Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chronic progressive leukoencephalopathy in adult celiac disease

Progressive leukoencephalopathy developed in a patient with adult celiac disease. Neurologic abnormalities appeared 4 years after the gastrointestinal manifestations despite a gluten-free diet and replacement of vitamins. Brain MRI showed marked confluent white matter abnormalities, and stereotactic brain biopsy revealed chronic leukoencephalopathy. Treatment with IV steroids and immunoglobulins did not stop disease progression. Celiac disease should be considered in the differential diagnosis of the leukoencephalopathies.
Polarization-Insensitive Holographic Surfaces With Broadside Radiation

Scalar holographic surfaces (HSs) with a unique polarization-insensitive property are presented. The proposed HSs are constructed by sinusoidally modulated loop-wire unit cells, which can support both TE mode and TM mode propagation with the same phase velocity. The modulation principle in terms of refractive index is presented, which is convenient for HS designs concerning both TE and TM modes. A scalar polarization-sensitive HS using square patches exhibits a mismatch in the E- and H-plane beamwidths due to the sin (φ) circumferential illumination of the x-directed dipole, resulting in a low aperture efficiency. Two novel scalar HS designs using loop-wire configuration in square lattice and hexagonal lattice are proposed which exhibit the polarization-insensitive property with nearly circularly symmetric E- and H-plane beamwidths when illuminated by an x-directed dipole. Both simulations and measurements are carried out in this paper, which agree well with each other.
C-Terminal DxD-Containing Sequences within Paramyxovirus Nucleocapsid Proteins Determine Matrix Protein Compatibility and Can Direct Foreign Proteins into Budding Particles

ABSTRACT Paramyxovirus particles are formed by a budding process coordinated by viral matrix (M) proteins. M proteins coalesce at sites underlying infected cell membranes and induce other viral components, including viral glycoproteins and viral ribonucleoprotein complexes (vRNPs), to assemble at these locations from which particles bud. M proteins interact with the nucleocapsid (NP or N) components of vRNPs, and these interactions enable production of infectious, genome-containing virions. For the paramyxoviruses parainfluenza virus 5 (PIV5) and mumps virus, M-NP interaction also contributes to efficient production of virus-like particles (VLPs) in transfected cells. A DLD sequence near the C-terminal end of PIV5 NP protein was previously found to be necessary for M-NP interaction and efficient VLP production. Here, we demonstrate that 15-residue-long, DLD-containing sequences derived from either the PIV5 or Nipah virus nucleocapsid protein C-terminal ends are sufficient to direct packaging of a foreign protein, Renilla luciferase, into budding VLPs. Mumps virus NP protein harbors DWD in place of the DLD sequence found in PIV5 NP protein, and consequently, PIV5 NP protein is incompatible with mumps virus M protein. A single amino acid change converting DLD to DWD within PIV5 NP protein induced compatibility between these proteins and allowed efficient production of mumps VLPs. Our data suggest a model in which paramyxoviruses share an overall common strategy for directing M-NP interactions but with important variations contained within DLD-like sequences that play key roles in defining M/NP protein compatibilities. IMPORTANCE Paramyxoviruses are responsible for a wide range of diseases that affect both humans and animals. Paramyxovirus pathogens include measles virus, mumps virus, human respiratory syncytial virus, and the zoonotic paramyxoviruses Nipah virus and Hendra virus. Infectivity of paramyxovirus particles depends on matrix-nucleocapsid protein interactions which enable efficient packaging of encapsidated viral RNA genomes into budding virions. In this study, we have defined regions near the C-terminal ends of paramyxovirus nucleocapsid proteins that are important for matrix protein interaction and that are sufficient to direct a foreign protein into budding particles. These results advance our basic understanding of paramyxovirus genome packaging interactions and also have implications for the potential use of virus-like particles as protein delivery tools.
Periconceptional use of folic acid supplements in Oslo

Background. Periconceptional supplementation with folic acid has been shown to decrease the occurrence of neural tube defects (NTD). A daily supplement of 400 µg folic acid from the month before pregnancy and the first 2 to 3 months of pregnancy is recommended in Norway. We wanted to evaluate the use of folic acid supplements among pregnant women in Oslo, and to explore demographic factors that were associated with periconceptional intake.
Chemical, thermal and pH‐induced equilibrium unfolding studies of Fusarium solani lectin

The effect of urea, guanidine thiocyanate, temperature and pH was studied on the conformational stability of Fusarium solani lectin. Equilibrium unfolding with chemical denaturants showed that the lectin was least stable at pH 12 and maximally stable at pH 8.0 near its pI (8.7). Guanidine thiocyanate (the concentration of denaturant at which the protein is half folded, D1/2 = 0.49 M at pH 12) was found to be an eight times stronger denaturant than urea (D1/2 = 3.88 M at pH 12). The unfolding curves obtained with fluorescence and CD measurements showed good agreement indicating a monophasic nature of unfolding and excluded the possibility of formation of any stable intermediate. The effect of pH on the lectin was found to be unusual as at acidic pH, the lectin showed a flexible tertiary structure with pronounced secondary structure, and retained its hemagglutinating activity. On the other hand, the lectin did not show any loss of conformation or activity upto 70°C for 15 min. Moreover, thermal denaturation did not result in the aggregation or precipitation of the protein even at high temperatures. Thermal denaturation was also carried out in the presence of a low concentration of guanidine thiocyanate. Change in the enthalpy of transition (ΔHm) varied linearly with transition temperature (Tm), which indicated that the heat capacity (ΔCp = 3.95 kJ · mol‐1 · K‐1) of the lectin remained constant during the unfolding. IUBMB Life, 59: 34‐43, 2007
Plasma Membrane Ca2+-ATPase Isoforms 2b and 4b Interact Promiscuously and Selectively with Members of the Membrane-associated Guanylate Kinase Family of PDZ (PSD95/Dlg/ZO-1) Domain-containing Proteins*

Spatial and temporal regulation of intracellular Ca2+ signaling depends on localized Ca2+ microdomains containing the requisite molecular components for Ca2+ influx, efflux, and signal transmission. Plasma membrane Ca2+-ATPase (PMCA) isoforms of the “b” splice type contain predicted PDZ (PSD95/Dlg/ZO-1) interaction domains. The COOH-terminal tail of PMCA2b isolated the membrane-associated guanylate kinase (MAGUK) protein SAP97/hDlg as a binding partner in a yeast two-hybrid screen. The related MAGUKs SAP90/PSD95, PSD93/chapsyn-110, SAP97, and SAP102 all bound to the COOH-terminal tail of PMCA4b, whereas only the first three bound to the tail of PMCA2b. Coimmunoprecipitations confirmed the interaction selectivity between PMCA4b and SAP102 as opposed to the promiscuity of PMCA2b and 4b in interacting with other SAPs. Confocal immunofluorescence microscopy revealed the exclusive presence and colocalization of PMCA4b and SAP97 in the basolateral membrane of polarized Madin-Darby canine kidney epithelial cells. In hippocampal neurons, PMCA2b was abundant throughout the somatodendritic compartment and often extended into the neck and head of individual spines where it colocalized with SAP90/PSD95. These data show that PMCA “b” splice forms interact promiscuously but also with specificity with different members of the PSD95 family of SAPs. PMCA-SAP interactions may play a role in the recruitment and maintenance of the PMCA at specific membrane domains involved in local Ca2+ regulation.
Material impulse response estimation from overlapping ultrasound echoes using a compressed sensing technique

When investigating thin materials with pulse echo ultrasound, multiple reflections (reverberations) from the layer(s) will overlap. It is therefore difficult to deduce information about speed of sound, thickness, density, etc. from the raw data. In order to extract this information, the overlapping pulses must be either decoupled or we must find some model of the material sample describing the wave propagation. It is, however, often reasonable to assume that the the number of reflections is small relative to the number of samples in the record signal of interest. In other words, the system describing the reverberations is sparse. In this paper we investigate, with simulations and with experiments on a 4.8 and 2.2 mm thick glass plate, respectively, how the framework of compressed sensing can be adopted in order to retrieve the impulse response of the material specimen.
Automatic text extraction in digital videos using FFT and neural network

Popular methods for extracting a text region in video images are in general based on analysis of a whole image such as merge and split method, and comparison of two frames. Thus, they take long computing time due to the use of a whole image. Therefore, this paper suggests the faster method of extracting a text region without processing a whole image. The proposed method uses line sampling methods, FFT and neural networks in order to extract texts in real time. In general, text areas are found in the higher frequency domain, thus, can be characterized using FFT. The candidate text areas can be thus found by applying the higher frequency characteristics to neural network. Therefore, the final text area is extracted by verifying the candidate areas. Experimental results show a perfect candidate extraction rate and about 92% text extraction rate. The strength of the proposed algorithm is its simplicity, real-time processing by not processing the entire image, and fast skipping of the images that do not contain a text.
The Law of Contract and the Concept of Change: Public and Private Attempts to Regulate Modification, Waiver, and Estoppel

This article argues that contractual change is inherently problematic because contract and change are fundamentally antithetical. Because change is inevitable, however, the law of contract attempts to regulate the effect of change. These attempts are divided into two realms: public regulation, including the preexisting duty rule and its substitutes, and private regulation, including contractual "no oral modification" and "no oral waiver" clauses. The article criticizes not only the preexisting duty rule but also the duress and good faith tests that have been suggested as substitutes. Instead, the article proposes a "coercion" test, which is stated in detail and which is compared with duress in a matrix of cases. On the private side, the article would validate clauses that require modifications and waivers to be written, although a limited exception for estoppel (which is distinguished from waiver and modification) is recognized. The article rejects calls for complete validation or invalidation of such clauses. The paper recognizes the benefits of those clauses, especially with respect to "course of performance" and its effects under the Uniform Commercial Code. After examining several decades of case law, however, the article concludes that courts cannot realistically be expected to uphold such clauses in the face of reasonable, material reliance. When a party seeks public (i.e., judicial) enforcement of a private regulation, public concerns must enter any decision to enforce that regulation. While the legislation proposed in this article would generally uphold these private regulations, circumstances are suggested in which such contractual clauses will fail. Provisions to replace UCC sections 1-205, 2-208, and 2-209 are included.
A Review of Urban Air Pollution Monitoring and Exposure Assessment Methods

The impact of urban air pollution on the environments and human health has drawn increasing concerns from researchers, policymakers and citizens. To reduce the negative health impact, it is of great importance to measure the air pollution at high spatial resolution in a timely manner. Traditionally, air pollution is measured using dedicated instruments at fixed monitoring stations, which are placed sparsely in urban areas. With the development of low-cost micro-scale sensing technology in the last decade, portable sensing devices installed on mobile campaigns have been increasingly used for air pollution monitoring, especially for traffic-related pollution monitoring. In the past, some reviews have been done about air pollution exposure models using monitoring data obtained from fixed stations, but no review about mobile sensing for air pollution has been undertaken. This article is a comprehensive review of the recent development in air pollution monitoring, including both the pollution data acquisition and the pollution assessment methods. Unlike the existing reviews on air pollution assessment, this paper not only introduces the models that researchers applied on the data collected from stationary stations, but also presents the efforts of applying these models on the mobile sensing data and discusses the future research of fusing the stationary and mobile sensing data.
Effects of acute cortisol and cocaine administration on attention, recall and recognition task performance in individuals with cocaine dependence

This study investigated the effects of acute cocaine administration on cognition, and whether these can be modeled using exogenous hydrocortisone, because cocaine‐induced cortisol elevations may influence its cognitive effects. Twelve cocaine‐dependent individuals received an intravenous bolus of cortisol (0.5 or 0.2 mg/kg) and cocaine (0.2 mg/kg) in a double‐blind randomized placebo‐controlled and counterbalanced fashion. Cognitive testing included verbal tasks of vigilance attention, free recall and recognition memory before the boluses and at 20, 60 and 100 min thereafter. The statistical analysis investigated dose response effects while accounting for all sources of variance in the design. No effects of low dose cocaine were found on any variables. Low dose cortisol enhanced and high dose impaired vigilance attention, and a trend was found for the same dose response profile on twice‐heard words. An opposite trend, inconsistent with prior research on cortisol and cognition, was observed for recognition: low dose impaired and high dose enhanced recognition of once‐heard words, and a very weak trend was found for recognition of new words. These findings, though tempered by design limitations, suggest a complex non‐linear cortisol attention/recognition dose‐response relationship and call for further research to elucidate cortisol's effects on cognition and their role in the pathophysiology of cocaine dependence. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Characterizing the quantitative genetic contribution to rheumatoid arthritis using data from twins.

OBJECTIVE Twin concordance data for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) on their own provide only limited insight into the relative genetic and environmental contribution to the disease. We applied quantitative genetic methods to assess the heritability of RA and to examine for evidence of differences in the genetic contribution according to sex, age, and clinical disease characteristics. METHODS Data were analyzed from 2 previously published nationwide studies of twins with RA conducted in Finland and the United Kingdom. Heritability was assessed by variance components analysis. Differences in the genetic contribution by sex, age, age at disease onset, and clinical characteristics were examined by stratification. The power of the twin study design to detect these differences was examined through simulation. RESULTS The heritability of RA was 65% (95% confidence interval [95% CI] 50-77) in the Finnish data and 53% (95% CI 40-65) in the UK data. There was no significant difference in the strength of the genetic contribution according to sex, age, age at onset, or disease severity subgroup. Both study designs had power to detect a contribution of at least 40% from the common family environment, and a difference in the genetic contribution of at least 50% between subgroups. CONCLUSION Genetic factors have a substantial contribution to RA in the population, accounting for approximately 60% of the variation in liability to disease. Although tempered by power considerations, there is no evidence in these twin data that the overall genetic contribution to RA differs by sex, age, age at disease onset, and disease severity.
Réseau bayésien pour un modèle de Recherche d'Information agrégée dans des documents structurés

In this paper, we are interested in aggregated search in structured XML documents. We present a model for the structured information retrieval, based on the Bayesian networks theory. Relations query-terms and terms-elements are modelled through probability measures. In this model, the user’s query starts a process of propagation to recover the relevant and noredundant elements. Thus, instead of retrieving a list of elements that are likely to answer the user’s query, our objective is to aggregate in the composite document relevant and no-redundant elements. An example of such retrieval is proposed to illustrate our approach. MOTS-CLÉS : recherche d’information agrégée, réseau bayésien, documents XML, document composite, éléments XML pertinents et non-redondants.
Instrumental Variables in the Long Run

In the field of long-run economic growth, it is common to use historical or geographical variables as instruments for contemporary endogenous regressors. We study the interpretation of these conventional instrumental variable (IV) regressions in a simple, but general, framework. We are interested in estimating the long-run causal effect of changes in historical conditions. For this purpose, we develop an augmented IV estimator that accounts for the degree of persistence in the endogenous regressor. We apply our results to estimate the long-run effect of institutions on economic performance. Using panel data, we find that institutional characteristics are imperfectly persistent, implying that conventional IV regressions overestimate the long-run causal effect of institutions. When applying our augmented estimator, we find that increasing constraints on executive power from the lowest to the highest level on the standard index increases national income per capita three centuries later by 1.2 standard deviations.
Price and Service Quality Competition with Benchmark Effect

We address the effect of the effect of benchmark effect of industry prominent firm for the influence of the duopoly competition. Consumers always consider prominent firms as the industry benchmark, when they evaluate other firms’ product, treating prominent firm as a reference point, thus show the loss aversion behavior. We find that benchmarking effect of the prominent firm makes consumer surplus increase, while decreases both firms’ profits.
Resolver compatible capacitive rotary position sensor

This paper describes a capacitive rotary position sensor that is characterized by its high compatibility with commercial resolvers. The main components are two electrode plates. Both parts are composed of simple circular or annular electrodes. The sensor is excited by two sinusoidal voltages, which are same as the excitation voltages of resolvers. These excitation voltages are applied to the stator transmitting electrodes. Then, these voltages arise on rotor electrodes by capacitive couplings. The stator pick-up electrodes detect voltages on the rotor that are amplitude-modulated due to the capacitance changes depending on the rotor position. The specifications of these signals are same as those of resolvers. Therefore, the rotor position can be calculated by the same way as resolvers. Due to the similarities with resolvers (excitation signals, generated signals and the way of calculate positions), this sensor can easily replace a commercial resolver. In this paper, the principle is verified by a prototype sensor, which shows a non-linearity error of +/−4 degrees.
Statistical Applications in Genetics and Molecular Biology Random Forests for Genetic Association Studies

The Random Forests (RF) algorithm has become a commonly used machine learning algorithm for genetic association studies. It is well suited for genetic applications since it is both computationally efficient and models genetic causal mechanisms well. With its growing ubiquity, there has been inconsistent and less than optimal use of RF in the literature. The purpose of this review is to breakdown the theoretical and statistical basis of RF so that practitioners are able to apply it in their work. An emphasis is placed on showing how the various components contribute to bias and variance, as well as discussing variable importance measures. Applications specific to genetic studies are highlighted. To provide context, RF is compared to other commonly used machine learning algorithms.
Use of positional therapy when incorporated into a diagnosis-treatment algorithm for obstructive sleep apnea

Purpose Positional obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is prevalent. We hypothesized that by incorporating positional therapy into a diagnosis-treatment algorithm for OSA it would frequently be prescribed as an appropriate first-line therapy. Methods Fifty-nine members (45 males, 49±9 yrs, BMI 35.2±5.6 kg/m 2 ) of the Law Enforcement Health Benefits (LEHB), Inc. of Philadelphia with clinically suspected OSA were evaluated. Patients completed an Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) questionnaire and a home sleep test (HST). Patients diagnosed with positional OSA (non-supine apnea-hypopnea index [AHI] < 5 events/hr) were offered positional therapy. A cost comparison to continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy was performed. Results Fifty-four (92%) of the patients (43 males, 49±9 yrs, BMI 35.2±5.3 kg/m 2 ) had OSA on their HST (AHI 24.2±20.1 events/hr). Sixteen (30%) patients had positional OSA. Compared to non-positional patients, patients with positional OSA were less heavy (32.4±5.1 vs. 36.4±5.1 kg/m 2 , respectively [ p =0.009]), less sleepy (ESS 8±5 vs. 12±5, respectively [ p =0.009]), and had less severe OSA (AHI 10.4±4.3 vs. 30.0±21.3 events/hr, respectively [ p <0.001]). Thirteen of the 16 patients with positional OSA agreed to positional therapy and 31 non-positional OSA patients agreed to CPAP therapy. Based on initial costs, incorporating positional therapy ($189.95/device compared to CPAP therapy at $962.49/device) into the treatment algorithm resulted in a 24% cost savings compared to if all the patients were initiated on CPAP therapy. Conclusion With the high prevalence of positional OSA, using a diagnosis-treatment algorithm that incorporates positional therapy allows it to be more frequently considered as a cost effective first-line therapy for OSA.
Manufacturing Sensor Network Based on Multi-Radio and Multi-Channel

With the development of industrialization and informationization, especially with the rising of Internet of Things, wireless sensor network (WSN) has being used in more and more fields. In this paper, a manufacturing Sensor Network Based on Multi-Radio and Multi-Channel (MR-MC) has been proposed. Firstly, the characteristics of the manufacturing network has been analyzed, and then state the new proposed wireless manufacturing sensor network in detail from three aspects: network architecture, topology structure and key problems, finally, in order to evaluate the validity of the proposed network, an experimental model based on OPNET has been developed and a set of experiments has been carried out.