Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Color discrimination deficits in Parkinson's disease are related to cognitive impairment and white‐matter alterations

Color discrimination deficit is a common nonmotor manifestation of Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the pathophysiology of this dysfunction remains poorly understood. Although retinal structure changes found in PD have been suggested to cause color discrimination deficits, the impact of cognitive impairment and cortical alterations remains to be determined. We investigated the contribution of cognitive impairment to color discrimination deficits in PD and correlated them with cortical anomalies. Sixty‐six PD patients without dementia and 20 healthy controls performed the Farnsworth–Munsell 100 hue test and underwent a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment for mild cognitive impairment diagnosis. In a subgroup of 26 PD patients, we also used high‐definition neuroanatomical magnetic resonance imaging for cortical thickness and diffusion tensor analysis. PD patients with mild cognitive impairment performed poorly on the Farnsworth–Munsell 100 hue test compared with PD patients without mild cognitive impairment and controls. In PD patients, performance on the Farnsworth–Munsell 100 hue test was correlated with measures of visuospatial abilities and executive functions. Neuroimaging analysis revealed higher mean and radial diffusivity values in right posterior white‐matter structures that correlated with poor performance on the Farnsworth–Munsell 100 hue test. No cortical thickness correlation reached significance. This study showed that cognitive impairment makes a major contribution to the color discrimination deficits reported in PD. Thus, performance on the Farnsworth–Munsell 100 hue test may reflect cognitive impairment more than color discrimination deficits in PD. Poor performance on the Farnsworth–Munsell 100 hue test was also associated with white‐matter alterations in right posterior brain regions. © 2012 Movement Disorder Society
1. Homicide Followed by Suicide (Dyadic Death) in Yorkshire and Humberside

In England and Wales 5–10 per cent of homicides are followed by the suicide of the assailant. Fifty-two episodes of homicide-suicide occurring in Yorkshire and Humberside have been studied. Forty-nine of the assailants were male with a mean age of 49 years. There were 65 victims, who were usually the spouse and/or children of the killer. Shooting was the most frequent method of killing and subsequent suicide. The results are compared with other homicide statistics and previously published studies of homicide-suicide.
Direct profiling and identification of peptide expression differences in the pancreas of control and ob/ob mice by imaging mass spectrometry

Imaging mass spectrometry (IMS) technology utilizes MALDI MS to map molecules of interest in thin tissue sections. In this study, we have evaluated the potential of MALDI IMS to study peptide expression patterns in the mouse pancreas under normal and pathological conditions, and to in situ identify peptides of interest using MS/MS. Different regions of the pancreas of both control and ob/ob mice were imaged, resulting in peptide‐specific profiles. The distribution of ions of m/z 3120 and 3439 displayed a striking resemblance with Langerhans islet's histology and, following MS/MS fragmentation and database searching were identified as C‐peptide of insulin and glicentin‐related polypeptide, respectively. In addition, a significant increase of the 3120 peak intensity in the obese mice was observed. This study underscores the potential of MALDI IMS to study the contribution of peptides to pancreas pathology.
Particle filtering based pitch sequence correction for monaural speech segregation

This article proposes a novel speech and sound segregation framework incorporating a technique for correcting a series of pitch periods based on particle filtering. The conventional pitch track correction method finds the peak locations of the autocorrelation functions to estimate the pitch period, and only the longest reliable pitch streak is used to correct unreliable pitch tracks. Especially in noisy environments, it is hard to find long and reliable pitch streaks, resulting in the degradation of the speech segregation performance. The proposed algorithm based on particle filtering considers all the reliable pitch streaks rather than the longest one and smoothly connects the scattered pitch streaks. To apply the particle filtering algorithm to pitch track correction, the importance weight computation to account for the degree of matchness of the found pitch to the individual spectro‐temporal components is also proposed. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated by the results of speech segregation experiments for the mixtures of speech and various noise sources in various mixing signal‐to‐noise ratios (SNRs). The evaluation measures were SNR, energy loss ratio, and noise residue ratio of the segregated speech, and all these measures showed that the proposed segregation method achieved superior performance compared to the conventional approach. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 23, 64–70, 2013.
A high performance floating point coprocessor

A 34000-transistor single-chip floating-point coprocessor fabricated in 3-/spl mu/m double metal NMOS technology is described. The fraction data path, including a shifter and 60-bit carry propagate ALU, is cycled in 100 ns for all operations requiring less than 19 bits of consecutive carry. A versatile carry length detection scheme, which requires minimal additional logic, is used to extend the microcycle for the small percentage of operations in which a long carry exists. Three-bit-per-cycle multiplication and one-and-one-half-bit-per-cycle division algorithms were used to achieve excellent overall performance.
On the estimation of atmospheric turbulence layers for AO systems

In current and next generation of ground telescopes, Adaptive Optics (AO) are employed to overcome the detrimental effects induced by the presence of atmospheric turbulence, that strongly affects the quality of data transmission and limits the actual resolution of the overall system. The analysis as well as the prediction of the turbulent phase affecting the light wavefront is therefore of paramount importance to guarantee the effective performance of the AO solution. In this work, a layered model of turbulence is proposed, based on the definition of a Markov-Random-Field whose parameters are determined according to the turbulence statistics. The problem of turbulence estimation is formalized within the stochastic framework and conditions for the identifiability of the turbulence structure (numbers of layers, energies and velocities) are stated. Finally, an algorithm to allow the layer detection and characterization from measurements is designed. Numerical simulations are used to assess the proposed procedure and validate the results, confirming the validity of the approach and the accuracy of the detection.
It's Not All About the Music: User Preference for Musicians on Facebook

To better understand hedonic utility of social media users, we conducted a study among university students using musicians’ Facebook pages for digital content consumption. Our study measures the effects of peer influence and media richness as subjects evaluated different musician’s pages with different levels of both effects. The results show support for our key hypothesis that social media users are influenced by peer influence in making choices to “like” something. More importantly, the key aspects of the product (in our case, music) were less of a predictor of consumer choice.
Defense at Scale : Building a Central Nervous System for the SOC

Data driven security is advocated as a way to augment traditional workflows in security operations. The goal of this data driven approach is to design a system that automatically labels escalation events as well as helping perform reproducible forensic tasks. Additionally the problem of tracking the evolving threat surface is attacked by leveraging a highly expressive composition of distributed systems called a Lambda Architecture.
Popping Phenomena in Temperature‐Controlled Radiofrequency Ablation: When and Why Do They Occur?

During temperature‐controlled radiofrequency (RF) ablation a popping sound sometimes occurs. This popping phenomenon is known to be associated with unwanted effects like blood boiling, endocardial rupture, catheter dislocation, and impedance rise. The present in vitro study determined the influence of cooling, electrode contact, and tip temperature on the occurrence of popping phenomena. Pieces of porcine ventricle were immersed in a bath of saline solution at 37°C, Forty‐two RF ablations were performed with different electrode‐tissue contact forces (i.e., 0.0–0.44N) in a temperature‐controlled mode (70°C setpoint, 30 s, 50 W maximum power output, 4‐mm tip, thermocouple). Half of the 42 ablations were performed with fluid flow (0,1 m/s, group I), the other half without flow (group II). In group I, mean tip temperature and power were 55.6 ± 8.5°C and 36.2 ± 13.8 W, resulting in a lesion volume of 121 ± 57 mm. In group II, the respective values were 67.3 ± 1.5°C and 9.9 ± 5.2 W resulting in a volume of 42 ± 18 mm3. The differences between groups were statistically significant. Overall, ten popping phenomenas occurred in group I and none in group II. Pops occurred significantly more often when the contact force was <0.1 N (8/10) and the tip temperature was <60°C (8/10). Two endocardial ruptures occurred, both were associated with a popping phenomenon. Using temperature control, the probability of pops is significantly higher when the ablation electrode and the endocardial tissue surface are exposed to fluid flow and the electrode‐tissue contact is poor. Under these conditions the tissue temperature can be much higher than the temperature measured at the tip electrode and can potentially reach 100°C causing in‐tramyocardial steam formation and a popping phenomenon.
PISA test format assessment and the local independence assumption

Large-scale assessments of reading comprehension, notably OECD’s Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA) and IEA’s Progress in Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), generally use paper-and-pencil tests in which a reading passage, with different questions based on it, is presented to the student. The PISA mathematics and science literacy tests also consist of a hierarchically embedded structure stimulus. In these surveys, cognitive data are scaled according to an item response theory (IRT) model. One of the cornerstones of standard IRT models is the assumption of local item independence (LII). Because multiple items are connected together to a common passage, items within a unit are not likely to be conditionally independent, which means that the independence assumption might be violated. In the first part of this study, Yen’s Q 3 statistic was used to evaluate the importance of the local item dependency (LID) effect with respect to PISA 2000 and PISA 2003 data. The consequences of the violation of the LII assumption on the student performance distribution were then explored. Moderate but clear global context dependencies were detected in a large number of the PISA reading and mathematics units. Some reading and mathematics units showed additional significant pairwise local dependencies. Further, LID impacted on the variability of the student proficiencies, and the bias in the variability estimate strongly correlated with average country performance. Therefore, the consequence of LII violation in PISA is that the relative variability of low-performing countries is overestimated while the relative variability of high-performing countries is underestimated.
System identification of a three-phase submerged-arc ferrosilicon furnace

A 36 MW submerged-arc ferrosilicon (FeSi) furnace is modeled using the technique of system identification. The main purpose of the modeling is for the simulation and evaluation of different control schemes. In particular, the part of the system associated with the control of the three-phase electrode currents, which is done by positioning of the electrodes, is examined. Data were collected at Icelandic Alloys Ltd., using experiments conducted mostly in open loop. The positioning of electrodes responding to control signals was estimated and modeled using measurements in closed loop. Data collection for the disturbance identification was done by keeping the three electrodes fixed and recording the currents. A first-order autoregressive (AR) model was used to model the disturbance environment. Different ARX MIMO models were tried using several model orders, combinations of inputs, and input delays. The results obtained indicate that the simple linear models developed include all the critical factors needed in a simulation of different electrode position based control schemes for the electrode current control of the furnace.
A Novel Receiver Design for PAM-DMT in Optical Wireless Communication Systems

Pulse-amplitude-modulated discrete multitone (PAM-DMT) modulation is an optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing scheme, which is compatible with intensity modulation and direct detection channel. In the conventional receiver for PAM-DMT, only the imaginary parts of subcarriers are detected, while the real parts are considered as clipping noise and simply discarded, causing insufficient usage of the received power. This letter proposes a new receiver characterizing temporal and spectral diversity combining for PAM-DMT, which extracts the effective information in clipping noise to recover the data. The proposed receiver achieves a better performance than the conventional receiver with a gain of at least 2.3 dB in Eb/N0 at the system bit error rate of 10-5 in additive white Gaussian noise channel by simulation when using 4-PAM modulation.
Critical Amino Acid Residues in Transmembrane Span 7 of the Serotonin Transporter Identified by Random Mutagenesis*

Transmembrane span 7 of the rat brain serotonin transporter was subjected to random mutagenesis. Of the 27 amino acid residues mutated, six were identified as functionally important by their sensitivity to nonconservative mutations. These residues were Asn-368 and Tyr-385, where substitutions that retained hydrogen-bonding ability were preferred; Gly-376 and Gly-384, where only glycine was accepted; Phe-380, where a phenyl ring was preferred; and Met-386, where hydrophobic substitutions were preferred. Mutations that did not preserve these structural characteristics were highly detrimental to serotonin transport activity. These six residues form a stripe that runs at an angle down the side of the putative α-helix, lending support to this structural prediction. Mutations at some of these positions also specifically impaired transport activity under low Na+ conditions. Other mutations at nearby positions in transmembrane span 7 also impaired activity in low Na+, although the activity of the mutants in high Na+ was similar to wild type. These results suggest that at least some of the six critical residues play a role in Na+ binding or perhaps in the coupling of Na+ binding to later steps in the transport cycle. These residues may be important in other aspects of the transporter’s function as well.
Evaluation of Risk Prediction Criteria for Episodes of Febrile Neutropenia in Children With Cancer

Purpose To evaluate the feasibility of risk stratification of children with cancer and febrile neutropenia using a simple set of criteria from data available to the clinician at the time of the patient's presentation. Patients and Methods This study is a retrospective cohort study of all children with cancer admitted to a single institution with fever and neutropenia (defined as an absolute neutrophil count <500 cells/mm 3 ) in a 1-year period. Patients were defined a priori as low risk if they were outpatients at the time of presentation with febrile neutropenia, had an anticipated duration of neutropenia less than 7 days, and had no significant comorbidity. All others were considered high risk. Data was analyzed by first admission for each patient and secondarily for all admissions for febrile neutropenia. Results There were 188 admissions in 104 patients for febrile neutropenia during the study period. Of these 47% were high risk and 53% were low risk. The duration of fever was not significantly different in the two groups. However, the duration of neutropenia and the length of hospital stay were significantly longer in the high-risk group. The frequency of bacteremia, other documented infection, and serious medical complications was significantly different in the two groups. Overall, the rate of any adverse event was 4% in the low-risk group versus 41% in the high-risk group. Conclusions Simple criteria available to the clinician at the time of evaluation of the child with cancer who has fever and neutropenia allow the selection of a population at low risk for bacteremia or serious medical complication. A prospective study is planned using these risk criteria, evaluating outpatient oral antibiotic therapy in low-risk children with cancer.
Tameness of The Pseudovariety Ls1

The notion of κ-tameness of a pseudovariety was introduced by Almeida and Steinberg and is a strong property which implies decidability of pseudovarieties. In this paper we prove that the pseudovariety LSl, of local semilattices, is κ-tame.
Comparison of hemorrhage control agents applied to lethal extremity arterial hemorrhages in swine.

BACKGROUND QuikClot powder (QC), chitosan dressing (CD), and fibrin sealant dressing (FSD) are new hemostatic products touted to be more effective in controlling severe extremity bleeding than the current standard gauze dressing. All have been utilized in the global war on terrorism. Our objective was to evaluate the hemostatic efficacy of these three products in a model of severe extremity arterial hemorrhage that could not be stopped by standard gauze treatment. METHODS A model of severe extremity arterial hemorrhage was developed in swine that was 100% fatal with standard gauze application and manual compression. The Army Field Bandage (AFB) was the standard gauze control. Anesthetized animals (n = 60, 15/group, 37.7 +/- 2.5 kg) were splenectomized and instrumented. A reproducible femoral artery injury was created using a 6 mm aortic punch, and free bleeding was allowed for 45 seconds. Each hemostatic agent was applied twice with three-minute compressions. All products were applied on actively bleeding wounds through a pool of blood. Fluid resuscitation was started with the first compression and titrated to a mean pressure of 65 mm Hg. Animals were observed for 180 minutes or until death. Endpoints were percent survival, survival time, blood loss, resuscitation volume, wound temperatures and tissue histology. Data are expressed as mean +/- SD and analyzed by Fisher's exact, logrank, and nonparametric ANOVA tests. RESULTS Baseline physiologic parameters were similar among groups. AFB did not produce hemostasis. QC also showed no hemostatic benefit, and QC treatment markedly increased maximum wound temperatures to an average of 70.8 +/- 4.2 degrees C (p < 0.001). CD stopped bleeding temporarily in only one animal. There were no survivors in the AFB, QC, or CD groups. CD numerically prolonged survival time (58.9 +/- 21.1 minute) compared with the control (38.4 +/- 24.7 minutes, p = 0.045) but the difference was not significant. FSD reduced bleeding (p < 0.05) and prevented exsanguination in 10/15 (2/3) animals, and resulted in a significantly longer average survival time (p < 0.0001). CONCLUSION FSD was superior to other currently utilized hemostatic products in controlling lethal arterial hemorrhage in this model of a fatal extremity wound. CD showed some hemostatic benefit. The exothermic reaction of QC was significant and resulted in gross and histologic tissue changes of unknown clinical significance. Controlled human studies with the promising products are required.
Contraindications for external cephalic version in breech position at term: a systematic review

Objective. External cephalic version (ECV) is a safe and effective intervention that can prevent breech delivery, thus reducing the need for cesarean delivery. It is recommended in national guidelines. These guidelines also mention contraindications for ECV, and thereby restrict the application of ECV. We assessed whether the formulation of these contraindications in guidelines are based on empiric data. Design. Systematic review. Population. Pregnant women with a singleton breech presentation from 34 weeks. Methods. We searched the National Guideline Clearinghouse, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, MEDLINE (1953–2009), EMBASE (1980–2009), TRIP database (until 2011), NHS (National Health Services, until 2011), Diseases database (until 2011) and NICE guidelines (until 2011) for existing guidelines on ECV and studied the reproducibility of the contraindications stated in the guidelines. Furthermore, we systematically reviewed the literature for contraindications and evidence on these contraindications. Main outcome measures. Contraindications of ECV. Results. We found five guidelines mentioning 18 contraindications, varying from five to 13 per guideline. The contraindications were not reproducible between the guidelines with oligohydramnios as the only contraindication mentioned in all guidelines. The literature search yielded 60 studies reporting on 39 different contraindications, of which we could only assess evidence of six of them. Conclusion. The present study shows that there is no general consensus on the eligibility of patients for ECV. Therefore we propose to limit contraindications for ECV to clear empirical evidence or to those with a clear pathophysiological relevance.
Calibration by an Enhanced Full Least Squares Method

This paper deals with the problem of the regression of measured quantities when measurement uncertainty affects both the regressed quantity and the independent variables. A new criterion is given, based on an enhanced full least-squares (FLS) method. The approach shares with the FLS similar metrological foundations, but it differs in that the propagation of the measurement uncertainty is performed numerically and not, as in a conventional FLS, on the basis of the classical law for the propagation of uncertainty based on a first order Taylor expansion. An example of application of the method is given together with a comparison with the regression obtained by the conventional FLS method