunk range of movement is assessed by observing shoulder girdle excursion during active trunk movements and is a key determinant of an athlete's class. However, to date research evaluating the impact of reduced trunk range of movement on wheelchair sports performance has not been conducted. In the present study, 15 non-disabled male participants performed two 20-s sprints on a wheelchair ergometer in each of three seating positions. Positions were typical of those used to enhance sitting stability in wheelchair sport and each impacted available trunk range of movement differently: condition-90 (seated with thighs horizontal; unrestricted range of movement) condition-45 (seated with thighs in 45°), and condition-0 (seated with hips maximally flexed; minimum range of movement). In condition-90, the trunk only actively contributed to the first push; for the remainder of the sprint, the trunk was held almost isometrically at 48.2° to the horizontal (range 42.1–56.4°). Similar patterns were observed for both condition-45 and condition-0. Compared with condition-90, participants in condition-0 had reduced capacity to accelerate of statistical (P < 0.05) and practical significance. These findings are an important initial step towards evidence-based decision making in classification. Future research should evaluate the individual and collective impact of other factors that affect the trunk's contribution to wheelchair sports performance, including strapping, seating position, and impairments of trunk muscle power and coordination.
Refinement of dendritic and synaptic networks in the rodent anterior cingulate and orbitofrontal cortex: Critical impact of early and late social experience

The process of weaning programs the neurobehavioral development and therefore provides a critical formative period for adult behavior. However, the neural substrates underlying these behavioral changes are largely unknown. To test the hypothesis that during childhood neuronal networks in the prefrontal cortex are reorganized in response to the timing and extent of social interactions, we analyzed the length, ramification, and spine density of apical and basal dendrites of layer II/III pyramidal neurons in four groups of male rats. (1) Early weaning at postnatal day (PND) 21 + postweaning social rearing (EWS), (2) late weaning at PND 30 + postweaning social rearing (LWS), (3) early weaning + postweaning social isolation (EWI), (4) late weaning + postweaning social isolation (LWI). Compared with late weaned animals, the early weaned animals displayed elevated spine densities on apical and basal dendrites only in the anterior cingulate (ACd), but not in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), irrespective of the postweaning housing conditions. For dendritic length and complexity an interaction between the factors weaning and postweaning rearing conditions was observed. In the ACd the EWI animals had longer and more complex apical dendrites compared with all other groups, whereas in the OFC the EWI animals displayed a significant reduction of apical dendritic length and complexity compared with the EWS group. Taken together, our findings show that the timing as well as the amount of social contact with family members significantly affects the refinement of prefrontal cortical synaptic networks, which are essential for emotional and cognitive behavior. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Develop Neurobiol 2008
Immune-based therapies in pancreatic and colorectal cancers and biomarkers of responsiveness

Immune-based strategies are the most promising treatments to improve cancer disease control. Early clinical trials are ongoing to test the safety and feasibility of immune-based therapies for gastrointestinal cancers. However, to date, immunotherapy has been only an experimental option for these diseases and a better understanding of their molecular, cellular, structural and clinical dissimilarities is crucial in the generation of tailored immunotherapeutic treatments. In this review, we will summarize the key mechanisms that regulate the action of immune system in cancer and the different immune-based approaches aimed at improving disease control in patients with advanced disease. We will then move on to discussing the current immunotherapeutic approaches in two types of gastrointestinal (colo-rectal and pancreatic) cancers, whose immune microenvironment has been lately object of intense analyses and has emerged as an important determinant of clinical outcome.
Orodispersible films having quick dissolution times for therapeutic and food use

The present invention concerns an orodispersible self-supporting film free from hydrocolloids comprising: a) a film-forming substance consisting of a maltodextrin in an amount comprised between 40 and 80% by weight; b) a plasticizer in an amount comprised between 15 and 55% by weight; e) a surfactant System in an amount comprised between 0.5 and 6% by weight; d) an active ingredient for food or therapeutic use in an amount between 0.05 and 30% by weight, characterised in that it contains a homopolymer or a copolymer of vinyl acetate in a quantity comprised between 2 and 10% by weight where the percentages are calculated on the total weight of said film.
Long QT syndrome: diagnosis and management.

BACKGROUND Long QT syndrome (LQT) is characterized by prolongation of the QT interval, causing torsade de pointes and sudden cardiac death. The LQT is a disorder of cardiac repolarization caused by alterations in the transmembrane potassium and sodium currents. Congenital LQT is a disease of transmembrane ion-channel proteins. Six genetic loci of the disease have been identified. Sporadic cases of the disease occur as a result of spontaneous mutations. The acquired causes of LQT include drugs, electrolyte imbalance, marked bradycardia, cocaine, organophosphorus compounds, subarachnoid hemorrhage, myocardial ischemia, protein sparing fasting, autonomic neuropathy, and human immunodeficiency virus disease. METHODS Data on the diagnosis and management of LQT were thoroughly reviewed. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS The diagnosis of LQT primarily rests on clinical and electrocardiographic features and family history. The clinical presentations range from dizziness to syncope and sudden death. Genetic screening is available primarily as a research tool. Short-term treatment of LQT is aimed at preventing the recurrences of torsades and includes intravenous magnesium and potassium administration, temporary cardiac pacing, withdrawal of the offending agent, correction of electrolyte imbalance, and, rarely, intravenous isoproterenol administration. The long-term treatment is aimed at reducing the QT-interval duration and preventing the torsades and sudden death and includes use of oral beta-adrenergic blockers, implantation of permanent pacemaker/cardioverter-defibrillator, and left thoracic sympathectomy. Sodium channel blockers are promising agents under investigation. Electrocardiograms are recorded for screening of family members. The data favor treating asymptomatic patients, if <40 years old at the time of diagnosis, with beta-adrenergic blockers.
Use of Indocyanine Green for Detecting the Sentinel Lymph Node in Breast Cancer Patients: From Preclinical Evaluation to Clinical Validation

Assessment of the sentinel lymph node (SLN) in patients with early stage breast cancer is vital in selecting the appropriate surgical approach. However, the existing methods, including methylene blue and nuclides, possess low efficiency and effectiveness in mapping SLNs, and to a certain extent exert side effects during application. Indocyanine green (ICG), as a fluorescent dye, has been proved reliable usage in SLN detection by several other groups. In this paper, we introduce a novel surgical navigation system to detect SLN with ICG. This system contains two charge-coupled devices (CCD) to simultaneously capture real-time color and fluorescent video images through two different bands. During surgery, surgeons only need to follow the fluorescence display. In addition, the system saves data automatically during surgery enabling surgeons to find the registration point easily according to image recognition algorithms. To test our system, 5 mice and 10 rabbits were used for the preclinical setting and 22 breast cancer patients were utilized for the clinical evaluation in our experiments. The detection rate was 100% and an average of 2.7 SLNs was found in 22 patients. Our results show that the usage of our surgical navigation system with ICG to detect SLNs in breast cancer patients is technically feasible.
Performance of Hybrid Fuzzy and Fuzzy Self Tuning PID Controller for any Order Transfer Function

: In any of the control application, controller design is the most important part. There are different types of controller architectures available in control literature. The controller can be conventional in nature or can be intelligent in nature. The conventional controller doesn’t possess the human intelligence; where in the intelligent controller human intelligence is embed with the help of certain soft computing algorithms. After the design of controller is performed, the performance evaluation part comes in to light. The designed controller has to give optimal control results irrespective of every situation like plant and equipment non linearity, equipment saturation. The fuzzy logic based controller meets the control objective. During the design of fuzzy based hybrid controller, the designer meets two key design challenges namely, optimization of existing fuzzy rule base and identification, estimation of new membership function or optimization of existing membership function. These issues play a vital role in controller design in real time. In real time controller hardware design there is memory and computational power constraints, so a designer needs to optimize these two design aspects.For optimization of existing mamdani based fuzzy rule base, a genetic algorithm approach is used and for identification and estimation of fuzzy membership function, a neural network based approach is used.
Functional Coupling of Phosphatidylinositol 4,5-Bisphosphate to Inositol 1,4,5-Trisphosphate Receptor*

The inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate receptor (InsP3R) plays a key role in intracellular Ca2+ signaling. InsP3R is activated by InsP3 produced from phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate (PIP2) by phospholipase C cleavage. Using planar lipid bilayer reconstitution technique, we demonstrate here that rat cerebellar InsP3R forms a stable inhibitory complex with endogenous PIP2. Disruption of InsP3R-PIP2 interaction by specific anti-PIP2 monoclonal antibody resulted in 3–4-fold increase in InsP3R activity and 10-fold shift in apparent affinity for InsP3. Exogenously added PIP2blocks InsP3 binding to InsP3R and inhibits InsP3R activity. Similar results were obtained with a newly synthesized water soluble analog of PIP2, dioctanoyl-(4,5)PIP2, indicating that insertion of PIP2 into membrane is not required to exert its inhibitory effects on the InsP3R. We hypothesize that the functional link between InsP3R and PIP2 described in the present report provides a basis for a local, rapid, and efficient coupling between phospholipase C activation, PIP2hydrolysis, and intracellular Ca2+ wave initiation in neuronal and non-neuronal cells.
Valuing Others' Opinions: Preference, Belief and Reliability Dynamics

Deliberation often leads to changes in preferences and beliefs of an agent, influenced by the opinions of others, depending on how reliable these agents are according to the agent under consideration. Sometimes, it also leads to changes in the opposite direction, that is, reliability over agents gets updated depending on their preferences and/or beliefs. There are various formal studies of preference and belief change based on reliability and/or trust, but not the other way around − this work contributes to the formal study of the latter aspect, that is, on reliability change based on agent preferences. In process, some policies of preference change based on agent reliabilities are also discussed. A two-dimensional hybrid language is proposed to describe such processes, and axiomatisations and decidability are discussed.
Reputation and Partnerships

This paper studies rmsdecisions to form partnerships to develop new projects and the reputation implications of such decisions. Speci cally, we analyze how rmsqualities, initial reputations and participation levels a¤ect the evolution of rmsreputations and incentives to form partnerships. We consider both the case where participation levels are exogenous and that where they are endogenous. There are equilibria in which only rms with good qualities form a partnership, and equilibria in which only rms with bad qualities do so. When participation levels are exogenous, qualities are substitutes, i.e., rms with higher qualities require lower qualities from potential partners to form partnerships. In contrast, when participation levels are endogenous, there are equilibria where qualities are complements, i.e., rms with higher qualities demand higher-quality partners. In particular, we identify situations where for low quality levels qualities are substitutes, while for high quality levels they are complements. Part of this paper was written when the second author was visiting the University of Southern California. We would like to thank Juan Carrillo, Adeline Delavande, Iliyan Georgiev and Jon Levin for helpful comments and suggestions.
Pose estimation and adaptive robot behaviour for human-robot interaction

This paper introduces a new method to determine a person's pose based on laser range measurements. Such estimates are typically a prerequisite for any human-aware robot navigation, which is the basis for effective and timeextended interaction between a mobile robot and a human. The robot uses observed information from a laser range finder to detect persons and their position relative to the robot. This information together with the motion of the robot itself is fed through a Kalman filter, which utilizes a model of the human kinematic movement to produce an estimate of the person's pose. The resulting pose estimates are used to identify humans who wish to be approached and interacted with. The behaviour of the robot is based on adaptive potential functions adjusted accordingly such that the persons social spaces are respected. The method is tested in experiments that demonstrate the potential of the combined pose estimation and adaptive behaviour approach.
Topographic Maps

We call "natural" image any photograph of an outdoor or indoor scene taken by a standard camera. We discuss the physical generation process of natural images as a combination of occlusions, transparencies and contrast changes. This description ts to the phenomenological description of Gaetano Kanizsa according to which visual perception tends to remain stable with respect to these basic operations. We deene a contrast invariant presentation of the digital image, the topographic map, where the subjacent occlusion-transparency structure is put into evidence by the interplay of level lines. We prove that each topographic map represents a class of images invariant with respect to local contrast changes. Several visualization strategies of the topographic map are proposed and implemented and mathematical arguments are developed to establish stability properties of the topographic map under digitization.
Distinct profiles of brain and cognitive changes in the very old with Alzheimer disease

Objective: To determine whether age-standardized brain morphometric and cognitive profiles differ in young-old (aged 60–75 years) and very-old (aged 80–91 years) patients with Alzheimer disease (AD). Methods: Using a case-control retrospective design, we compared hippocampal volume and cortical gray matter thickness in areas known to be affected by AD in 105 patients with AD and 125 healthy control (HC) participants divided into young-old and very-old subgroups. Brain morphometric and cognitive scores of the AD groups were standardized to their respective age-appropriate HC subgroup and then compared. Results: Several cognitive domains (executive function, immediate memory, and attention/processing speed) were less abnormal in the very old with AD than in the young old with AD. Similarly, the very old with AD showed less severe cortical thinning than the young old with AD in the left posterior cingulate cortex, right lateral temporal cortex, and bilateral parietal cortex and in overall cortical thickness. This effect is partially explained by an age-related decrease in cortical thickness in these brain regions in the HC participants. Conclusions: The typical pattern of AD-related cognitive and morphometric changes seen in the young old appear to be less salient in the very old. Thus, mild cases of AD in the very old may go undetected if one expects to see the prototypical pattern and severity of cognitive or brain changes that occur in the young old with AD. These results underscore the importance of interpreting neuropsychological test performance and morphometric brain measures in reference to the individual's age. Neurology® 2011;77:713–721
An evaluation of techniques used in estimating snail populations.

No uniform method, applicable to all situations, can be developed for the quantitative study of bilharziasis vector snail populations. The selection of survey technique and sampling device depends on the objectives of the study, the circumstances in which the work is carried out, the nature of the habitat and the resources available.The various techniques used in obtaining snail-population estimates are divided into two categories-direct methods and indirect methods. The former involve the collection of snails from a specified habitat or for a specified period of time, while the latter include techniques, such as snail marking and palm-leaf traps, in which the snails are not obtained through the efforts of a collector. Each method and device is described in detail, and its suitability under various conditions is discussed.
Effect of Posterolateral Scar Tissue on Clinical and Echocardiographic Improvement After Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy

Background— Currently, one third of patients treated with cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) do not respond. Nonresponse to CRT may be explained by the presence of scar tissue in the posterolateral left ventricular (LV) segments, which may result in ineffective LV pacing and inadequate LV resynchronization. In the present study, the relationship between transmural posterolateral scar tissue and response to CRT was evaluated. Methods and Results— Forty consecutive patients with end-stage heart failure (NYHA class III/IV), LV ejection fraction ≤35%, QRS duration >120 ms, left bundle-branch block, and chronic coronary artery disease were included. The localization and transmurality of scar tissue were evaluated with contrast-enhanced MRI. Next, LV dyssynchrony was assessed at baseline and immediately after implantation with tissue Doppler imaging. Clinical parameters, LV volumes, and LV ejection fraction were assessed at baseline and at a 6-month follow-up. Fourteen patients (35%) had a transmural (>50% of LV wall thickness) posterolateral scar. In contrast to patients without posterolateral scar tissue, these patients showed a low response rate (14% versus 81%; P<0.05) and did not show improvement in clinical or echocardiographic parameters. In addition, LV dyssynchrony remained unchanged after CRT implantation (84±46 versus 78±41 ms; P=NS). Patients without posterolateral scar tissue and severe baseline dyssynchrony (≥65 ms) showed an excellent response rate of 95% compared with patients with a posterolateral scar and/or absent LV dyssynchrony (11%). Conclusions— CRT does not reduce LV dyssynchrony in patients with transmural scar tissue in the posterolateral LV segments, resulting in clinical and echocardiographic nonresponse to CRT.
The Mode Characteristics of an Asymmetrical Left-Handed Material Slab Waveguide Containing Dispersion

The propagating characteristics of the TM mode for an asymmetrical three-layer slab waveguide with left-handed materials containing dispersion as a core layer are studied. The results indicate that both guided waves and surface waves can propagate in the waveguide. There exists TM0 or TM1 mode for surface waves. However, there is no TM0 mode for guided waves. All TMm (order m>1) are guided waves, all TM modes exist two-mode phenomenon except TM1 mode. In addition, the property of energy flux is also discussed.
The active tension-length curve of vascular smooth muscle related to its cellular components

The active and passive isometric tension-length (internal circumference) relation of vascular smooth muscle has been investigated using a 100-200-micron lumen diameter artery from the rat mesenteric bed. Conditions were established under which maximal activation was obtained at all lengths. Below L0 (the length at which maximum tension, delta T0, was developed) the active tension fell with decreasing length along a line which extrapolated to 0.38 L0; below 1.1 L0 the relation was reversible regardless of the protocol used. Above L0 the active tension fell linearly with increasing length along a line which extrapolated to zero tension at 1.82 L0. At the longer lengths investigated (up to 1.6 L0) the passive tension upon which the active responses were superimposed was as high as 4.4 delta T0. However, measurements of the dynamic characteristics of the preparation (with a time resolution of 2 ms) suggest that the active tension measured is nevertheless a measure of the active properties of the contractile apparatus. Direct light microscopic observation of the effect of length change on the cells within the walls of the preparation showed that changes in vessel length produced, on average, the same percentage change in cell length. Histological examination showed no signs of cell destruction following large extensions. The results suggest that the decrease in tension with extension above L0 is due to changes in the properties of the contractile apparatus, rather than to cellular damage.
Review of oximes available for treatment of nerve agent poisoning

A review was conducted of papers describing the use of N‐methyl‐2‐pyridinealdoxime (PAM), toxogonin or HI‐6 as antidotes to the nerve agents tabun, sarin, soman and VX. The review included use of the oxime alone, oxime plus atropine and oxime plus atropine plus diazepam, given therapeutically, i.e. after nerve agent, in all cases. Experiments with any of these compounds given prophylactically were not considered. The review also included protocols of pyridostigmine prophylaxis and oxime‐atropine therapy (with or without diazepam). It was difficult to draw conclusions as to the best oxime to use, because of lack of data in many cases. The identity of the oxime did not appear to be important when pyridostigmine prophylaxis was combined with atropine‐oxime‐diazepam therapy; in these cases, very good protection was observed in guinea pigs against all four nerve agents. The choice of oxime based on the data presently available may well depend on factors other than protection against lethality, such as cost and availability of the oxime and human toxicity of the oxime. This last factor was also reviewed, and the results showed that toxogonin is likely to cause more side‐effects than PAM or HI‐6. The efficacy of the oximes against the emerging threat agent GF was also reviewed.