Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
[Study of the optic nerve head-fovea angle with retinophotography in healthy patients].

PURPOSE The measurement of ocular torsion remains complicated and delicate when using subjective methods of measurement. Objective measures are now accessible in daily practice. This study determined the standards for ocular torsion in healthy patients with fundus photographs. MATERIALS AND METHODS Prospective study on 150 patients divided into three different age groups: children (under 15 years); young adults (15-50 years); and adults (over 50 years). All patients included had a normal oculomotor examination and were close to emmetropia. The fundus photographs were taken using a standardized system. The results were analyzed with a graphic computer program and took into consideration reproducible anatomical models; a statistical study determined the thresholds of statistical significance. RESULTS The optic nerve head-fovea angle followed a Gaussian distribution (mean, 6.3; standard deviation, 3.4). The measure was reproducible in a single patient through different successive examinations. There was no variation of this angle between the patients of different ages. Furthermore, in 87% of the patients, the fovea had a projection between the center and the lower edge of the optic nerve head, indicating that these anatomical models are reliable in a clinical evaluation of torsion. DISCUSSION This study confirms the accuracy of the objective measurements of ocular torsion and validates the anatomical models proposed by the rare studies already published. CONCLUSIONS The era of systematic ophthalmic photography is opening new perspectives in diagnosis now that the range in healthy patients has been determined, necessary before the disease could be analyzed. This validation of reliable and simple anatomical models should make this method easy to use in clinical and daily practice.
Using a Geolocation Social Networking Application to Calculate the Population Density of Sex-Seeking Gay Men for Research and Prevention Services

Background In the United States, human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) continues to have a heavy impact on men who have sex with men (MSM). Among MSM, black men under the age of 30 are at the most risk for being diagnosed with HIV. The US National HIV/AIDS strategy recommends intensifying efforts in communities that are most heavily impacted; to do so requires new methods for identifying and targeting prevention resources to young MSM, especially young MSM of color. Objective We piloted a methodology for using the geolocation features of social and sexual networking applications as a novel approach to calculating the local population density of sex-seeking MSM and to use self-reported age and race from profile postings to highlight areas with a high density of minority and young minority MSM in Atlanta, Georgia. Methods We collected data from a geographically systematic sample of points in Atlanta. We used a sexual network mobile phone app and collected application profile data, including age, race, and distance from each point, for either the 50 closest users or for all users within a 2-mile radius of sampled points. From these data, we developed estimates of the spatial density of application users in the entire city, stratified by race. We then compared the ratios and differences between the spatial densities of black and white users and developed an indicator of areas with the highest density of users of each race. Results We collected data from 2666 profiles at 79 sampled points covering 883 square miles; overlapping circles of data included the entire 132.4 square miles in Atlanta. Of the 2666 men whose profiles were observed, 1563 (58.63%) were white, 810 (30.38%) were black, 146 (5.48%) were another race, and 147 (5.51%) did not report a race in their profile. The mean age was 31.5 years, with 591 (22.17%) between the ages of 18-25, and 496 (18.60%) between the ages of 26-30. The mean spatial density of observed profiles was 33 per square mile, but the distribution of profiles observed across the 79 sampled points was highly skewed (median 17, range 1-208). Ratio, difference, and distribution outlier measures all provided similar information, highlighting areas with higher densities of minority and young minority MSM. Conclusions Using a limited number of sampled points, we developed a geospatial density map of MSM using a social-networking sex-seeking app. This approach provides a simple method to describe the density of specific MSM subpopulations (users of a particular app) for future HIV behavioral surveillance and allow targeting of prevention resources such as HIV testing to populations and areas of highest need.
Association between Antimicrobial Consumption and Resistance in Escherichia coli

ABSTRACT During a 9-year study period from 1997 through 2005, the association between antimicrobial resistance rates in Escherichia coli and outpatient antimicrobial consumption was investigated in 20 hospital districts in Finland. A total of 754,293 E. coli isolates, mainly from urine samples, were tested for antimicrobial resistance in 26 clinical microbiology laboratories. The following antimicrobials were studied: ampicillin, amoxicillin-clavulanate, cephalosporins, fluoroquinolones, trimethoprim, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, pivmecillinam, and nitrofurantoin. We applied a protocol used in earlier studies in which the level of antimicrobial consumption over 1 year was compared with the level of resistance in the next year. Statistically significant associations were found for nitrofurantoin use versus nitrofurantoin resistance (P < 0.0001), cephalosporin use versus nitrofurantoin resistance (P = 0.0293), amoxicillin use versus fluoroquinolone resistance (P = 0.0031), and fluoroquinolone use versus ampicillin resistance (P = 0.0046). Interestingly, we found only a few associations between resistance and antimicrobial consumption. The majority of the associations studied were not significant, including the association between fluoroquinolone use and fluoroquinolone resistance.
Pallidal neuronal activity: Implications for models of dystonia

Dystonia is a neurological syndrome involving sustained contractions of opposing muscles leading to abnormal movements and postures. Recent studies report abnormally low pallidal neuronal activity in patients with generalized dystonia, suggesting hyperkinetic disorders result from underactive basal ganglia output. We examined this hypothesis in 11 patients with segmental and generalized dystonia undergoing microelectrode exploration of the internal globus pallidus (GPi) before pallidotomy or deep brain stimulation (DBS) implantation. The mean firing rates and firing patterns were compared with those in six patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). In seven patients who underwent surgery under local anesthesia, the mean GPi firing rate was 77Hz, similar to the 74Hz observed in the PD patients. However, in three dystonic patients under propofol anesthesia, GPi mean firing rate was much reduced (31Hz), and the firing pattern was distinguished by long pauses in activity, as reported by others. Low‐dose propofol in one other dystonia patient also seemed to suppress GPi firing. These results indicate that an abnormally low basal ganglia output is not the sine qua non of dystonia. The widely accepted pathophysiological models of dystonia that propose global decreases in basal ganglia output need to be viewed with caution in light of these findings. Ann Neurol 2003
Evaluation of a primary care paramedic STEMI bypass guideline.

OBJECTIVE Limited evidence supports primary care paramedic (PCP) direct transport of ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients for percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). The goal of this study was to evaluate an urban-based PCP STEMI bypass guideline. METHODS We reviewed consecutive Toronto Paramedic Services call reports between April 7, 2015, and May 31, 2016, regarding STEMI patients identified by PCPs. The primary outcome was patient assignment (stable versus unstable) according to guideline criteria. Secondary outcomes were the proportion of PCP-transported patients who had an indication for an advanced care intervention (ACI) or who received an ACI when PCPs rendezvoused with an advanced care paramedic (ACP). Lastly, we reviewed prehospital outcomes of cardiac arrest patients and calculated the difference in transport intervals between direct PCP bypass and a PCI-centre and predicted transport interval to the closest emergency department (ED). RESULTS Of 361 patients, 232 were PCP transports and 129 were ACP-rendezvous transports. There was a significant difference in the distribution of stable and unstable patients between PCPs and ACPs (p<0.001). For PCP patients, 21/232 (9.1%) had indications for an ACI, whereas 34/129 (26.4%) ACP patients received an ACI. Eleven patients experienced cardiac arrest; 10 were successfully resuscitated (5 of these by PCPs). The median difference between direct PCP bypass and a PCI-centre versus transport to the closest ED was 5.53 minutes (IQR=6.71). CONCLUSIONS We found a significant difference in the distribution of stable and unstable patients and fewer patients with indications for an ACI in PCP patients. This PCP STEMI bypass guideline appears feasible.
A prototype implementation of a digital controlled rectifier-based wireless PMDC motor drive

A working model of wirelessly controlled permanent magnet DC motor (PMDC) drive is proposed in this paper. Proposed design helps enhancing the control of DC motors that are installed in industries from a central location though wireless medium, hence replaces dedicated control units and human supervision. Proposed design is based on the spectrum analysis carried out on DC motor supply voltage waveform resulted by half-controlled rectifier circuit. This methodology not only reduces harmonics in motor voltage and current but also reduces losses that occur due to high switching frequencies in conventional pulse-width modulation (PWM) based drives. Proposed design communicates with a remote control unit through RF channel. A prototype of proposed design is implemented to control a medium power PMDC motor and results are presented. Proposed design may be extended to single-phase or three-phase AC-DC converter fed DC drives and to single-phase or three-phase AC motor drives. Proposed design is fully compatible with 50Hz and 60Hz power systems. Proposed drive is implemented using a high-power microcontroller unit.
Mapping of conformational autoantibody epitopes in ZNT8

Identification of the major humoral epitopes in zinc transporter 8 (ZnT8) will expand the range of biomarkers for human type 1 diabetes and may provide clues to the mechanisms governing disease progression. Our initial studies suggested that most ZnT8‐reactive sera recognize conformational epitopes in the final 100aa region of the molecule. Subsequently we identified residue 325 as a major determinant in two epitopes linked to a genetic polymorphism with high minor allele frequency (rs13266634). The goal of the current study was to extend this analysis to identify non‐polymorphic epitopes in ZnT8.
ECLAMC: The Latin-American Collaborative Study of Congenital Malformations

Definition: ECLAMC (‘Estudio Colaborativo Latino Americano de Malformaciones Congénitas’) is a program for the clinical and epidemiological investigation of risk factors in the etiology of congenital anomalies in Latin-American hospitals, using a case-control methodological approach. It is a voluntary agreement among professionals lacking institutional base as well as designated budgets. ECLAMC has been usually funded by research-funding agencies rather than public health ministries. The National Research Councils of Argentina and Brazil have been the main sources of support during its 36 years of existence. Since vital and health statistics are unreliable in South America, ECLAMC collects all the information required for the denominators in a hospital-based sample of births. ECLAMC can be defined as a continental network of persons interested in research and prevention of birth defects. History and Evolution: From the institutional point of view, ECLAMC has had headquarters in diverse centers of Argentina and Brazil, but always as an independent research project, without a defined administrative link. ECLAMC began operating in 1967, as an investigation limited to the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and it gradually expanded until covering all the 10 countries of South America as well as Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. Even though ECLAMC has maintained essentially the same original experimental design since 1967, due to the data accumulated by the program, the increasing experience as well as the development in science, technical modifications occurred including a DNA bank and a fully informatized data handling system. Since 1974 ECLAMC has been a founder member of the International Clearinghouse for Birth Defects Monitoring Systems; since 1994 a WHO Collaborating Center for the Prevention of Congenital Malformations, and since 2000 a collaborating member of the NIH Global Netwok for Women’s and Children’s Health Research. Methodology: The maternity hospital network of ECLAMC examines around 200,000 births per year. All major and minor anomalies diagnosed at birth in infants weighing 500 g or more are registered according to a manual of procedures. The next non-malformed baby of the same sex born in the same hospital is selected as a control subject for each case. Thus, a one-to-one healthy control group matched by sex, time and place of birth is obtained. As a system of epidemic surveillance, ECLAMC systematically observes the fluctuations in the frequencies of different malformations and, in the case of an alarm for a probable epidemic of a given malformation, at a given moment, and given area, it acts to identify its cause. As termination of pregnancy has severe legal restrictions in South America, prevention of birth defects should concentrate on primary, preconceptional and tertiary measures. Tertiary measures aim to avoid complications of the affected patients from the medical, psychological, and social standpoints.
Purely Functional Data Structures

This paper gives an introduction and short overview of various topics related to purely functional data structures. First the concept of persistent and purely functional data structures is introduced, followed by some examples of basic data structures, relevant in purely functional setting, such as lists, queues and trees. Various techniques for designing more efficient purely functional data structures based on lazy evaluation are then described. Two notable general-purpose functional data structures, zippers and finger trees, are presented next. Finally, a brief overview is given of verifying the correctness of purely functional data structures and the time and space complexity calculations. 1 Data Structures and Persistence A data structure is a particular way of organizing data, usually stored in memory and designed for better algorithm efficiency[27]. The term data structure covers different distinct but related meanings, like: • An abstract data type, that is a set of values and associated operations, specified independent of any particular implementation. • A concrete realization or implementation of an abstract data type. • An instance of a data type, also referred to as an object or version. Initial instance of a data structure can be thought of as the version zero and every update operation then generates a new version of the data structure. Data structure is called persistent if it supports access to all versions. [7] It’s called partially persistent if all versions can be accessed, but only last version can be modified and fully persistent if every version can be both accessed and modified. Persistent data structures are observationally immutable, as operations do not visibly change the structure in-place, however there are data structures which are persistent but perform assignments. Persistence can be achieved by simply copying the whole structure but this is inefficient in time and space as most modifications are relatively small. Often some similarity between the new and old versions of a data structure can be exploited to make the operation more efficient.
Development of a Mobile Robot to Run in Tsukuba Challenge 2010

Abstract This paper describes an implementation of a mobile robot system in a 1 km autonomous mobile robot navigation challenge called ‘Tsukuba Challenge 2010’ which was held in the city of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan. The mobile robot used only three types of sensors which were a magnetic sensor, two wheel encoders, and a laser range finder. For a stable navigation, we have proposed a method that is able to localize and perform trajectory tracking based on patterns of the magnetic field's intensity that occurs in the environment. It was divided into two distinct parts of map building and navigating. In the map building, the mobile robot was operated by a joystick along the course of the challenge to record the environmental magnetic field to build a map. The mobile robot then navigated by using a trajectory tracking method based on the map. During the seven trials which were given before the qualifying and final runs, the mobile robot completed the full course three times with once in small rain.
The influence of semantic processing on phonological decisions in children and adults: a magnetoencephalography (MEG) study.

PURPOSE To examine the behavioral effects and neural activation patterns associated with implicit semantic processing influences on phonological judgments during reading in children and adults. METHOD Whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings were obtained from 2 groups, children (9-13 years) and adults, performing a homophone judgment task. The stimuli consisted of pairs of sequentially presented written words that were either homophones, synonym foils, or unrelated control words. RESULTS The difference in the time taken to respond to synonym pairs relative to control pairs of stimuli, called the semantic interference effect (SIE), was, on average, 24 ms for adults and 86 ms for children. Source analysis of the MEG data using minimum-norm estimation (MNE) yielded less activation in the adults for the synonym condition compared with the control condition in right anterior temporal and inferior frontal cortex 300-500 ms after the onset of the 2nd word in a pair, suggestive of semantic priming as well as inhibition of the SIE. A similar priming effect was observed for the children in left-anterior temporal cortex. CONCLUSION The observed group differences in the magnitude of the SIE and brain activation patterns may reflect developmental differences in the effects of semantic information on phonological decisions during word processing.
Molecular Gerontology: Bridging the Simple and the Complex

Abstract: It is clear, both empirically and theoretically, that the mechanisms of aging are multiple and complex. Nevertheless, single gene mutations and simple interventions such as calorie restriction have broad effects on the senescent phenotype. The major challenge is to unite highly reductionist analysis of molecular components with integrative model systems that can “put it all together. ” Two themes are developed. In the first, biochemical models are described that show how the network concept of cellular aging can be used to integrate multiple biochemical mechanisms that contribute to cellular instability. In the second theme, the role of intrinsic developmental chance is examined as a major factor contributing, in addition to genes and environment, to the divergence of the senescent phenotype. The implications of these themes for research strategies in molecular gerontology are discussed.
Platform-Intermediated Trade with Uncertain Quality

Consider trade conducted via a platform , such as an online app store or a farmers' market. The quality sellers choose for their products affects the surplus trade generates. Because the platform's profit depends on that surplus, the platform can have an incentive to regulate quality. This is true even if quality is observable at time of purchase or if sellers can develop reputations concerning quality. It is also true if the platform charges sellers only; that is, even if the platform has no direct interest in buyers' well-being.
Asymmetric bias in perception of facial affect among Roman and Arabic script readers

The asymmetric chimeric faces test is used frequently as an indicator of right hemisphere involvement in the perception of facial affect, as the test is considered free of linguistic elements. Much of the original research with the asymmetric chimeric faces test was conducted with subjects reading left-to-right Roman script, i.e., English. As readers of right-to-left scripts, such as Arabic, demonstrated a mixed or weak rightward bias in judgements of facial affect, the influence of habitual scanning direction was thought to intersect with laterality. We administered the asymmetric chimeric faces test to 1239 adults who represented a range of script experience, i.e., Roman script readers (English and French), Arabic readers, bidirectional readers of Roman and Arabic scripts, and illiterates. Our findings supported the hypothesis that the bias in facial affect judgement is rooted in laterality, but can be influenced by script direction. Specifically, right-handed readers of Roman script demonstrated the greatest mean leftward score, and mixed-handed Arabic script readers demonstrated the greatest mean rightward score. Biliterates showed a gradual shift in asymmetric perception, as their scores fell between those of Roman and Arabic script readers, basically distributed in the order expected by their handedness and most often used script. Illiterates, whose only directional influence was laterality, showed a slight leftward bias.
Clinical and Neurobiological Relevance of Current Animal Models of Autism Spectrum Disorders

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by social and communication impairments, as well as repetitive and restrictive behaviors. The phenotypic heterogeneity of ASD has made it overwhelmingly difficult to determine the exact etiology and pathophysiology underlying the core symptoms, which are often accompanied by comorbidities such as hyperactivity, seizures, and sensorimotor abnormalities. To our benefit, the advent of animal models has allowed us to assess and test diverse risk factors of ASD, both genetic and environmental, and measure their contribution to the manifestation of autistic symptoms. At a broader scale, rodent models have helped consolidate molecular pathways and unify the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying each one of the various etiologies. This approach will potentially enable the stratification of ASD into clinical, molecular, and neurophenotypic subgroups, further proving their translational utility. It is henceforth paramount to establish a common ground of mechanistic theories from complementing results in preclinical research. In this review, we cluster the ASD animal models into lesion and genetic models and further classify them based on the corresponding environmental, epigenetic and genetic factors. Finally, we summarize the symptoms and neuropathological highlights for each model and make critical comparisons that elucidate their clinical and neurobiological relevance.