Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Increased Concentrations of Glutamate and Glutamine in Normal-Appearing White Matter of Patients with Multiple Sclerosis and Normal MR Imaging Brain Scans

In Multiple Sclerosis (MS) the relationship between disease process in normal-appearing white matter (NAWM) and the development of white matter lesions is not well understood. In this study we used single voxel proton ‘Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy’ (qMRS) to characterize the NAWM and thalamus both in atypical ‘Clinically Definite MS’ (CDMS) patients, MRIneg (N = 15) with very few lesions (two or fewer lesions), and in typical CDMS patients, MRIpos (N = 20) with lesions, in comparison with healthy control subjects (N = 20). In addition, the metabolite concentrations were also correlated with extent of brain atrophy measured using Brain Parenchymal Fraction (BPF) and severity of the disease measured using ‘Multiple Sclerosis Severity Score’ (MSSS). Elevated concentrations of glutamate and glutamine (Glx) were observed in both MS groups (MRIneg 8.12 mM, p<0.001 and MRIpos 7.96 mM p<0.001) compared to controls, 6.76 mM. Linear regressions of Glx and total creatine (tCr) with MSSS were 0.16±0.06 mM/MSSS (p = 0.02) for Glx and 0.06±0.03 mM/MSSS (p = 0.04) for tCr, respectively. Moreover, linear regressions of tCr and myo-Inositol (mIns) with BPF were −6.22±1.63 mM/BPF (p<0.001) for tCr and −7.71±2.43 mM/BPF (p = 0.003) for mIns. Furthermore, the MRIpos patients had lower N-acetylaspartate and N-acetylaspartate-glutamate (tNA) and elevated mIns concentrations in NAWM compared to both controls (tNA: p = 0.04 mIns p<0.001) and MRIneg (tNA: p = 0.03 , mIns: p = 0.002). The results suggest that Glx may be an important marker for pathology in non-lesional white matter in MS. Moreover, Glx is related to the severity of MS independent of number of lesions in the patient. In contrast, increased glial density indicated by increased mIns and decreased neuronal density indicated by the decreased tNA, were only observed in NAWM of typical CDMS patients with white matter lesions.
Quality Information Systems: Repository Support for Evolving Process Models

Abstract. Relationships between Total Quality Management and process support in CASE environments are established in two ways: firstly, by analysing the repository requirements for each stage in the SEI process maturity model, enhanced by team support aspects; secondly, by presenting a quality-centered process model that formally differentiates but also integrates the aspects of process definition, process evaluation, and process improvement.
Towards real-time 3D sound sources mapping with linear microphone arrays

In this paper, we present a method for real-time 3D sound sources mapping using an off-the-shelf robotic perception sensor equipped with a linear microphone array. Conventional approaches to map sound sources in 3D scenarios use dedicated 3D microphone arrays, as this type of arrays provide two degrees of freedom (DOF) observations. Our method addresses the problem of 3D sound sources mapping using a linear microphone array, which only provides one DOF observations making the estimation of the sound sources location more challenging. In the proposed method, multi hypotheses tracking is combined with a new sound source parametrisation to provide with a good initial guess for an online optimisation strategy. A joint optimisation is carried out to estimate 6 DOF sensor poses and 3 DOF landmarks together with the sound sources locations. Additionally, a dedicated sensor model is proposed to accurately model the noise of the Direction of Arrival (DOA) observation when using a linear microphone array. Comprehensive simulation and experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method. In addition, a real-time implementation of our method has been made available as open source software for the benefit of the community.
Continuous Intra-Arterial Infusion of Nimodipine During Embolization of Cerebral Aneurysms Associated With Vasospasm

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Despite rigorous efforts, cerebral vasospasm remains an important cause of morbidity and mortality in patients who survive their initial subarachnoid hemorrhage. In cases of intracranial ruptured aneurysm associated with vasospasm, we evaluated the effectiveness of combined embolization of an aneurysm and intra-arterial infusion of nimodipine, which continued during the entire procedure. Materials and METHODS: Ten patients with ruptured aneurysms associated with vasospasm who were treated in a single session were reviewed retrospectively. After initial intra-arterial infusion of nimodipine (1–2 mg within 10–15 minutes), they underwent occlusion of the aneurysm with coils under continuous intra-arterial infusion of nimodipine at a dose of 1 mg per hour. RESULTS: Angiography showed severe proximal vasospasm in 1 patient, proximal and distal in 3 patients, and distal in 3 patients. There was also moderate proximal vasospasm in 4 patients, proximal and distal in 1 patient, and distal in 1 patient. Complete occlusion of the aneurysm was achieved in 5 patients, incomplete occlusion in 3 patients, and a small neck remnant in 2 patients. Final angiograms also demonstrated complete clearance of a proximal spasm in 4 patients, and complete clearance of proximal and distal spasms in another 4 patients. Mean initial dose of nimodipine was 1.375 mg, and mean continuous infusion dose was 1.275 mg (mean total dose, 2.65 mg). No medical complications related to extended infusion of nimodipine occurred. CONCLUSION: In this small series, extended intra-arterial infusion of nimodipine up to the end of the embolization procedure was effective and safe in patients with a ruptured aneurysm and associated vasospasm. This technique seems to increase the security of the procedure as well as force further vasorelaxation when the endovascular route is used to treat both the aneurysm and vasospasm in a single step.
The differential effects of rheumatoid arthritis on distress among patients and partners

This study investigated primary and secondary stressors of distress in rheumatoid arthritis patients and partners, analysing data of 61 couples. Patients’ disability was found to be a primary stressor of their distress. In addition, it also had an indirect effect on partners’ distress through partners’ primary stressor, perceived burden. Marital quality and negative transactions can be considered joint secondary stressors for partners, not for patients. An indication of an indirect effect of marital quality on patients’ distress was found, through partners’ burden. Using a multilevel model, which takes into account the dependence between patients’ and partners’ distress, 36% of the variance in patients’ distress could be explained, whereas 68% of partners’ distress variance was explained. More knowledge on how patient and partner influence each other's distress is needed to develop psychosocial interventions that will help patients and partners minimize their psychological distress and prevent deterioration of their marital quality.
Anomaly Intrusions Detection Based on Support Vector Machines with an Improved Bat Algorithm

The continuous proliferation of more complex and various security threats leads to the conclusion that new solutions are required. Intrusion Detection Systems can be a pertinent solution because they can deal with the large data volumes of logs gathered from the multitude of systems and can even identify new types of attacks if based on anomaly detection. In this paper we propose an IDS model which includes two stages: feature selection with information gain and detection with Support Vector Machines (SVM). A draw-back of SVM is that its performance results are influenced by its user input parameters. Therefore, in order to better the classifier we exploit the advantages of a recent Swarm Intelligence (SI) algorithm, the Bat Algorithm (BA), which we improve by enhancing its randomization with Lévy flights. We test our model for the NSL-KDD dataset and prove that it can outperform the original BA, ABC or the popular PSO.
The organization of Japanese prosody

This paper discusses several topics concerning what I call the ,, semantic constraint" on Japanese compounds, a constraint which blocks the prosodic compound formation process in the language. The main discussion starts with the claim that there are two types of compounds in Japanese, "compounding compounds, " to which the prosodic compound rule readily applies, and "non-compounding compounds", which somehow fail to undergo the process. After justifying this position, I will attempt to make a detailed examination of the marked semantic structures constituting the "semantic constraint, " which are responsible for the second type of compounds. I will also show the fact that the compound formation process in English admits of exceptions which are significantly similar to those of Japanese. The second part of the paper focuses on the nature and role of the "semantic constraint" in "complex" compound nouns, or compound nouns consisting of three or more elements. It will be shown that this constraint enables us to uncover the regularities which these compounds exhibit in accentual patterning. -i pý. 'fiý#, , 26 -iZ. MZ
Prior Criminality and Employment of Social Workers with Substantial Access to Children: A Decision Board Analysis

SUMMARY The central purpose of this research was to find the extent and circumstances of the influence which a criminal record has upon appointment as a social worker with substantial, unsuper vised access to children. One would suppose that applicants with a conviction for indecently assaulting a child would never be appointed, but that those with other kinds of record would be appointed to the extent to which prior offences were relatively trivial, distant in time and involved property rather than people. The reality was much less clear-cut. The study may be seen as a way of depicting the pattern and process of current practice. It has clear implications for the refinement of guidance to achieve nationally desired ends of child protection. This article will draw upon data gathered for a Ph.D., incorporating interviews with every social services department (SSD) in England and Wales. The study has yielded interesting findings relating to (in)consistency in decision making across SSDs. The findings from the first 64 interviews have been used for the article. Preliminary analysis suggests that the remaining interviews show similar patterns. The focus will be on possibly the most significant finding of the research: that six SSDs in a decision-making process relating to a number of fictitious candidates, revealed that they would have agreed to employ one of the candidates as a children and family social worker, despite knowledge of that candidate's conviction for indecently assaulting a child.
Psychology of the Scientist: LXVI. The Idiot Savants Have Taken over the Psychology Labs! or Why in Science Using the Rejection of the Null Hypothesis as the Basis for Affirming the Research Hypothesis is Unwarranted

The fable of a group of idiot savants, who conduct methodologically flawless research to test senseless research hypotheses and are able to affirm some of them on the basis of the rejection of the null hypothesis, is used to dramatize the argument that the rejection of the null hypothesis, by itself, is not sufficient grounds for affirming the research hypothesis. Reasons and examples are given to argue that affirmation of a scientific hypothesis must be based primarily on substantive evidence that is independent of an hypothesis test.
Oxidative stress generated by hemorrhagic shock recruits Toll-like receptor 4 to the plasma membrane in macrophages

Oxidative stress generated by ischemia/reperfusion is known to prime inflammatory cells for increased responsiveness to subsequent stimuli, such as lipopolysaccharide (LPS). The mechanism(s) underlying this effect remains poorly elucidated. These studies show that alveolar macrophages recovered from rodents subjected to hemorrhagic shock/resuscitation expressed increased surface levels of Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), an effect inhibited by adding the antioxidant N-acetylcysteine to the resuscitation fluid. Consistent with a role for oxidative stress in this effect, in vitro H2O2 treatment of RAW 264.7 macrophages similarly caused an increase in surface TLR4. The H2O2-induced increase in surface TLR4 was prevented by depleting intracellular calcium or disrupting the cytoskeleton, suggesting the involvement of receptor exocytosis. Further, fluorescent resonance energy transfer between TLR4 and the raft marker GM1 as well as biochemical analysis of the raft components demonstrated that oxidative stress redistributes TLR4 to lipid rafts in the plasma membrane. Preventing the oxidant-induced movement of TLR4 to lipid rafts using methyl-β-cyclodextrin precluded the increased responsiveness of cells to LPS after H2O2 treatment. Collectively, these studies suggest a novel mechanism whereby oxidative stress might prime the responsiveness of cells of the innate immune system.
The association between prehospital endotracheal intubation attempts and survival to hospital discharge among out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients.

OBJECTIVES The benefit of prehospital endotracheal intubation (ETI) among individuals experiencing out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OOHCA) has not been fully examined. The objective of this study was to determine if prehospital ETI attempts were associated with return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) and survival to discharge among individuals experiencing OOHCA. METHODS This retrospective study included individuals who experienced a medical cardiac arrest between July 2006 and December 2008 and had resuscitation efforts initiated by paramedics from Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Outcome variables were prehospital ROSC and survival to hospital discharge, while the primary independent variable was the number of prehospital ETI attempts. RESULTS There were 1,142 cardiac arrests included in the analytic data set. Prehospital ROSC occurred in 299 individuals (26.2%). When controlling for initial arrest rhythm and other confounding variables, individuals with no ETI attempted were 2.33 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.63 to 3.33) times more likely to have ROSC compared to those with one successful ETI attempt. Of the 299 individuals with prehospital ROSC, 118 (39.5%) were subsequently discharged alive from the hospital. Individuals having no ETI were 5.46 (95% CI = 3.36 to 8.90) times more likely to be discharged from the hospital alive compared to individuals with one successful ETI attempt. CONCLUSIONS Results from these analyses suggest a negative association between prehospital ETI attempts and survival from OOHCA. In this study, the individuals most likely to have prehospital ROSC and survival to hospital discharge were those who did not have a reported ETI attempt. Further comparative research should assess the potential causes of the demonstrated associations.
Rebuilding identity after brain injury: Standard cognitive and music-evoked autobiographical memory training

Background: This paper presents a report involving a male patient who had experienced a subarachnoid haemorrhage. He presented with profound anterograde and retrograde amnesia, which caused him to be severely confused about his social contacts and his environment. Aim: To describe the complexity of amnesia and identity loss and examine how the combination of cognitive and music-evoked autobiographical training affected a person with anterograde and retrograde amnesia following subarachnoid haemorrhages (acquired brain injury [ABI]). Method: The 47-year-old male patient, who had worked as a DJ for some parts of his life previously had a good memory of musical events and facts about musical artists. This patient received an applied cognitive training programme (part I), which was based on spaced retrieval and errorless learning methods. The patient also received therapy involving the administration of music-evoked emotional responses (part II). The cognitive training programme consisted of 13 hourly sessions spread over four weeks. The music-based intervention included 5 hourly sessions, which took part place over two weeks. Results: Part I optimised the patient’s name recall and local orientation. The resulting recovery of dayto-day memory and the awareness of the dependence on learning strategies led to the patient having a realisation of his severe loss of autobiographical memory. The patient became frustrated, angry and depressed and was at risk of disengaging from most areas of his neuro-rehabilitation programme. Part II enabled the patient to link the music or the artist with autobiographical events and to elicit emotional responses to such events. These were stringed into an autobiographical narrative with the result that the patient gained insight into the person he used to be and connected with past emotional experiences. The regained autobiographical memories were maintained beyond the training context. Conclusion: The patient’s mood and motivation to continue his neuro-rehabilitation programme improved. This enabled him to make further progress regarding his functional independence.
Hiding the presence of individuals from shared databases

Advances in information technology, and its use in research, are increasing both the need for anonymized data and the risks of poor anonymization. We present a metric, δ-presence, that clearly links the quality of anonymization to the risk posed by inadequate anonymization. We show that existing anonymization techniques are inappropriate for situations where δ-presence is a good metric (specifically, where knowing an individual is in the database poses a privacy risk), and present algorithms for effectively anonymizing to meet δ-presence. The algorithms are evaluated in the context of a real-world scenario, demonstrating practical applicability of the approach.
A 0.94mW/Gb/s 22Gb/s 2-tap partial-response DFE receiver in 40nm LP CMOS

A decision-feedback equalizer (DFE) reconstructs the post-cursor inter-symbol interference (ISI) pattern from the detected data sequence and subtracts it from the received signal before detecting the next symbol. Therefore, DFE's operating speed is fundamentally limited by a 1-unit-interval (UI) feedback loop that is often the critical path in high-speed designs. Partial-response DFE (prDFE) architectures push the feedback loop away from the analog front-end to the post-slicer domain by making redundant decisions, as shown in Fig. 2.8. 1(a). Since distinction between post and current data requires a sequential element to prevent a race, a latch overhead exists in the critical path of many prDFE designs [1]. For a 1-tap prDFE, the design in [2] entirely eliminates the sequential element from the critical path leveraging a unique race-free property of 1-tap half-rate prDFE. However, the architecture is not extendable to larger number of taps. For a 2-tap prDFE, overhead of the sequential element is reduced in a quarter-rate architecture. Figure 2.8. 1(b) shows the block diagram of a receiver front-end with a shared CTLE, half-rate slicers and a quarter-rate prDFE. The critical path in the quarter-rate implementation is limited by a 2:1 mux delay (Tmux) and a flop setup and clock-to-output overhead (TFF), as shown in Fig. 2.8. 2(a). Assuming TFF = 2Tmux, the loop delay increases by 200% compared to the absolute minimum for speculation, Tmux. Figure 2.8. 2(a) also shows the race that is prevented by employing the sequential elements in a quarter-rate implementation.
IFN-γ and R-848 Dependent Activation of Human Monocyte-Derived Dendritic Cells by Neisseria meningitidis Adhesin A1

A soluble recombinant form of Neisseria meningitidis adhesin A (NadAΔ351–405), proposed as a constituent of anti-meningococcal B vaccines, is here shown to specifically interact with and immune-modulate human monocyte-derived dendritic cells (mo-DCs). After priming with IFN-γ and stimulation with NadAΔ351–405, mo-DCs strongly up-regulated maturation markers CD83, CD86, CD80, and HLA-DR, secreted moderate quantities of TNF-α, IL-6, and IL-8, and produced a slight, although significant, amount of IL-12p70. Costimulation of mo-DCs with NadAΔ351–405 and the imidoazoquinoline drug R-848, believed to mimic bacterial RNA, increased CD86 in an additive way, but strongly synergized the secretion of IL-12p70, IL-1, IL-6, TNF-α, and MIP-1α, especially after IFN-γ priming. CD86/CD80 overexpression correlated with the occupation of high-(kd ∼ 80 nM) and low-(kd ∼ 4 μM) affinity binding sites for NadAΔ351–405. Alternatively, secretion of IL-12p70 and TNF-α, IL-6, and IL-8 corresponded to the occupation of high- or low-affinity receptors, respectively. Mo-DCs matured by IFN-γ and NadAΔ351–405 supported the proliferation of naive CD4+ T lymphocytes, inducing the differentiation of both IFN-γ and IL-4 producing phenotypes. Our data show that NadA not only is a good immunogen but is as well endowed with a proimmune, self-adjuvating, activity.
Direct Measures in Environmental Education Evaluation: Behavioral Intentions versus Observable Actions

The objective of many environmental education programs is to promote pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors in students. However, evaluation of these programs has focused on asking participants what they think (attitudes) and what they do (behaviors) regarding the environment problems through self-report questionnaires and interviews. These methods of collecting information provide data on the participants' perspective based on their reported behavior, which in many cases is not the same as their actual behavior. Unfortunately, few evaluations use direct measures of behavior instead of self-reports. This article reviews existing research on evaluation of environmental education programs, and proposes alternatives that incorporate direct measures of observable behavior as an additional evaluation tool. Examples of situations where direct measures are adaptable include assessment of students' learning after a stream ecology activity through a performance assessment, observations of students' behaviors related with litter reduction and water pollution, and observtions of students' disposal of liquids into storm drains. Direct measures provide first-hand information about the impact of environmental education programs and specific feedback on how these programs are or are not accomplishing their goals.
Passionate rationalism: the role of emotion in decision making

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to argue that emotion has a central role to play in rational decision making based on recent research in the neuroanatomy of emotion. As a result, traditional rational decision‐making theories, including Herbert Simon's modified model of satisficing that sharply demarcates emotions and values from rationality and rational decision making, need substantial revision. The paper concludes by outlining some central features of a theory of emotional decisions that is biologically more realistic than the traditional rationalist‐cognitive model.Design/methodology/approach – The paper employs contemporary scientific as well as traditional philosophical criteria in its argumentation. Methodologically, it can be described as an example of applying naturalistic philosophy to a central issue of human thought and experience, and how humans are able to value things at all on the basis of their neuroanatomy.Findings – The paper presents some initial features of a new theory of emoti.