Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Endovascular Treatment of Symptomatic Intradural Vertebral Dissecting Aneurysms

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to report our experience with endovascular treatment of 14 patients with symptomatic intradural vertebral dissecting aneurysms. Materials AND METHODS: Between January 2000 and January 2006, 14 patients with symptomatic intradural dissecting vertebral aneurysms were treated. A total of 756 (568 ruptured, 188 unruptured) endovascular treated aneurysms (incidence, 1.9%) were treated during this period. There were 7 female and 7 male patients with a mean age of 48 years (age range, 10–64 years). Thirteen patients (93%) presented with subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) and 1 (7%) presented with acute symptoms of mass effect on the brain stem. RESULTS: Treatment consisted of coil occlusion of the dissected arterial segment including the aneurysm (internal coil trapping) in 13 of 14 patients and stent placement over the aneurysm as the only therapy in 1 patient. All aneurysms and occluded arterial segments remained occluded on follow-up imaging at 6 to 13 months, and none of the patients had infarctions in the medulla or territory of the posterior inferior cerebellar artery. Clinical outcome was excellent in 11 patients; 3 had cognitive impairment after SAH but were independent in daily activities. There were no episodes of recurrent hemorrhage. CONCLUSION: Intradural vertebral dissecting aneurysms presenting with SAH should be treated promptly because of the high risk of recurrent hemorrhage. In our experience, trapping of the dissected segment with coils was straightforward, could be done in most patients, and was effective in preventing rebleeding. In our opinion, only in exceptional circumstances are more sophisticated techniques aimed at preservation of the parent artery necessary.
Practical Real‐Time Lens‐Flare Rendering

We present a practical real‐time approach for rendering lens‐flare effects. While previous work employed costly ray tracing or complex polynomial expressions, we present a coarser, but also significantly faster solution. Our method is based on a first‐order approximation of the ray transfer in an optical system, which allows us to derive a matrix that maps lens flare‐producing light rays directly to the sensor. The resulting approach is easy to implement and produces physically‐plausible images at high framerates on standard off‐the‐shelf graphics hardware.
A Framework for Hybrid and Analogical Planning

This chapter describes a model and an underlying theoretical framework for hybrid planning. Modern planning domain-description formalisms are based on purely sentential languages. Sentential representations produce problem encodings that often require the system to carry out an unnecessary amount of trivial deductions, preventing it from concentrating all the computational effort on the actual search for a plan and leading to a loss in performances. This chapter illustrates how techniques from the area of knowledge representation and reasoning can be adopted to develop more efficient domain-description languages. In particular, experimental evidence suggests that the adoption of analogical descriptions can lead to significant improvements in planning performance. Although often more efficient, however, analogical representations are generally less expressive than sentential ones. The hybrid approach proposed here provides a framework in which sentential and analogical descriptions can be integrated and used interchangeably, thereby overcoming the limitations and exploiting the advantages of both paradigms.
Involvement of protein kinase C in serotonin-induced spike broadening and synaptic facilitation in sensorimotor connections of Aplysia.

1. Plasticity at the connections between sensory neurons and their follower cells in Aplysia has been used extensively as a model system to examine mechanisms of simple forms of learning. Earlier studies have concluded that serotonin (5-HT) is a key modulatory transmitter and that it exerts its short-term actions via cAMP-dependent activation of protein kinase A. Subsequently, it has become clear that other kinase systems such as protein kinase C (PKC) also may be involved in the actions of 5-HT. 2. Application of phorbol esters, which activate PKC, produced a slowly developing spike broadening but had little effect on excitability (a process known to be primarily cAMP dependent). Moreover, the effects of phorbol esters and 5-HT on spike duration were not additive, suggesting that they may share some common mechanisms. 3. The protein kinase inhibitor staurosporine suppressed both 5-HT-induced slowly developing spike broadening and, under certain conditions, facilitation of transmitter release. Staurosporine did not inhibit 5-HT-induced enhancement of excitability. The effectiveness of staurosporine on spike broadening was dependent on the time at which spike broadening was examined after application of 5-HT. Staurosporine appeared to have little effect on spike broadening 3 min after application of 5-HT, whereas it inhibited significantly 5-HT-induced spike broadening at later times. The staurosporine-insensitive component of 5-HT-induced spike broadening may be mediated by cAMP. 4. The results suggest that the activation of PKC plays a key role in components of both 5-HT-induced spike broadening and facilitation of synaptic transmission. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Parental Role in learning ESL in developing countries

This article attempts to propound the significance of the parent’s role how they contribute and make the leaning of English a successful experience for their child. In developing countries like Pakistan, English has acquired the status of second language and “Second language refers to language which is required by a person in addition to his mother tongue (Cook 2001). Parental involvement in learning English of their child creates possibilities to enhance the proficiency and on the other hand, obstructs the constraint of lack of proficiency in second language among the parents as their own level of education is identified low in these countries. They are unable to help the child directly in their second language acquisition. The first part of the article has encompassed the potential and latent role of parents in their child acquisition of English, and the second part envisages that relationship between the socio-economic status (SES) of the parents and the child’s learning second language is identified. SES of the parents refers to the occupation, level of education, material sources and social class in the stratification of society. Family SES directly conditions a child life chances, better or worse, more or less, financial support for his education, and so on
Frequent-subsequence-based prediction of outer membrane proteins

A number of medically important disease-causing bacteria (collectively called Gram-negative bacteria) are noted for the extra "outer" membrane that surrounds their cell. Proteins resident in this membrane (outer membrane proteins, or OMPs) are of primary research interest for antibiotic and vaccine drug design as they are on the surface of the bacteria and so are the most accessible targets to develop new drugs against. With the development of genome sequencing technology and bioinformatics, biologists can now deduce all the proteins that are likely produced in a given bacteria and have attempted to classify where proteins are located in a bacterial cell. However such protein localization programs are currently least accurate when predicting OMPs, and so there is a current need for the development of a better OMP classifier. Data mining research suggests that the use of frequent patterns has good performance in aiding the development of accurate and efficient classification algorithms. In this paper, we present two methods to identify OMPs based on frequent subsequences and test them on all Gram-negative bacterial proteins whose localizations have been determined by biological experiments. One classifier follows an association rule approach, while the other is based on support vector machines (SVMs). We compare the proposed methods with the state-of-the-art methods in the biological domain. The results demonstrate that our methods are better both in terms of accurately identifying OMPs and providing biological insights that increase our understanding of the structures and functions of these important proteins.
QSynth: A Tool for QoS-aware Automatic Service Composition

With the proliferation of Web services, service engineers demand good automatic service composition algorithms that not only synthesize the correct work plans from thousands of services but also satisfy the quality requirements of the users. Our observation is that conventional approaches suffer from serious limitations in scalability and accuracy when addressing both requirements simultaneously. We have designed and implemented a tool QSynth to use QoS objectives of service requests as the search directives. This approach effectively prunes the search space and significantly improves the accuracy of the search results. Evaluations show that, compared to the state of the art, QSynth achieves superior scalability and accuracy with respect to a large variety of composition scenarios. Our design of QSynth won the performance championship of Web Services Challenge 2009.
Impact of prenatal diagnosis by ultrasound on the prevalence of congenital anomalies at birth in southern France.

STUDY OBJECTIVE--The aims were (1) to assess whether termination of pregnancy after prenatal screening by ultrasound affected the prevalence of congenital anomalies at birth, and (2) to examine the trend of this pattern over time. DESIGN--This study deals with congenital anomalies, possibly detectable prenatally or at birth, which were classified as isolated and multiple anomalies; chromosomal anomalies were not included. The prevalence rates of congenital anomalies at birth were determined from case registration data in the Marseille district, France, from the registry of congenital malformations (Eurocat no 22), which covers 23,500 births a year. The chi 2 test for homogeneity in proportions was used to test whether the differences in the total prevalence rates were significant over time. SETTING--The population was defined as all children born to parents living in the Marseille district between January 1 1984 and December 31 1990. PATIENTS--Among the 164,509 pregnancy outcomes monitored during the study, 1795 children with a single congenital anomaly and 288 with multiple congenital anomalies detectable at birth were assessed. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS--The percentage of pregnancy terminations was higher in the case of multiple anomalies (16%) than with single ones (7.5%). Leaving aside the lethal birth defects, this percentage became 7.9% in the case of multiple anomalies and 4.3% with isolated ones. A significant increase (p < 0.001) occurred over the seven year study period in the total percentage of terminations because of isolated anomalies but not in that involving multiple ones. The increase observed in the former case was found to be mainly attributable to an increase in the number of terminations of pregnancy undertaken because of anomalies which were either lethal or associated with very low survival rates (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS--Termination of pregnancy after prenatal ultrasound examination was found to have a definite impact on the prevalence at birth of lethal and congenital anomalies with a low survival rate, and this impact tended to increase over time. No such impact was observed in the case of congenital anomalies associated with high survival rates.
The Influence of Religiously and Scientifically Framed Messages on Agreement with Water Use Restrictions

Recent droughts in 2012 and 2013 have increased attention to water use issues in the United States. Cities, government agencies, and environmental nonprofit organizations use scientifically-framed messages to advocate for water conservation. In addition, some religious organizations use messages based on religious teachings to promote water conservation. Because approximately 70% of the U.S. public reports some religious affiliation, it is important to investigate the influence of religious and scientific messages for promoting water conservation. I report the results of an experiment that examines how scientifically- and religiously-framed messages influence attitudes about water use restrictions. I found that Christians were no more or less likely to agree with a policy calling for water use restrictions than non-Christians and non-religious people. However, a Christian religious message negatively influenced agreement with water use restrictions in the entire sample—and in a Christian subsample. Results suggest that religiously framed messages may not increase environmental concern.
> Replace This Line with Your Paper Identification Number (double-click Here to Edit) <

—This paper addresses the use of the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) in the study of power system low frequency electromechanical oscillations (LFEOs). Based on a modified complex Morlet mother-wavelet function, an approach is proposed to exploit the relationship between system low frequency oscillation features and the Morlet CWT of a system ringdown signal for detection of modal parameter changes as well as for modal frequency and damping computation. Also, several guidelines for selecting the center frequency and bandwidth parameters, the scaling factor, and the translation factor, are proposed in order to provide reliable modal identification estimates. The efficiency of the proposed approach is confirmed by applying it to synthetic, simulated and measured signals.
Very low birth weight and growth into adolescence.

OBJECTIVE To compare the growth and pubertal development of very low-birth-weight (VLBW) children (birth weight <1500 g) and normal-birth-weight (NBW) children (birth weight >2499 g) to adolescence to determine if, and at what age, VLBW children "catch up. " DESIGN Inception cohort study to age 14 years. SETTING Royal Women's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia. PATIENTS Eighty-six consecutive survivors with a birth weight less than 1000 g, 120 consecutive survivors with a birth weight of 1000 to 1499 g, and 60 randomly selected NBW controls. Children with cerebral palsy at age 14 years were excluded. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Weight, height, and head circumference measurements at birth and ages 2, 5, 8, and 14 years converted to z (SD) scores. RESULTS At age 14 years, pubertal development was similar in NBW and VLBW children. At ages 2, 5, 8, and 14 years, VLBW children were significantly shorter and lighter and had smaller head circumferences than NBW children. The differences in height and weight between VLBW and NBW children were less apparent as SD scores improved in VLBW children over time. Within the VLBW group, compared with children with a birth weight of 1000 to 1499 g, those with a birth weight less than 1000 g had significantly lower weight z scores earlier in childhood but not at age 14 years, significantly lower height z scores only at age 2 years, and significantly lower head circumference z scores throughout childhood. CONCLUSION This group of VLBW children experienced late catch-up growth to age 14 years but remain smaller than their NBW peers. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2000;154:778-784
Neuroendokrine Kontrolle des Energiestoffwechsels

Zusammenfassung Das Gehirn reguliert das Energiegleichgewicht des Körpers, indem es Signale aus der Körperperipherie integriert und verarbeitet. Periphere Signale werden von Pankreas, Fettgewebe und dem Verdauungstrakt ausgesandt und beeinflussen durch ihre Wirkung im Gehirn die Nahrungsaufnahme bzw. Energieabgabe des Organismus. In den letzten Jahren wuchsen die Erkenntnisse über den Einfluss zentraler Netzwerke auf den Energiehaushalt rapide. Zahlreiche Peptide konnten charakterisiert werden, deren Funktion die Übermittlung des Energiestatus an das Gehirn zu sein scheint. Ebenso konnten Fortschritte bei der Identifizierung der an dieser Übermittlung beteiligten Hirnregionen, Neuronenpopulationen sowie der Neurotransmitter gemacht werden, die an der Signalverarbeitung mitwirken. Eine besondere Rolle spielen in diesem Zusammenhang das Fettgewebshormon Leptin sowie das von den Betazellen des Pankreas produzierte Insulin. Beide Hormone werden in Abhängigkeit vom Energiestatus des Körpers in die Blutbahn abgegeben und beeinflussen im Gehirn die Regulation der Energieaufnahme und - abgabe. Ein besseres Verständnis dieser Regelkreise ist nötig, um die Pathogenese der in Ausmaß und Häufigkeit zunehmenden Fettleibigkeit besser zu verstehen.
Effect of ethical leadership and climate on effectiveness

Orientation: The increasing prevalence of theft, sabotage and other deviant behaviours in the workplace has disastrous effects for organisations, such as lowered effectiveness, escalated costs and the organisation’s declining reputation. Research purpose: The purpose of the research was to design and investigate the relationships among perceived leader effectiveness, ethical climate and ethical leadership. A further objective of the investigation was to validate a conceptual model clarifying the structural associations among the latent constructs in the South African corporate domain. Motivation for the study: A successful leader is both an ethical and an effective leader. An organisation’s leadership is seen as the most critical element in establishing and maintaining an ethical climate in organisations. Research design, approach and method: A convenient and multi-cultural sample comprised of 224 employees from various organisations in South Africa. The structure and content of the variables were analysed through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), beside item analysis. Main findings: Satisfactory reliability was found for all the measurement scales. The results of CFA demonstrated acceptable fit with the data for the refined measurement and structural models. The results of structural equation modelling (SEM) indicated positive relationships among ethical leadership, ethical climate and leader effectiveness. Practical implications: Organisational leaders should take full responsibility for cultivating ethics through ethical leader behaviour and an ethical climate. By reinforcing these aspects, perceived leader effectiveness can be advanced, which will ultimately decrease corruption and other forms of counterproductive behaviour in South African organisations. Contribution: The study provides further theoretical and empirical evidence that leadership effectiveness can be realised through instilling an ethical organisational climate in which ethical leadership is exhibited and encouraged.
Regional differences in waiting time to pregnancy among fertile couples from four European cities.

BACKGROUND A previous European study found a longer time to pregnancy (TTP) among fertile women from Paris compared with women from other Western European countries. A co-ordinated, cross-sectional study of pregnant couples from Denmark (Copenhagen), France (Paris), Scotland (Edinburgh) and Finland (Turku) was therefore undertaken to assess differences in waiting TTP among couples from these cities. METHODS Pregnant women were invited to participate when they showed up for their first antenatal visit in one of the four centres. Inclusion criteria included that their partner was 20-45 years of age and born in the country in which he was currently living and that the pregnancy was achieved without fertility treatment. Both partners filled in a questionnaire and the man underwent a physical examination and delivered a semen sample (Turku: n = 237, Copenhagen: n = 302, Edinburgh: n = 212, Paris: n = 191). RESULTS French couples had a decreased probability of conception compared with couples from the other three countries, although only after adjustment for confounders. No significant differences between couples from the three other countries were found. CONCLUSION The observed geographical differences in TTP remain unexplained and were not due to differences in semen quality, but may be caused by varying exposures to environmental factors or psychological distress. In addition, selection bias due to the low participation rates cannot be ruled out. Future studies examining the causes for geographical differences in TTP are needed.
Middleware approaches for wireless sensor networks based on current trends

During the last years Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technologies have been increasingly adopted and utilized as a prominent communication infrastructure in highly demanding application scenarios. However, in order to cope with the diverse and dynamic requirements of such cases in real deployment critical challenges must be addressed mainly stemming from the scarce resource availability characterizing state of the art WSN platforms. Aiming to tackle respective deficiencies and weaknesses a critical research domain has bloomed focusing on designing and implementing novel specialized middleware architectures. Indeed various approaches have emerged all targeting to harness all possible capabilities from WSN platforms in a flexible, efficient and dynamically reconfigurable way, not only at design time but most importantly in run-time. Driven by this new trends this paper attempts to offer a categorization of the most prominent one and analyze their main characteristics. Also a high level evaluation is presented with respect to their suitability in specific cases or/and requirements so as to assist designers to their effort to select the optimum one.
Edge-Preserving Super-Resolutıon Using An Adaptive Outlier Rejection Method

Registration errors are well-known problems in super-resolution restoration applications. Local outliers are caused by the registration errors and objects in motion. Instead of blind rejection of local outliers, we favor for the detected edges. For that, pre-estimated high-resolution image is searched for some specified edge and corner patterns. Outlier rejection is performed based on the pattern found. The method is shown to reduce over-blurring caused by the regularization that is common in iterative super-resolution restoration algorithms.
Characterizing the Real-Time Behavior of Prioritized Switched-Ethernet 1

Ethernet is, today, the de facto standard in the Local Area Networks general domain. Despite having been designed for the office environment, it has been appropriately modified or adapted in order to fulfill the requirements of many other fields, including large distributed embedded systems and industrial automation. One typical requirement in such application fields is the need to deliver time-constrained communication services, which cannot be efficiently met using the original CSMA/CD medium access control. Among many possible solutions, either software or hardware-based, the one that became more popular, recently, is the use of switches. However, this does not enforce timeliness per se. In this paper we show a set of practical experiments that reveal the weaknesses of switched Ethernet in what concerns real-time behavior. The results point to the need for further traffic control, at the data sources, if a predictable behavior of the switch is desired.
On The Theory and Practice of Singular Spectrum Analysis Forecasting

Theoretical results on the properties of forecasts obtained using singular spectrum analysis are presented in this paper. The mean squared forecast error is derived under broad regularity conditions, and it is shown that the forecasts obtained in practice will converge to their population ensemble counterparts. The theoretical results are illustrated by examining the performance of singular spectrum analysis forecasts when applied to autoregressive processes and a random walk process. Simulation experiments suggest that the asymptotic properties developed are reflected in observed finite sample behaviour. Empirical applications using real world data sets indicate that forecasts based on singular spectrum analysis are competitive with other methods currently in vogue.