Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Oxcarbazepine: Drug of the Future in the Treatment of Trigeminal Neuralgia

Background: The aim of the study was to estimate the efficacy of oxcarbazepine in trigeminal neuralgia. Oxcarbazepine is a novel antiepileptic drug, and its effect on trigeminal neuralgia has not been studied extensively previously. Materials and methods: Fifty-three patients with trigeminal neuralgia (34 men and 19 women) took a mean dose of 600 mg of oxcarbazepine for a period of three weeks. Pain intensity was measured by using visual analog scale. Results: Of the 53 patients, 42 (79%) were completely or well controlled by OXC, and nine (17%) partially but acceptably controlled. Treatment with OXC was therefore satisfactory initially in 51 (96%) of the patients. In seven of these patients, mild transient side effects occurred but did not necessitate cessation of treatment. Conclusion: OXC appears to be an effective substitute for carbamazepine in those patients intolerant of this agent, or experiencing significant side effects.
Evaluation of End-to-End Learning for Autonomous Driving: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

End-to-End learning for autonomous vehicles has received much attention recently. Departing from traditional complex systems, it promises to address the steering, throttle, and braking predictions with a single neural network. However, it requires significant amounts of diverse training data, high-end cameras and expensive computation units. In this paper we describe an end-to-end learning platform for autonomous driving, built with emphasis on minimizing requirements, both in terms of software and hardware. We accomplish autonomous navigation on a closed track with a single low-cost camera and a typical laptop. We describe each step, from data pre-processing to actuation, evaluate trade-offs, and motivate decisions. Our analysis concludes that standard performance metrics are incomplete; thus we expand our analysis to heuristic behavioral evaluation by visualizing the backpropagation process, broadening our understanding of the deep neural network.
Structuring Operative Notes using Active Learning

We present an active learning method for placing the event mentions in an operative note into a pre-specified event structure. Event mentions are first classified into action, peripheral action, observation, and report events. The actions are further classified into their appropriate location within the event structure. We examine how utilizing active learning significantly reduces the time needed to completely annotate a corpus of 2,820 appendectomy notes.
In vitro Biological Activities of Selected Medicinal Plant Extracts

Terrestrial plants have played a dominant therapeutic role in the treatment of human ailments from time immemorial. Plants have been used as a primary source of medicine for millennia, with the earliest recorded uses found in Babylon circa 1770 B.C. in the code of Hammurabhi and in ancient Egypt circa 1550 B.C [1]. In India, reference to the system of Ayurveda dates back to 900 B.C. Till last century, medical practice depended largely on the use of plants and the knowledge about the use of herbal medicines was mainly based on age-long empirical experience communicated from one generation to the next which formed the basis of many traditional medicinal systems including Ayurveda in India. It is common knowledge in many of today’s societies that plants or their extracts continue to provide effective treatment for diseases of all kinds, as they have been for centuries. Ayurvedic medicine in India and traditional Chinese medicine both depend to a large extent on the use of precise plant-based prescriptions for the treatment of specific disorders. Similar contemporary practices are found in many regions, for example in other parts of Asia, South America, Africa, the Middle East and Russia [2]. A major lacuna in Ayurveda is the lack of drug standardization, information and quality control. Most of the Ayurvedic medicines are in the form of crude extracts which are a mixture of several ingredients and the active principles when isolated individually fail to give desired activity. This implies that the activity of the extract is the synergistic effect of its various components. In the absence of pharmacopoeia data on the various plant extracts, it is not possible to isolate or standardize the active contents having the desired effects [3]. The scientific study of traditional medicines, derivation of drugs through bio prospecting and systematic conservation of the concerned medicinal plants are thus of great importance. Traditional systems of medicine continue to be widely practised on many accounts. Population rise, inadequate supply of drugs, prohibitive cost of treatments, side effects of several allopathic drugs and Article Info
Antenatal Betamethasone Administration Alters Stress Physiology in Healthy Neonates

OBJECTIVE: To analyze hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis balance in healthy newborns after antenatal betamethasone treatment for lung maturation where delivery could be prolonged until or near term. METHODS: In a prospective observational study, salivary cortisol and cortisone levels were measured at the fourth day of life during resting conditions and in response to a pain-induced stress event in 23 neonates with antenatal exposure to a single course of betamethasone (2×12 mg) and compared with 40 controls. The mean interval between betamethasone treatment and delivery was 60±23 days. RESULTS: On day 4 of life, neonates in the control group exhibited a significant increase in cortisol and cortisone from baseline levels after the stress induction (1.175–2.4 ng/mL for cortisol and 11.35–18.15 ng/mL for cortisone [both P<.05]), whereas, in betamethasone-exposed neonates, cortisol and cortisone stress response was not significantly different from baseline levels (1.39–1.6 ng/mL for cortisone [P=.76] and 14.8–17.1 ng/mL for cortisol [P=.69]). No influence of gestational age at betamethasone administration (P=.76) or gestational age at delivery (P=.71) on stress response patterns was observed in a multiple stepwise regression. CONCLUSION: A single course of antenatal betamethasone treatment induces a suppression of stress reactivity in healthy newborns. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II
A space-diversity optical labeling scheme with optical labels derived from ASE noise

We propose an optical labeling scheme whereby the optical label and payload are transmitted separately on two different fibers that carry bidirectional traffic. This eliminates the complex optical label and payload separation and combination processes which are usually required at the intermediate optical switching nodes. Another novel feature of our proposed scheme is the use of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise as a light source for the optical labels. The labels are modulated using a reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (RSOA) that is injected with a narrow-band ASE noise from a low-cost broadband ASE noise source. The effects of Rayleigh backscattering and reflection noise on this bidirectional transmission system are also demonstrated experimentally.
Human cytomegalovirus seroprevalence in three socioeconomically different urban areas during the first trimester: a population-based cohort study.

BACKGROUND To re-evaluate the impact of socioeconomic status and human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) seroprevalence during pregnancy, we carried out a population-based cohort study. METHODS IgG and IgM antibodies to HCMV and IgG avidity were studied by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in three different socioeconomic areas (SEA) in the 9-12th week of pregnancy of 1088 consecutive mothers. RESULTS The overall IgG seropositivity was 70.7%, ranging from 60.9 to 76.4% in 'upper' to 'lower' SEA (P = 0.0004). The HCMV IgM seropositivity was 4.0%, ranging from 3.8% in the 'upper' and 'intermediate' SEA to 4.6% in the 'lower' SEA. Serologically acute cases, defined by low avidity of IgG, represented 1.7% of the pregnancies in the 'upper' SEA compared with 1.0 and 1.1% in the other two areas. In the 'lower' SEA there were twice as many recurrent infections as in the others, 3.6 versus 1.7%. The low impact of age did not increase after elimination of the effects of SEA and parity. Miscarriages were associated neither with IgG nor with IgM positivity, although the percentage of >/=2 miscarriages was 8.8% in seronegative women compared with 11.2% and 13.6% in IgG- and IgM-positive women. CONCLUSIONS Social environment seems to be the most powerful factor, predicting both IgG seroprevalence and recurrences during pregnancy.
Assimilation of Diazotrophic Nitrogen into Pelagic Food Webs

The fate of diazotrophic nitrogen (ND) fixed by planktonic cyanobacteria in pelagic food webs remains unresolved, particularly for toxic cyanophytes that are selectively avoided by most herbivorous zooplankton. Current theory suggests that ND fixed during cyanobacterial blooms can enter planktonic food webs contemporaneously with peak bloom biomass via direct grazing of zooplankton on cyanobacteria or via the uptake of bioavailable ND (exuded from viable cyanobacterial cells) by palatable phytoplankton or microbial consortia. Alternatively, ND can enter planktonic food webs post-bloom following the remineralization of bloom detritus. Although the relative contribution of these processes to planktonic nutrient cycles is unknown, we hypothesized that assimilation of bioavailable ND (e.g., nitrate, ammonium) by palatable phytoplankton and subsequent grazing by zooplankton (either during or after the cyanobacterial bloom) would be the primary pathway by which ND was incorporated into the planktonic food web. Instead, in situ stable isotope measurements and grazing experiments clearly documented that the assimilation of ND by zooplankton outpaced assimilation by palatable phytoplankton during a bloom of toxic Nodularia spumigena Mertens. We identified two distinct temporal phases in the trophic transfer of ND from N. spumigena to the plankton community. The first phase was a highly dynamic transfer of ND to zooplankton with rates that covaried with bloom biomass while bypassing other phytoplankton taxa; a trophic transfer that we infer was routed through bloom-associated bacteria. The second phase was a slowly accelerating assimilation of the dissolved-ND pool by phytoplankton that was decoupled from contemporaneous variability in N. spumigena concentrations. These findings provide empirical evidence that ND can be assimilated and transferred rapidly throughout natural plankton communities and yield insights into the specific processes underlying the propagation of ND through pelagic food webs.
Controlled Authoring of Biological Experiment Reports

We give a demonstration of an application of XRCE's controlled text authoring system MDA to biological experiment reports. This work is the result of a collaboration between XRCE's Document Content Models team, CNRS's Institut de Biologie Structurale, and Protein'eXpert, a company specialized in biotechnology based in Grenoble. We start with a brief presentation of the partners involved and their respective goals. We then give some technical background on the MDA system. Some novel features of the application are discussed, in particular how MDA can be used for integrating the formalization of an experimental protocol with its associated textual documentation.
A Novel Web Page Recommender System for Anonymous Users Based on Clustering of Web Pages

— Information overload is major problem of today’s internet use. Users frequently get much more information than needed. Web Personalization and recommender systems are becoming popular now days to overcome this problem. We have proposed a novel web page recommender system to improve browsing experience of anonymous users. We have used web usage mining technique for personalizing a web site and recommendation of web pages. This technique uses preprocessing, analysis for finding the relationship among web pages, clustering and classification phases of data mining. The preprocessing step aims at maintaining consistency in dataset. We have modelled the relationship among web pages with novel measures of distance matrix, occurrence frequency matrix and relationship matrix. A virtual graph is created corresponding to the relationship matrix to show the relationship among web pages. The proposed method partitions the virtual graph into various clusters i.e. navigation patterns by proposing an enhanced depth first search algorithm. It is a graph based partitioning algorithm. We classify the active user under consideration into one of the cluster by using LCS algorithm. Finally, we used a threshold value to recommend only optimum number of web pages. Use of novel measures for finding the relationship, use of threshold values at the time of formation of clusters as well as at the time of recommendation of web pages gives us better results in term of improved visit coherence, accuracy, coverage and F1 measures. We get max. 61% accuracy, 49.2% avg. coverage and 28.87% avg. F1 values in the recommendation of web pages. Similarly, we get 57.8% avg. visit coherence in the formation of clusters and a minimum of 15 % outliers
A novel framework for efficient automated singer identification in large music databases

Over the past decade, there has been explosive growth in the availability of multimedia data, particularly image, video, and music. Because of this, content-based music retrieval has attracted attention from the multimedia database and information retrieval communities. Content-based music retrieval requires us to be able to automatically identify particular characteristics of music data. One such characteristic, useful in a range of applications, is the identification of the singer in a musical piece. Unfortunately, existing approaches to this problem suffer from either low accuracy or poor scalability. In this article, we propose a novel scheme, called Hybrid Singer Identifier (HSI), for efficient automated singer recognition. HSI uses multiple low-level features extracted from both vocal and nonvocal music segments to enhance the identification process; it achieves this via a hybrid architecture that builds profiles of individual singer characteristics based on statistical mixture models. An extensive experimental study on a large music database demonstrates the superiority of our method over state-of-the-art approaches in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, scalability, and robustness.
Functional Diversity of the Schistosoma mansoni Tyrosine Kinases

Schistosoma mansoni, one of the causative agents of schistosomiasis, has a complex life cycle infecting over 200 million people worldwide. Such a successful and prolific parasite life cycle has been shown to be dependent on the adaptive interaction between the parasite and hosts. Tyrosine kinases (TKs) play a key role in signaling pathways as demonstrated by a large body of experimental work in eukaryotes. Furthermore, comparative genomics have allowed the identification of TK homologs and provided insights into the functional role of TKs in several biological systems. Finally, TK structural biology has provided a rational basis for obtaining selective inhibitors directed to the treatment of human diseases. This paper covers the important aspects of the phospho-tyrosine signaling network in S. mansoni, Caenorhabditis elegans, and humans, the main process of functional diversification of TKs, that is, protein-domain shuffling, and also discusses TKs as targets for the development of new anti-schistosome drugs.
Sweeteners in Our Diets and World Health Organization Guidelines on Free Sugars Intake

World Health Organization (WHO) refers to monosaccharides of glucose, fructose, and disaccharides of sucrose, maltose that added to foods, drinks, baked goods and confectioneries, plus sugars presents in honey, fruit juice and fruit juice concentrates as free sugars or added sugars because there is strong evidence of high risk of overweight, obesity and tooth decay from consuming of these type of sugars. WHO does not refer to naturally sugars present in fresh fruits, vegetables and milk as free sugars but refer to them as natural sugars or intrinsic sugars because they are encapsulated by plants cell wall or naturally occurred in milk and are digested slowly to inter blood stream comparing to free sugars and there is no reported evidence of adverse effects from the consumption of these naturally present sugars in fruits, vegetables, grains, milk or milk products.
Usability Analysis of Visual Programming Environments: A 'Cognitive Dimensions' Framework

Abstract The cognitive dimensions framework is a broad-brush evaluation technique for interactive devices and for non-interactive notations. It sets out a small vocabulary of terms designed to capture the cognitively-relevant aspects of structure, and shows how they can be traded off against each other. The purpose of this paper is to propose the framework as an evaluation technique for visual programming environments. We apply it to two commercially-available dataflow languages (with further examples from other systems) and conclude that it is effective and insightful; other HCI-based evaluation techniques focus on different aspects and would make good complements. Insofar as the examples we used are representative, current VPLs are successful in achieving a good ‘closeness of match’, but designers need to consider the ‘viscosity ’ (resistance to local change) and the ‘secondary notation’ (possibility of conveying extra meaning by choice of layout, colour, etc.).
Obesity as an independent risk factor for elective and emergency caesarean delivery in nulliparous women – systematic review and meta‐analysis of cohort studies

The objective of the study was to investigate the association between increasing maternal body mass index (BMI) and elective/emergency caesarean delivery rates. Systematic review and meta‐analysis of published cohort studies were used. The bibliographic databases, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, were searched systematically, with no language restrictions, from 1996 to May 2007. MeSH terms and key words for ‘pregnancy’, ‘obesity’, ‘overweight,’‘body mass index’ and ‘caesarean section’ were combined with the Cochrane Collaboration strategy for identifying primary studies. Finally, 11 papers were considered eligible for inclusion in the review. Although all the papers were cohort studies, only three were prospective in nature. Compared with women with normal BMI (20–25 kg m−2), the crude pooled odds ratios (95% confidence intervals) for caesarean section in overweight (BMI 25–30 kg m−2), obese (BMI 30–35 kg m−2) and morbidly obese (BMI > 35 kg m−2) women were 1.53 (1.48, 1.58), 2.26 (2.04, 2.51) and 3.38 (2.49, 4.57) respectively. The pooled odds of having an emergency caesarean section were 1.64 (95% confidence intervals 1.55, 1.73) in overweight and 2.23 (2.07, 2.42) in obese women. Caesarean delivery risk is increased by 50% in overweight women and is more than double for obese women compared with women with normal BMI.
Valid Inference in Partially Unstable Generalized Method of Moments Models

This paper considers time series Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) models where a subset of the parameters are time varying. We focus on an empirically relevant case with moderately large instabilities, which are well approximated by a local asymptotic embedding that does not allow the instability to be detected with certainty, even in the limit. We show that for many forms of the instability and a large class of GMM models, usual GMM inference on the subset of stable parameters is asymptotically unaffected by the partial instability. In the empirical analysis of presumably stable parameters—such as structural parameters in Euler conditions—one can thus ignore moderate instabilities in other parts of the model and still obtain approximately correct inference. Copyright , Wiley-Blackwell.
Blood concentrations of polymorphonuclear leucocyte elastase and interleukin‐6 are indicators for the occurrence of multiple organ failures at the early stage of acute pancreatitis

We studied potential indicators of severe acute pancreatitis by measuring the blood concentrations of various cytokines, polymorphonuclear leucocyte elastase (PMN‐E), acute phase reactants, pancreatic amylase (P‐AMY), pancreatic elastase‐1 (E‐1) and white blood cell (WBC) counts in patients with acute pancreatitis. In addition, the presence of multiple organ damage was assessed. Subjects consisted of 22 patients with acute pancreatitis including severe (n= 11), moderate (n= 4) and mild (n= 7) cases. A significant positive correlation was observed between the number of organs damaged and the peak concentrations of interleukin (IL)‐6, PMN‐E, C‐reactive protein (CRP) and pancreatic secretory trypsin inhibitor (PSTI). Among these markers, blood concentrations of PMN‐E and IL‐6 rapidly increased and peaked at the early phase of acute pancreatitis whereas CRP and PSTI did not. The elevation of PMN‐E and IL‐6 was greater the more severe the symptoms. However, no significant correlation was observed between the number of organs damaged and the maximum serum concentrations of P‐AMY and E‐1, or the WBC count, which have been considered to be markers of pancreatitis. These results suggest that PMN‐E and IL‐6 concentrations are useful indicators of severity and prognosis and their determination facilitates the selection of appropriate treatment in the early stages of disease to prevent the aggressive progression of acute pancreatitis.
Spectral efficiency optimized MIMO transmission using AMC and power assignment based on SNR ordering

A new transmission scheme is designed to maximize average spectral efficiency in a MIMO link considering instantaneous bit error rate (BER) and total power constraints. Discrete link adaptation using adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) is utilized to combat multipath fading which is implementable in practical systems. ZF receiver is employed by which MIMO channel becomes equivalent to several parallel non interfering links. Instead of the mentioned actual links, virtual links are considered which are ordered based on their SNRs. Optimized power levels are assigned based on SNR ordering provisioning total power constraint. Numerical evaluations show a noticeable performance improvement by the proposed scheme compared to the scheme in which power is uniformly divided among actual links.
A method for the design and development of distributed applications using UML

Presents a design and development method for distributed applications running on top of advanced object-oriented middleware platforms. We introduce the basic concept of the distinction between a set of concepts and their relations, the definition of a notation supporting such concepts and rules for automatic code generation that help to provide a smooth transition from the design step to the implementation stage. Although the set of concepts is based on RM-ODP (Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing), we refine a number of ODP definitions in order to reflect practical design tasks. The supporting notation we present rests upon the customization of the Unified Modeling Language (UML). Automatic code generation issues are presented briefly, taking a extended CORBA 2.3 object middleware as the target distributed infrastructure.