Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Safety of robotic-assisted treadmill therapy in children and adolescents with gait impairment: A bi-centre survey

Objective: The aim of the present study was to report on adverse events encountered with robotic-assisted treadmill therapy in children and adolescents with gait disorders. Methods: Eighty-nine patients who underwent a trial of robotic assisted treadmill therapy in the two participating centres were analysed. Demographic data and safety data of the patients were analysed using descriptive statistics. Results: In 38 (42.7%) out of 89 patients, adverse events were documented. Most commonly, mild skin erythema at the sites of the cuffs of the device and muscle pain were encountered. In five patients (5.6%), open skin lesions (n = 2), joint pain (n = 2) or tendinopathy (n = 1) limited the continuation of the therapy with the Lokomat. No severe side-effects emerged. Conclusions: Robotic assisted treadmill therapy is a safe method to enable longer periods of gait therapy in children and adolescents with gait disorders.
Susceptibility tensor imaging

Heterogeneity of magnetic susceptibility within brain tissues creates unique contrast between gray and white matter in magnetic resonance phase images acquired by gradient echo sequences. Detailed understanding of this contrast may provide meaningful diagnostic information. In this communication, we report an observation of extensive anisotropic magnetic susceptibility in the white matter of the central nervous system. Furthermore, we describe a susceptibility tensor imaging technique to measure and quantify this phenomenon. This technique relies on the measurement of resonance frequency offset at different orientations with respect to the main magnetic field. We propose to characterize this orientation variation using an apparent susceptibility tensor. The susceptibility tensor can be decomposed into three eigenvalues (principal susceptibilities) and associated eigenvectors that are coordinate‐system independent. We show that the principal susceptibilities offer strong contrast between gray and white matter, whereas the eigenvectors provide orientation information of an underlying magnetic network. We believe that this network may further offer information of white matter fiber orientation. Magn Reson Med 63:1471–1477, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Mode-partition noise and intensity correlation in a two-mode semiconductor laser.

The intensity-noise characteristics of a nearly single-longitudinal-mode semiconductor laser are analyzed by adopting a two-mode model. An approximate solution of the resulting Langevin rate equations is used to obtain an analytic expression for the enhancement of the main-mode intensity noise caused by mode partition. We also obtain analytic expressions for the autocorrelation and cross-correlation functions which are used to discuss noise variances in the two modes. In particular, the cross-correlation function is related to the mode-partition coefficient, a measure of anticorrelation between the two modes that is useful to analyze the system performance. Our results show explicitly how the intensity correlation is affected by the mode-suppression ratio and other device parameters.
Prospective, multicentre, randomized, double-blind study of the efficacy of escitalopram versus citalopram in outpatient treatment of major depressive disorder

Pre-clinical studies, active-control clinical trials and meta-analyses indicate that escitalopram (S-citalopram) might be more effective than citalopram, the racemic mixture of S- and R-citalopram. The present study aimed to confirm the superior efficacy of escitalopram over citalopram. A double-blind, randomized clinical trial was performed in which general practitioners and psychiatrists compared fixed doses of escitalopram (20 mg/day) with citalopram (40 mg/day) over 8 weeks in outpatients with major depressive disorder (MDD) [baseline Montgomery–Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) score ≥30]. Primary efficacy parameter was change from baseline to last assessment in the MADRS total score. Out of 138 (aged 44.1±10.9 years; initial MADRS score 36.3±4.8) and 142 (aged 46.2±11.1 years; initial MADRS score 35.7±4.4) evaluable patients who were randomized to escitalopram and citalopram, respectively, six and 15 withdrew prematurely (P=0.05). The MADRS score decreased more in the escitalopram than in the citalopram arm (–22.4±12.9 versus –20.3±12.7; P<0.05). There were more treatment responders with escitalopram (76.1%) than with citalopram (61.3%, P<0.01). Adjusted remitter rates were 56.1% and 43.6%, respectively (P<0.05). Tolerability was similar in both groups. This randomized double-blind trial confirms that escitalopram has a superior effect to citalopram in MDD.
A low-cost mobile adaptive tracking system for chronic pulmonary patients in home environment.

OBJECTIVE The main objective of this study is presenting a real-time mobile adaptive tracking system for patients diagnosed with diseases such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and application results at home. The main role of the system is to support and track chronic pulmonary patients in real time who are comfortable in their home environment. It is not intended to replace the doctor, regular treatment, and diagnosis. MATERIALS AND METHODS In this study, the Java 2 micro edition-based system is integrated with portable spirometry, smartphone, extensible markup language-based Web services, Web server, and Web pages for visualizing pulmonary function test results. The Bluetooth(®) (Bluetooth SIG, Kirkland, WA) virtual serial port protocol is used to obtain the test results from spirometry. General packet radio service, wireless local area network, or third-generation-based wireless networks are used to send the test results from a smartphone to the remote database. The system provides real-time classification of test results with the back propagation artificial neural network algorithm on a mobile smartphone. It also provides the generation of appropriate short message service-based notification and sending of all data to the Web server. In this study, the test results of 486 patients, obtained from Atatürk Chest Diseases and Thoracic Surgery Training and Research Hospital in Ankara, Turkey, are used as the training and test set in the algorithm. RESULTS The algorithm has 98.7% accuracy, 97.83% specificity, 97.63% sensitivity, and 0.946 correlation values. The results show that the system is cheap (900 Euros) and reliable. CONCLUSIONS The developed real-time system provides improvement in classification accuracy and facilitates tracking of chronic pulmonary patients.
Transaction Costs and Institutional Explanations for Government Service Production Decisions

Governments not only choose which services to deliver to citizens, but they also choose how to deliver those services. Governments can produce services themselves or through a variety of external production mechanisms, including contracting with other governments, private firms, and nonprofits. In this article, we apply a transaction cost framework complemented with institutional and market theories to examine governments’ service production decisions. Our analyses of a 1997 International City/County Management Association survey shows how governments choose service production mechanisms to manage the transaction costs inherent in delivering different types of services. Perhaps the central decision that governments make is choosing which services to deliver to citizens. However, governments also decide how to deliver these services. Traditionally governments have internally produced services—that is, they have made the services themselves, with their own workers, offices, equipment, and so on. Over the last several decades the means through which governments can deliver services has expanded to include vouchers, franchises, and nontax incentives, to name a few policy tools (Stein 1990; Salamon 2002). In particular, governments have increasingly relied on external actors to produce services through contracting and other third-party arrangements (Warner and Hedbon 2001). Given the array of production possibilities available to governments, why do governments select the service production mechanisms that they do? We use a transaction costs framework to argue that governments select production mechanisms in part to minimize risks associated with delivering services under alternative institutional arrangements. These risks derive from the type of service being produced, the nature of the service marketplace, and goal incongruence between the government and the vendor. We further complement our basic transaction costs framework by arguing that institutional pressures in governments’ operating environments reinforce these purposive decisions about service production mechanisms. In this article we examine how municipal and county governments choose to produce services across five service production mechanisms—internal production, joint contracting, complete contracts with other governments, complete contracts with private firms, and
An Analysis of the Influence of Location in the Market for Undeveloped Urban Fringe Land

This paper blends and extends the Colwell and Munneke (1997) and Isakson (1997) models of urban land values to include a spatiotemporal plattage component. By including a monocentric term in the Isakson model, we arrive at a Colwell and Munneke-type model with a temporal component included in the plattage term. We further extend this model to include a spatiotemporal effect in the plattage term and demonstrate the use of geostatistical plattage models. (R14)
The effects of periodic prompting on selected teaching behaviors of physical education student teachers

AUTHOR van der Mars, Hans TITLE The Effects of Periodic Prompting on Selected Teaching Behaviors ofPhysical Education Student Teachers. PUB DATE 84 NOTE 16p. Paper presented at the National Convention of the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (Anaheim, CA, March 28-April 2, 1984). PUB TYPE Speeches/Conference Papers (150) -Reports ,Research/Technical (143)
Golden angle dual‐inversion recovery acquisition coupled with a flexible time‐resolved sparse reconstruction facilitates sequence timing in high‐resolution coronary vessel wall MRI at 3 T

The need for performing dual‐inversion recovery (DIR) coronary vessel wall MRI in correspondence to minimal cardiac motion and optimal blood signal nulling is a major challenge. We propose to address this hurdle by combining DIR with a prolonged acquisition window in conjunction with a golden angle radial trajectory and k‐t sparse sensitivity encoding (SENSE) reconstruction to enable a flexible a‐posteriori selection of optimized imaging parameters.
Dlx genes pattern mammalian jaw primordium by regulating both lower jaw-specific and upper jaw-specific genetic programs

Dlx transcription factors are implicated in patterning the mammalian jaw, based on their nested expression patterns in the first branchial arch (primordium for jaw) and mutant phenotypes; inactivation of Dlx1 and Dlx2 (Dlx1/2-/-) causes defects in the upper jaw, whereas Dlx5/6-/- results in homeotic transformation of the lower jaw into upper jaw. Therefore, the `Dlx codes' appear to regionalize the jaw primordium such that Dlx1/2 regulate upper jaw development, while Dlx5/6 confer the lower jaw fate. Towards identifying the genetic pathways downstream of Dlx5/6, we compared the gene expression profiles of the wild-type and Dlx5/6-/- mouse mandibular arch (prospective lower jaw). We identified 20 previously unrecognized Dlx5/6-downstream genes, of which 12 were downregulated and 8 upregulated in the mutant. We found a Dlx-regulated transcriptional enhancer in close proximity to Gbx2, one of the Dlx5/6-downstream genes, strongly suggesting that Gbx2 is a direct target of Dlx5/6. We also showed that Pou3f3 is normally expressed in the maxillary (prospective upper jaw) but not mandibular arch, is upregulated in the mandibular arch of Dlx5/6-/-, and is essential for formation of some of the maxillary arch-derived skeleton. A comparative analysis of the morphological and molecular phenotypes of various Dlx single and double mutants revealed that Dlx1, 2, 5 and 6 act both partially redundantly and antagonistically to direct differential expression of downstream genes in each domain of the first branchial arch. We propose a new model for Dlx-mediated mammalian jaw patterning.
Retail Gasoline Price Ceilings and Regulatory Capture: Evidence from Canada

We evaluate the efficacy of price ceiling legislation by employing weekly data on retail gasoline prices for eight cities in Eastern Canada between 1999 and 2007. The use of these data allows us to pool "treatment" cities in the Atlantic provinces with "control" cities in Ontario and Quebec. Ordinary least squares and instrumental variables estimates demonstrate that the enactment of such regulation is significantly correlated with higher prices. A potential explanation for these results is that price ceilings act as "focal points" enabling firms to set higher prices, thus suggesting the possibility of regulatory capture. Copyright 2011, Oxford University Press.
Deletion of AMPKα1 attenuates the anticontractile effect of perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT) and reduces adiponectin release

Perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT) surrounds most blood vessels and secretes numerous active substances, including adiponectin, which produce a net anticontractile effect in healthy individuals. AMPK is a key mediator of cellular energy balance and may mediate the vascular effects of adiponectin. In this study, we investigated the role of AMPK within PVAT in mediating the anticontractile effect of PVAT.
Behavioral intention in the luxury fast food restaurant

The purpose of this article is to analyze the impacts of personal interaction encounters, service excellence, product quality and positive emotion on consumer behavioral intentions in luxury fast food restaurants. The paper investigates samples of luxury fast food restaurants' customers in Shiraz, using stratii¬ed random sampling. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed by fast food restaurant staffs to randomly selected customers who were waiting for checks after dinner. In all, 780 customers were asked to complete a survey on a voluntary basis. A total of 738 completed questionnaires were obtained and used in this study. The paper adopted the structural equation modeling approach to test the hypothesis. The empirical validation of the conceptual model supports the research hypotheses. The results support the fully mediating role of service excellence in the relationship between personal interaction encounters and behavioral intentions. This study explores how positive emotion mediates the impact of product quality and behavioral intentions. The paper also i¬nds support for linear relationship between behavioral intention and actual behavior. Key words: Personal interaction encounters, service excellence, product quality, positive emotion, behavioral intention, actual behavior.
Norwegian Wage Curves

The paper presents empirical evidence on wage formation in Norway using annual time series data for manufacturing industry. First, we show that long-run effects of consumer prices and taxes depend strongly on the exact definition of the empirical variables. Using the implicit factor income deflator, the wedge between consumer's and producer's real wages is insignificant. Second, our results indicate that there is a long-run tradeoff between the wage level and the unemployment ratio and the Phillips curve specification is firmly rejected. Third, the paper presents empirical evidence in favor of a strongly nonlinear wage curve. Fourth, our results support the long-term unemployment hypothesis, as increased proportion of long-term unemployment shifts the wage curve outwards and to the right. Copyright 1995 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
(De)constructing a policy 'failure': housing stock transfer in Glasgow

The most significant housing stock transfer in the UK took place in Glasgow in 2003. It has been widely and repeatedly depicted as a policy 'failure', by both journalists and informed critics. This article evaluates the specific claims of failure by looking at developments to date and the available evidence. It uses an available theoretical framework to consider how such judgements have been arrived at, revealing the biases contained therein. The label of 'failure' is rejected, but policy deficiencies are identified; again, a theoretical framework is used to relate these weaknesses to the nature of the politics involved in the formation and oversight of the policy.
Eco-Labelling and the Trade-Environment Debate

In this paper we consider the effectiveness of eco-labels as a substitute for alternative, but trade-restrictive, environmental policies. Specifically, while there are concerns that eco-labelling requirements increase the cost of international trade, due to their potential for misuse as technical trade barriers, little attention has been given to the environmental benefits of eco-labelling. We show that incentive problems inherent in eco-labelling policies make it a very weak tool of environmental policy. Despite this, we argue that eco-labelling schemes may remain popular, owing to the lack of alternative WTO compliant environmental policies. We also use this framework to consider the economic and political conflicts facing the EU with regard to its policies on genetically modified organisms.
Comparative evaluation of term selection functions for authorship attribution

Different computational models have been proposed to automatically determine the most probable author of a disputed text (authorship attribution). These models can be viewed as special approaches in the text categorization domain. In this perspective, in a first step we need to determine the most effective features (words, punctuation symbols, part-of-speech, bigram of words, etc.) to discriminate between different authors. To achieve this, we can consider different independent feature-scoring selection functions (information gain, gain ratio, pointwise mutual information, odds ratio, chi-square, bi-normal separation, GSS, Darmstadt Indexing Approach (DIA), and correlation coefficient). Other term selection strategies have also been suggested in specific authorship attribution studies. To compare these two families of selection procedures, we have extracted articles from two newspapers and belonging to two categories (sports and politics). To enlarge the basis of our evaluations, we have chosen one newspaper written in the English language (‘Glasgow Herald’) and a second one in Italian (‘La Stampa’). The resulting collections contain from 987 to 2,036 articles written by four to ten columnists. Using the Kullback–Leibler divergence, the chi-square measure and the Delta rule as attribution schemes, this study found that some simple selection strategies (based on occurrence frequency or document frequency) may produce similar, and sometimes better, results compared with more complex ones.
SVD Based Blind Video Watermarking Algorithm

In this paper, a new blind video watermarking algorithm is proposed based on the singular value decomposition. The watermarks can be detected without the original video or any other information of the original singular values. Experiments show that the algorithm bears desirable robustness on MPEG-2 compression, median filtering, small rescaling, and rotation, etc
'Real Time' Early Warning Indicators for Costly Asset Price Boom/Bust Cycles: A Role for Global Liquidity

We test the performance of a host of real and financial variables as early warning indicators for costly aggregate asset price boom/bust cycles, using data for 18 OECD countries. A quasi real time signaling approach is used to predict asset price booms that have serious real economy consequences. We use a loss function to rank the indicators given policy makers' relative preferences with respect to missed crises and false alarms and suggest a new measure for assessing the usefulness of indicators. Global measures of liquidity, in particular a global private credit gap, are the best performing indicators and display forecasting records, which are informative for policy makers interested in timely reactions to growing financial imbalances.
Intracranial Hemorrhage After Percutaneous Radiofrequency Trigeminal Rhizotomy

Radiofrequency thermocoagulation (RFT) of trigeminal ganglion is a commonly performed percutaneous procedure for the management of trigeminal neuralgia. However, it is not free from potentially life‐threatening complications. A case of intracranial hemorrhage following RFT, which was managed conservatively, is reported. The authors suggest that coagulation parameters be normalized and intra‐procedural blood pressure controlled while performing this technique. As RFT is carried out as an ambulatory procedure, absence of any intracranial complication must be ascertained clinically before the patient is discharged.
Equity Style Payoffs And Stock Return Predictability: Evidence From The South African JSE Securities Exchange

This paper undertakes to examine the structure of the payoffs to style attributes on the JSE Securities Exchange over the period from 1997 to 2007. Adopting the methodology of Haugen and Baker (1996), two expected return multifactor models are constructed to predict forward monthly returns of sample stocks using style attributes as model inputs. The Grinold model has an objective of selecting model inputs that will maximize the in-sample Grinold (1989) information ratio while the QH model has an objective of maximizing the in-sample Qian and Hua (2003) information ratio. The out-of-sample predictions of the models and their corresponding model inputs are evaluated over the period from 2002 to 2007. The permutations of the style attributes for the models are updated every 12 months based on training over the prior 60 months under the stepwise variable selection procedure proposed by Van Rensburg and Robertson (2003). The examination of the style attributes selected by the respective models reveal that most of the style attributes that exhibit significant univariate mean payoffs in our prior study are selected by the expected return multifactor models in this research. In addition, t he value attributes with the most consistent univariate payoffs are found to be the most important contributors to equity return forecasting. It is also found that models that account for multicollinearity tend to outperform the models that fail to address this issue over the out-of-sample period. Overall, the QH model outperforms the Grinold model in terms of both information ratios over the out-of-sample period. T he out-of-sample performance scores of the respective models are consistent with their corresponding in-sample performance scores, which suggest that successful expected return multifactor models, based on style attributes, can be developed to forecast ex-ante JSE equity returns.