Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neural activity during Stroop colour-word task performance in late proficient bilinguals: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study

The aim of this study was to identify which neural substrates are engaged during manual Stroop task performance and compare the activation between 8 late proficient Macedonian-English bilinguals and 10 matched English monolinguals. During functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) adult participants performed four Stroop task conditions in a block design (control, congruent, semantically incongruent, response incongruent). Here, we focussed on differences in activation between the two groups in two contrasts: (1) the presence of task-irrelevant information that conflicts at both the response and semantic level (response incongruent versus congruent); and (2) the presence of competing task-relevant information that confl icts at the response level only (response incongruent versus semantically incongruent). For the first contrast, comparisons between monolinguals (English) and the first language of bilinguals (Macedonian) revealed greater activation in the posterior regions of monolinguals, possibly indicative of a more elaborate stimulus evaluation process. For the second contrast, bilinguals showed less activation in anterior cingulate and prefrontal regions than monolinguals. As poor performance on the Stroop task has been found to be associated with greater activation in these two regions, we interpret this in light of earlier ideas regarding cognitive control and the advantages of bilingualism. That is, less effortful word-form processing might indicate that bilinguals are more effectively dealing with response conflict. Together the current findings suggest that learning two languages may modify the neural substrates engaged during tasks that rely on executive functioning.
Acute kidney injury risk assessment at the hospital front door: what is the best measure of risk?

Background We examined the prevalence of acute kidney injury (AKI) risk factors in the emergency medical unit, generated a modified risk assessment tool and tested its ability to predict AKI. Methods A total of 1196 patients admitted to medical admission units were assessed for patient-associated AKI risk factors. Subsequently, 898 patients were assessed for a limited number of fixed risk factors with the addition of hypotension and sepsis. This was correlated to AKI episodes. Results In the first cohort, the prevalence of AKI risk factors was 2.1 ± 2.0 per patient, with a positive relationship between age and the number of risk factors and a higher number of risk factors in patients ≥65 years. In the second cohort, 12.3% presented with or developed AKI. Patients with AKI were older and had a higher number of AKI risk factors. In the AKI cohort, 72% of the patients had two or more AKI risk factors compared with 43% of the cohort with no AKI. When age ≥65 years was added as an independent risk factor, 84% of those with AKI had two or more AKI risk factors compared with 55% of those with no AKI. Receiver operating characteristic analysis suggests that the use of common patient-associated known AKI risk factors performs no better than age alone as a predictor of AKI. Conclusions Detailed assessment of well-established patient-associated AKI risk factors may not facilitate clinicians to apportion risk. This suggests that additional work is required to develop a more sensitive validated AKI-predictive tool that would be useful in this clinical setting.
A Parallel Computer Implementation of Power System Transient Stability Assessment Using the Transient Energy Function Method

The development of a parallel version of the transient energy function method program on an IBM 3090-600E supercomputer is described. The step-by-step procedure for converting a sequential code to a parallel environment is detailed. The parallel code was tested on a 50 generator Ontario Hydro network. With six parallel processors, an elapsed time speedup of 5.36 was obtained. >
Reducèd in vitro response to concanavalin A and lipopolysaccharide in senescent mice: a function of reduced number of responding cells

Studies of the cell cycle of cells responding to Con A and to LPS from 12 and 28‐month‐old mice demonstrate that the generation time of individual proliferating cells does not alter with age. Nor does it differ for the B cells responding to LPS or the T cells responding to Con A. These studies also demonstrate that the proliferating cells from senescent mice are equally capable of repeated cell divisions as are the cells from the 1‐year‐old adult mouse. It is concluded that the defect in senescent mice which leads to a reduced in vitro response to the polyclonal mitogens LPS and Con A is a reduction in the number of responding cells and not an alteration in the capacity of those cells which do respond to divide.
Enamel surface topography analysis for diet discrimination. A methodology to enhance and select discriminative parameters

Tooth wear and, more specifically, dental microwear texture is a dietary proxy that has been used for years in vertebrate paleoecology and ecology. DMTA, dental microwear texture analysis, relies on a few parameters related to the surface complexity, anisotropy and heterogeneity of the enamel facets at the micrometric scale. Working with few but physically meaningful parameters helps in comparing published results and in defining levels for classification purposes. Other dental microwear approaches are based on ISO parameters and coupled with statistical tests to find the more relevant ones. The present study roughly utilizes most of the aforementioned parameters in their more or less modified form. But more than parameters, we here propose a new approach: instead of a single parameter characterizing the whole surface, we sample the surface and thus generate 9 derived parameters in order to broaden the parameter set. The identification of the most discriminative parameters is performed with an automated procedure which is an extended and refined version of the workflows encountered in some studies. The procedure in its initial form includes the most common tools, like the ANOVA and the correlation analysis, along with the required mathematical tests. The discrimination results show that a simplified form of the procedure is able to more efficiently identify the desired number of discriminative parameters. Also highlighted are some trends like the relevance of working with both height and spatial parameters, as well as the potential benefits of dimensionless surfaces. On a set of 45 surfaces issued from 45 specimens of three modern ruminants with differences in feeding preferences (grazing, leaf-browsing and fruit-eating), it is clearly shown that the level of wear discrimination is improved with the new methodology compared to the other ones.
On the exact worst case query complexity of planar point location

What is the smallest constant c so that the planar point location queries can be answered in c log 2 n + o(log n) steps (i.e., point-line comparisons) in the worst case? M. T. Goodrich, M. Orletsky, and K. Ramaiyer (1997, in Proc 8th ACM-SIAM Symp on Discrete Algorithms (SODA), pp. 757-766) showed that c = 2 is possible using linear space and conjectured this to be optimal. We disprove this conjecture and show that c = 1 can be achieved. Moreover by giving upper and lower bounds we show that without space restrictions the worst case query complexity of planar point location differs from log 2 n + 2√log 2 n at most by an additive factor of (1/2)log 2 log 2 n + O(1). For the case of linear space we show the query complexity to be bounded by log 2 n √ 2√log 2 n + O(log 1/4 n).
Grammar based oracle for security testing of web applications

The goal of security testing is to detect those defects that could be exploited to conduct attacks. Existing works, however, address security testing mostly from the point of view of automatic generation of test cases. Less attention is paid to the problem of developing and integrating with a security oracle. In this paper we address the problem of the security oracle, in particular for Cross-Site Scripting vulnerabilities. We rely on existing test cases to collect HTML pages in safe conditions, i.e. when no attack is run. Pages are then used to construct the safe model of the application under analysis, a model that describes the structure of an application response page for safe input values. The oracle eventually detects a successful attack when a test makes the application display a web page that is not compliant with the safe model.
Wireless Brain Monitoring in the Emergency Department

Most hospitals in the world do not perform electroencephalograms in the emergency departments due to space, cost, training, and complexity of the equipment and the test. New miniature, low-cost, simple, digital, wireless EEG machines have been developed that solve all four of these inhibiting factors to allow EEG, to be used in emergency departments to evaluate patients presenting with altered mental status for nonconvulsive seizures. Four-channel wireless EEG used in the ED is feasible, provides good quality screening EEGs, and was able to diagnose underlying seizures or slowing in a significant number of patients
Radioactive Iodine for Thyrotoxicosis in Childhood and Adolescence: Treatment and Outcomes

Objective: The aim of the present study was to evaluate the outcome of radioiodine treatment in thyrotoxicosis in childhood and adolescence. Methods: This was a retrospective study of 27 patients (ages 7.2- 19.8 years) with a diagnosis of thyrotoxicosis who received iodine-131 (I-131) treatment from January 2007 to December 2011 in the Nuclear Medicine Division, Department of Radiology, Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University. Gender, duration of antithyroid drug (ATD) treatment, 24-hour I-131 uptake, thyroid weight, total dose and number of treatments with I-131, and thyroid status at 6 months after treatment were recorded. Results: The outcomes of 27 patients (85.2% female, 14.8% male) treated with radioactive iodine were analyzed to assess the effectiveness of therapy as related to dose and gland size. All children and adolescents received 150 µCi of I-131/g of thyroid tissue (n=27). Six 6 months after treatment, 44.5% of the patients were hyperthyroid, 14.8% were euthyroid, and 40.7% were hypothyroid. Of the 12 cases with hyperthyroidism, 2 cases needed a second dose of I-131 treatment, and they finally reached a hypothyroid state. The patients were classified into 2 groups according to treatment success (euthyroid and hypothyroid) and treatment failure (hyperthyroid). There were no significant differences in age, gender, duration of ATD treatment, 2- and 24-hour I-131 uptake, thyroid weight, and total I-131 dose between these two groups. Conclusions: Radioiodine treatment is safe and effective for thyrotoxicosis in childhood and adolescence. It is suitable as a good second-line therapy for patients with severe complications, those who show poor compliance, and those who fail to respond to ATD treatment. Conflict of interest:None declared.
Firing-Pattern-Dependent Specificity of Cortical Excitatory Feed-Forward Subnetworks

The cortical circuit includes networks of highly interconnected pyramidal neurons. Here, we investigated whether pyramidal cells form subnetworks depending on pyramidal subtypes. We classified layer V (L5) pyramidal cells in rat frontal cortex into three physiological subtypes based on the presence (SA-d type) or absence (SA type) of an initial burst in neurons displaying slowly adapting spike trains, or fast spike frequency adaptation (FA type) against current pulse injections. Pyramidal cells projecting to the particular subcortical areas were correlated with the physiological subtypes. Focal glutamate stimulation of a L2/3 pyramidal cell induced EPSCs in SA and SA-d cells more frequently than in FA cells. FA cells in upper L5 received more inputs from the upper L2/3, and those in lower L5 received inputs from cells in lower L2/3, suggesting topographic interlaminar projections to FA cells. Dual recordings from L5 pyramidal cells revealed that common input probability that two L5 cells share inputs from a L2/3 cell was high in cell pairs of the same subtypes, compared with those in different subtype pairs. Furthermore, the common input probability was highly selective when cell pairs of the same subtypes, but not different subtypes, had connections between them. Our results suggest that L2/3 pyramidal cells selectively innervate L5 cells, depending on their firing subtypes.
PUBLIC HEALTH NUTRITION AND EPIDEMIOLOGY Maternal nutrition among women from Sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on Nigeria, and potential implications for pregnancy outcomes among immigrant populations in developed countries

Pregnant women in countries of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are at risk of poor nutritional status and adverse outcomes as a result of poverty, food insecurity, sub-optimal healthcare facilities, frequent infections and frequent pregnancies. Studies from Nigeria, for example, have revealed a high prevalence of both under- and over-nutrition, as well as nutrient deficiencies, including iron, folate, vitamin D and vitamin A. Subsequently, obstetric complications, including hypertension, anaemia, neural tube defects, night-blindness, low birth weight and maternal and perinatal mortality, are common. Migration patterns from SSA to the Western world are on the rise in recent years, with Nigerians now representing the most prevalent immigrant African population in many developed countries. However, the effect of immigration, if any, on the nutritional status and pregnancy outcomes of these women in their host countries has not yet been studied. Consequently, it is unknown to what extent the nutritional deficiencies and pregnancy complications occurring in Nigeria, and other countries of SSA, present in these women post-emigration. This may result in missed opportunities for appropriate antenatal care of a potential high-risk group in pregnancy. The present review discusses the literature regarding nutrition in pregnancy among SSA women, using Nigeria as an example, the common nutrition-related complications that arise and the subsequent obstetric outcomes. The concept of dietary acculturation among immigrant groups is also discussed and deficiencies in the literature regarding studies on the diets of pregnant immigrant women are highlighted.
Fluid Dynamic Models of Flagellar and Ciliary Beating

Abstract: We have developed a fluid–mechanical model of a eucaryotic axoneme that couples the internal force generation of dynein molecular motors, the passive elastic mechanics of microtubules, and forces due to nexin links with a surrounding incompressible fluid. This model has been used to examine both ciliary beating and flagellar motility. In this article, we show preliminary simulation results for sperm motility in both viscous and viscoelastic fluids, as well as multiciliary interaction with a mucus layer.
Androgenetic alopecia in adolescents: A report of 43 cases

Androgenetic alopecia (AGA) is the most common type of hair loss in adults, but it also occurs in adolescents, though its prevalence among this younger population is not well established. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the clinical manifestations and endocrine status of adolescent patients with AGA in Korea. This 5‐year (January 2001–August 2005) clinical study involved 43 adolescent patients with AGA. Testosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEA‐S) laboratory studies were undertaken to investigate androgenic hormonal effects. Hair loss severity was categorized using the Hamilton–Norwood and Ludwig classifications. Gender ratio showed a male predominance (M : F, 35:8), and a mean age at onset of 16.8 years. These adolescent patients showed milder symptoms than adults, and a family history of alopecia was found in 72.1%, which is greater than that reported in adults, which ranges 30.9–64.5%. Seborrheic dermatitis (27.9%) was the condition most commonly associated with AGA among our study subjects, followed in descending order by acne vulgaris and atopic dermatitis. Serum levels of testosterone and DHEA‐S were within normal limits, except in one subject. Our study shows the clinical characteristics of AGA in Korean adolescents.
Free Deterministic Equivalents for the Analysis of MIMO Multiple Access Channel

In this paper, a free deterministic equivalent is proposed for the capacity analysis of the multi-input multi-output (MIMO) multiple access channel (MAC) with a more general channel model compared to previous works. In particular, a MIMO MAC with one base station (BS) equipped with several distributed antenna sets is considered. Each link between a user and a BS antenna set forms a jointly correlated Rician fading channel. The analysis is based on operator-valued free probability theory, which broadens the range of applicability of free probability techniques tremendously. By replacing independent Gaussian random matrices with operator-valued random variables satisfying certain operator-valued freeness relations, the free deterministic equivalent of the considered channel Gram matrix is obtained. The Shannon transform of the free deterministic equivalent is derived, which provides an approximate expression for the ergodic input-output mutual information of the channel. The sum-rate capacity achieving input covariance matrices are also derived based on the approximate ergodic input-output mutual information. The free deterministic equivalent results are easy to compute, and simulation results show that these approximations are numerically accurate and computationally efficient.
Rechts-, Wirtschafts-und Verwaltungswissenschaftliche Sektion Fachbereich Wirtschaftswissenschaften Diskussionspapiere Der Dfg- Forschergruppe (nr.: 3468269275): Heterogene Arbeit: Positive Und Normative Aspekte Der Qualifikationsstruktur Der Arbeit Does Venture Capital Syndication Spur Employment G

Zusammenfassung: This study examines empirically the syndication of equity by multiple venture capitalists in Germany. Following the literature, there are mainly two competing views as to why venture capitalists syndicate investments. First, syndication can be viewed as a means of risk-sharing. Second, venture capitalists may provide important productive resources to firms, capital and information. We test hypotheses based on these two aspects. The results show that the syndication of equity and the number of venture capitalists involved cannot be fully explained by firm characteristics like size, age or industry affiliation. Although syndicated investments do not differ significantly in stock-market performance, they show significantly higher growth rates. Abstract This study examines empirically the syndication of equity by multiple venture capitalists in Germany. Following the literature, there are mainly two competing views as to why venture capitalists syndicate investments. First, syndication can be viewed as a means of risk-sharing. Second, venture capitalists may provide important productive resources to firms, capital and information. We test hypotheses based on these two aspects. The results show that the syndication of equity and the number of venture capitalists involved cannot be fully explained by firm characteristics like size, age or industry affiliation. Although syndicated investments do not differ significantly in stock-market performance, they show significantly higher growth rates. Despite the crucial role venture capitalists play in financing high-tech firms, there is disproportionally little attention in the academic literature on venture capital syndication. Although some firms are backed by a sole venture capitalist, a closer look at the working practice of the venture capitalist industry shows striking evidence that investments are often undertaken by more than one venture capitalist. This practice of financing firms by two or more venture capitalists, called syndication, involves different venture capital firms taking an equity stake in the firm. In the presence of team-effects and the resulting moral-hazard incentives, the still remaining question is, why venture capitalists syndicate private equity, when the practice of syndication may create both, ex-ante and ex-post managerial problems. Following the literature, there are mainly two competing views as to why venture capitalists syndicate investments. First, syndication can be viewed as a means of risk-sharing. Second, venture capitalists may provide important productive resources to firms, capital and information. While the first perspective looks only at the risk-diversification side of the venture capitalist, the second perspective focuses more on the strategic aspects of syndication in providing necessary tangible (equity) …
Coating Sand with New Hydrophobic and Superhydrophobic Silica/Paraffin Wax Nanocapsules for Desert Water Storage and Transportation

Paraffin wax emulsions have gained immense attention as a cheap, environment-friendly, and aroma-free material for preparing superhydrophobic coatings. In this work, paraffin wax (PWs) capsules consisting of hydrophobic silica nanoparticles were used for coating desert sand. Different types of the hydrophobic silica nanoparticles, modified with new oleylamino- and oleylamide silane precursors, were prepared in the presence and absence of paraffin waxes. The particle sizes, surface charges, thermal stability, surface morphologies, and wetting characteristics of these nanoparticles were investigated. The combination of these superhydrophobic silica nanoparticles and desert sand, showed excellent water repellency; stable water droplets remained on the sand surface, without any wetting or permeation. Furthermore, the mixing of the superhydrophobic sand with untreated sand (mixing ratio 1:10 wt %), with a thickness of 2 cm, sustained a great water-holding capacity with a water column height of 35 cm. The good thermal stability of the PWs capsules containing hydrophobic silica nanoparticles, along with their good water-holding capacity, make them potential candidates for developing superhydrophobic sand for desert water storage and transportation.
Automatic contrast enhancement of low-light images based on Naka-Rushton visual adaptation in non-sub-sampled shearlet domain

In this paper a non-sub-sampled shearlet transform model for image enhancement to improve image quality by maximizing the information content in the input image is proposed and implemented. This is inspired by two basic human visual features: i) visual adaptation, ii) local contrast enhancement of color image. We achieve the goal in different stages: In initial stage evolved upon the shearlet transformation of an image from image space to a low-pass and high-pass images in shearlet space and then to the visual response space. The visual adaptation is generally implemented with the Naka-Rushton equation, a rational transformation which allows to accurately compress the range of the input image. The later stage consists in a variational method able to perform local contrast enhancement with Weber-Fechner's law. After modifying the response values, the transformation can be reversed to produce the resulting image. The proposed method Naka-Rushton shearlet Image Enhancement (NRSIE) has been implemented on several color images. The results are compared with two other popular color image enhancement techniques along with visual analysis, detail and background variance. It has been found that NRSIE scales better results compared to two other popular methods.