Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of methylphenidate on response to oral levodopa: a double-blind clinical trial.

OBJECTIVE To determine if repeated dosing with methylphenidate hydrochloride (MPD) (Ritalin; Novartis Pharmaceuticals, East Hanover, NJ), an inhibitor of the dopamine transporter, would augment the effects of oral levodopa in patients with Parkinson disease. DESIGN The study was a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled crossover trial. SETTING The trial was conducted at the General Clinical Research Center (GCRC) as an inpatient study. Subjects Thirteen people with idiopathic Parkinson disease and a fluctuating motor response to levodopa were recruited from movement disorder clinics as a convenience sample. One subject was excluded because he did not have a 10% increase in tapping speed in response to levodopa. The remaining 12 subjects completed the protocol. INTERVENTIONS A 0.4-mg/kg dose of MPD was administered orally at 8 am, noon, and 4 pm in conjunction with the subjects' normal oral antiparkinsonian medications. Oral levodopa dosage was decreased as clinically feasible during the first 4 days in the GCRC during open-label administration of MPD and hourly monitoring of parkinsonism and vital signs between 7 am and 8 pm. Subjects were discharged taking their usual antiparkinsonian medications without MPD. They returned 1 and 2 weeks later to the GCRC for 1 day of hourly monitoring of their response to the medication regimen derived during the 4 days in the GCRC, once with MPD and once with identical-appearing placebo, in a randomized sequence and double-blind conditions. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The main outcome measure was the duration of "on" time between 9 am and 8 pm measured by an increase in tapping speed by 10% over the average of the 7 am to 8 am predosing tapping speed measurements. Secondary measures were estimates of "on" time obtained with the timed walking task, tremor scores, and dyskinesia scores. In addition, averages of hourly tapping speeds, walking speed, tremor scores, dyskinesia scores, vital signs, and analog scale scores for mood, anxiety, and fatigue between 9 am and 8 pm were examined. Adverse events on the double-blinded days were compared. RESULTS Methylphenidate tended to increase the time "on" as measured by tapping (P = .09) but not by walking time or dyskinesia scores (P = .40 and .42, respectively). Methylphenidate tended to increase average tapping speed, decrease time to perform walking task, decrease tremor, and increase dyskinesia score but only the decrease in tremor reached significance. Neither the investigators nor the subjects could reliably identify active drug. Methylphenidate was well tolerated. CONCLUSIONS The effects of 0.4 mg/kg of MPD 3 times per day on the motor response to levodopa were small and variable and judged to be clinically insignificant. Trial Registration clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00359723.
Artificial daylight photodynamic therapy with “non-inflammatory” doses of hexyl aminolevulinate only marginally delays SCC development in UV-exposed hairless mice

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is effective for actinic keratoses, but is associated with pain and post-treatment inflammation. Daylight-mediated PDT and PpIX-precursors at low concentrations reduce pain and inflammation intensity. The objective was to evaluate the effect of repeated low-concentration PDT combined with artificial daylight on SCC development. Mice ( n = 265) were exposed to simulated solar UV-irradiation (UVR) 3 times weekly mimicking “summer-dose”-exposure (3 SED). Selected groups of mice received a “winter-dose”-exposure (0.6 SED) for the first 90 days. PDT was delivered with 0.1%, 0.05% and 0.02% hexyl aminolevulinate (HAL) cream and artificial daylight for 2.5 hours (6 J cm^−2) in different treatment regimes (1-3 times weekly, 45-days intervals, days 1-180 and from day 180 onwards). The primary end-point was the time to first SCC (1 mm diameter). 0.1% HAL-PDT given 3 times weekly slightly delayed SCC development and induced minimal inflammation. In winter- and summer UVR-treatment regimes, 0.1% HAL PDT delayed the time to first SCC compared to control UVR and placebo-PDT when mice were PDT-treated on days 1-180 (median 213 vs. 199 days, p = 0.011) and from day 180 onwards (median 218 vs. 199 days, p = 0.006). PDT with 0.05% and 0.02% HAL did not influence SCC development (medians 206 days, p = ns). In summer UVR-exposed mice, 0.1% HAL-PDT marginally postponed the time to first SCC compared to control UVR (median 160 days) when treatments were given 3 times weekly for 180 days (median 166, p = 0.01), but not for 90 days (median 161, p = 0.112). In conclusion, repeated low-concentration HAL-PDT combined with artificial daylight is well-tolerated, but only marginally delays SCC development in mice.
Is the International Physical Activity Questionnaire-Short Form (IPAQ-SF) valid for assessing physical activity in chronic fatigue syndrome?

Purpose. To evaluate the criterion validity and internal consistency of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire-short form (IPAQ-sf) in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) patients. Method. Fifty-six CFS patients completed the IPAQ-sf after they wore a tri-axial accelerometer and filled out activity diaries during 1 week. Spearman rank correlation coefficients and Cronbach's Alpha were calculated. Results. The IPAQ-sf correlated significantly with the energy expenditure and Metabolic Equivalents (METs) minutes spent moderately to vigorously active following the activity diary and accelerometer. These correlation coefficients were however low (r varying between 0.282 and 0.426) and rather irrelevant, since CFS patients hardly reach moderate or vigorous activity levels. Internal consistency between the three subitems used for the total score of the IPAQ-sf was 0.337. Conclusion. The observed associations between the IPAQ-sf data and the data obtained from the accelerometer (gold standard) and the diaries were too low to be in support of the use of the IPAQ-sf in patients with CFS. The IPAQ-sf does not seem an appropriate tool to assess physical activity in CFS patients. Further study is required to seek for a valid, practical and affordable tool.
Preprotachykinin A is expressed by a distinct population of excitatory neurons in the mouse superficial spinal dorsal horn including cells that respond to noxious and pruritic stimuli

Abstract The superficial dorsal horn, which is the main target for nociceptive and pruritoceptive primary afferents, contains a high density of excitatory interneurons. Our understanding of their roles in somatosensory processing has been restricted by the difficulty of distinguishing functional populations among these cells. We recently defined 3 nonoverlapping populations among the excitatory neurons, based on the expression of neurotensin, neurokinin B, and gastrin-releasing peptide. Here we identify and characterise another population: neurons that express the tachykinin peptide substance P. We show with immunocytochemistry that its precursor protein (preprotachykinin A, PPTA) can be detected in ∼14% of lamina I-II neurons, and these are concentrated in the outer part of lamina II. Over 80% of the PPTA-positive cells lack the transcription factor Pax2 (which determines an inhibitory phenotype), and these account for ∼15% of the excitatory neurons in this region. They are different from the neurotensin, neurokinin B, or gastrin-releasing peptide neurons, although many of them contain somatostatin, which is widely expressed among superficial dorsal horn excitatory interneurons. We show that many of these cells respond to noxious thermal and mechanical stimuli and to intradermal injection of pruritogens. Finally, we demonstrate that these cells can also be identified in a knock-in Cre mouse line (Tac1Cre), although our findings suggest that there is an additional population of neurons that transiently express PPTA. This population of substance P–expressing excitatory neurons is likely to play an important role in the transmission of signals that are perceived as pain and itch.
Ablative Fractional Laser Resurfacing Helps Treat Restrictive Pediatric Scar Contractures

Conventional management of debilitating pediatric scar contractures, including hand therapy and surgery, may often be beset by delayed treatment, suboptimal results, and additional surgical morbidity. Ablative fractional laser resurfacing is an emerging adjunctive procedural option for scar contractures because of its promising efficacy and safety profile. However, its use to improve function has not been studied in the pediatric population. Herein we report 2 pediatric patients with recalcitrant scar contractures, causing persistent functional deficits, treated with an ablative fractional laser protocol. Both patients experienced rapid and cumulative subjective and objective improvements in range of motion and function as measured by an independent occupational therapist without reported complications. We highlight ablative fractional laser resurfacing as a novel and promising tool in the management of function-limiting scar contractures in children and propose that the technique be incorporated into existing scar treatment paradigms, guided by future research.
Antimicrobial Peptides Past, Present and Future

Uncontrolled antibiotic use lead to increasing the level of resistant bacterial species. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are one of the few alternatives in the fight with everyday growing bacterial resistance to commonly used antibiotics. AMPs general application could be also as endotoxin neutralizing agents or as an adjuvants to regular antimicrobial therapy. In this review we were focused on the most recent data that concern the diverse use of AMPs, their activities and modes of actions.
A Parent’s Perspective on Deaf Education in South Africa

aware of it. There were no available scientific SASL resources. The project proposed to collect SASL data from South African members of the Deaf community and then to analyze the research findings. The data were incredibly valued because they were based on evidence about SASL issues. One could consider that SASL should be an official language of South Africa as it was a real language like any other spoken language. SASL was not relevant to spoken languages or international sign language—it was unique and indigenous. After my studies were completed, I decided to become more involved in SASL research and teaching academic SASL at the School of Language and Literature Studies and the Center for Deaf Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. Meanwhile, I kept my fashion design business and was also self-employed; both jobs were parttime, though. I became the full-time SASL coordinator at the Center for Deaf Studies in 2006. The research project had been held up for a long time because of lack of funds. I applied for second studies, doing a part-time project management course at the university. They accepted my request to appoint an SASL interpreter during classes. It was more convenient, and I was doing better than when I studied at Wits Techinkon. The Techin kon had refused to appoint a sign language interpreter for Deaf students. That was a painful struggle and unfair; however, I achieved my first studies by making my own strategy with textbooks, searching in the library, and taking notes from students. In my childhood, I was been discriminated against by people who had negative thoughts and who treated me unequally. I have been battling against the odds. When I learned from Deaf activists the saying, “Deaf people can do anything, except hear,” that was an influential and meaningful inspiration to me. Now I can ignore whatever they are thinking about in other people, even a disability or minor physical problem, as I know that no one is perfect on the earth. Everyone must treat each other as being human.
Design of a distributed kite power control system

Kite power is a promising innovative technology for converting wind energy into electricity at a higher capacity factor and, for many applications, at a lower cost than conventional wind turbines. However, accessing this potential depends substantially on the availability of sophisticated control systems. Delft University of Technology is developing a kite power generator which operates a tethered inflatable membrane wing in a pumping cycle. The flight trajectory is controlled by an actuator unit suspended below the wing and communicates with the ground station control centre via a fast and reliable wireless link. The link is also used to transmit the data of the on-board sensors to the ground. In a future wind park of many kite power systems, the individual kites and ground stations have to communicate among each other, to avoid collisions and to optimize the total energy output of the park. A preparatory analysis has shown that the current prototype would significantly benefit from a distributed control system approach, achieving higher efficiency and increased operational flexibility. For larger installations a distributed control system would be mandatory anyway. For these reasons, a distributed control system with a flexible architecture has been developed. The unique design and first test results are presented.
Image transmission using error-resilient wavelet coding and forward error correction

An error-resilient coding scheme is proposed for the transmission of images over unreliable channels. Forward error correction is used in conjunction with the error-resilient source coder for the protection of the compressed stream. Unlike almost all other robust coding schemes presented to date, the proposed scheme is able to decode portions of the bitstream even after the occurrence of uncorrectable errors. The resulting coder is shown to be very efficient for image transmission over noisy channels.
The Mind Incarnate

How are the mind and body harnessed together? In The Mind Incarnate, Lawrence Shapiro addresses this question by testing two widely accepted hypotheses, the multiple realizability thesis and the separability thesis. He argues that there is signficicant -- though far from decisive -- evidence against them.While contemporary philosophers no longer view the mind as a supernatural entity -- the famous "Ghost in the Machine" dogma that Gilbert Ryle ridiculed over fifty years ago -- Shapiro argues that naturalistic approaches to understanding the mind retain their own naturalized varieties of ghosts. In particular, the multiple realizability thesis holds that the connection between human minds and human brains is in some sense accidental: the tie between mental properties and neural properties is not physically necessary. According to the separability thesis, the mind is a largely autonomous component residing in the body that contributes little to its functioning. Shapiro tests these hypotheses against two rivals, the mental constraint thesis and the embodied mind thesis. Collecting evidence from a variety of sources (e.g., neuroscience, evolutionary theory, and embodied cognition) he concludes that the multiple realizability thesis, accepted by most philosophers as a virtual truism, is much less obvious than commonly assumed, and that there is even stronger reason to give up the separability thesis. In contrast to views of mind that tempt us to see the mind as simply being resident in a brain or body, Shapiro view is a far more encompassing integration of mind, brain, and body than philosophers have supposed.
Effects of long-lasting insecticidal nets and zooprophylaxis on mosquito feeding behaviour and density in Mwea, central Kenya.

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Zooprophylaxis is a strategy that can control malaria by attracting mosquitoes to domestic animals that act as dead-end hosts. The objective of this study was to establish the effects of zooprophylaxis and long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) on malaria transmission in an agro-based ecosystem with seasonal transmission. METHODS The mosquito samples were collected indoors using the space spray catch method before and after intervention between October 2005 and March 2006 to determine the mosquito densities and the feeding patterns of Anopheles spp in Mwea, Kenya. RESULTS A total of 4148 mosquito samples were collected, out of which 11 (0.2%) were tested positive for sporozoites. Ten were Anopheles gambiae species and one was An. funestus species. Results on blood meal ELISA showed that in the household categories that used bednets and kept one cow there was a decrease in relative change ratio (post-/pre-intervention) of 87.5 and 19.6% (p <0.05) in human and cattle blood intake respectively. For households that kept 2-4 cattle and used bednets, there was a decrease in cattle blood index (CBI) by 61.9% and an increase in human blood index (HBI) by 2%, which was not significant (p <0.05). In households with <4 cattle and bednet, there was significant reduction (p >0.05) in CBI of 37.5% as compared to the reduction of 10.3% in HBI. The ratios of man biting rates (MBR) decreased significantly, as you move up from households with one cattle with or without LLINs to households with more than four cattle with or without LLINs with a regression coefficient of -0.96; SE = 0.834; p = 0.017. Similarly, the HBI decreased significantly with the regression coefficient of 0.239; SE = 0.039; p = 0.015 (p <0.05) especially in households with >4 cattle. INTERPRETATION & CONCLUSION This study demonstrated that there were additive effects of zooprophylaxis and LLINs in the control of mosquito density and reduction of human risk to the mosquito bites. However, in Integrated Vector Management (IVM), the number of animals per household should not be more than four.
Variability of Absorption and Optical Properties of Key Aerosol Types Observed in Worldwide Locations

Aerosol radiative forcing is a critical, though variable and uncertain, component of the global climate. Yet climate models rely on sparse information of the aerosol optical properties. In situ measurements, though important in many respects, seldom provide measurements of the undisturbed aerosol in the entire atmospheric column. Here, 8 yr of worldwide distributed data from the AERONET network of ground-based radiometers were used to remotely sense the aerosol absorption and other optical properties in several key locations. Established procedures for maintaining and calibrating the global network of radiometers, cloud screening, and inversion techniques allow for a consistent retrieval of the optical properties of aerosol in locations with varying emission sources and conditions. The multiyear, multi-instrument observations show robust differentiation in both the magnitude and spectral dependence of the absorption—a property driving aerosol climate forcing, for desert dust, biomass burning, urban‐industrial, and marine aerosols. Moreover, significant variability of the absorption for the same aerosol type appearing due to different meteorological and source characteristics as well as different emission characteristics are observed. It is expected that this aerosol characterization will help refine aerosol optical models and reduce uncertainties in satellite observations of the global aerosol and in modeling aerosol impacts on climate.
State estimation for distributed cyber-physical power systems under data attacks

For the physical network, such as power physical network, built cyber network to optimise the regulation and control to constitute cyber-physical system, in order to achieve optimal control of large scale distributed systems, and bring along with virus, hacking, denial of service from the threat of cyber network that may lead to malicious damage in physical system. In this paper, a distributed dynamic model for a class of power systems with data attack is built with the assumption of attack detectability. Dynamic state estimators are presented to detect the attacked data and estimate its original value. Finally, a simulation of 9-bus power system shows the effectiveness of our proposed method.
Subunit structure of paired helical filaments in Alzheimer's disease

The neurofibrillary tangles that occur in the brain in cases of senile dementia of the Alzheimer type contain a distinctive type of filament, the paired helical filament (PHF). We have developed a method for isolating the tangles postmortem in sufficient yield for structural study of PHFs by electron microscopy of negatively stained and shadowed preparations. This material shows the characteristic helical structure seen in sectioned embedded material. In addition, two striking fragmentation patterns are observed. (a) Some filaments show sharp transverse breaks at apparently random positions along the filament. (b) In a few PHFs one strand is missing for a variable length, whereas the other appears to maintain its structural integrity. The shadowed specimens show the PHF to be wound in a left-handed manner. These observations indicate that the PHF consists of subunits of very limited axial extent arranged along two left-handed helical strands. The visualization of the substructure within the PHFs is rather variable and a model building approach has therefore been adopted, which has allowed the main features seen in the images to be interpreted. The subunit appears to have at least two domains in a radial direction and an axial extent of less than 5 nm. The whole structure can best be described as a twisted ribbon and indeed alkali treatment does untwist PHFs to give flat ribbons. The nature of the proposed model makes it most unlikely that the PHF is formed by a simple collapse of normal cytoskeletal elements, such as neurofilaments.
JPIAspectZ: A Formal Specification Language for Aspect-Oriented JPI Applications

This article proposes and describes JPIAspectZ, a formal language used to write Aspect-Oriented (AO) software specification to support the use of Join Point Interfaces (JPI) between advised classes and aspects. JPIAspectZ looks for a concept and model consistency for a JPI software development process. The main characteristic of JPI is to define explicit associations between aspects and advised classes by means of join point interfaces, so that classes are no longer oblivious of their possible interaction with aspects and as well aspects, for their action effectiveness, do not depend on signatures of advisable class methods. Only JPIAspectZ supports this JPI principle. An application example of JPIAspectZ is presented to analyze the pros and cons of our proposal.
Regulation of Synthesis and Roles of Hyaluronan in Peritoneal Dialysis

Hyaluronan (HA) is a ubiquitous extracellular matrix glycosaminoglycan composed of repeated disaccharide units of alternating D-glucuronic acid and D-N-acetylglucosamine residues linked via alternating β-1,4 and β-1,3 glycosidic bonds. HA is synthesized in humans by HA synthase (HAS) enzymes 1, 2, and 3, which are encoded by the corresponding HAS genes. Previous in vitro studies have shown characteristic changes in HAS expression and increased HA synthesis in response to wounding and proinflammatory cytokines in human peritoneal mesothelial cells. In addition, in vivo models and human peritoneal biopsy samples have provided evidence of changes in HA metabolism in the fibrosis that at present accompanies peritoneal dialysis treatment. This review discusses these published observations and how they might contribute to improvement in peritoneal dialysis.