Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Finding Distinctive Shape Features for Automatic Hematoma Classification in Head CT Images from Traumatic Brain Injuries

Computer aided diagnosis (CAD) in medical imaging is of growing interest in recent years. Our proposed CAD system aims to enhance diagnosis and prognosis of traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients with hematomas. Hematoma caused by blood vessel rupture is the major lesion in TBI cases and is usually assessed using head computed tomography (CT). In our CAD system, we segment the hematoma region from each slice of a CT series, extract features from the hematoma segments, and automatically classify the hematoma types using machine learning methods. We propose two sets of shape based features for each segmented hematoma region. The first set contains primitive features describing the overall shape of a hematoma region. The features in the second set are based on the dissimilarities of the shapes of hematoma regions measured by geodesic distances. After feature extraction, we classify the hematoma regions into three types -- epidural hematoma, sub-dural hematoma, and intracerebral hematoma, using random forest. Each tree of the random forest votes one class for each hematoma, and the random forest takes the class label with the majority votes for the hematoma. As hematomas are volumetric in nature, some hematomas are observed across several consecutive slices in the same CT series. For each class, we add the votes from each hematoma slice that comprises the volumetric hematoma in that class, then we take the class with the majority of the summed votes as the class label for that volumetric hematoma. The overall classification accuracies for hematoma region from each CT slice are 80.7%, 81.3%, and 81.1% using primitive features only, geodesic distance features only, or both sets of features, respectively. For volumetric hematoma classification, the overall accuracies are 80.9%, 81.5%, and 81.5% respectively. The results are promising to radiologists and neurosurgeons specialized in this field of research.
Reviewing automatic language identification

The Oregon Graduate Institute Multi-language Telephone Speech Corpus (OGI-TS) was designed specifically for language identification research. It currently consists of spontaneous and fixed-vocabulary utterances in 11 languages: English, Farsi, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Spanish, Tamil, and Vietnamese. These utterances were produced by 90 native speakers in each language over real telephone lines. Language identification is related to speaker-independent speech recognition and speaker identification in several interesting ways. It is therefore not surprising that many of the recent developments in language identification can be related to developments in those two fields. We review some of the more important recent approaches to language identification against the background of successes in speaker and speech recognition. In particular, we demonstrate how approaches to language identification based on acoustic modeling and language modeling, respectively, are similar to algorithms used in speaker-independent continuous speech recognition. Thereafter, prosodic and duration-based information sources are studied. We then review an approach to language identification that draws heavily on speaker identification. Finally, the performance of some representative algorithms is reported. <<ETX>>
Graph-Based Navigation of a Box Office Prediction System

Predicting movies’ box office performance is a bit like gambling and predicting the stock market: there is a lot of luck involved but analyzing the system’s input frequently leads a better result. There are many inputs to box office prediction but certainly among the most influential in predicting future success are the actors involved and their past performances. Grasping the variables needed in the large data sets to make a box office prediction is an overwhelming task where a visualization would be useful. In this paper we describe a means to visualize these large data sets and distill them down into a simple causal approach that makes understanding the factors that affect box office performance easier.
Highly impulsive rats: modelling an endophenotype to determine the neurobiological, genetic and environmental mechanisms of addiction

Impulsivity describes the tendency of an individual to act prematurely without foresight and is associated with a number of neuropsychiatric co-morbidities, including drug addiction. As such, there is increasing interest in the neurobiological mechanisms of impulsivity, as well as the genetic and environmental influences that govern the expression of this behaviour. Tests used on rodent models of impulsivity share strong parallels with tasks used to assess this trait in humans, and studies in both suggest a crucial role of monoaminergic corticostriatal systems in the expression of this behavioural trait. Furthermore, rodent models have enabled investigation of the causal relationship between drug abuse and impulsivity. Here, we review the use of rodent models of impulsivity for investigating the mechanisms involved in this trait, and how these mechanisms could contribute to the pathogenesis of addiction.
Dandelion: from raw data to dataGEMs for developers

The amount of data generated on the Web is increasing day by day, but it is not always accessible and usable: developers have to go through numerous steps from obtaining the data to building applications on top of it. The mission of SpazioDati is to eliminate these steps from the development process. SpazioDati pulls the data from various disparate data sources together in one big knowledge graph, Dandelion, and provides a set of APIs over it. In this paper we provide an overview of the data curation and data access platform we develop at SpazioDati.
Transcriptomic Analysis of Purified Embryonic Neural Stem Cells from Zebrafish Embryos Reveals Signaling Pathways Involved in Glycine-Dependent Neurogenesis

How is the initial set of neurons correctly established during the development of the vertebrate central nervous system? In the embryo, glycine and GABA are depolarizing due the immature chloride gradient, which is only reversed to become hyperpolarizing later in post-natal development. We previously showed that glycine regulates neurogenesis via paracrine signaling that promotes calcium transients in neural stem cells (NSCs) and their differentiation into interneurons within the spinal cord of the zebrafish embryo. However, the subjacent molecular mechanisms are not yet understood. Our previous work suggests that early neuronal progenitors were not differentiating correctly in the developing spinal cord. As a result, we aimed at identifying the downstream molecular mechanisms involved specifically in NSCs during glycine-dependent embryonic neurogenesis. Using a gfap:GFP transgenic line, we successfully purified NSCs by fluorescence-activated cell sorting from whole zebrafish embryos and in embryos in which the glycine receptor was knocked down. The strength of this approach is that it focused on the NSC population while tackling the biological issue in an in vivo context in whole zebrafish embryos. After sequencing the transcriptome by RNA-sequencing, we analyzed the genes whose expression was changed upon disruption of glycine signaling and we confirmed the differential expression by independent RTqPCR assay. While over a thousand genes showed altered expression levels, through pathway analysis we identified 14 top candidate genes belonging to five different canonical signaling pathways (signaling by calcium, TGF-beta, sonic hedgehog, Wnt, and p53-related apoptosis) that are likely to mediate the promotion of neurogenesis by glycine.
A Call for a Dual Culture Change

As a general pediatrician for over 30 years the focus of my practice keeps changing to comply with emerging demands; sometimes precipitated by “new morbidities” other by economic and institutional changes, this time it is by the increased awareness of the impact that social determinants and adverse childhood events have on health outcomes of children and in our communities. Only that this time what needs to change is different; it is not about learning to manage newly described conditions or incorporating electronic medical record technologies, or new disease classifications, it is about a “dual culture change”, in us as practitioners and also in what families expect to get at the clinic [1].
Interest Rates , ECB Communication and Inflation Expectations

Guiding and anchoring inflation expectations of the public are key tasks of modern central banks. In this paper we investigate how the European Central Bank (ECB) influences inflation expectations of professional forecasters. We argue that it is a good sign that interest rate changes as such are not significant in explaining inflation expectations: The ECB has been able to prepare professional forecasters inflation expectations well in advance such that they only marginally have to adjust their forecasts. Consequently, only surprise interest rate movements have an impact. The empirical results confirm this hypothesis.
Quality of life and burden of women with premenstrual dysphoric disorder

Background Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) is a severe form of premenstrual physical and psychological discomfort. The disorder is common and has a negative impact on mental health and quality of life of women suffering from PMDD. Aim This study was carried out to evaluate the quality of life of women with PMDD. Participants and methods In a comparative case–control study, 34 patients with PMDD and 34 healthy controls (matched for age, educational level, and social class) were included. All were within the reproductive period. Tools Both groups were subjected to the following psychometric tools: a semistructured interview, a structured clinical interview for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-fourth edition, the World Health Organization Quality Of Life instrument, the symptom checklist instrument, the psychological adjustment scale, and the Sheehan disability scale. Results Patients and control groups were matched for age (P=0.46), marital status (P=0.35), educational level (P=0.87), and socioeconomic status (P=0.84). The mean scores of psychological and social relationships domains on the World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL)-BREF were lower for patients compared with the healthy control participants. Differences were statistically significant for emotional, family, and social adjustment (P Conclusion Patients with PMDD have lower quality of life than healthy participants. They have maladjusted emotions, family relations, and social functioning. They experience higher somatization, obsessive-compulsive, depressive, and anxiety symptoms than normal participants. The burden of illness is high. Appropriate recognition of the disorder and its impact should lead to the treatment of women with PMDD. Effective treatments are available. They should reduce individual suffering and impact on families, society, and economy.
Measles Virus Infection of Alveolar Macrophages and Dendritic Cells Precedes Spread to Lymphatic Organs in Transgenic Mice Expressing Human Signaling Lymphocytic Activation Molecule (SLAM, CD150)

ABSTRACT Recent studies of primate models suggest that wild-type measles virus (MV) infects immune cells located in the airways before spreading systemically, but the identity of these cells is unknown. To identify cells supporting primary MV infection, we took advantage of mice expressing the MV receptor human signaling lymphocyte activation molecule (SLAM, CD150) with human-like tissue specificity. We infected these mice intranasally (IN) with a wild-type MV expressing green fluorescent protein. One, two, or three days after inoculation, nasal-associated lymphoid tissue (NALT), the lungs, several lymph nodes (LNs), the spleen, and the thymus were collected and analyzed by microscopy and flow cytometry, and virus isolation was attempted. One day after inoculation, MV replication was documented only in the airways, in about 2.5% of alveolar macrophages (AM) and 0.5% of dendritic cells (DC). These cells expressed human SLAM, and it was observed that MV infection temporarily enhanced SLAM expression. Later, MV infected other immune cell types, including B and T lymphocytes. Virus was isolated from lymphatic tissue as early as 2 days post-IN inoculation; the mediastinal lymph node was an early site of replication and supported high levels of infection. Three days after intraperitoneal inoculation, 1 to 8% of the mediastinal LN cells were infected. Thus, MV infection of alveolar macrophages and subepithelial dendritic cells in the airways precedes infection of lymphocytes in lymphatic organs of mice expressing human SLAM with human-like tissue specificity.
Corpus-based evidence for approximating semantic transparency of complex verbs

Morphologically complex words possess meanings that range from completely transparent (i. e. similar) to completely opaque (i. e. dissimilar) with respect to the meaning of their base word. German prefix and particle verbs are very productive and frequently used in standard German and are thus a particularly useful means by which to study the effects of relatedness of meaning to the base verb. For example, the particle verbs auffinden (‘find, locate’) and abfinden (‘compensate, accept’) are morphologically derived from the base finden (‘find’). They thus both share their form with finden (‘find’) though only auffinden (‘find, locate’) shares also its meaning. The linguistic literature (Eisenberg, 2004; Fleischer & Barz, 1992; Olsen, 1996) distinguishes between prefix and particle verbs in that verbal prefixes are inseparable from the base in finite forms (Sie befindet sich in X, ‘she resides in X’) whereas particles are free morphemes and separated from the verb stem in finite forms (Sie findet sich mit X ab, ‘she accepts X’). Besides these morphosyntactic differences, both types of verb derivations may vary with respect to the semantic similarity to the base. Semantic similarity information is not yet part of lexical databases like CELEX 5 (Baayen, Piepenbrock, & Gulikers, 1995) or dlexDB 6 (Heister et al., 2011). In the following, we argue that
RAL-TR-1999-055 SQP methods for large-scalenonlinear programming 1

We compare and contrast a number of recent sequential quadratic programming (SQP) methods that have been proposed for the solution of large-scale nonlinear programming problems. Both line-search and trust-region approaches are considered, as are the implications of interior-point and quadratic programming methods. 1 Presented at the 19th IFIP TC7 Conference on System Modelling and Optimization, July 12 16, 1999, Cambridge, England. 2 Computational Science and Engineering Department, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Oxfordshire, OX11 0QX, England, EU. Email : n.gould@rl.ac. uk 3 Current reports available from \http://www.numerical. rl.ac. uk/reports/reports.html". 4 Department of Mathematics, Facult es Universitaires ND de la Paix, 61, rue de Bruxelles, B-5000 Namur, Belgium, EU. Email : pht@math.fundp.ac.be 5 Current reports available from \ftp://thales.math.fundp.ac.be/pub/reports". Computational Science and Engineering Department Atlas Centre Rutherford Appleton Laboratory Oxfordshire OX11 0QX July 21, 1999. SQP methods for large-scale nonlinear programming 1
Tumor Necrosis Factor-&agr; Promotes Macrophage-Induced Vascular Smooth Muscle Cell Apoptosis by Direct and Autocrine Mechanisms

Objective—We have previously shown that human macrophages induce human plaque vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) apoptosis by cell-cell proximity, Fas-L, and nitric oxide (NO), thereby predisposing to plaque rupture. This study sought to analyze whether tumor necrosis factor-&agr; (TNF-&agr;) contributes additionally to macrophage-induced VSMC apoptosis. Methods and Results—Macrophage-induced VSMC apoptosis was examined in direct coculture. Antagonistic antibodies to TNF-receptor (R1) inhibited VSMC apoptosis, and preincubation of monocytes and VSMCs indicated that TNF-R1 on both cell types contributed to macrophage-induced VSMC apoptosis. Correspondingly, both monocytes and VSMCs expressed TNF-R1, and macrophages expressed cell surface TNF-&agr;. Two NO donors upregulated VSMC surface TNF-R1, and exogenous TNF-&agr; induced VSMC apoptosis synergistically with the NO donor diethylenetriamine/NO, indicating that NO sensitizes VSMCs to TNF-&agr;. Neutralizing anti–TNF-R1 antibodies inhibited macrophage activation assessed by Fas-L expression and NO secretion. Conclusions—TNF-&agr; promotes macrophage-induced VSMC apoptosis by autocrine and direct pathways.
Parenteral anticoagulants in heart disease: Current status and perspectives (Section II)

Summary Anticoagulants are a mainstay of cardiovascular therapy, and parenteral anticoagulants have widespread use in cardiology, especially in acute situations. Parenteral anticoagulants include unfractionated heparin, low-molecular-weight heparins, the synthetic pentasaccharides fondaparinux, idraparinux and idrabiotaparinux, and parenteral direct thrombin inhibitors. The several shortcomings of unfractionated heparin and of low-molecular-weight heparins have prompted the development of the other newer agents. Here we review the mechanisms of action, pharmacological properties and side effects of parenteral anticoagulants used in the management of coronary heart disease treated with or without percutaneous coronary interventions, cardioversion for atrial fibrillation, and prosthetic heart valves and valve repair. Using an evidence-based approach, we describe the results of completed clinical trials, highlight ongoing research with currently available agents, and recommend therapeutic options for specific heart diseases.
Advances in BAC-Based Physical Mapping and Map Integration Strategies in Plants

In the advent of next-generation sequencing (NGS) platforms, map-based sequencing strategy has been recently suppressed being too expensive and laborious. The detailed studies on NGS drafts alone indicated these assemblies remain far from gold standard reference quality, especially when applied on complex genomes. In this context the conventional BAC-based physical mapping has been identified as an important intermediate layer in current hybrid sequencing strategy. BAC-based physical map construction and its integration with high-density genetic maps have benefited from NGS and high-throughput array platforms. This paper addresses the current advancements of BAC-based physical mapping and high-throughput map integration strategies to obtain densely anchored well-ordered physical maps. The resulted maps are of immediate utility while providing a template to harness the maximum benefits of the current NGS platforms.
Developing an affective working companion utilising GSR data

Affective Computing field is in its second decade and is showing great achievements and promising results. Affective computing is mainly related to detecting and modifying a person's affective state. This paper presents a review on the fields of emotion and affective computing. It reviews some of the work done in the field and proposes a new smart computer system. The proposed system shall use galvanic skin response (GSR) in order to build a model that relates the GSR signals to different emotions. An application shall then be built on top of this model, in order to improve and enhance a person? s mood by suggesting activities that best suits their current mood.
Diversity Is What You Want It to Be

We propose that diversity is a malleable concept capable of being used either to attenuate or to enhance racial inequality. The research reported here suggests that when people are exposed to ambiguous information concerning an organization’s diversity, they construe diversity in a manner consistent with their social-dominance motives. Specifically, anti-egalitarian individuals broaden their construal of diversity to include nonracial (i.e., occupational) heterogeneity when an organization’s racial heterogeneity is low. By contrast, egalitarian individuals broaden their construal of diversity to include nonracial heterogeneity when an organization’s racial heterogeneity is high. The inclusion of occupational heterogeneity in perceptions of diversity allows people across the spectrum of social-dominance orientation to justify their support for or opposition to hierarchy-attenuating affirmative-action policies. Our findings suggest that diversity may not have a fixed meaning and that, without a specific delineation of what the concept means in particular contexts, people may construe diversity in a manner consistent with their social motivations.
Increased Monoamine Concentration in the Brain and Blood of Fetal Thalidomide- and Valproic Acid–Exposed Rat: Putative Animal Models for Autism

Autism is defined as a congenital neurodevelopmental disorder in which serotonergic dysfunction may be involved in its pathogenesis. One of the characteristic laboratory findings in autistic patients is hyperserotonemia, although its mechanism has not been elucidated to date because of difficulties in studying human patients. Recent reports have demonstrated that thalidomide or valproic acid exposure during early embryonic days (first trimester) in humans causes higher incidence of autism. Morphologic abnormalities found in autism (e.g. cerebellar anomalies, reduced motor neuron numbers) have been reported in animals administered with these teratogens prenatally, suggesting the possibility of the use of these animals as an experimental autistic model. In this study, we evaluated monoamine levels in the brain and blood of rats exposed to teratogens prenatally. Of the groups exposed to thalidomide on embryonic day (E)2, E4, E7, E9, and E11, a significant increase of hippocampal serotonin was only observed in the group exposed on E9. Furthermore, E9 thalidomide and valproic acid exposure both resulted in an increase of hippocampal serotonin, frontal cortex dopamine, and hyperserotonemia. These results thus indicate that two potentially autism-inducing teratogens, thalidomide and valproic acid, have the same effect on early monoamine system development in the brain and the blood, which may explain the pathogenesis of autism.