Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Physics and Machine Learning: Emerging Paradigms

Current research in Machine Learning (ML) combines the study of variations on well-established methods with cutting-edge breakthroughs based on completely new approaches. Among the latter, emerging paradigms from Physics have taken special relevance in recent years. Although still in its initial stages, Quantum Machine Learning (QML) shows promising ways to speed up some of the costly ML calculations with a similar or even better performance than existing approaches. Two additional advantages are related to the intrinsic probabilistic approach of QML, since quantum states are genuinely probabilistic, and to the capability of finding the global optimum of a given cost function by means of adiabatic quantum optimization, thus circumventing the usual problem of local minima. Another Physics approach for ML comes from Statistical Physics and is linked to Information theory in supervised and semi-supervised learning frameworks. On the other hand, and from the perspective of Physics, ML can provide solutions by extracting knowledge from huge amounts of data, as it is common in many experiments in the field, such as those related to High Energy Physics for elementary-particle research and Observational Astronomy.
Cyclic 2,3-diphosphoglycerate as a component of a new branch in gluconeogenesis in Methanobacterium thermoautotrophicum delta H

A unique compound, cyclic 2,3-diphosphoglycerate (cDPG), is the major soluble carbon and phosphorus solute in Methanobacterium thermoautotrophicum delta H under optimal conditions of cell growth. It is a component of an unusual branch in gluconeogenesis in these bacteria. [U-13C]acetate pulse-[12C]acetate chase methodology was used to observe the relationship between cDPG and other metabolites (2-phosphoglycerate and 2,3-diphosphoglycerate [2-PG and 2,3-DPG, respectively]) of this branch. It was demonstrated that cells could grow exponentially under conditions in which 2-PG and 2,3-DPG, rather than cDPG, were the major solutes. While the total concentration of these three phosphorylated molecules was maintained, rapid interconversion of 13C label among them was observed. Label flow from 2-PG to 2,3-DPG to cDPG to polymer is the usual direction in this pathway in exponentially growing cells, while the reverse reactions sometimes predominate in the stationary phase. Evidence of the presence of a polymeric compound in this pathway was provided by 13C nuclear magnetic resonance (one-dimensional and two-dimensional INADEQUATE) studies of solubilized cell debris.
Neuropsychological performance following a history of multiple self-reported concussions: A meta-analysis

Abstract Debate continues about the long-term neuropsychological impact of multiple mild traumatic brain injuries (MTBI). A meta-analysis of the relevant literature was conducted to determine the impact of having a history of more than one self-reported MTBI (versus just one MTBI) across seven cognitive domains, as well as symptom complaints. The analysis was based on 8 studies, all conducted with athletes, involving 614 cases of multiple MTBI and 926 control cases of a single MTBI. The overall effect of multiple MTBI on neuropsychological functioning was minimal and not significant (d = 0.06). However, follow-up analyses revealed that multiple self-reported MTBI was associated with poorer performance on measures of delayed memory and executive functioning. The implications and limitations of these findings are discussed. (JINS, 2010, 16, 262–267.)
Radiosurgery for brain metastases from primary lung carcinoma.

PURPOSE Brain metastases are a common problem in patients with lung cancer. This retrospective review was performed to describe the efficacy and toxicity of stereotactic radiosurgery for brain metastases from lung carcinoma and to evaluate prognostic factors for survival. PATIENTS AND METHODS A retrospective review was performed of 113 patients with the diagnosis of lung carcinoma who underwent radiosurgery with or without whole-brain radiotherapy for management of newly diagnosed or recurrent, single, or multiple brain metastases from 1991 through 1998 at the University of California, San Francisco. Freedom from progression and survival were measured from the date of radiosurgery and estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method. Prognostic factors were evaluated with the log-rank test and Cox proportional hazards models. RESULTS The median patient age at the time of radiosurgery was 59 years (range, 37-82 years), and the median Karnofsky performance score was 90 (range, 50-100). The median survival time from radiosurgery was 12.0 months overall, 13.9 months for 41 patients treated with radiosurgery alone initially, 14.5 months for 19 patients treated with radiosurgery and whole-brain radiotherapy initially, and 10.0 months for 53 patients with recurrent brain metastases. Among newly diagnosed patients, multivariate analysis showed that improved survival was associated with absence of extracranial metastases and fewer brain metastases. Among patients with recurrent brain metastases, improved survival was associated with higher Karnofsky performance score, control of the primary tumor, and fewer metastases. Measured by lesion, 1-year local freedom from progression probabilities were 81% for radiosurgery alone, 86% for radiosurgery and whole-brain radiotherapy, and 65% for radiosurgery performed after recurrence. In patients with newly diagnosed brain metastases, there was a significantly greater risk of developing subsequent brain metastases and of worse overall brain freedom from progression after radiosurgery alone versus radiosurgery and whole-brain radiotherapy. One-year brain freedom from progression probabilities were 13% without salvage therapy and 62% with salvage therapy in the 41 patients treated initially with radiosurgery alone, versus 67% without salvage therapy and 89% with salvage therapy in the 19 patients treated initially with radiosurgery plus whole-brain radiotherapy. DISCUSSION Radiosurgery is an effective therapy for selected patients with newly diagnosed or recurrent brain metastases from lung carcinoma. Initial whole-brain radiotherapy with radiosurgery appears to improve brain control but not survival. Prospective, randomized trials are needed to further investigate the role of radiosurgery with and without whole-brain radiotherapy for brain metastases.
Evidence that the nature of amino acid residues in the P3 position directs substrates to distinct catalytic sites of the pituitary multicatalytic proteinase complex (proteasome).

Cleavage of bonds after neutral amino acids by the multicatalytic proteinase complex (MPC) has been recently shown to be catalyzed by at least three distinct components [Orlowski, M. , Cardozo, C. , & Michaud, C. (1993) Biochemistry 32, 1563-1572]. One component, designated as chymotrypsin-like (ChT-L), cleaves peptide bonds on the carboxyl side of hydrophobic residues and is also active toward peptidyl-arylamide bonds. A second component, designated as branched-chain amino acid preferring (BrAAP), and a third component, designated as small neutral amino acid preferring (SNAAP), cleave preferentially bonds on the carboxyl side of branched-chain amino acids and between small neutral amino acids, respectively. Evidence indicates that the BrAAP component is a major factor responsible for degradation of protein by the MPC. The purpose of the present study was to identify the structural requirements that determine the involvement of these components in cleavage of peptides after different neutral amino acids. A series of substrates was synthesized with the aim of probing the role of residues beyond those flanking the scissile bond in directing substrates to defined catalytic sites. The data indicate that a proline or glycine residue in the P3 position directs the substrate to the catalytic site of the BrAAP component provided that a branched-chain amino acid is present in the P1 position. A proline residue in P3 is also important for involvement of the SNAAP component in substrate degradation. The presence of this residue interferes with substrate binding to the catalytic site of the ChT-L activity, even in the presence of a phenylalanine residue in the P1 position. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Enhancing the credibility of fiscal forecasts in South Africa: Is a fiscal council the only way?

The paper investigates whether fiscal credibility in South Africa (SA) would be enhanced by following the international trend of establishing a fiscal council. Given that fiscal councils and numerical fiscal rules are increasingly seen as complementary aspects of fiscal policymaking frameworks, we survey evidence on fiscal councils, with reference to empirical studies and country experience – Chile in particular. Whilst earlier studies generated inconclusive results of earlier attempts about the link between fiscal councils and good fiscal performance, more recent studies found that the involvement of fiscal councils has contributed to more accurate macroeconomic and budgetary forecasts. In the light of this evidence – in particular, the increasingly recognised need for flexibility in fiscal rules, respect for the country’s political environment in considering the appropriateness of fiscal councils and the importance of transparency in any fiscal regime – we discuss lessons for SA, and the mechanics of our proposal. SA’s fiscal performance and regime are assessed, with reference to the literature’s finding of historical fiscal sustainability and macro fiscal forecasting accuracy and various measures characterising the current transparency-enhancing regime of fiscal discretion. It is recognised that SA does not have numerical fiscal rules and that the National Treasury has not been outperformed by nongovernment economists in forecasting key variables used in drafting the annual budget. Projections nevertheless become increasingly inaccurate over three-year periods. On average, budget deficit forecasting errors have during the previous decade been lower than in European Union countries. The case for a fiscal council on the basis of better short-term forecasting accuracy alone is not strong. Instead of a fiscal council, an institutional innovation is proposed, namely structured bi-annual discussions of government’s macroeconomic budget forecasts in public parliamentary hearings, integrated into the budget process. This avoids drainage of scarce resources from Treasury and political pitfalls encountered elsewhere and might strengthen credibility of medium-term projections.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE ACCOUNTING RESEARCH METHODS IN ALBANIA

Many researchers have revealed that the accounting research has evolved overtime from normative to positive research. Today, the main methodologies used by accounting researchers around the world are empirical or analytical but other methodologies are not excluded. The main purpose of our paper is to study the actual development of the accounting research methods in Albania. We present a brief, mainly exploratory review of main approaches in accounting research. We conducted a content analyses of the accounting related papers referred in the International Conferences organized by the Faculty of the Economics, by the Accounting department of the Faculty of the Economics and by the National Council of Accounting in a four years period (2008-2011). It results from our research that the main method used in accounting research in Albania is the empirical method (empirical-archival followed by empirical-case study and empirical survey). We plan to advance our project by adding further data from articles published in economic journals as well as by testing specific hypotheses. In addition, we plan to survey accounting researchers attitudes influenced by institutional differences in the academic systems. Meanwhile we hope this work will contribute some empirical and methodological insights to the ongoing methodological debate in accounting research.
Abscisic acid and water‐stress induce the expression of a novel rice gene.

We have identified a novel rice gene, called RAB 21, which is induced when plants are subject to water‐stress. This gene encodes a basic, glycine‐rich protein (mol. wt 16,529) which has a duplicated domain structure. Immunoblots probed with antibodies raised against beta‐galactosidase/RAB 21 fusion protein detect RAB 21 protein only in cytosolic cell fractions. RAB 21 mRNA and protein accumulate in rice embryos, leaves, roots and callus‐derived suspension cells upon treatment with NaCl (200 mM) and/or the plant hormone abscisic acid (10 microM ABA). The effects of NaCl and ABA are not cumulative, suggesting that these two inducers share a common response pathway. Induction of RAB 21 mRNA accumulation by ABA is rapid (less than 15 min in suspension cells) and does not require protein synthesis, indicating that preformed nuclear and/or cytosolic factors mediate the response to this hormone. We have characterized the RAB 21 gene by determining the complete nucleotide sequence of a nearly full‐length cDNA and corresponding genomic copy, and by mapping the start site of its major transcript. The proximal promoter region contains various GC‐rich repeats.
Cognitive rehabilitation combined with drug treatment in Alzheimer's disease patients: a pilot study

Objective: To study the efficacy of cognitive rehabilitation combined with acetylcholinesterase inhibitor (AChE-I) treatment in patients with mild Alzheimer's disease and their relatives. Method: Thirteen patients with mild Alzheimer's disease treated with rivastigmine 6-12 mg/day for more than two months started cognitive rehabilitation training. Before and after the cognitive rehabilitation training patients were assessed through cognitive tests, activities of daily living scale, neuropsychological battery and scales to evaluate caregivers' depressive and anxiety symptoms. Six patients were randomized to a combined treatment group (AChE-I plus cognitive rehabilitation and caregiver support) and seven patients to a control group (AChE-I only) and followed up for five months. Results: Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores (p=0.047) and backward digit span scores (p=0.018) were significantly different between the groups on follow-up. The combined treatment group showed a better positive treatment effect on cognitive and neuropsychological tests applied to patients and reduction of psychiatric symptoms was observed in their caregivers (nonsignificant). Conclusion: Cognitive rehabilitation associated with AChE-I treatment can potentially be useful to stabilize or improve cognitive and functional performance of patients with mild Alzheimer's disease and can reduce caregivers' psychiatric symptoms.
Représentations cognitives et spatiales des risques et des nuisances pour les citadins

Les problemes environnementaux, parmi lesquels peuvent etre catalogues les risques majeurs et les nuisances, notamment urbaines, sont devenus des questions centrales des societes occidentales. Enjeux economiques, culturels, points focaux des discours formules par les politiques ou par divers groupes sociaux, ils cristallisent les rapports homme-milieu, sont revelateurs de choix de societe, de developpements socio-techniques mais aussi de valeurs vehiculees par tel ou tel groupe d'interet. Ce memoire rend compte de la question des representations des risques et des nuisances urbaines pour la population (« le public »). Il s'agit la de l'un des deux axes de recherches poursuivis depuis une quinzaine d'annees alimentes par divers travaux dont la problematique, la methodologie, le contexte de realisation et les principaux resultats figurent dans le volume des annexes. Reprenant les questions qui ont structure les multiples enquetes menees, je propose ici d'approfondir le lien entre ces representations « communes » et l'espace (configuration des lieux, positionnement des phenomenes et des agents) ainsi que le role de l'information officielle a visee preventive. Dans l'optique d'evaluer l'impact des politiques publiques qui pronent l'individualisation des actions de preventions et la responsabilisation des citoyens pour se premunir des effets des risques et des nuisances, je m'interroge enfin sur les consequences des representations (influencees par l'information) sur les comportements, en lien egalement avec la problematique de la participation citoyenne a la gestion de la cite.
Cognitive and linguistic sources of variance in 2-year-olds’ speech-sound discrimination: a preliminary investigation.

PURPOSE This preliminary investigation explored potential cognitive and linguistic sources of variance in 2-year-olds’ speech-sound discrimination by using the toddler change/ no-change procedure and examined whether modifications would result in a procedure that can be used consistently with younger 2-year-olds. METHOD Twenty typically developing 2-year-olds completed the newly modified toddler change/no-change procedure. Behavioral tests and parent report questionnaires were used to measure several cognitive and linguistic constructs. Stepwise linear regression was used to relate discrimination sensitivity to the cognitive and linguistic measures. In addition, discrimination results from the current experiment were compared with those from 2-year-old children tested in a previous experiment. RESULTS Receptive vocabulary and working memory explained 56.6% of variance in discrimination performance. Performance was not different on the modified toddler change/no-change procedure used in the current experiment from in a previous investigation, which used the original version of the procedure. CONCLUSIONS The relationship between speech discrimination and receptive vocabulary and working memory provides further evidence that the procedure is sensitive to the strength of perceptual representations. The role for working memory might also suggest that there are specific subject-related, nonsensory factors limiting the applicability of the procedure to children who have not reached the necessary levels of cognitive and linguistic development.
Unions and Job Quality in the UK

This article presents a counterpoint to a structuralist view of job quality and argues that it can be understood as an outcome of contested power dynamics of interest representation within institutions of labor market regulation. The article presents studies of unions in two sectors in the UK (health care and industrial cleaning) where bad jobs are common. It examines how unions have sought to regulate job quality through representing new interests within existing institutions and by extending institutional regulation to new groups. The evidence highlights the contested nature of these decisions and the importance of collective actors in exercising agency in seeking to improve job quality. The evidence shows how new interests can be promoted within institutions to (seek to) improve job quality, despite internal resistance.
Arrangement of Photosystem II and ATP Synthase in Chloroplast Membranes of Spinach and Pea[W][OA]

This work uses electron cryotomography to study the three-dimensional supramolecular organization of photosystem II and ATP synthase within the thylakoid membrane. It finds photosystem II as dimers in grana stacks, whereas ATP synthases are monomers located on minimally curved stromal thylakoids or grana end membranes but are absent from the highly curved grana margins, in clear contrast to the situation in mitochondria. We used cryoelectron tomography to reveal the arrangements of photosystem II (PSII) and ATP synthase in vitreous sections of intact chloroplasts and plunge-frozen suspensions of isolated thylakoid membranes. We found that stroma and grana thylakoids are connected at the grana margins by staggered lamellar membrane protrusions. The stacking repeat of grana membranes in frozen-hydrated chloroplasts is 15.7 nm, with a 4.5-nm lumenal space and a 3.2-nm distance between the flat stromal surfaces. The chloroplast ATP synthase is confined to minimally curved regions at the grana end membranes and stroma lamellae, where it covers 20% of the surface area. In total, 85% of the ATP synthases are monomers and the remainder form random assemblies of two or more copies. Supercomplexes of PSII and light-harvesting complex II (LHCII) occasionally form ordered arrays in appressed grana thylakoids, whereas this order is lost in destacked membranes. In the ordered arrays, each membrane on either side of the stromal gap contains a two-dimensional crystal of supercomplexes, with the two lattices arranged such that PSII cores, LHCII trimers, and minor LHCs each face a complex of the same kind in the opposite membrane. Grana formation is likely to result from electrostatic interactions between these complexes across the stromal gap.
Testicular Dysgenesis Syndrome

Extended Abstract In the Western world fertility rates are low and infertility is a major health problem. Unofficial statistics from Denmark reveal that about 6% of all Danish children are now born after assisted reproduction techniques, including in vitro fertilization, intracytoplasmic sperm injection, donor insemination or homologous insemination. However, there are no retrospective data on trends in fecundity (ability to conceive). We, and others, have focused on some aspects of adverse trends in male reproductive health such as the rising incidence of testicular cancer, low and probably declining semen quality, high and possibly increasing frequencies of undescended testes and hypospadias. Due to medical specialization and the different ages at presentation of symptoms, reproductive problems used to be analysed separately by various professional groups, for instance paediatric endocrinologists, urologists, andrologists or oncologists. There is evidence that poor semen quality, testicular cancer, undescended testes and hypospadias are symptoms of one underlying entity, testicular dysgenesis syndrome (TDS), which may be increasingly common due to adverse environmental influences. Experimental and epidemiological studies suggest that TDS is the result of disruption of embryonal programming and gonadal development during fetal life. An endocrine disrupter hypothesis to explain the adverse trends has been proposed. It is recommended that future epidemiological studies on trends in male reproductive health should not focus on one symptom alone, but be more comprehensive and take all aspects of TDS into account.
Magnitude subtraction vs. complex subtraction in dynamic contrast‐enhanced 3D‐MR angiography: Basic experiments and clinical evaluation

Magnitude subtraction and complex subtraction in dynamic contrast‐enhanced three‐dimensional magnetic resonance (3D‐MR) angiography were compared using a phantom and 23 human subjects. In phantom studies, complex subtraction showed far better performance than magnitude subtraction, especially for longer echo times, with thicker slices, and without fat suppression. With complex subtraction, non‐fat‐suppressed studies showed contrast‐to‐noise ratios comparable to those in fat‐suppressed studies. In human subjects, complex subtraction was superior to magnitude subtraction in 9 subjects, but comparable to magnitude subtraction in 14 subjects. There were no cases in which magnitude subtraction was superior to complex subtraction. Although the differences observed in human studies when complex subtraction was applied with thinner slices, shorter echo times, and the fat‐suppression technique were not as pronounced as those seen in phantom studies, complex subtraction should be performed in dynamic contrast‐enhanced 3D‐MR angiography because there are no drawbacks in complex subtraction. Further research is necessary to assess the feasibility of dynamic contrast‐enhanced 3D‐MR angiography without fat suppression in human subjects using complex subtraction, as suggested by the results of phantom studies. If it is found to be feasible, dynamic contrast‐enhanced 3D‐MR angiography without fat suppression using complex subtraction may prove to be a robust technique that eliminates the need for shimming and can reduce the acquisition time. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 1999;10:813–820. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.