Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mixed-methods development of a new patient-reported outcome instrument for chronic low back pain: part 2—The Patient Assessment for Low Back Pain–Impacts (PAL-I)

Abstract We describe qualitative and quantitative development and preliminary validation of the Patient Assessment for Low Back Pain–Impacts (PAL-I), a patient-reported outcome measure for use in chronic low back pain (cLBP) clinical trials. Concept elicitation and cognitive interviews (qualitative methods) were used to identify and refine symptom concepts. Classical test theory and Rasch measurement theory (quantitative methods) were used to evaluate item-level and scale-level performance of the PAL-I using an iterative approach between qualitative and quantitative methods. Patients with cLBP participated in concept elicitation interviews (N = 43), cognitive interviews (N = 38), and assessment of paper-to-electronic format equivalence (N = 8). A web-based sample of self-reported patients with cLBP participated in quantitative studies to evaluate preliminary (N = 598) and revised (n = 401) drafts and patients with physician-diagnosed cLBP (N = 45) participated in preliminary validation of the PAL-I. The instrument contained 9 items describing cLBP impacts (walking, sitting, standing, lifting, sleep, social activities, travelling, climbing, and body movements). Item-level performance, scale structure, and scoring seemed to be appropriate. One-week test–retest reproducibility was acceptable (intraclass correlation coefficient 0.88 [95% confidence interval, 0.78-0.94]). Convergent validity was demonstrated with PAL-I total score and Roland-Morris Disability Questionnaire (Pearson correlation 0.82), MOS-36 Physical Functioning (−0.71), and MOS-36 Bodily Pain (−0.71). Individual item scores and total score discriminated between numeric rating scale tertile groups and painDETECT categories. Interpretation of paper and electronic administration modes was equivalent. The PAL-I demonstrated content validity and is potentially useful to assess treatment benefit in clinical trials of cLBP therapies.
Visual Neurons in the Superior Colliculus Discriminate Many Objects by Their Historical Values

The superior colliculus (SC) is an important structure in the mammalian brain that orients the animal toward distinct visual events. Visually responsive neurons in SC are modulated by visual object features, including size, motion, and color. However, it remains unclear whether SC activity is modulated by non-visual object features, such as the reward value associated with the object. To address this question, three monkeys were trained (>10 days) to saccade to multiple fractal objects, half of which were consistently associated with large rewards while other half were associated with small rewards. This created historically high-valued (‘good’) and low-valued (‘bad’) objects. During the neuronal recordings from the SC, the monkeys maintained fixation at the center while the objects were flashed in the receptive field of the neuron without any reward. We found that approximately half of the visual neurons responded more strongly to the good than bad objects. In some neurons, this value-coding remained intact for a long time (>1 year) after the last object-reward association learning. Notably, the neuronal discrimination of reward values started about 100 ms after the appearance of visual objects and lasted for more than 100 ms. These results provide evidence that SC neurons can discriminate objects by their historical (long-term) values. This object value information may be provided by the basal ganglia, especially the circuit originating from the tail of the caudate nucleus. The information may be used by the neural circuits inside SC for motor (saccade) output or may be sent to the circuits outside SC for future behavior.
Modeling and Testing the Spring Elasticity Properties with Variable User Defined Input Parameters Using MATLAB

: Spring elasticity is dependent upon 3 basic components of spring Spring constant, Damping constant and mass of the object. In this project we will build a computer simulation model to see the effects of these 3 parameters on spring elasticity and its functionalities. We will use matlab and simulink to model spring elasticity equations. We will also modify the equations to enable user defined inputs of above 3 parameters. A simulink model is obtained using which we run computer simulation number times according to user defined inputs and model the response of spring elasticity with varying user defined input parameters.
Review of Phase Separation of Water in Oil Emulsion using Electro-Pulse Inductive Coalesce

Water is invariably made with rock oil. If there is high and enough shear forces once rock oil and made water flow through the assembly path, stable emulsions could also be shaped. This state of affairs might notably be gift throughout the assembly of serious oils wherever steam is employed to scale back the viciousness of serious oil or in cases wherever submersible pumps square measure won’t to by artificial means carry the made fluids. To with efficiency style and operate serious production systems, information concerning properties that may influence the formation of emulsions and destabilization mechanisms of emulsions systems is critical. If the water isn’t far away from the rock oil it will cause quality drawback and economical losses. On the opposite aspect information concerning made water characteristics is very important to assist operators increase production, however information concerning the impacts of discharging made water in marine surroundings is very important similarly. The technology for electricity improvement of conglutination of water droplets in oil emulsions is critically reviewed these days, this technology is mostly thought-about for the separation of associate degree binary compound section distributed in an exceedingly insulator oil section with a considerably lower insulator constant than that of the form. Numerous styles are introduced, with most exploitation electrical energy (AC) electrical fields with mains frequency (50 or sixty Hz). The DC (DC) field has been less common within the past as compared to the AC. The characteristics and pure mathematics of the conductor system (generally cylindrical or plate) influence the performance of the electricity coalesce, and square measure closely associated with the kind of the applied field and therefore the emulsion used. There square measure essentially 2 varieties of conductor: uninsulated conductor and insulated electrode. Combination of electro conglutination and mechanical separation (e.g., centrifugal force) has conjointly been introduced. Heating and therefore the addition of chemicals are shown to more enhance the electro conglutination of water droplets. Alternative strategies that may be combined with the electrical treatment square measure filtration, strategies using high and temperature, and mixing. This review paper conjointly appearance at a number of this specific industrial applications exploitation the electro conglutination technology. Besides the oil and crude oil industries, this technology has potential applications within the edible oil industries like oil, sunflower-seed oil and oil process. Most of the presently out there instrumentation is incredibly huge and hulking, having an oversized inventory of emulsion. Therefore, we tend to see the long run trend for brand spanking new developments to be within the direction of inventing little moveable devices, incorporating options like optimum electrical fields and combined electrical and centrifugal forces to more enhance the separation of water-in-oil emulsions.
Multimodal Relational Tensor Network for Sentiment and Emotion Classification

Understanding Affect from video segments has brought researchers from the language, audio and video domains together. Most of the current multimodal research in this area deals with various techniques to fuse the modalities, and mostly treat the segments of a video independently. Motivated by the work of (Zadeh et al., 2017) and (Poria et al., 2017), we present our architecture, Relational Tensor Network, where we use the inter-modal interactions within a segment (intra-segment) and also consider the sequence of segments in a video to model the inter-segment inter-modal interactions. We also generate rich representations of text and audio modalities by leveraging richer audio and linguistic context alongwith fusing fine-grained knowledge based polarity scores from text. We present the results of our model on CMU-MOSEI dataset and show that our model outperforms many baselines and state of the art methods for sentiment classification and emotion recognition.
The esophagiome: integrated anatomical, mechanical, and physiological analysis of the esophago‐gastric segment

Esophageal diseases are highly prevalent and carry significant socioeconomic burden. Despite the apparently simple function of the esophagus, we still struggle to better understand its physiology and pathophysiology. The assessment of large data sets and application of multiscale mathematical organ models have gained attention as part of the Physiome Project. This has long been recognized in cardiology but has only recently gained attention for the gastrointestinal(GI) tract. The term “esophagiome” implies a holistic assessment of esophageal function, from cellular and muscle physiology to the mechanical responses that transport and mix fluid contents. These anatomical, mechanical, and physiological models underlie the development of a “virtual esophagus” modeling framework to characterize and analyze function and disease. Functional models incorporate anatomical details with sensory–motor responses, especially related to biomechanical functions such as bolus transport. Our review builds on previous reviews and focuses on assessment of detailed anatomical and geometric data using advanced imaging technology for evaluation of gastro‐esophageal reflux disease (GERD), and on esophageal mechanophysiology assessed using technologies that distend the esophagus. Integration of mechanics‐ and physiology‐based analysis is a useful characteristic of the esophagiome. Experimental data on pressures and geometric characteristics are useful for the validation of mathematical and computer models of the esophagus that may provide predictions of novel endoscopic, surgical, and pharmaceutical treatment options.
Mortality, morbidity and follow-up after acute poisoning by substances of abuse: A prospective observational cohort study

Aims: Despite the excess mortality and morbidity associated with acute poisoning by substances of abuse, follow-up is frequently not organised. We assessed morbidity, including repeated poisoning, and follow-up after acute poisoning by substances of abuse through charting contacts with health services. We also charted short-term mortality. Methods: Patients 12 years and older treated for acute poisoning by substances of abuse at a primary care emergency outpatient clinic in Oslo, Norway, were included consecutively from October 2011 through September 2012. We retrieved information from national registers on fatalities, hospital admissions, and contacts at outpatient specialist health services and with general practitioners (GPs), during the 90 days following a poisoning episode. Results: We included 1731 patients treated for 2343 poisoning episodes. During the 90 days following the poisoning, 31% of the patients were treated at somatic hospitals, 9% admitted to psychiatric hospitals, 37% in treatment at outpatient psychiatric/addiction specialist health services, 55% saw their GP, while 34% had no follow-up. The short-term mortality rate was 2.0%, eight times higher than expected. Increasing age, suicidal intention, opioid poisoning, and severe mental illness were associated with increased risk of death. Increasing age, male gender, opioid poisoning, and severe mental illness were associated with repeated poisoning. Patients with increased risk of repeated poisoning were more likely to be in follow-up at outpatient specialist psychiatric/addiction services and in contact with their GP. Conclusions: Follow-up measures seem targeted to those most in need, though one out of three had none. The mortality rate calls for concern.
B 1 Shimming with a Multi-Mode Travelling Wave Antenna at 9 . 4 T

Introduction Travelling waves have been introduced as an alternative excitation technique for MRI [1]. Recently, the extension to multi-channel excitation was presented at 7T [2] using dielectric fillings of the magnet bore. At 9.4T (~400MHz), to excite multiple modes without the necessity of such a dielectric filing becomes feasible. Building on initial performance measurements of the multi-mode antenna [3], here we report on the prospects of RF shimming with the multi-mode antenna. Methods The multi-mode antenna is based on the design of a previously developed patch antenna [4] with an additional monopole connected at the middle of the patch. Both patch ports and the monopole were fed independently by the parallel transmit system of a 9.4T MR scanner (Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany). Data were acquired on a human post-mortem brain in a cylinder filled with formalin. The cylinder was placed on the patient bed with the long axis coinciding with the longitudinal axis of the MR scanner. B1 maps of the measurement setup were acquired with a Bloch-Siegert shift based gradient echo sequence [5] with the following protocol parameters: FOV: 220x156x154mm, 3mm isotropic resolution, TR=250ms, TE=11ms. A 5kHz off-resonant Fermi pulse with duration of 8ms with a transmitter voltage of 132V was used for the experiment. The measurement was repeated for all three ports of the antenna. The resulting B1 maps were normalised to the transmit voltage. RF shimming was performed using a magnitude-least squares approach [6] with the target being a uniform excitation of the slice shown in Figure 2. Results Fig.1 shows the B1 efficiency maps for the individual channels. The distinct field patterns corresponding to the patch ports, i.e. the TE11 mode, (left and middle) and the monopole port (TM01 mode) are well visible. Fig.2 shows a sagittal localizer image before and after the RF shimming procedure. Despite the fact that the shimming procedure could not completely homogenise the excitation, some severe signal dropouts (white arrows) were reduced or even removed in some given areas. Conclusion As expected, simple RF shimming is not capable of removing the high degree of the RF inhomogeneity encountered at 9.4T. Though even with the low number of channels it is capable of reducing the encountered inhomogeneity in particular regions of interest and reduces the power requirements. Further studies will aim at the performance and verification of the RF shimming with the multi-mode antenna for in vivo imaging and the application of more sophisticated pTX techniques to further reduce the excitation inhomogeneities. References [1] Brunner et al. Nature 457:994-998 (2009) [2] Brunner et al. MRM 66:290-300 (2011) [3] Brenner et al. Proc. ESMRMB p.48 (2011) [4] Geschewski et al. Proc. ISMRM #1478 (2010) [5] Sacolick et al. MRM 63:1315-1322 (2010) [6] Setsompop et al. MRM 59:908–915 (2008) Figure 1: Measured B1 maps for the two patch ports (left and middle) and the monopole (right). The monopole shows the anticipated drop of field strength in the middle, corresponding to the excitation of the TM01 mode.
3D Face Registration using Individual Reference Face Shape

: 3D face biometrics has become an important research topic that has seen an enormous growth in the last few decades. The performance of any 3D face recognition system depends on the accurate registration or alignment of facial surfaces. Various registration methods in literature so far use either the one-to-all registration approaches or the average face model (AFM) based approaches for aligning the probe 3D face to gallery faces. In the former approach, each probe face is registered to all faces in the gallery, at a great computational cost. In the latter approach, the AFM calculated from the gallery images is considered as the reference face for aligning all the probe faces. However, the alignment of probe face to the less similar AFM results in the possible loss of discriminatory information. In this paper, an alternative approach that uses individual reference shape for the registration of each probe 3D face is proposed. Here each probe face is aligned to its corresponding, much similar reference face shape that ensures a better registration. Experimental results show that the proposed registration approach provides better alignment than the existing methods and the results are reported using the Bosphorus 3D face database.
Mean platelet volume in preterm: a predictor of early onset neonatal sepsis

Abstract Background: Early onset sepsis (EOS) is potentially life-threatening problem especially in preterm. EOS diagnosis is challenging due to its non-specific signs and laboratory tests. Mean platelet volume (MPV) has been used as predictor of many inflammatory diseases. Objectives: To assess the correlation between serial MPV measurement and EOS occurrence in preterm infants and to determine MPV effectiveness in combination with C reactive protein (CRP) to diagnose EOS and mortality prediction. Methods: The study was carried out on 95 preterm infants with antenatal risk factor for EOS. Blood samples were taken for complete blood count (CBC) including MPV evaluated at birth (cord blood) and at 72 h of life. CRP analyzed on days 1 and 3, subsequently patients were identified in two groups: sepsis (n = 28) and no-sepsis (n = 67). Results: MPV was significantly higher on both day 1 (10.23 ± 0.92) fl and day 3 (10.77 ± 1.16) fL in the sepsis group compared with no-sepsis (8.11 ± 0.29) fl and (8.53 ± 0.42) fl, respectively. MPV of 8.6 fL was identified as cut off value in patients probably resulting in sepsis with a sensitivity of 97.14% and a specificity of 100%. MPV of 10.4 fl was determined as cut off value in patients possibly resulting in death with a sensitivity of 70% and a specificity of 82.5%. The combination of both MPV and CRP on day 1 resulted in improving performance of MPV with higher negative predictive value (93.1%) and higher sensitivity (80%). Conclusion: High cord blood and day 3 MPV can be used as surrogate marker for prediction of EOS and associated mortality in preterm neonates.
Neuroprotectants in the Era of Reperfusion Therapy

For decades, numerous pharmacological and non-pharmacological strategies have been evaluated without success to limit the consequences of the ischemic cascade, but more rarely the therapies were explored as add on remedies on individuals also receiving reperfusion therapies. It is plausible that these putative neuroprotectants never reached the ischemic brain in adequate concentrations. Currently, the concept of neuroprotection incorporates cerebral perfusion as an obligatory substrate upon which ischemic brain survival depends, and it is plausible that some of the compounds tested in previous neuroprotection trials might have resulted in more favorable results if reperfusion therapies had been co-administered. Nonetheless, pharmacological or mechanical thrombectomy are frequently powerless to fully reperfuse the ischemic brain despite achieving a high rate of recanalization. This review covers in some detail the importance of the microcirculation, and the barriers that may hamper flow reperfusion at the microcirculatory level. It describes the main mechanisms leading to microcirculatory thrombosis including oxidative/nitrosative stress and refers to recent efforts to ameliorate brain perfusion in combination with the co-administration of neuroprotectants mainly aimed at harnessing oxidative/nitrosative brain damage.
Pro-Environmental Behaviour of Secondary School Students: A Topographical Analysis

Persons’ behavior, personal values, attitudes and level of consciousness are shaped by a number of factors that include locality, culture, religion, opportunities, environment and personal experiences. Among all other factors the gender and localities of individual was assumed to mediate the effects on pro-environmental behavior. The topographical condition in terms of climate, temperature, rain rate throughout the year, humidity, resources available and natural calamities may have more and less impact in forming personality characteristics i.e. behaviour, knowledge, values, etc. The present study has been emerged out of the above considerations. For that purpose, the state, West Bengal has been divided into six topographical zones and a sample of 145 (N = 145) secondary students of different parts of West Bengal has been taken. Samal and Sarkar Pro-environmental Behavour Questionnaire (SSPBQ) developed by researchers has been used to measure the selected variable. Descriptive statistics along with ANOVA have been employed to analyze the data. No difference of the pro-environmental behaviour was found in case of gender but the significant differences were found in case of localities as well as topographical zones. It might be concluded that the localities and topographical zones might mediate in pro-environmental behaviour of person.
Seuil de positivité de la troponine i cardiaque dans le diagnostic de l’IDM péri-opératoire après chirurgie cardiaque sous circulation extra-corporelle chez l’adulte

Introduction L'objectif de cette étude prospective, réalisée sur une année au laboratoire de biochimie de l'HMIMV de Rabat, vise à étudier la cinétique de la Troponine Ic (TnIc) après chirurgie cardiaque sous circulation extracorporelle (CEC) en vue d'établir des valeurs seuils pour le diagnostic d'infarctus de myocarde péri-opératoire (IDMPO). Méthodes Nous avons inclus 58 patients opérés pour chirurgie valvulaire ou pontage coronarien sous CEC. Ces patients ont été séparés en 3 groupes selon l'évolution clinique, biologique (TnIc) et électrique durant la période post opératoire précoce. Nous avons dosé et suivi la cinétique de la TnIc par une technique immuno-enzymatique, au moyen du réactif FlexR CTNI avant et après la CEC, à H0, H3, H6, H12, H21, H24 et H72 sur l'automate Dimension Xpand plusR de la société Siemens. Résultats Les résultats obtenus sont plus élevés qu'en cardiologie, même chez le groupe des patients sans complications cardiaques post opératoires, avec un taux moyen de TnIc environ 2,5 fois supérieur à la valeur seuil en cardiologie. La cinétique de libération est significativement différente entre les 3 groupes (p‹0,05). Conclusion La valeur seuil que nous proposons pour confirmer le diagnostic de l'IDMPO est de 13ng/ml obtenue entre H12 et H24. Nous recommandons, de ce fait, un à deux prélèvements vers H12 puis entre H20 et H24.
In vivo detection of Alzheimer disease in APP transgenic mice with T 2-Mapping

Methods: We used six 20-week old TgCRND8 mice and five ageand gendermatched wildtype mice for MRI. TgCRND8 mice encode a double mutant form of amyloid precursor protein under the control of the PrP gene promoter. Thioflavine S-positive Aβ amyloid deposits are present at 3 month, with dense-cored plaques and neuritic pathology evident from 5 month of age [1]. Imaging was performed on a small animal scanner (Clinscan, Bruker, Ettlingen, Germany). A Bruker mouse head phased array coil (2x2) was used for imaging. The protocol consisted of a high resolution (100μm isotropic) T2-weighted TSEsequence (TR: 1250ms, TE: 43ms) and a T2*-weighted GREsequence (TR: 50ms, TE: 11ms, FA: 18°) with the same resolution for plaque imaging. A multiechosequence (TR: 2500ms, 12x TE: 8 97 ms, 156 x 156 x 700μm) was used for T2-calculation. T2-Maps of the mouse brain were calculated with internal software discarding the first echo (due to signal loss to achieve steady state) and subtracting background noise. For comparison of groups 12 regions of interest (ROI) in 2 slices were defined and analyzed (Fig. 1). As a measure of effect size Cohan’s d was calculated. During the whole imaging protocol (3h duration) mice were anaesthetised with isoflurane. Breathing and body temperature were monitored and carefully adjusted.