Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neuropeptide S: A novel modulator of stress and arousal

Neuropeptide S (NPS) is a recently identified bioactive peptide that modulates stress and arousal. NPS is expressed in a few discrete nuclei in the brainstem, such as the pericoerulear (locus coeruleus (LC)) area and the parabrachial nucleus. NPS activates its cognate G protein-coupled receptor at low nanomolar agonist concentrations and induces elevation of intracellular Ca2+ and cAMP, therefore acting as an excitatory transmitter. The NPS receptor is widely expressed in the brain, including regions known to regulate stress responses such as hypothalamus, thalamus, amygdala and limbic cortex. We have recently reported that the NPS system can modulate stress responses and induce wakefulness based on a battery of behavioral tests. Activation of NPS receptors induces arousal and reduces all sleep stages. At the same time, NPS produces anxiolytic-like effects in rodents. These studies indicate that the NPS system has a unique pharmacological profile to promote both anxiolytic and arousal effects. NPS might interact with other hypothalamic neuropeptide systems that are known to be involved in stress and appetite control and thus might be a valuable target for development of a new class of drugs to treat anxiety disorders.
An affine transform for speaker recognition enhancement under mismatched coding conditions

Text-independent speaker recognition performance suffers significantly under mismatched coding conditions between training and testing speech data. In this paper, a baseline HMM-based speaker recognition system is tested under various mismatched conditions with a large number of different HMM topologies. Training and testing the models using only the voiced segments of the samples is then considered. A technique based on a diagonal affine transform in the cepstrum domain is proposed, which maps the mismatched test cepstrum data onto the baseline cepstrum domain. Results for 2 different state-of-the-art codecs and a large number of different model topologies show encouraging improvement in performance compared to the mismatched cases
A device for combined thermal and pulsed electric field treatment of food

The application of pulsed electric fields to biological tissue enables both ohmic heating of the material and a permeabilisation of the biological cells at ambient temperature due to electroporation. To what extend each of both mechanisms is effective can be controlled via the applied electric field strength and duration of treatment. A device for batch treatment of biological material with pulsed electric fields for studying both effects has been set up and tested successfully. It comprises a pulse circuit based on a RLC circuit and a 30-stage Marx generator with IGBT switches. The generator has been designed with only one closing switch per stage, capable of active voltage clamping. The charging voltage per stage and pulse current are 1 kV and 500 A, respectively. Soft-switching conditions of the IGBTs are ensured by the inductance of the circuit. The operation of the device has been demonstrated with a combined treatment of an apple by electroporation and ohmic heating.
Stress and Stressors among Medical Undergraduate Students: A Cross-sectional Study in a Private Medical College in Tamil Nadu

Background: Medical education is perceived as being stressful, and a high level of stress may have a negative effect on cognitive functioning and learning of students in a medical school. Objectives: To (a) assess the perceived stress among medical undergraduate students, (b) identify the sources of stress, and (c) find an association of perceived stress with sociodemographic characteristics and various stressors. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among medical undergraduate students in a private medical college in Tamil Nadu. A total of 750 medical students from 1st year to final year were invited to participate in the study. Self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data regarding sociodemographic profile, perceived stress using perceived stress scale-14 and academic, psychosocial and environmental stressors. Descriptive statistics was used to describe the sociodemographic characteristics, sources of stress and perceived stress. Logistic regression analyses were carried out to assess determinants of stress. Results: The overall response rate was 93.33% (700 out of 750 students). The mean perceived stress score was 25.64 ± 5.44. Higher age-group, year of studying bachelor of medicine and bachelor of surgery, vastness of academic curriculum, fear of poor performance in examination, lack of recreation, loneliness, family problem, and accommodation away from home were important determinants of perceived stress. Conclusions: The perceived stress was higher among higher age group and final year medical students. Academic, psychosocial, and environmental stressors are associated with perceived stress. Reframing the academic curriculum and examination patterns, incorporating recreational and sports activities, and establishment of counseling cells in the institution is needed.
Cerebral hypoxic damage in fetus and newborn. Basic patterns and their clinical significance.

TWO BASIC forms of hypoxic brain damage make their appearance in the fetus and newborn. The lesions, located in the cerebrum, distributed through the cortical and deep structures, are not of random occurrence. The cerebral damage evolves in precise patterns; the location of lesions is governed by the gestational age of the fetus or neonate at the time of the hypoxic event. This temporal factor is of significance not only in determining the anatomic pattern of the cerebral damage, but correspondingly, has a direct bearing on the ultimate form of the neurologic defect in infants who survive. Accordingly, the findings here offer an organic basis for correlating the occurrence of gestational complications, particularly prematurity, with the presence clinically of cerebral palsy, mental retardation, and other nervous system defects in infants who survive. Traditionally the occurrence of hypoxic damage in the neonatal brain has been minimized.
Osteoporosis: the evolution of a diagnosis

The global trend towards increased longevity has resulted in ageing populations and a rise in diseases or conditions that primarily affect older persons. One such condition is osteoporosis (fragile or porous bones), which causes an increased fracture risk. Vertebral and hip fractures lead to increased morbidity and mortality and result in enormous healthcare costs. Here, we review the evolution of the diagnosis of osteoporosis. In an attempt to separate patients with normal bones from those with osteoporosis and to define the osteoporosis diagnosis, multiple factors and characteristics have been considered. These include pathology and histology of the disease, the endocrine regulation of bone metabolism, bone mineral density (BMD), fracture type or trauma severity, risk models for fracture prediction, and thresholds for pharmacological intervention. The femoral neck BMD −2.5 SDs cut‐off for the diagnosis of osteoporosis is arbitrarily chosen, and there is no evidence to support the notion that fracture location (except vertebral fractures) or severity is useful to discriminate osteoporotic from normal bones. Fracture risk models (including factors unrelated to bone) dissociate bone strength from the diagnosis, and treatment thresholds are often based on health‐economic considerations rather than bone properties. Vertebral fractures are a primary feature of osteoporosis, characterized by decreased bone mass, strength and quality, and a high risk of another such fracture that can be considerably reduced by treatment. We believe that the 2001 definition of osteoporosis by the National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Panel on Osteoporosis is still valid and useful: ‘Osteoporosis is defined as a skeletal disorder characterized by compromised bone strength predisposing a person to an increased risk of fracture’.
Emergency department utilization by adolescents in the United States.

BACKGROUND Adolescents in the United States have been shown to underutilize primary care services and therefore may rely heavily on emergency service. Although several small studies have explored local emergency services for youth, there are no published reports of adolescent utilization of emergency services on a national scale. Furthermore, emergency services data have not been aggregated according to the age subgroups used by the current guidelines for adolescent care. OBJECTIVE To explore the utilization of emergency departments in the United States by early (11 to 14 years), middle (15 to 17 years), and late (18 to 21 years) adolescent subgroups. DESIGN Secondary analysis of the emergency department component of the 1994 National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey. SETTING Nationally representative sample of 418 emergency departments in the United States. PATIENTS Approximately 26,547 visits by patients of all ages, representing 93.4 million total visits in 1994 and 14.8 million adolescent visits. OUTCOME MEASURES Number of visits, health insurance, reasons for visits, urgency of visits, resulting diagnoses, and hospitalization rates. RESULTS Adolescents accounted for 15.4% of the population and 15.8% of emergency department visits in 1994. Late adolescents were overrepresented in emergency department visits relative to their population proportion (6.8% of visits, 5.3% of population), whereas early adolescents were underrepresented (4.6% of visits, 5.9% of population). Lack of health insurance was more common among 11- to 21-year-olds (26.2%) than either children (13.6%) or adults (22.7%). By ages 18 to 21 years, 40.5% of male visits and 27.6% of female visits were uninsured. Injury-related visits were more common among adolescents (28.6%) than either children (23.1%) or adults (18.2%). Injury was the leading reason for visits among all adolescent age-sex subgroups (36.6% to 42.0% of male visits and 14.1% to 27.2% of female visits) except females aged 18 to 21 years for whom digestive reasons ranked first (18.8%). Injury was the leading diagnosis for all adolescent age-sex subgroups, with peaks at early adolescence of 61.6% for males and 45.8% for females. Across all adolescent age-sex subgroups, 3.1% to 5.3% of visits resulted in hospitalization, and 41.0% to 52.5% of visits were urgent. These rates did not differ from those of children but were lower than those of adults. CONCLUSIONS Utilization of emergency departments increases and health insurance decreases during adolescence, suggesting that adolescents with inadequate health insurance may rely heavily on emergency departments for their health care needs. Most adolescent visits to emergency departments are not urgent and might be better treated through nonemergency, primary care sites.
Object-oriented design from user scenarios

The tutorial leverages HCI professionals’ expertise in generating and analyzing user tasks to teach the fundamentals of object-oriented design. Students begin working on design projects immediately, creating object models of user scenarios, and elaborating these models throughout the day to develop a complete design. The students learn methods of responsibility-driven design, as well as how to generalize from individual scenario models to develop class abstractions.
Wireless two way relaying with side information

A three phase two way relaying communications problem is studied in this paper, which is assisted by side information. A three node scenario is considered, where two nodes are communicating with each other via a relay at the middle. In the first two time slots, the two communication nodes broadcast their data packets to each other and the relay respectively. Without performing the integrity check, a bit-wise-xor operation is used to combines two received packets into one at the relay. In order to prevent the error propagation due to the erroneous packet that the relay receives, side information is broadcasted by the relay at the third time slot, as well as the xor encoded packet. Numerical analysis shows that the error propagation problem can be significantly suppressed by using the side information at the two communication nodes.
A Comment on "An Analytical Model for Designing Memory Hierarchies"

In our paper, "An analytical model for designing memory hierarchies" (see ibid., vol. 45, no. 10, p. 180-1, 194 (1996)), we made the following statement: "Failing to apply a specific model of workload locality makes it impossible to provide an easily used, closed-form solution for the optimal cache configuration, and so the results from these papers have contained dependencies on the cache configuration-the number of levels, or the sizes and hit rates of the levels. " Our description did not accurately reflect the contents of the paper by J.E. MacDonald and K.L. Sigworth (1975), and we regret any false impressions caused by the inaccuracy.
Midbrain Ataxia: Possible Role of the Pedunculopontine Nucleus in Human Locomotion

Midbrain lesions have rarely been implicated as a responsible location in patients presenting with gait instability. In animals, stimulation of the pontomesencephalic area results in rapid walking followed by running. Ablative lesions in this area cause a reduction of locomotor activity [1]. However, the center in humans is probably more dependent upon cortical and subcortical input to activate the system. We report a case of a 66-year-old male who had a subacute infarction in the left posterior tegmentum presenting primarily with gait instability, further supporting the evidence that brainstem locomotor regions also exist in humans.
USING COLORED PETRI NETS TO MODEL AND SIMULATE CONTROL ARCHITECTURES OF MOBILE ROBOTS

The research on autonomous systems has been influe ncing the improvement of the navigation of vehicles and mobile robots using artificial intelligence techniq ues. Several economical segments can get advantage from the application of that scientific effort. On one hand, those systems demand control architectures which m ay have a high level of complexity when being tested by physical i mp ementations. On the other hand, recent bibliogra phy presents the efficacy of Petri nets on modeling of real systems with concurrent activities and for the planning and control of mobile robots ́ tasks. The objective of this paper is to pr esent the use of colored Petri net (CPN) formalism to model and simulate a control system for a mobile robot. A fuz zy logic behavior-based navigational control archit ecture CPN model is presented. The CPNs fitted well to the pur pose of this work due to three main aspects: the ca pability of quantitative analysis of input data to the modeled robotic system, the possibility of using computatio nal programming resources and the efficient analysis of the simulat ions from specific output files. Finally, a verifie d mathematical model of the robotic control system based on Petri nets f ormalism was obtained without the necessity of defi ning a new Petri
Hardware Validation for Control of Three-Phase Grid-Connected Microgrids Using Artificial Neural Networks

This paper presents a strategy for controlling inverter-interfaced DERs within a microgrid using an artificial neural network. The neural network implements a dynamic programming algorithm and is trained with a new Levenberg-Marquardt backpropagation algorithm. Hardware experiments were conducted to evaluate the performance of the neural network vector control method. They showed that the neural network control technique performs well for DER converter control if the controller output voltage is below the converter’s PWM saturation limit. If the controller’s output voltage exceeds the PWM saturation limit, the neural network controller automatically turns into a state by maintaining a constant dc-link voltage as its first priority, while meeting the reactive power control demand as soon as possible. Under variable, unbalanced, and distorted system conditions, the neural network controller is stable and reliable.
Modeling Reaction Time for Abstract and Concrete Concepts using a Recurrent Network

Several recent studies have emulated aspects of human language processing using attractor networks. One study attempted to emulate human behavior in the lexical decision task: humans recognize concrete words faster than abstract words. The network, though, produced the opposite behavior. We revisit that result, exploring several other stopping criteria as well as an entirely different notion of concept abstractness. Even with these modifications the network consistently settles faster on abstract input than on concrete input, leading us to question fundamentally the reasons behind the human response times. 1 Modeling human behavior with a recurrent network Several recent studies have had success modeling certain aspects of human behavior in language processing with attractor networks. An attractor network is a recurrent neural network designed to settle to a stable output over time. Attractor networks may be more accurate simulations of human neural processes than previous models. One attractor network effectively modeled semantic and associative priming effects observed in humans [1]. Another exhibited many symptoms of dyslexia when damaged [2]. In order to further understand the relationship of attractor networks to human language processing, we revisited a study on the effect of abstractness on reaction time in the lexical decision task [3]. The lexical decision task is to decide whether a string of characters is a word or not. Several studies have indicated humans identify concrete words more quickly than abstract words [4, 5, 6, 7]. This effect is modulated by frequency: low frequency words are more strongly affected than are high frequency words [4, 6]. Many other variables might also affect lexical decision speed as performed by an attractor network: frequency in training, density in the semantic space, and the number of bits turned on in the semantic vectors [3]. Our contribution is an analysis of different settling criteria for the attractor network and of a different notion of the representational difference between abstract and concrete pseudo-semantic vectors.
Mast‐cell—leukocyte cytokine cascades in allergic inflammation

Despite decades of intensive study, the generation of a wide variety of imaginative hypotheses, and the revelation of many interesting and potentially important findings, the role of the mast cell in allergic inflammation is still not fully understood. This statement is especially true in regard to those clinically significant examples of allergic inflammation that occur in man, such as allergic asthma and atopic dermatitis. That the mast cell may have critically important roles in such disorders is. of course, not in question. The issue is not what mast cells mighr do in these responses but what they actually do, how they do it. and, beyond that, the relative importance of the mast cell's role(s) in these reactions compared to those of other cell types that may express functions that are similar to, or overlap, those of the mast cell. The purpose of this brief review is not to consider all of the many potential roles of the mast cell and its diverse mediators in various components of allergic inflammatory responses. Instead, using asthma as the main example, the discussion will focus primarily on the possibility that mast-cell cytokine production represents an important (and therapeutically accessible) link between mast-cell activation and many of the clinically significant features and consequences of allergic inflammation. Inflammation, mast cells, and cytokines in the pathogenesis of allergic asthma
DISCRETE APPROXIMATION AND CONTROL OF HIGH-ORDER NONLINEAR CONTINUOUS SYSTEMS

Abstract Approximation-based approaches to hybrid control systems synthesis have been mostly limited to problems with low-order linear continuous dynamics. In this contribution, results from the theory of monotone dynamical systems are used to efficiently compute discrete approximations for a class of nonlinear models. Furthermore, a situation is investigated where the high-dimensional plant state converges to a low-dimensional manifold; in the proposed approach the computational effort is governed by the dimension of the low-order manifold without neglecting the high-order dynamics. Results are applied to synthesize a discrete event controller for the automatic start-up of a nonlinear distillation column model of 42nd order.
Stem cell transplantation for the treatment of immunodeficiency in children: current status and hopes for the future

ABSTRACT Primary immunodeficiencies (PID) are rare inherited disorders affecting immune function and can be life-threatening if not treated. Haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) offers a curative approach for many of these disorders and gene therapy is increasingly used as an alternative therapeutic strategy for patients lacking a suitable donor. Early diagnosis, improved supportive care and advances in gene and cell therapies have resulted in increased survival rates and improved quality of life. This review describes current strategies employed to improve outcomes in PID, focusing on new developments in HSCT, gene and cell therapy. We also address the challenges associated with newborn screening (NBS) programmes and novel mutations identified through improved diagnostic technology.
Exome sequencing of a pedigree with tourette syndrome or chronic tic disorder

Ten members of a 3‐generation pedigree with 7 showing Tourette syndrome/chronic tic phenotype (TS‐CTD) were evaluated with whole exome sequencing. We identified 3 novel, nonsynonymous single nucleotide variants in the MRPL3, DNAJC13, and OFCC1 genes that segregated with chronic tic phenotype. These variants were not present in 100 control subjects or in dbSNP/1000 Genomes databases. A novel variant in the 5′ untranslated region of the OFCC1 gene was found in 2 TS‐CTD patients from a different pedigree. Further studies will clarify the importance of variants in MRPL3, DNAJC13, and OFCC1 genes in TS. Ann Neurol 2011;69:901–904
Housing Health and Safety Decision Support System with Augmented Reality

Integration of augmented reality and decision support systems has a very promising future in scientific research. The authors of this paper participated in two projects: Lifelong Learning Programme project “Learning Augmented Reality Global Environment” (LARGE) and project “Development of national Housing Health and Safety certification model” (DNHHSCM). One of LARGE’s and DNHHSCM’s goals (on the Lithuanian side) was to integrate of augmented reality and decision support systems (to develop a HoUsing health and Safety decision Support system with Augmented Reality (HUSSAR)). HUSSAR consists of a Decision Support Subsystem and an Augmented Reality Subsystem and can create value in the following important ways: search for dwelling alternatives, find out alternatives and make an initial negotiation table, provide augmented reality services, complete a multiple criteria analysis of alternatives, make negotiations based on real calculations, determine the most rational dwelling purchase variant, statistical analysis, groupware decision making and complete an analysis of the loan alternatives offered by certain banks.