Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Trastorno por estrés postraumático y tratamiento psicoterapéutico de las pesadillas

Introduction: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a disease which may appear after facing a situation where someone’s life is in danger. It is characterized by an important psychic distress, hyper-alertness, persistent re-experiencing of the event and avoidance of situations which may recall the event. Its psychopathologic mechanism starts from an alteration of the normal response to stress which causes several neurophysiologic changes that explain its onset and permanence. Nightmares are part of the re-experiencing symptoms and therefore may cause avoidance behaviors. Aim: To review the medical literature in order to find the best psychotherapeutic approaches to treat nightmares in PTSD. Method: non-systematic review of Medline and LILACS medical databases. Results: Psychotherapies with a cognitive behavioral 1 Residente de psiquiatria de segundo ano, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogota, Colombia. Nathalie Tamayo Martinez 92 Revista de Investigaciones en Seguridad Social y Salud, Num. 11 (enero-diciembre), 2009 approach are the most studied therapies for the treatment of nightmares. Different techniques are available such as the therapies of guided imagery, lucid dreaming, exposure, restructuring and relaxation, desensitization, and relaxation and nightmare recording. However, some pharmacologic approaches might seem to be effective as well. Conclusions: Nightmares are some of the most reported symptoms in posttraumatic stress disorder. The treatment of these symptoms is not included within the therapeutic aims of the disorder and there is not an important response with regularly used treatments. However, an important improvement has been positively reported with a guided treatment which encompasses a global improvement of PTSD symptoms. Therefore, it would be advisable to include nightmare treatment as an integral part of the treatment taking into account the chronic and highly limiting characteristics of the symptoms for the patients who suffer it.
Differences in anthropometric parameters and the IFG-I-IGFBP3 axis between liver and renal transplant children.

BACKGROUND Growth can be differently altered after liver and renal transplantation (Tx) in childhood. METHODS We compared graft function, linear growth, immunosuppression and serum IGF-I (RIA) and IGFBP3 (IRMA) concentrations in 15 liver (5.6+/-1.1 years old) and 17 renal (7.4+/-0.1 years old) Tx patients who were followed for 4-6 years. RESULTS Graft function was normal post-liver Tx, although in renal recipients creatinine clearance decreased significantly during follow-up. Liver Tx children presented an increase in mean height of 0.92+/-0.2 SDS (P<0.01) beyond the 2nd year post-Tx, although in renal Tx patients height SDS did not improve. Immunosuppressive corticoid dosage could be decreased and discontinued in liver Tx patients, while in renal recipients it was maintained between 0.18+/-0.01 and 0.16+/-0.02 mg/kg/day. At 3.7+/-0.4 years post Tx, liver Tx patients presented higher mean serum IGF-I level, lower mean serum IGFBP3 value, leading to a higher mean IGF-I/IGFBP3 molar ratio, P<0.001. CONCLUSIONS We found that while catch up growth coud be achieved after liver Tx, height SDS did not improve after renal Tx. This may be related to a reduced renal graft function and/or to differences in immunosuppressive corticoid dosage. In children with renal transplants a challenge for the future will reside in making it possible to substitute steroid therapy without altering graft function.
Democracy, and the Construction of Allogeny/Autochthony in Postcolonial Cameroon

Since independence Cameroon has been a hegemonic state, evidenced by the 1966 introduction of a single party, the Cameroon National Union (CNU), which was purportedly created to foster national integration. This focus on national integration led to a de-emphasis of all other issues such as fundamental human rights. And because a select elite assigned itself the task of imagining the form the nation would take, this process was naturally accompanied by a contraction of the political space. Because the national integration project had paid minimal dividends after more than two decades, Cameroonians refused to legitimize it. They had realized that it simply served as a ruse for the ruling class to convert the state into a patrimonial one. Hence, people sought to regain their voices and participation through the democratic process. Reluctantly, the state capitulated to demands for political pluralism, passing the so-called Liberal Laws of 1990. However, by allowing multiparty politics, the government ruptured the facade of cohesion of the ruling class, which resulted in elites becoming increasingly preoccupied with maintaining their power and losing interest in the national integration project. As a result of this rupture, national integration, once the holy grail of national policy, was displaced, if not replaced, by newer concepts of autochthones and allogenes. Cameroonians who had been urged to settle anywhere in the country by President Paul Biya were now being denied their civil and political rights. Administrators, political elites, or indigenes (autochthones) of an area denied them the right to vote just because they were considered settlers or strangers (allogenes). Boundaries between the various groups could easily be established because state policy required that the ethnic origin of all Cameroonians ("native of') be indicated on their birth certificates. Because differences are a tool for both self-
Regulation by endogenous INTERLEUKIN-10 of the expression of nitric oxide synthase induced after ligation of CD23 in human macrophages.

The possible role of interleukin 10 (IL-10) as an endogenous inhibitor of CD23-driven inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) expression in human macrophages was investigated. Cross-linking of CD23 by a monoclonal antibody induced iNOS mRNA, as detected by RT-PCR, and the production of NO measured as the stable derivative, nitrite. A linear correlation was observed between CD23 expression and iNOS activity or NO2- production. The iNOS activity reached a maximum 48 h after ligation of CD23, then declined rapidly until 72 h. In parallel, nitrite production was detected after 24 h and reached a maximum after 48 h. In addition, ligation of the CD23 molecule induced, in a time-dependent manner, the production of IL-10. As this cytokine is known to regulate iNOS induction and activity, we evaluated the effect of a neutralizing mAb to IL-10 on CD23-induced iNOS activity and nitrite production by CD23-bearing macrophages and found that both were significantly enhanced. Furthermore, the addition of exogenous IL-10 suppressed CD23-driven iNOS mRNA expression, iNOS activity and production of nitrite. These data suggest that, after CD23-ligation at the cell surface of human phagocytes, the secretion of IL-10 downregulates the CD23-induced NO production at the transcriptional level, thus providing an efficient feed-back mechanism.
Sensing the human body by implanted RFID tags

Starting from the physical evidence that passive RFID systems may be used as self-sensing devices, the feasibility of human monitoring by means of implanted tags is here investigated. The sensing capabilities, the backscattering contrast and the communication link are analyzed considering a specific medical application, i.e. the continuous monitoring of brain edema evolution in patients neurosurgery treated. By using numerical simulations all the significant issues of the passive sensing are here investigated at different frequency bands. Preliminary experimental results with simplified phantoms corroborate the analysis.
Provably Secure Certificateless Authenticated Key Agreement Protocol in the Standard Model

Inspired by the certificateless public key encryption scheme proposed by Jong et al, we present a new certificateless authenticated key agreement protocol (CLAK). It is provably secure in the standard model. CLAK protocol provides perfect forward secrecy. Compared with a certificateless authenticated key agreement protocol which is only provable secure in the random oracle model, the new protocol is improved with respect to the security properties, computation and communication cost.
Change State Capture in Service Aware Storage

Storage QoS methodology has been extensively mentioned in large-scale storage systems. Since storage resources tend to be heterogeneous and dynamic changed, efficient storage states capturing becomes essential. In this paper we propose a novel capturing and preserving mechanism, called Change State Capture (CSC). CSC can capture the changed state when storage provider QoS modified. The changed event can trigger the Broker module to reorganize the storage resources to meet this change. The experimental results show that CSC can achieve better performance than existing periodic scanning algorithm in terms of efficiency.
Unipolar Depression

Abstract This literature review is a discussion of the current epidemiological theories regarding the diagnosis, course, demographics, etiology, co-morbidity, and treatment of unipolar depression. It is written for the health care professional who must maintain knowledge of the most current information regarding chronic episodic depression. Directions for future research are also offered.
Full-Body Pose Tracking—The Top View Reprojection Approach

Recent introduction of low-cost depth cameras triggered a number of interesting works, pushing forward the state-of-the-art in human body pose extraction and tracking. However, despite the remarkable progress, many of the contemporary methods cope inadequately with complex scenarios, involving multiple interacting users, under the presence of severe inter- and intra-occlusions. In this work, we present a model-based approach for markerless articulated full body pose extraction and tracking in RGB-D sequences. A cylinder-based model is employed to represent the human body. For each body part a set of hypotheses is generated and tracked over time by a Particle Filter. To evaluate each hypothesis, we employ a novel metric that considers the reprojected Top View of the corresponding body part. The latter, in conjunction with depth information, effectively copes with difficult and ambiguous cases, such as severe occlusions. For evaluation purposes, we conducted several series of experiments using data from a public human action database, as well as own-collected data involving varying number of interacting users. The performance of the proposed method has been further compared against that of the Microsoft's Kinect SDK and NiTETM using ground truth information. The results obtained attest for the effectiveness of our approach.
Clinical aspects of renal transplantation in polycystic kidney disease.

BACKGROUND Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) as a systemic disorder represents a special subgroup among patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). The different organ manifestations are potential risk factors for cardiovascular events or infections in the course after renal transplantation. Therefore, a long-term evaluation of ADPKD patients and of a control group was done. PATIENTS AND METHODS 80 ADPKD patients were compared with 88 non-diabetic patients in a retrospective follow-up after renal transplantation. Patient and graft survival (1, 5 and 10 years after transplantation) as well as complications such as infections and cardiovascular events were evaluated. RESULTS A comparable overall transplant (1 year, 5 years, 10 years: 83%, 73%, 67% ADPKD vs. 84%, 70%, 51% controls) and patient survival rate (1 year, 5 years, 10 years: 96%, 84%, 73% ADPKD vs. 91%, 79%, 58% controls) was found in both groups. Infectious complications with the exception of urinary tract infections (UTIs: ADPKD 42.5% vs. 26%) were diagnosed in similar frequency in the graft recipients. ADPKD patients were significantly more affected by UTIs than their control group (p < 0.05) and tended to suffer more often from lethal infections (ADPKD 7 vs. controls 3), but without statistical significance. Cardiovascular events were not observed to be significantly different between both groups (ADPKD 3 vs. controls 4). An obvious difference was found in patient (p < 0.01) and transplant survival rates (p < 0.05) of male and female ADPKD patients. The female group showed a significantly better outcome. CONCLUSIONS The overall patient and graft survival rates did not differ between the ADPKD and control groups. The better outcome of female ADPKD graft recipients compared to the male group may be related to a gender-dependent disease severity, possibly due to hormonal effects. As UTIs and lethal septicemia were the leading complications in ADPKD patients, a careful monitoring for infections is important in the post-transplant follow-up.
Addressing Environment Non-Stationarity by Repeating Q-learning Updates

Q-learning (QL) is a popular reinforcement learning algorithm that is guaranteed to converge to optimal policies in Markov decision processes. However, QL exhibits an artifact: in expectation, the effective rate of updating the value of an action depends on the probability of choosing that action. In other words, there is a tight coupling between the learning dynamics and underlying execution policy. This coupling can cause performance degradation in noisy non-stationary environments. Here, we introduce Repeated Update Q-learning (RUQL), a learning algorithm that resolves the undesirable artifact of Q-learning while maintaining simplicity. We analyze the similarities and differences between RUQL, QL, and the closest state-of-the-art algorithms theoretically. Our analysis shows that RUQL maintains the convergence guarantee of QL in stationary environments, while relaxing the coupling between the execution policy and the learning dynamics. Experimental results confirm the theoretical insights and show how RUQL outperforms both QL and the closest state-of-the-art algorithms in noisy non-stationary environments.
Placental 11β-HSD2 Activity, Early Postnatal Clinical Course, and Adrenal Function in Extremely Low Birth Weight Infants

The placental enzyme 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase-2 (11β-HSD2) transforms maternal cortisol to inactive cortisone. Fetal glucocorticoid excess due to reduced 11β-HSD2 activity could make small preterm infants susceptible to early adrenal insufficiency when the maternal cortisol source is no longer sustained. We assessed whether placental 11β-HSD2 activity is related to early adrenal insufficiency and postnatal clinical course in extremely low birth weight (<1000 g) infants. Mean gestational age of the 44 infants was 26.6 wk (range, 23.7–32.0), birth weight was 747 g (440–981), and relative birth weight was −1.9 SD (−4.9 to 1.0). We determined placental 11β-HSD2 activity, baseline, and ACTH-stimulated cortisol and assessed illness severity by the Score of Neonatal Acute Physiology (SNAP). One standard deviation decrease in placental 11β-HSD2 activity corresponded to a 1.85 (95% CI 0.55 to 3.14; p = 0.006) unit increase in SNAP score and 2.9 mm Hg decrease in minimum mean arterial pressure (95% CI 0.3 to 5.6 mm Hg; p = 0.03). Placental 11β-HSD2 activity was not associated with cortisol concentrations, although the confidence interval of the ACTH-stimulated cortisol was close to zero: 1 SD increase corresponded to 17% (−18% to 49%) increase in ACTH-stimulated cortisol. Moreover, a 1 SD decrease in enzyme activity was associated with a hazard ratio for postnatal glucocorticoid treatment of 1.63 (95% CI 1.00 to 2.65); p = 0.05. In ELBW infants, lower placental 11β-HSD2 activity is associated with more severe early postnatal illness and hypotension. Although an association with baseline or ACTH-stimulated cortisol was not seen, possible relationships with other components of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis remain to be determined.
An Apprenticeship-Model Employment Program for Adults with Developmental Disabilities: An Exploratory Study

Author(s): Schwartzman, Benjamin Chaim | Advisor(s): Kasari, Connie | Abstract: Most of the current developmental disability research focuses on childhood prevention and intervention. However, there is a substantial need for more research to focus on practical adaptation issues for adults with developmental disabilities. Working age individuals with developmental disabilities exhibit significantly lower employment, higher underemployment, higher “malemployment,” and higher job switching rates as compared to the general population. The current study aimed to investigate: (1) the past and current vocational and support experiences of the participants according to parent report (2) the participant outcomes as a result of engaging in an apprenticeship model employment program, and potential factors associated with outcomes (3) whether the novel “Secret Shopper” observational assessments are able to measure change in vocational skills. Data from the current study suggests that the apprenticeship model of employment as well as the Secret Shopper observational assessment are both promising, and in need of further study with a larger sample size. Parent interview data regarding past and current experiences of the participants in the program suggest 6 major themes: 1. With the right supports, difficulties associated with disabilities may be fostered into great benefits 2. Fierce and prolonged advocacy from parents 3. Greater independence in daily living activities 4. Previous positive work experience 5. Collaboration occurring between educational and vocational service systems, and 6. Unprompted negativity. Information gained from the current study provides this population, in desperate need of better supports, with preliminary information regarding the effectiveness of the apprenticeship model of employment for the greatly underserved population of adults with developmental disabilities.
Termination of Nondeterministic Recursive Probabilistic Programs

We study the termination problem for nondeterministic recursive probabilistic programs. First, we show that a ranking-supermartingales-based approach is both sound and complete for bounded terminiation (i.e., bounded expected termination time over all schedulers). Our result also clarifies previous results which claimed that ranking supermartingales are not a complete approach even for nondeterministic probabilistic programs without recursion. Second, we show that conditionally difference-bounded ranking supermartingales provide a sound approach for lower bounds of expected termination time. Finally, we show that supermartingales with lower bounds on conditional absolute difference provide a sound approach for almost-sure termination, along with explicit bounds on tail probabilities of nontermination within a given number of steps. We also present several illuminating counterexamples that establish the necessity of certain prerequisites (such as conditionally difference-bounded condition).
Determining the Role of the Internet in Violent Extremism and Terrorism: Six Suggestions for Progressing Research

ABSTRACT Some scholars and others are skeptical of a significant role for the Internet in processes of violent radicalization. There is increasing concern on the part of other scholars, and increasingly also policymakers and publics, that easy availability of violent extremist content online may have violent radicalizing effects. This article identifies a number of core questions regarding the interaction of violent extremism and terrorism and the Internet, particularly social media, that have yet to be adequately addressed and supplies a series of six follow-up suggestions, flowing from these questions, for progressing research in this area. These suggestions relate to (1) widening the range of types of violent online extremism being studied beyond violent jihadis; (2) engaging in more comparative research, not just across ideologies, but also groups, countries, languages, and social media platforms; (3) deepening our analyses to include interviewing and virtual ethnographic approaches; (4) up-scaling or improving our capacity to undertake “big data” collection and analysis; (5) outreaching beyond terrorism studies to become acquainted with, for example, the Internet Studies literature and engaging in interdisciplinary research with, for example, computer scientists; and (6) paying more attention to gender as a factor in violent online extremism.
An Investigation of Perceived Risk at the Brand Level

Perceived risk is conceptualized in terms of expected negative utility associated with automobile brand preferences. Empirical evidence supports the notion that importance of loss is more useful as a segmentation variable than as a component in a multiplicative model. The findings also Indicate that probability of loss may operate at the handled risk level and importance of loss at the inherent risk level.
Multi-target Particle Filter Tracking Algorithm Based on Wireless Sensor Networks

In order to improve the multi-target tracking efficiency for wireless sensor networks and solve the problem of data transmission, analyzed existing particle filter tracking algorithm, ensure that one of the core technology for wireless sensor network performance. In this paper, from the basic theory of target tracking, in-depth analysis on the basis of the principle of particle filter, based on dynamic clustering, proposed the multi-target Kalman particle filter (MEPF) algorithm, through the expansion of Calman filter (EKF) to generate the proposal distribution, a reduction in the required number of particles to improve the particle filter accuracy at the same time, reduce the computational complexity of target tracking algorithm, thus reducing the energy consumption. Application results show that the MEPF in the proposed algorithm can achieve better tracking of target tracking and forecasting, in a small number of particles still has good tracking accuracy. Copyright © 2014 IFSA Publishing, S. L.
The coincidence of people and biodiversity in Europe

A positive correlation between human population density and species richness has been recorded across the tropics. Here I investigate whether this correlation holds true for Europe. Analyses reveal a positive correlation between human population density and plant (rho = 0.505), mammal (rho = 0.471) and reptile and amphibian (rho = 0.556) species richness. The results are largely concordant with those obtained in similar studies for Africa. However, contrary to previous analyses, the correlation found between people and breeding bird species richness (rho = 0.186) was weak. Of three measures of endemism used, only combined European endemic species richness correlated with human density (rho = 0.437). Richness among combined restricted-range European endemics was not correlated (rho = 0.095) with human density, while richness among all combined restricted-range species was only weakly correlated with human density (rho = 0.167). The results partially support the idea of a correlation between people and biodiversity, although there are some important exceptions. Discussion of possible mechanisms underling the observed patterns is undertaken.
Product Biomonitoring and Responsible Reporting

In this issue of Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP), Schecter et al. (2011) report levels of polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants in butter purchased from retail stores. Although the investigators found prevalent levels of PBDEs in butter, they report that one sample had inordinately high levels of octa-, nona-, and deca-BDE congeners, likely from its highly contaminated wrapping paper.