Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of continuous positive airway pressure on blood pressure in hypertensive patients with coronary artery bypass grafting and obstructive sleep apnea.

BACKGROUND Previous studies have documented that obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) increases the incidence of hypertension, respiratory failure and unexpected post-operative deaths during night in coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) patients. We hypothesized that continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) reduces blood pressure in these patients. METHODS We conducted a prospective, controlled study in 51 patients. The subjects received CPAP treatment were defined as CPAP group, whereas those refused to use CPAP were served as controls. Blood pressure was measured by 24 h ambulatory blood pressure at baseline and at six months. RESULTS Fifty-one patients completed the study. CPAP group and controls had similar characteristics. Compared with the control group, the 24-h SBP and 24-h DBP in the CPAP group had a tendency towards lower levels, but the differences were not statistically significant. But the change of SBP in CPAP treatment was significantly higher than controls (CPAP: 10.0 ± 13.5 mm Hg vs. CONTROL 2.9 ± 10.5 mm Hg, P = 0.040). The rate of hypertension control was improved in the CPAP treatment, but had no statistical difference compared to the controls (CPAP, 76.0% vs. CONTROL, 61.5%; P = 0.260). Compared with controls, the proportion of non-dipping hypertension had a markedly improvement in the CPAP group (CONTROL, 46.2% vs. CPAP, 16.0%; P = 0.034). CONCLUSIONS CPAP therapy decreased SBP and improved the status of non-dipping hypertension and alleviated daytime somnolence in hypertensive patients with CABG and OSA on standardized antihypertensive treatment. But DBP and hypertension control did not significantly change compared with the control group.
The Prediction of Young Homicide and Violent Offenders

Aim was to investigate a range of potentially modifiable risk factors for boys in late childhood for later violence and homicide convictions. Boys from the Pittsburgh Youth Study (N = 1,517) were measured through self-reports and official records in late childhood (ages 11–13) on a large number of potentially modifiable risk factors, and were followed up in juvenile and adult criminal records in terms of violence and homicide. Predictors of conviction for homicide largely overlapped with predictors of conviction for violence. Twenty three out of 28 possible risk factors significantly predicted later violence convictions. Regression analysis identified four significant modifiable risk factors in late childhood for any violent offenders: physical abuse, parental stress, bad friends and low school motivation. The higher the number of early risk factors, the higher the probability of later conviction for violent offenses including homicide. The discussion focus on single-, and multi-modal interventions in late childhood to reduce later violence and possibly homicide.
Let the Shape Speak - Discriminative Face Alignment using Conjugate Priors

This work presents a novel Bayesian formulation for aligning faces in unseen images. Our approach is closely related to Constrained Local Models (CLM) [2] and Active Shape Models (ASM) [6], where an ensemble of local feature detectors are constrained to lie within the subspace spanned by a Point Distribution Model (PDM). Fitting a model to an image typically involves two steps: a local search using a detector, obtaining response maps for each landmark (likelihood term) and a global optimization that finds the PDM parameters that jointly maximize all the detections. The global optimization can be seen as a Bayesian inference problem, where the posterior distribution of the PDM parameters (and pose) can be inferred in a maximum a posteriori (MAP) sense. We present a novel Bayesian global optimization strategy, where the prior is used to encode the dynamic transitions of the PDM parameters. Using recursive Bayesian estimation we model the prior distribution of the data as being Gaussian. The mean and covariance were assumed to be unknown and treated as random variables. The Shape Model: The shape of a PDM is represented by the 2D locations of a mesh s = (x1,y1, . . . ,xv,yv) (v landmarks). Applying PCA on training examples, results in the parametric model s = s0 + Φb + Ψq, where s0 is the mean shape, Φ is the shape subspace matrix (n eigenvectors), b is a vector of shape parameters, q the pose parameters vector and Ψ holds four special eigenvectors that linearly model the 2D pose [4]. Goal: Given a 2v vector of observed positions y, the goal is to find the optimal set of parameters b that maximizes the posterior probability of being aligned. Using an Bayesian approach, the shape parameters are
Electrophysiological Signatures of Visual Lexical Processing: Open-and Closed-Class Words

n This paper presents evidence of the disputed existence of an electrophysiological marker for the lexical-categorical distinction between open-and closed-class words. Event-related brain potentials were recorded from the scalp while subjects read a story. Separate waveforms were computed for open-and closed-class words. Two aspects of the waveforms could be reliably related to vocabulary class. The first was an early negativity in the 230-to 350-msec epoch, with a bilateral anterior predominance. This negativity was elicited by open-and closed-class words alike, was not affected by word frequency or word length, and had an earlier peak latency for closed-class words. The second was a frontal slow negative shift in the 350-to 500-msec epoch, largest over the left side of the scalp. This late negativity was only elicited by closed-class words. Although the early negativity cannot serve as a qualitative marker of the open-and closed-class distinction, it does reflect the earliest electrophysiological manifestation of the availability of categorical information from the mental lexicon. These results suggest that the brain honors the distinction between open-and closed-class words, in relation to the different roles that they play in on-line sentence processing.
Production of bone mineral material and BMP-2 in osteoblasts cultured on double acid-etched titanium

Background The study of osteoblasts and their osteogenic functions is essential in order to understand them and their applications in implantology. In this sense, this study try to study BMP-2 production and bone matrix deposition, in addition to other biological variables, in osteoblasts cultured on a rough double acid-etched titanium surface (Osseotite®, Biomet 3i, Palm Beach Garden, Florida, USA) in comparison to a smooth titanium surface (machined) and a control Petri dish. Material and Methods An in vitro prospective study. NHOst human osteoblasts from the femur were cultured on three different surfaces: Control group: 25-mm methacrylate dish (n = 6); Machined group: titanium discs with machined surface (n = 6) and Experimental group: titanium discs with a double acid-etched nitric and hydrofluoric Osseotite® acid surface (n = 6). A quantification of the mitochondrial membrane potential, and studies of apoptosis, mobility and adhesion, bone productivity (BMP-2) and cellular bone synthesis were carried out after culturing the three groups for forty-eight hours. Results A statistically significant difference was observed in the production of BMP-2 between the experimental group and the other two groups (22.33% ± 11.06 vs. 13.10% ± 5.51 in the machined group and 3.88% ± 3.43 in the control group). Differences in cellular bone synthesis were also observed between the groups (28.34% ± 14.4% in the experimental group vs. 20.03% ± 6.79 in the machined group and 19.34% ± 15.93% in the control group). Conclusions In comparison with machined surfaces, Osseotite® surfaces favor BMP-2 production and bone synthesis as a result of the osteoblasts in contact with it. Key words:BMP-2, Cytoskeleton, cell culture, bone matrix, apoptosis, cell viability.
Shared Neural Markers of Decision Confidence and Error Detection

Empirical evidence indicates that people can provide accurate evaluations of their own thoughts and actions by means of both error detection and confidence judgments. This study investigates the foundations of these metacognitive abilities, specifically focusing on the relationship between confidence and error judgments in human perceptual decision making. Electroencephalography studies have identified the error positivity (Pe)—an event-related component observed following incorrect choices—as a robust neural index of participants' awareness of their errors in simple decision tasks. Here we assessed whether the Pe also varies in a graded way with participants' subjective ratings of decision confidence, as expressed on a 6-point scale after each trial of a dot count perceptual decision task. We observed clear, graded modulation of the Pe by confidence, with monotonic reduction in Pe amplitude associated with increasing confidence in the preceding choice. This effect was independent of objective accuracy. Multivariate decoding analyses indicated that neural markers of error detection were predictive of varying levels of confidence in correct decisions, including subtle shifts in high-confidence trials. These results suggest that shared mechanisms underlie two forms of metacognitive evaluation that are often treated separately, with consequent implications for current theories of their neurocognitive basis.
Surface-Wave Attenuation in Laterally Inhomogeneous Media : Elements of Theory

SUMMARY We present an attenuation model for mid-period Rayleigh waves in Central Asia and surrounding regions. This model is defined by maps of attenuation coefficient across the region of study in the period band 14-24 s. The model is constructed to characterize the regional variations in attenuation of seismic waves in the crust, which are related to the tectonic history of the studied territory, to calibrate the regional surface-wave magnitude scale, and to extend the teleseismic ‗surface-wave magnitude – body-wave magnitude' (Ms-mb) discriminant to regional distances. The construction of the model proceeds in three stages. The first stage in model construction is the measurement of Rayleigh wave spectral amplitudes. We collected and processed waveform data for 200 earthquakes occurring from 2003 to 2006 inside and around Eurasia, and used records of about 135 broadband permanent and temporary stations. This data set provided a sufficient number of spectral amplitude measurements between 14 and 24 s periods for the construction of two–dimensional tomographic maps of attenuation coefficients. At the second stage of the work, the integral of attenuation coefficients along given paths is estimated using both inter-station measurements and single-station measurements corrected for source and receiver terms. The third stage includes the refining of source parameters, recalculation of attenuation coefficient integrals after this refinement, grooming of resulting coefficients, and multi-stage tomograhic inversion of the data. Tomographic maps for the set of periods from 14 to 24 s, which exhibit clear correlation with geology and tectonics of the territory under study, were obtained. Validation of these maps using the inter-station measurements confirms their accuracy in predicting the observations.
Cyber-bullying in the Online Classroom: Instructor Perceptions of Aggressive Student Behavior

The advent of online learning has created the medium for cyber-bullying in the virtual classroom and also by e-mail. Bullying is usually expected in the workplace and between students in the classroom. Most recently, however, faculty members have become surprising targets of online bullying. For many, there are no established policies nor is training provided on how to react. The current research defines the problem, reviews the findings of a cyber-bullying survey, and explores recommendations for addressing cyber-bullying through policies, training, and professional development.
Joint Emotion-Topic Modeling for Social Affective Text Mining

This paper is concerned with the problem of social affective text mining, which aims to discover the connections between social emotions and affective terms based on user-generated emotion labels. We propose a joint emotion-topic model by augmenting latent Dirichlet allocation with an additional layer for emotion modeling. It first generates a set of latent topics from emotions, followed by generating affective terms from each topic. Experimental results on an online news collection show that the proposed model can effectively identify meaningful latent topics for each emotion. Evaluation on emotion prediction further verifies the effectiveness of the proposed model.
A multiple model approach to respiratory motion prediction for real-time IGRT

Respiration induces significant movement of tumours in the vicinity of thoracic and abdominal structures. Real-time image-guided radiotherapy (IGRT) aims to adapt radiation delivery to tumour motion during irradiation. One of the main problems for achieving this objective is the presence of time lag between the acquisition of tumour position and the radiation delivery. Such time lag causes significant beam positioning errors and affects the dose coverage. A method to solve this problem is to employ an algorithm that is able to predict future tumour positions from available tumour position measurements. This paper presents a multiple model approach to respiratory-induced tumour motion prediction using the interacting multiple model (IMM) filter. A combination of two models, constant velocity (CV) and constant acceleration (CA), is used to capture respiratory-induced tumour motion. A Kalman filter is designed for each of the local models and the IMM filter is applied to combine the predictions of these Kalman filters for obtaining the predicted tumour position. The IMM filter, likewise the Kalman filter, is a recursive algorithm that is suitable for real-time applications. In addition, this paper proposes a confidence interval (CI) criterion to evaluate the performance of tumour motion prediction algorithms for IGRT. The proposed CI criterion provides a relevant measure for the prediction performance in terms of clinical applications and can be used to specify the margin to accommodate prediction errors. The prediction performance of the IMM filter has been evaluated using 110 traces of 4-minute free-breathing motion collected from 24 lung-cancer patients. The simulation study was carried out for prediction time 0.1–0.6 s with sampling rates 3, 5 and 10 Hz. It was found that the prediction of the IMM filter was consistently better than the prediction of the Kalman filter with the CV or CA model. There was no significant difference of prediction errors for the sampling rates 5 and 10 Hz. For these sampling rates, the errors of the IMM filter for 0.4 s prediction time were less than 2.1 mm in terms of the 95% CI criterion or 1.1 mm in terms of the standard deviation (SD) or root mean squared errors (RMSE) criterion. For the prediction time of 0.6 s the errors were less than 3.6 mm in terms of the 95% CI criterion or 1.8 mm in terms of the SD/RMSE criterion. The prediction error analysis showed that the average percentage of the target lies outside the 95% CI margin was 5.2% and outside the SD/RMSE margin was 24.3%. This indicates the effectiveness of the 95% CI criterion as a margining strategy to accommodate prediction errors.
Correlation of fiber shape measures with dilute suspension properties

The correlations between the intrinsic viscosity of fiber suspensions and 17 measures of fiber shape were inve­ stigated. The intrinsic viscosities of suspensions of fibers with various shapes and aspect ratios were determined numerically. The shapes studied include different degrees of fiber curvature, angular bends, helical shapes, randomly generated shapes, and others. The shape measure that correlated most strongly with intrinsic viscosity was an invariant of the hydrodynamic resis­ tance tensor; this invariant is related to the hydrodynamic drag coefficients on a fiber translating in the three principal direc­ tions. This measure can be computed from 3D images of real fibers, and could potentially be a useful quantity for describing fiber shape. These results also suggest that experimentallymeasured intrinsic viscosities can be used to characterize fiber shape, either directly or by extracting the invariant from experi­ mental data.
Decidualization of the Human Endometrium: Mechanisms, Functions, and Clinical Perspectives

The fetomaternal interface, consisting of the maternal decidua and the invading fetal trophoblast, critically regulates placental function and the growth and development of the conceptus. In its broadest sense, decidualization could be viewed as the postovulatory process of endometrial remodeling in preparation for pregnancy, which includes secretory transformation of the uterine glands, influx of specialized uterine natural killer cells, and vascular remodeling. A more restricted definition of the decidual process denotes the morphological and biochemical reprogramming of the endometrial stromal compartment. This differentiation process is dependent entirely on the convergence of the cyclic adenosine monophosphate and progesterone signaling pathways that drives integrated changes at both the transcriptome and the proteome level. As a consequence, decidualizing stromal cells acquire the unique ability to regulate trophoblast invasion, to resist inflammatory and oxidative insults, and to dampen local maternal immune responses. In humans, decidualization of the stromal compartment occurs in the mid-luteal phase of the menstrual cycle, independently of pregnancy. This raises the possibility that biochemical analysis of timed endometrial biopsy samples taken in a nonconception cycle could be informative of subsequent pregnancy outcome.
Lentiviral Transfer of the LacZ Gene into Human Endothelial Cells and Human Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells

Because one of the attractive characteristics of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1)-based lentiviral vectors is that it can infect even nondividing cells, a lentivirus-mediated gene delivery system is currently being paid a great deal of attention as an innovative tool for gene transfer into target cells. The purpose of the work was to investigate the efficacy of lentiviral transfer of the LacZ gene into human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) and human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (HMSCs) in vitro. For the present study, a vesicular stomatitis virus G-protein (VSV-G)-pseudotyped lentiviral vector encoding the E. coli LacZ gene tagged with nuclear localization signal (NLS) was generated in 293T cells by means of the three-plasmid system. The resulting lentiviral vector, LtV-NLS/LacZ, was allowed to infect HUVECs and HMSCs. Approximately 70% of HUVECs were positive for LacZ expression and 50% of HMSCs showed LacZ activity. There was no significant difference in transduction efficacy between early and late-passage phases in both cells. LtV-NLS/LacZ-transduced HUVECs showed gene expression of endothelial markers including CD34 and flt-1 and KDR/flk-1 of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) receptors and had angiogenic potential as efficiently as primarily cultured HUVECs in a Matrigel assay. These findings provide evidence that lentiviral vectors are efficient tools for gene transfer and expression in human endothelial cells and stem cells that could be useful for tissue engineering.
Vocabulary harmonisation for biometrics: the development of ISO/IEC 2382 Part 37

This study discusses a 10-year effort by Standards Committee 37 of the International Organisation for Standardisation/International Electrotechnical Commission Joint Technical Committee 1 (ISO/IEC JTC1 SC37) to create a systematic vocabulary for the field of `biometrics' based on international standards for vocabulary development. That process has now produced a new International Standard (ISO/IEC 2382-37:2012), which conceptualises and defines 121 terms that are most central to the proposed field. This study will review some of the philosophical and operational principles of vocabulary development within SC37, present 11 of the most commonly used standardised terms with their definitions and discuss some of the conceptual changes implicit in the new vocabulary.
Enhanced expression of neutral endopeptidase (NEP) in airway epithelium in biopsies from steroid- versus nonsteroid-treated patients with atopic asthma.

The expression of the endogenous neuropeptide-degrading enzyme, neutral endopeptidase (NEP; CALLA, CD10, E.C.3.4.24.11) on cultured human airway epithelial cells can be upregulated by corticosteroids. We examined whether NEP expression in the airway epithelium or lamina propria in bronchial biopsies is enhanced in atopic asthmatics on regular inhaled steroids as compared with those without steroid treatment. Forty nonsmoking adults (age 19 to 48 yr) with mild to moderate asthma (forced expiratory volume in 1 s > or = 50% pred., histamine PC20 range 0.02 to 7.6 mg/ml) with (n = 23) or without (n = 17) regular inhaled steroids treatment entered the study. Biopsies were taken at (sub)segmental level from the right lower lobe, the middle lobe, and the main carina. Immunohistochemical staining was performed on cryostat sections using the VIL-A1 monoclonal antibody against CD10 (NEP). Intra- and inter-observer repeatability of a semiquantitative scoring method was good as assessed by weighted kappa (kappa(w) ranging from 0.66 to 0.81). In the airway epithelium, NEP-positive sites were within the basal layer and, in contrast with studies applying other antibodies, also at apical sites and within the lamina propria. In both the epithelium and lamina propria, NEP expression was not significantly different between the three biopsy sites (Friedman's nonparametric two-way analysis of variance; P > 0.68), nor was expression in the lamina propria associated with inhaled steroid usage (Mann-Whitney U test; P = 0.98). However, NEP expression was significantly enhanced in the airway epithelium in patients using inhaled steroids as compared with nonsteroid users (mean rank: 23.4 and 15.5, respectively; P = 0.02). Among nonsteroid-using subjects, NEP expression was related to symptoms and the methacholine PC20 (Rs: -0.69 and 0.49, respectively; P < or = 0.04). We conclude that the expression of NEP is enhanced in airway epithelium in bronchial biopsy specimens from patients with atopic asthma who are regularly using inhaled steroids as compared with patients who do not. This fits the hypothesis that the anti-inflammatory effect of corticosteroids within the airways is partially mediated by the upregulation of the endogenous neuropeptide-degrading enzyme NEP.