Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
White matter alterations in Parkinson’s disease with normal cognition precede grey matter atrophy

Introduction While progressive MRI brain changes characterize advanced Parkinson’s disease (PD), little has been discovered about structural alterations in the earliest phase of the disease, i.e. in patients with motor symptoms and with normal cognition. Our study aimed to detect grey matter (GM) and white matter (WM) changes in PD patients without cognitive impairment. Methods Twenty PD patients and twenty-one healthy controls (HC) were tested for attention, executive function, working memory, and visuospatial and language domains. High-resolution T1-weighted and 60 directional diffusion-weighted 3T MRI images were acquired. The cortical, deep GM and WM volumes and density, as well as the diffusion properties of WM, were calculated. Analyses were repeated on data flipped to the side of the disease origin. Results PD patients did not show any significant differences from HC in cognitive functioning or in brain volumes. Decreased GM intensity was found in the left superior parietal lobe in the right (p<0.02) and left (p<0.01) flipped data. The analysis of original, un-flipped data demonstrated elevated axial diffusivity (p<0.01) in the superior and anterior corona radiata, internal capsule, and external capsule in the left hemisphere of PD relative to HC, while higher mean and radial diffusivity were discovered in the right (p<0.02 and p<0.03, respectively) and left (p<0.02 and p<0.02, respectively) in the fronto-temporal WM utilizing flipped data. Conclusions PD patients without cognitive impairment and GM atrophy demonstrated widespread alterations of WM microstructure. Thus, WM impairment in PD might be a sensitive sign preceding the neuronal loss in associated GM regions.
New approach for field association term dictionary with passage retrieval

Field Association (FA) terms are a limited set of discriminating terms that can specify document fields. Document fields can be decided efficiently if there are many relevant FA terms in that documents. An earlier approach built FA terms dictionary using a WWW search engine, but there were irrelevant selected FA terms in that dictionary because that approach extracted FA terms from the whole documents. This paper proposes a new approach for extracting FA terms using passage (portions of a document text) technique rather than extracting them from the whole documents. This approach extracts FA terms more accurately than the earlier approach. The proposed approach is evaluated for 38, 372 articles from the large tagged corpus. According to experimental results, it turns out that by using the new approach about 24% more relevant FA terms are appending to the earlier FA term dictionary and around 32% irrelevant FA terms are deleted. Moreover, precision and recall are achieved 98% and 94% respectively using the new approach.
Multiple Human Face Detection Based on Local Genetic Algorithm Clustering Using Mobile iPhone Platform

This paper discusses the role of evolutionary computation in visual perception for partner robots. The search of evolutionary computation has many analogies with human visual search. First of all, we discuss the analogies between the evolutionary search and human visual search. Next, we propose the concept of evolutionary robot vision, and multiple human face detection method based on local genetic algorithm clustering. Finally, we show experimental results of the multiple human face detection using mobile platform iPhone platform to discuss the effectiveness of our proposed method.
Secure Multiparty Computation between Distrusted Networks Terminals

One of the most important problems facing any distributed application over a heterogeneous network is the protection of private sensitive information in local terminals. A subfield of cryptography called secure multiparty computation (SMC) is the study of such distributed computation protocols that allow distrusted parties to perform joint computation without disclosing private data. SMC is increasingly used in diverse fields from data mining to computer vision. This paper provides a tutorial on SMC for nonexperts in cryptography and surveys some of the latest advances in this exciting area including various schemes for reducing communication and computation complexity of SMC protocols, doubly homomorphic encryption and private information retrieval.
Poly(alkycyanoacrylate) nanoparticles for enhanced delivery of therapeutics – is there real potential?

The properties inherent in poly(alkylcyanoacrylate) (PACA) nanoparticles, such as biocompatibility and biodegradability of the polymer, a simple preparation process and particularly the entrapment of bioactives, specifically proteins and peptides, have sparked extensive interest in these nanoparticles as drug delivery systems. Research has focused on the oral route of administration, however ocular, transdermal and delivery across the blood–brain barrier have also been investigated. Despite numerous promising studies, no formulation with this colloidal carrier has been marketed to date. A number of factors have been identified as interfering with the reproducibility of in vitro and in vivo results, which impedes the comparison of the plethora of experiments done with PACA nanoparticles. This review will highlight the challenges and opportunities of using PACA nanoparticles as drug delivery systems, including polymerisation mechanisms and templates, entrapment, release, nanoparticle uptake and toxicity. In vitro and in vivo studies, as well as possible surface modifications for targeted delivery in the human field and veterinary applications of PACA nanoparticles are reviewed. Emphasis will be placed on microemulsions as templates for the preparation of PACA nanoparticles and oral delivery of proteins and peptides.
Trends in smoking behaviour between 1985 and 2000 in nine European countries by education

Objective: To examine whether trends in smoking behaviour in Western Europe between 1985 and 2000 differed by education group. Design: Data of smoking behaviour and education level were obtained from national cross sectional surveys conducted between 1985 and 2000 (a period characterised by intense tobacco control policies) and analysed for countries combined and each country separately. Annual trends in smoking prevalence and the quantity of cigarettes consumed by smokers were summarised for each education level. Education inequalities in smoking were examined at four time points. Setting: Data were obtained from nine European countries: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Participants: 451 386 non-institutionalised men and women 25–79 years old. Main outcome measures: Smoking status, daily quantity of cigarettes consumed by smokers. Results: Combined country analyses showed greater declines in smoking and tobacco consumption among tertiary educated men and women compared with their less educated counterparts. In country specific analyses, elementary educated British men and women, and elementary educated Italian men showed greater declines in smoking than their more educated counterparts. Among Swedish, Finnish, Danish, German, Italian, and Spanish women, greater declines were seen among more educated groups. Conclusions: Widening education inequalities in smoking related diseases may be seen in several European countries in the future. More insight into effective strategies specifically targeting the smoking behaviour of low educated groups may be gained from examining the tobacco control policies of the UK and Italy over this period.
EULAR recommendations for disease management: guidance not guidelines

The past two decades have witnessed remarkable advances in the treatment of inflammatory arthritis that have made remission in previously untreatable conditions a realistic goal for many patients. These advances derive from new insights into disease mechanisms; the advent of the biologics and other new therapies; the development of robust measures of disease activity; coherent treatment strategies to guide therapy (ie, treat to target or T2T); and a sufficient supply of rheumatologists to implement the new approaches.1 The advances in rheumatology have been unprecedented and, arguably, the treatment of inflammatory arthritis has progressed faster and further than that of any other serious chronic disease in all of medicine. Indeed, a patient with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) today can lead an essentially normal life, whereas, a few decades ago, such a patient would have a restricted existence and be easily recognised by the appearance of grave illness, wasting and deformity. Along with better outcomes have come challenges in the utilisation of the current armamentarium of disease modifying antirheumatic drugs or DMARDs (table 1). These challenges are, of course, welcome since they signify progress. In the face of literally hundreds to thousands of ways to treat arthritis and the continuing influx of novel agents, they also demand guidance for both providers and patients to establish a treatment plan, recognising potential risks, benefits and costs. The publication of three articles on European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) recommendations for the treatment of early inflammatory arthritis, RA and axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA) is therefore an important event and provides a much needed perspective and framework for the delivery of best care.2–4 View this table: Table 1 Disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) Each article represents a remarkable effort by panels of rheumatologists, health professionals and patient representatives to encompass an ever-expanding literature and provide overarching principles as well as specific recommendations. The work …
A Bayesian approach to direction finding with parametric array uncertainty

With few exceptions, high-resolution source localization algorithms require an exact characterization of the array, including knowledge of the sensor positions, sensor gain/phase response, mutual coupling, and receiver equipment effects. In practice, all such information is inevitably subject to errors. Recently, several different methods have been proposed for alleviating the inherent sensitivity of parametric methods to such modeling errors. The technique proposed herein is related to the class of so-called auto-calibration procedures, but it is assumed that certain prior knowledge of the array response errors is available. The optimal maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimator for the problem at hand is formulated, and a more computationally attractive large-sample approximation is derived. In addition, the performance advantage of the algorithm is illustrated by an example involving a linear array mounted on a flexible structure. <<ETX>>
Overlay-Friendly Native Network : A Contradiction in Terms ?

It is a widely accepted notion that the native layer of the current Internet has begun to stagnate in terms of the services offered. Consequently, overlay networks have gained attention as a viable alternative to overcome functionality limitations of the Internet. A common approach to overlay network design holds the native network inviolable, implying that the overlay has to take on all the tasks needed to provide the desired high-level services. This limits the performance achieved and can potentially overburden the overlay layer. To solve these problems, we envision that, as overlay applications proliferate, the native layer should gradually evolve to suit the overlay network requirements. This paper proposes a framework for such an overlay-friendly native network (OFNN), which will cater to the overlay applications without compromising on the performance of the non-overlay applications. However, it is arguable that such a modification to the native network is contradictory to the fundamental reason overlay networks were conceived. We address this argument in our paper and classify the OFNN approaches as contradictory or non-contradictory based on whether the native layer modification is invasive or not. Further, we discuss the option of tuning the native layer parameters as a simple, yet feasible, non-contradictory OFNN approach. As examples, we present the overlay-friendly tuning of the native layer IGP hello-interval, BGP MED attribute and IGP cost.
Measurement of Time-Varying MIMO Channel for Performance Analysis of Closed-Loop Transmission

A real-time multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel measurement system was implemented by using a 4times4 MIMO software defined radio (SDR) testbed. A target application of this system is to evaluate realistic performance of closed-loop MIMO transmission in time-varying channels at 5 GHz band. The results of indoor measurements showed that feedback delay of the closed-loop transmission causes severe degradation of channel capacity, and an interference canceller in eigenbeamspace is indispensable in achieving the benefits of channel state information (CSI) feedback
An Assessment of Absorbed Organ Dose Arising from Conventional Diagnostic X-ray Examinations by Monte Carlo Simulation (MCNP-4C Code)

In this study the radiation transport code, MCNP-4C has been used to perform Monte Carlo simulations to estimate radiation dose delivered to different organs in conventional x-ray examinations. For this purpose we have made use of ORNL mathematical anthropomorphic phantoms. Although, implementation of a few modifications have been necessary to simulate adult male and female phantoms. The source of radiation has been defined as a point source, emitting photons into a solid angle (cone). The x-ray beam was shaped by a collimator to produce a rectangular field at the midline of the phantom. The x-ray spectrum utilized for the simulation was adopted from HPA-SRS30. To validate the simulation executed in this study, normalized organs doses to unit entrance surface dose for hermaphrodite phantom were computed. The calculations were carried out for head, chest and abdomen examinations (AP-PA views). Our results were compared with corresponding values presented by NRPB (Jones and wall 1985&Hart et al 1994). Although for some organs, the evaluated organ dose in this study and those estimated by NRPB were slightly different, but in general two sets of results were in good agreement. The differences were originated from application of different Monte Carlo packages, different organ size and tissue compositions specified in these two studies. For further evaluation of MCNP-4C method, our results were compared with organ an effective dose produced by implementation of ODS-60. In spite of some common assumptions between two techniques a number of differences were evident. Finally, in present study MCNP-4C code was used to calculate the normalized organ doses per unit ESD for male and female phantoms separately (for chest and abdomen examinations in AP-PA projections).
Outcome and prognostic markers in severe drug‐induced liver disease

The combination of high aminotransferases (hepatocellular injury) and jaundice has been reported to lead to a mortality rate of 10% to 50% for different drugs, a phenomenon known as “Hy's rule. ” However, Hy's rule has never been validated, and limited data exist on predictors for outcome in hepatocellular and other forms of drug‐induced liver disease. All reports of suspected hepatic adverse drug reactions received by the Swedish Adverse Drug Reactions Advisory Committee (1970‐2004) were reviewed. Cases with bilirubin levels 2 or more times the upper limit of normal (ULN) were analyzed. A total of 784 cases were retrieved—409 with hepatocellular injury, 206 with cholestatic injury, and 169 with mixed liver injury. The mortality/transplantation rate was 9.2%, and bilirubin (median 18.7 × ULN [IQR 12.6‐25]; range 4.5‐42) was higher (P < .0001) in the deceased/transplant recipients compared with the surviving patients (median 5.5 × ULN [IQR 3.3‐9.5]; range 2.0‐38). A total of 7.8% with cholestatic and 2.4% with a mixed pattern died. The mortality rate in hepatocellular injury for different drugs varied from 40% (6 of 15) for halothane to 0% (0 of 32) for erythromycin, in total 12.7%. Using logistic regression analysis, age, aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and bilirubin were found to independently predict death or liver transplantation in the hepatocellular group, whereas among patients with cholestatic/mixed liver injury, bilirubin was the only independent predictor. In conclusion, hepatocellular jaundice has a high but variable mortality rate, depending on the drug involved. The AST and bilirubin levels are the most important predictors of death or liver transplantation. (HEPATOLOGY 2005;42:481–489.)
MODE I AND MIXED MODE I AND II MEASUREMENTS FOR STICTION FAILED MEMS DEVICES

Recently, we have shown that in-service repair of stiction failed MEMS devices is possible with structural vibrations. In order to further understand this phenomenon and better predict, theoretically, the onset of repair we have constructed an apparatus to determine the Mode I, II, and III interfacial adhesion energies of MEMS devices failed on a substrate. Though our method is general, we are specifically focused on devices created using the SUMMiT V process. An apparatus has been constructed that has 8 degrees-of-freedom between the MEMS device, the surface on which the device is failed, and a scanning interferometric microscope. Deflection profiles of stiction failed MEMS (micro-cantilevered beams 1500 microns long, 30 microns wide, and 2.6 microns thick) have their deflection profiles measured with nanometer resolution by the scanning interferometric microscope. Then non-linear elastic models are used in order to determine the interfacial adhesion energy between the failed micro-cantilevers and the surface. In this work we report the interfacial energies from Mode I and Mixed Mode I and II type failures. We also show further experimental results of repair of stiction failed MEMS and corresponding modeling results that use data from the Mode I and II experiments.Copyright © 2009 by ASME
Diversity-Aware Clustering of SIOC Posts

Sentiment analysis as well as topic extraction and named entity recognition are emerging methods used in the field of Web Mining. Next to SQL-like querying and according visualization, new ways of organization have become possible. In this demo paper we apply efficient clustering algorithms that stem from the image retrieval field to sioc:Post entities, blending similarity scores of sentiment and covered topics. We demonstrate the system with a visualization component that combines different diversity aspects within microposts by Twitter users and a static news article collection.
Adaptive Block-Based Singular Value Decomposition Filtering

Noise reduction is one of the most important processes to enhance the quality of reconstructed image. In this paper, we present an adaptive block-based singular value decomposition method for noise reduction. Instead of applying block-based singular value decomposition (BSVD) directly to noisy images, we propose to apply BSVD on the noisy edge image version obtained from the difference between the original noisy image and its blur image version. From the experimental results, we demonstrate that our proposed approach compared with traditionally methods can remove noise, preserve edges as well as effectively smooth in the homogenous region. Therefore, our method leads to a practical method to be used for noise reduction.
Anatomical, Physiological, and Theoretical Basis for the Antiepileptic Effect of Vagus Nerve Stimulation

Summary: The vagus is a mixed nerve carrying somatic and visceral afferents and efferents. The majority of vagal nerve fibers are visceral afferents and have a wide distribution throughout the central nervous system (CNS) either monosynaptically or via the nucleus of the solitary tract. Besides activation of well‐defined reflexes, vagal stimulation produces evoked potentials recorded from the cerebral cortex, the hippocampus, the thalamus, and the cerebellum. Activation of vagal afferents can depress monosynaptic reflexes, decrease the activity of spinothalamic neurons, and increase pain threshold. Depending on the stimulation parameters, vagal afferent stimulation in experimental animals can produce electroencephalo‐graphic (EEG) synchronization or desynchronization and has been shown to affect sleep states. The desynchronization of the EEG appears to depend on activation of afferent fibers that have conduction velocities of ≤ 15 m/s. Vagal afferent stimulation can also influence the activity of interictal cortical spikes produced by topical strychnine application, and either attenuate or stop seizures produced by pentylenetetrazol, 3‐mercaptoproprionic acid, maximal electroshock, and topical alumina gel. The mechanisms for the antiepileptic effects of vagal stimulation are not fully understood but probably relate to effects on the reticular activating system. The vagus provides an easily accessible, peripheral route to modulate CNS function.
Idealized dynamic population sizing for uniformly scaled problems

This paper explores an idealized dynamic population sizing strategy for solving additive decomposable problems of uniform scale. The method is designed on top of the foundations of existing population sizing theory for this class of problems, and is carefully compared with an optimal fixed population sized genetic algorithm. The resulting strategy should be close to a lower bound in terms of what can be achieved, performance-wise, by self-adjusting population sizing algorithms for this class of problems.
2 Second Malignancies in Retinoblastoma : The Real Problem

Retinoblastoma accounts for 6% of pediatric malignancies under the age of 5 years in the United States, (Broaddus et al., 2008) and epidemiological data suggest that the incidence is standard across populations (Kivelä, 2009). Despite its rarity, observations about the pathogenesis of this disease have enhanced our understanding of genetic cancer syndromes. Germinal or hereditary cases comprise approximately 40% of retinoblastoma cases, and all patients with the germinal RB1 mutation are at risk for secondary malignancies. According to recent reports, some retinoblastoma patients exhibit varying degrees of mosaicism for the RB1 mutation, allowing them to develop second primary malignancies in addition to those with standard hereditary retinoblastoma. These cancers occur in various anatomic locations such as the skull and long bones, soft tissues, skin, nasal cavity, brain, lung, and breast. The pattern of development and risk for these tumors are heavily influenced by the methods of treatment for retinoblastoma, which have shifted from enucleation to external-beam radiation to systemic chemotherapy with focal treatments. Investigations of the benefits of intra-arterial chemotherapy are ongoing with the hopes of reducing the morbidities associated with systemic therapy. Due to these improving treatment techniques, 10-year survival rates of primary retinoblastoma have been among the highest of all childhood cancers at greater than 92% in the United States and other developed countries since 1975 (Kaatsch, 2010; Linabery & Ross, 2008). Secondary malignancies have thus become an increasingly significant topic of interest as they are the leading cause of death of germinal retinoblastoma survivors in the United States.