Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Big data processing: Is there a framework suitable for economists and statisticians?

The emerging wave of Big Data applications is flooding all branches of scientific knowledge. Economic and statistical applied research carried out in central banks and policy advising institutions is no exception. In this paper we present one of the most promising platform providing a unifying framework for different researchers willing to harness their knowledge of popular and simple computing environment such as R and Python. Along with their Integrated Development Environment (IDE), these are two of the most used numerical computing framework which are open source, provide built-in capabilities for statistical analysis and include a wide array of user contributed packages for an ample set of analytical tools suitable for different scientific applications. In the Big Data framework, we show how to provide researchers with a suitable programming environment allowing them to tame the intrinsic complexity of a High Performance Computing Cluster. Here we provide few empirical applications based on classical econometric and machine learning modeling.
Outcome after Brain Haemorrhage

Between 10 and 20% of strokes are due to intracerebral haemorrhage. The 1-month case fatality is about 42% in unselected cohorts. This relatively low incidence (compared with ischaemic stroke) and high early case fatality means that relatively few patients are available for long-term follow-up and therefore the available data on prognosis are imprecise. Moreover, improvements in diagnostic methods, such as the introduction of gradient echo MRI, which is very sensitive to intracerebral haemorrhage, are altering the types of patients being entered into studies of prognosis. Despite these methodological difficulties, it does appear that the overall prognosis with respect to survival and residual disability is similar to that for ischaemic stroke of equivalent clinical severity. Greater age and stroke severity, whether graded by neurological score or extent of haemorrhage on imaging, are both associated with increased case fatality and poorer functional outcomes. There is no definite evidence of differential recovery between ischaemic and haemorrhagic stroke. Epileptic seizures occur more commonly after haemorrhagic stroke (about 8 per 100 patient-years) compared with ischaemic stroke and more commonly in lobar rather than basal ganglia haemorrhage. There is no reliable evidence to indicate that the risk of recurrent stroke after haemorrhage differs from that after ischaemic stroke. However, strokes due to haemorrhage, like those due to infarction, are heterogeneous not only in terms of severity but also in their causes. The causes (e.g. amyloid angiopathy, hypertension, coagulation deficits) are likely to influence the risk of subsequent stroke. Pooling of data from community-based studies of haemorrhagic stroke that have used consistent definitions and methods represents the only feasible way to obtain more precise data on prognosis after intracerebral haemorrhage.
Closer to Learning: Social Networks, Trust, and Professional Communities

researchers, educators, and policymakers suggest the use of professional learning communities as one important approach to the improvement of teaching and learning. However, relatively little research examines the interplay of professional interactions (structural social capital) around instructional practices and key elements of professional learning communities (relational and cognitive social capital) from the lens of social capital. We employed a mixed-method design that draws on social network analysis, surveys, interviews, and observations to understand what accounts for the pattern of professional interactions within four high-performing professional learning community schools. The results indicate that teacher trust, principal trust, professional dialogue with the principal, and years of teaching in the school play a significant role in explaining teachers’ close network relationships. Implications and limitations are discussed.
Measurement of nutrition status in Crohn's disease patients receiving infliximab therapy.

AIM There is limited information on the nutrition impact of antitumor necrosis factor-alpha treatment in adult Crohn's disease (CD). This study was performed to examine the effect of a 6-month course of infliximab on enterocyte function, nutrient status, metabolism, and body composition in these patients. METHODS Seven CD patients were assessed for disease activity, enterocyte function, and body composition prior to, after 6 weeks, and after 6 months of infliximab treatment. Measurements included (1) disease activity: Inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire, Harvey Bradshaw Index, and C-reactive protein; (2) enterocyte function: folate, homocysteine, vitamin B(12), citrulline, vitamin D, beta-carotene, d-xylose absorption; (3) Prognostic Inflammatory and Nutritional Index (PINI); and (4) body composition and metabolism: body mass index (BMI), fat and lean body mass, resting energy expenditure (RRE), and respiratory quotient. RESULTS Most patients had improvement in disease activity with infliximab. PINI decreased in all patients (-3.35, P = .04). Plasma folate concentration significantly increased. There was an increase in BMI, fat mass, and lean body mass. The respiratory quotient increased in most patients. Changes in citrulline level and REE were inconsistent. CONCLUSIONS Crohn's disease patients have improvements in an index that measures both inflammation and nutrition (PINI) with infliximab therapy. Increases in plasma folate suggest improvement in enterocyte function and/or increased oral intake. The increase in respiratory quotient suggests decreased lipolysis and the lack of a starvation state. It was unclear whether weight gain was predominantly fat or lean muscle mass. These finding also support the use of PINI in Crohn's patients as an overall marker of inflammation and nutrition, and as a measure of response to infliximab therapy.
The experience of dying: an ethnographic nursing home study.

PURPOSE This article reviews the literature on "The Experience of Dying" and presents data from a larger, ongoing study of an ethnography of dying in nursing homes. The purpose of the ethnographic study was to investigate the process of providing end-of-life care to residents who were dying in nursing homes. DESIGN AND METHODS Participant observation, in-depth interviews, and event analysis were used to obtain data in three nursing facilities. RESULTS The review of the literature disclosed that research on the experience of dying is limited; most of the studies have been conducted in acute care hospitals among people who were dying of cancer. The ethnographic study found that lack of attention to cultural needs, cognitive status, inadequate staffing, and inappropriate and inadequate communication between health care providers and nursing home residents and their families were the predominant factors that influenced the experience of dying. IMPLICATIONS Future research is needed on: The experience of dying for patients with dementia, for people in a comatose state, and for non-English speaking patients; symptom management; health care provider/patient-family interaction; the burden of caregiving for families; and the consequences of the constraints within our health care system for people who are dying in various settings.
Pneumococcal bacteremia during a decade in children in Soweto, South Africa

Objectives. To monitor for a decade the incidence and the clinical and microbiologic characteristics of pneumococcal bacteremia in children in Soweto and to assess the influence of HIV infection on any changes. Methods. Case records of children with pneumococcal bacteremia at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital from July, 1986, to June, 1987 (1986/1987), and from July, 1996, to June, 1997 (1996/1997), were retrospectively reviewed. Results. There were 194 episodes, 62 in 1986/1987 and 132 in 1996/1997. The minimum annual incidence for children younger than 5 years of age increased from 61 per 100 000 (179 per 100 000 for those <12 months old) in 1986/1987 to 130 per 100 000 (349 per 100 000 for those <12 months old) in 1996/1997. Sixty-seven (60%) of 111 patients tested in 1996/1997 were HIV-seropositive; none were tested in 1986/1987. The HIV-infected compared with HIV-noninfected were more likely to be malnourished (61% vs. 36%, P = 0.02), less likely to have other underlying disease (12% vs. 50%, P = 0.00001) and more frequently used antibiotics recently (69% vs. 43%, P = 0,008). Penicillin-nonsusceptible isolates were found in 22 (35%) patients in 1986/1987 and 52 (39%) in 1996/1997. There was no significant change in antimicrobial susceptibility during the decade or by HIV serostatus. Conclusions. Children in Soweto had a high incidence of pneumococcal bacteremia which doubled during the decade mainly as a result of the impact of the HIV epidemic. There has been no significant change in antimicrobial susceptibility for the decade.
Isthmotectal axons make ectopic synapses in monocular regions of the tectum in developing Xenopus laevis frogs

During the development of binocular maps in the tectum of Xenopus laevis, axons that relay input from the ipsilateral eye via the nucleus isthmi undergo a prolonged period of shifting connections. This shifting accompanies the dramatic change in eye position that takes place as the laterally placed eyes of the tadpole move dorsofrontally. There is a concomitant expansion of the proportion of tectum that receives contralateral retinotectal input corresponding to the binocular portion of the visual field. Electrophysiological recording demonstrates that ipsilateral units are present in those rostral tectal zones, and anatomical methods show that the isthmotectal axons arborize densely in the rostral region but also extend sparser branches into the caudal zone, which is occupied by contralateral inputs with receptive fields in the monocular zone of the visual field.
DualAligner: a dual alignment-based strategy to align protein interaction networks

MOTIVATION Given the growth of large-scale protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks obtained across multiple species and conditions, network alignment is now an important research problem. Network alignment performs comparative analysis across multiple PPI networks to understand their connections and relationships. However, PPI data in high-throughput experiments still suffer from significant false-positive and false-negatives rates. Consequently, high-confidence network alignment across entire PPI networks is not possible. At best, local network alignment attempts to alleviate this problem by completely ignoring low-confidence mappings; global network alignment, on the other hand, pairs all proteins regardless. To this end, we propose an alternative strategy: instead of full alignment across the entire network or completely ignoring low-confidence regions, we aim to perform highly specific protein-to-protein alignments where data confidence is high, and fall back on broader functional region-to-region alignment where detailed protein-protein alignment cannot be ascertained. The basic idea is to provide an alignment of multiple granularities to allow biological predictions at varying specificity. RESULTS DualAligner performs dual network alignment, in which both region-to-region alignment, where whole subgraph of one network is aligned to subgraph of another, and protein-to-protein alignment, where individual proteins in networks are aligned to one another, are performed to achieve higher accuracy network alignments. Dual network alignment is achieved in DualAligner via background information provided by a combination of Gene Ontology annotation information and protein interaction network data. We tested DualAligner on the global networks from IntAct and demonstrated the superiority of our approach compared with state-of-the-art network alignment methods. We studied the effects of parameters in DualAligner in controlling the quality of the alignment. We also performed a case study that illustrates the utility of our approach. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION http://www.cais. ntu.edu. sg/∼assourav/DualAligner/.
The Circular Eleven Antenna: A New Decade-Bandwidth Feed for Reflector Antennas With High Aperture Efficiency

Future ultra-wideband (UWB) radio telescopes require UWB feeds for reflector antennas, and many new UWB feed technologies have gained substantial progress to satisfy the tough specifications for future radio telescope projects, such as the square kilometer array (SKA). It has been noticed that, different from traditional narrow-band horn feeds, all UWB feeds are non-BOR (Body of Revolution) antennas. Therefore, BOR1 efficiency becomes an important characterization for the modern UWB feed technologies. We present a novel circular Eleven feed, constructed of “circularly” curved folded dipoles printed on flat circuit boards, in order to have high BOR1 efficiency at a low manufacture cost. The Genetic Algorithm (GA) optimization scheme has been applied to the design for achieving a low reflection coefficient. Simulated and measured results show that the circular Eleven feed has a reflection coefficient below -6 dB over 1.6-14 GHz and below -10 dB over 78% of the band, and an aperture efficiency higher than 60% over 1-10 GHz and 50% up to 14 GHz.
Considerations for test design to accommodate energy‐budget models in ecotoxicology: A case study for acetone in the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis

Toxicokinetic–toxicodynamic (TKTD) modeling offers many advantages in the analysis of ecotoxicity test data. Calibration of TKTD models, however, places different demands on test design compared with classical concentration–response approaches. In the present study, useful complementary information is provided regarding test design for TKTD modeling. A case study is presented for the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis exposed to the narcotic compound acetone, in which the data on all endpoints were analyzed together using a relatively simple TKTD model called DEBkiss. Furthermore, the influence of the data used for calibration on accuracy and precision of model parameters is discussed. The DEBkiss model described toxic effects on survival, growth, and reproduction over time well, within a single integrated analysis. Regarding the parameter estimates (e.g., no‐effect concentration), precision rather than accuracy was affected depending on which data set was used for model calibration. In addition, the present study shows that the intrinsic sensitivity of snails to acetone stays the same across different life stages, including the embryonic stage. In fact, the data on egg development allowed for selection of a unique metabolic mode of action for the toxicant. Practical and theoretical considerations for test design to accommodate TKTD modeling are discussed in the hope that this information will aid other researchers to make the best possible use of their test animals. Environ Toxicol Chem 2014;33:1466–1475. © 2014 SETAC
[Outcome of patients who underwent surgical repair of aneurysm after subarachnoid hemorrhage].

BACKGROUND Follow-up study of patients with surgical repair of aneurysmal subarachnoidal hemorrhage (SAH), looking for clinical outcome predictors. PATIENTS AND METHODS Sixty two patients consecutively admitted to a teaching hospital, from January 1992 to December 1995 were included in the study. We studied preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative features looking for their relationship with the outcome. The ultimate outcome was evaluated by means of Glasgow Outcome Scale on discharge and 6 months later. RESULTS Smoking (p = 0.0001) and arterial hypertension (AHT) (p = 0.0186) were more frequent in these patients than in general population, but without relationship to the outcome as with the age of the clinical status on admission. The greatest statistical relationship was found between the level of consciousness on postoperative awakening (measured by the Hunt and Hess scale), and the outcome (p = 2.53 x 10(-8). From our results we made an algorithm that correctly assigned 92% of studied patients to their outcome. CONCLUSIONS All patients admitted on with aneurysm SAH deserve intensive care treatment besides their clinical grade. The level of consciousness on postoperative awakening was a good outcome predictor.
Integrated microwave sensors in SiGe with antenna in package: From concepts to solutions

In recent years wireless sensor systems operating in the microwave and mm-wave range became more and more popular. Automotive radar sensors are still the driving force for the development of higher integrated mm-wave sensors and thus pave the way also for applications in completely new areas. Industrial and life-science applications often require special functionality, smaller size, lower-power consumption, higher accuracy, easier applicability and more imaging capabilities, which leads towards flexible multi-channel multi-mode systems-on-chip (SoC) with antenna-in-package (AiP) solutions. This contribution treats some basic principles of radar and frontend concepts with respect to integration and indicates parallels and differences to typical communication radio chips. With advances in the packaging-technology the handling of mm-wave components becomes much easier, allowing new application areas. The embedded wafer level ball grid array (eWLB) packaging technology serves as basis for the additional integration of an antenna. Finally, realized systems of integrated SiGe-based sensors covering frequencies up to 240 GHz are shown. As application results measurements from a low-cost AiP based mm-wave imaging sensor at 160 GHz are presented.
Role of the 75-kDa TNF receptor in TNF-induced activation of neutrophil respiratory burst.

The exclusive role of the 55-kDa TNF receptor (TNF-R55) as the signaling receptor in TNF-induced activation of respiratory burst by human polymorphonuclear leukocytes residing on biologic surfaces has been inferred from results obtained with receptor-specific monoclonal and polyclonal Abs. In this work, we confirm this assumption by a more direct approach, i.e., by using receptor-specific TNF mutants (p55TNF and p75TNF) and, as a novel contribution, we show that cooperation of the 75-kDa TNF receptor (TNF-R75) is required for a full blown response to the cytokine. This conclusion stems from three sets of data: 1) none of the TNF-R55-specific agonists used, i.e., mAbs or p55TNF, induced a respiratory burst comparable with that induced by TNF; 2) selective down-modulation of TNF-R75 resulted in a diminished response to TNF but not to TNF-R55-specific agonists or to the chemotactic peptide FMLP; and 3) mAbs that either block or stabilize binding of TNF to TNF-R75 inhibited the response to the cytokine, suggesting that cooperation requires not only TNF binding to the receptor but also an appropriate dissociability from it. The inhibitory effect of the Abs increased as the cytokine concentrations decreased, indicating that cooperation by TNF-R75 becomes more relevant at low TNF doses. Such a cooperation does not seem to rely on the activation of a TNF-R75-linked signaling pathway independent of TNF-R55, since the response to p55TNF and p75TNF given in combination was not higher than the response to p55TNF alone. The possible mechanisms of cooperation are discussed.
Self‐monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) improves glycaemic control in oral hypoglycaemic agent (OHA)‐treated type 2 diabetes (SMBG‐OHA study)

We conducted a clinical research study to determine the effect of self‐monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) on glycaemic control and the value of a putatively less painful blood sampling technique on SMBG in oral hypoglycaemic agent‐treated type 2 diabetes patients; SMBG has not been broadly applied in non‐insulin‐treated patients in Japan.
Automated Evaluation of Medical Software Usage: Algorithm and Statistical Analyses

Evaluating the correctness of medical software usage is critically important in healthcare system management. Turf [1] is a software that can effectively collect interactions between user and computer. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to compare the recorded human-computer interaction events with a predefined path. Based on the pass/fail results, statistical analysis methods are proposed for two applications: to identify training effects and to compare products of the same functionality.
The role of pain‐related anxiety in adolescents' disability and social impairment: ALSPAC data

Anxiety, in particular pain‐related anxiety, plays an important role in explaining the severity of pain complaints and pain‐related disability in both adults and children with chronic pain. The fear‐avoidance model (FAM) describes how pain‐related anxiety plays a critical role in the maintenance of pain‐avoidance behaviour, which in turn influences pain‐related disability. However, the FAM does not take into account broader aspects of adolescence, such as social functioning, which could be negatively impacted by anxiety. In addition, most studies examining the role of anxiety in pain have used small convenience or clinical samples. By using a large UK epidemiological database, this study investigated the associations between pain‐related anxiety, disability and judgements of social impairment.
Postflight Balance Control Recovery in an Elderly Astronaut: A Case Report

Objective To examine the sensorimotor adaptive response of a 77-year-old man exposed to the gravito-inertial challenges of orbital space flight. Study Design Prospective case study with retrospective comparisons. Setting NASA Neurosciences Laboratory (Johnson Space Center) and Baseline Data Collection Facility (Kennedy Space Center). Primary Participant One 77-year-old male shuttle astronaut. Intervention Insertion into low Earth orbit was used to remove gravitational stimuli and thereby trigger sensorimotor adaptation to the microgravity environment. Graviceptor stimulation was reintroduced at landing, and sensorimotor readaptation to the terrestrial environment was tracked to completion. Main Outcome Measures Computerized dynamic posturography tests were administered before and after orbital flight to determine the magnitude and time course of recovery. Results The elderly astronaut exhibited balance control performance decrements on landing day; however, there were no significant differences between his performance and that of younger astronauts tested on the same shuttle mission or on previous shuttle missions of similar duration. Conclusions These results demonstrate that the physiological changes attributed to aging do not necessarily impair adaptive sensorimotor control processes.
Transmembrane dynamics of water exchange in human brain

Tracking arterial spin labeled (ASL) water in the human brain with magnetic resonance imaging can provide important information on the dynamics of the trans‐capillary and trans‐membrane water exchange. This information however, is not only important from a basic biological standpoint, but also is essential for deciphering positron emission tomography and MRI perfusion experiments based on the movement of labeled water. While substantial information exists on water exchange through cellular membranes in vitro, the in vivo information remains limited and controversial. In this MRI study, we use a combination of pulsed ASL and recently developed quantitative blood‐oxygen‐level‐dependent technique to address this question. Our approach is based on the measurements of the intrinsic MR transverse relaxation (T 2* ) properties of the ASL‐labeled water. We discovered that T 2* of the ASL‐labeled water in the extravascular space is 87 ms ± 10 ms while T 2* of the corresponding tissue water is much shorter, 50 ms ± 4 ms. This suggests that the ASL‐labeled water does not reach equilibrium with the extravascular tissue and is mostly localized to the extraneuronal space. We estimated that the water transport time through the neuronal membranes is on the order of several tens of seconds; a finding consistent with older PET tracer kinetic studies using 15O‐water. Magn Reson Med, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.