Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Remisión bioquímica de pacientes acromegálicos sometidos a cirugía endoscópica

Objective. Endoscopic transnasal transsphenoidal surgery is the cornerstone of therapy for acromegaly at our Center. We conducted a retrospective study to determine whether this approach induced biochemical remission, and compared our observations to published series. Methods. We performed a retrospective analysis of our Pituitary Surgery database, and identified all patients that underwent endoscopic transnasal transsphenoidal surgery as primary treatment for acromegaly. Pre- operatory imaging and endocrinological panels were assessed, and the 2009 Acromegaly Consensus Group criteria were used to determine whether biochemical remission was achieved. Results. Eight patients underwent primary endoscopic adenomectomy. One had a microadenoma, one had a non-invasive macroadenoma, and the remaining six patients presented invasive macroadenomas. Median insulin-like growth factor I levels at three months of surgery were 633 ng/mL (199 ng/mL - 1600 ng/mL), while growth hormone levels were 10,20 ng/mL (0,96 ng/mL mL–16,60 ng/mL). Two patients met criteria for remission, with a non-invasive macroadenoma and a microadenoma.Four of the remaining patients achieved remission after administration of somatostatin analogues Conclusions. This is the first report of endoscopic transnasal transsphenoidal surgery as primary treatment for acromegaly in Costa Rica. Attaining cure in patients with large, invasive macroadenomas can be elusive, and a multi-modal approach is necessary.
Preliminary Screening of Beef Consumed in Ibadan, Nigeria for Antibacterial Residues

Three hundred and ninety samples each of liver, kidney and muscles from abattoirs in Ibadan were screened for the presence of antibiotics residues using a rapid microbiological assay. Premi ® Test, a commercially available kit containing agar pre-seeded with Bacillus stearothermophilus , sensitive to most commonly used antibiotics providing a simple and quick response to presence of antibiotics was used. The results showed that 816 samples (69.74%) out of a total of one thousand one hundred and seventy edible beef samples screened contained antibacterial residues. The positive samples comprised of 320 (40%), 281 (34%) and 215 (26%) kidney, liver and muscle samples respectively This is indicative of high risk of exposure of the consumers to wide range of antibacterial residues that have found their ways to the food chain through improper usage of the drugs in food animals. There is need for detailed drug residues risk assessment, surveillance and proper regulatory control of health management practices in the production of food animals in Nigeria to ensure food safety. Key Words : antibiotics residues, meat, food safety, meat, Premi ® Test.
Tratamiento percutáneo de las bioprótesis aórticas disfuncionantes con la prótesis CoreValve

El implante valvular aortico percutaneo ha surgido recientemente como alternativa terapeutica para pacientes con estenosis aortica severa sintomatica y alto riesgo quirurgico. Se presenta la experiencia inicial en el tratamiento de la disfuncion de la bioprotesis aortica mediante el implante percutaneo de protesis aortica CoreValve en 4 pacientes, tanto con estenosis como con insuficiencia aortica, y se analiza los resultados hospitalarios y a medio plazo. El procedimiento se realizo con anestesia local y guiado por angiografia. Se implantaron con exito en todos los casos, si bien uno preciso una segunda protesis por posicionamiento alto de la primera. No hubo complicaciones mayores. Tras un seguimiento medio de 7±4,7 meses, todos los pacientes se encuentran asintomaticos.
Exploring attentional bias towards threatening faces in chimpanzees using the dot probe task

Primates have evolved to rapidly detect and respond to danger in their environment. However, the mechanisms involved in attending to threatening stimuli are not fully understood. The dot-probe task is one of the most widely used experimental paradigms to investigate these mechanisms in humans. However, to date, few studies have been conducted in non-human primates. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the dot-probe task can measure attentional biases towards threatening faces in chimpanzees. Eight adult chimpanzees participated in a series of touch screen dot-probe tasks. We predicted faster response times towards chimpanzee threatening faces relative to neutral faces and faster response times towards faces of high threat intensity (scream) than low threat intensity (bared teeth). Contrary to prediction, response times for chimpanzee threatening faces relative to neutral faces did not differ. In addition, we found no difference in response times for faces of high and low threat intensity. In conclusion, we found no evidence that the touch screen dot-probe task can measure attentional biases specifically towards threatening faces in our chimpanzees. Methodological limitations of using the task to measure emotional attention in human and non-human primates, including stimulus threat intensity, emotional state, stimulus presentation duration and manual responding are discussed.
Atlas of Electromyography

1. BRACHIAL PLEXUS 2. MEDIAN NERVE 3. ULNAR NERVE 4. RADIAL NERVE 5. AXILLARY NERVE 6. MUSCULOCUTANEOUS NERVE 7. SUPRASCAPULAR NERVE 8. DORSAL SCAPULAR NERVE 9. LONG THORACIC NERVE 10. SUBSCAPULAR NERVES AND THORACODORSAL NERVE 11. MEDIAL AND LATERAL PECTORAL NERVES 12. CERVIAL PLEXUS 13. PHRENIC NERVE 14. SACRAL PLEXUS 15. SCIATIC NERVE 16. TIBIAL NERVE 17. COMMON PERONEAL NERVE 18. SUPERIOR GLUTEAL NERVE 19. INFERIOR GLUTEAL NERVE 20. PUDENDAL NERVE 21. LUMBAR PLEXUS 22. FEMORAL NERVE 23. OBTURATOR NERVE 24. CRANIAL MUSCLES 25. PARASPINAL MUSCLES
Literacy and the Bilingual Learner: Texts and Practices in London Schools

The book considers, through a series of case studies of bilingual learners in London schools and colleges, the way in which learners who are learning through a second language develop literacy in educational settings. Early chapters set out models of literacy instruction and offer analyses of the appropriateness of these models for the learners at the centre of this book. Subsequent chapters use data from the learners' own literacy narratives and from classroom interactions to draw implications for ways in which the texts and practices made available to learners mesh with their needs and expectatons
Perceptual vision models for picture quality assessment and compression applications

The rapid increase in the use of compressed digital images has created a strong need for the development of objective picture quality metrics. No objective metrics have yet been demonstrated to work accurately over a wide range of scenes, coders, and bit-rates. Promising results have been achieved by metrics which model the operation of early stages of the human visual system. However, these models have generally been calibrated using simple visual stimuli, and have not considered any higher level or cognitive processes which are known to in uence human perception of image quality. In this thesis, a new picture quality metric is proposed which models both early vision and higher level attention processes. The early vision model simulates the operation of neurons in the primary visual cortex. The general structure of this model is similar to other models of early visual processes. However, the model's components have been designed and calibrated speci cally for operation with complex natural images. This model is shown to provide accurate prediction of image delity. Although the early vision model gives a signi cantly better prediction of picture quality than simple objective metrics, it is unable to capture any higher level perceptual or cognitive e ects. To address this issue, a model of visual attention is developed. This model produces Importance Maps, which predict the regions in the scene that are likely to be the focus of attention. The Importance Maps are used to weight the visible distortions produced by the early vision model, since it is known that distortions occurring in the regions of interest i have the greatest e ect on overall picture quality. Comparison with subjective quality rating data demonstrates that the inclusion of the attention model in the quality metric provides a statistically signi cant increase in the correlation between the model's prediction and subjective opinion. Perceptual vision models such as the ones presented in this thesis can be used in many other areas of image processing. Image compression is one of the areas which can obtain signi cant bene t from the use of perceptual models. To demonstrate this, an MPEG encoder is implemented which uses components of both the early vision and attention models to control the spatially-adaptive quantisation process. Subjective testing of sequences coded using this technique con rms the improvement in subjective quality which can be achieved by using a perceptual vision model in a compression algorithm.
A Clickstream Data Analysis of Users' Information Seeking Modes in Social Tagging Systems

Social tagging systems enable their users to access useful or interesting information resources in various ways. The purposes of this study are to identify the information seeking modes adopted by users in this context and to determine the popularity as well as effectiveness of these modes. A transaction log file obtained from Douban, the most influential Chinese-language social tagging system, was examined based on an original clickstream data analysis framework. The results show that encountering, browsing by resource/tag/user/group, searching, and monitoring by user/group are the major modes ever adopted. While browsing by resource is the most popular mode, browsing by tag is the most effective one. The research findings enrich our understanding of social tagging systems as vibrant information seeking environments and provide useful implications for their interface design.
The Ideology of Peronism: The Third Way and the Law of the Excluded Middle

THE RECENT VICTORY OF RAUL ALFONSÍN AND THE RADICAL Party in Argentina marks the end of forty years during which the Peronists were, overtly or covertly, the major factor in Argentine politics. It also sounds the death-knell of attempts to find a trans-class solution to the problem of political legitimacy in Argentina. It may not be inappropriate, then, to look back on the most sustained attempt to establish this legitimacy via an ideology of class collaboration: the ideology of Peronism.
Vocabulary instruction : research to practice

Introduction. Kame'enui, Baumann, Context for Vocabulary Instruction. Part I: Teaching Specific Vocabulary. McKeown, Beck, Sandora,Direct and Rich Vocabulary Instruction Needs to Start Early. Biemiller, Teaching Vocabulary in the Primary Grades: Vocabulary Instruction Needed. Coyne, Capozzoli-Oldham, Simmons,Vocabulary Instruction for Young Children at Risk of Reading Difficulties: Teaching Word Meanings during Shared Storybook Readings. K.D. Stahl, S.A. Stahl, Young Word Wizards! : Fostering Vocabulary Development in Preschool and Primary Education. Part II: Teaching Vocabulary-Learning Strategies. Graves, Ruda, Sales, Baumann,Teaching Prefixes: Making Strong Instruction Even Stronger. Templeton, The Vocabulary-Spelling Connection and Generative Instruction: Morphological Knowledge at the Intermediate Grades and Beyond. Baumann, Carr Edwards, Boland, Font, Teaching Word-Learning Strategies. Part III: Teaching Vocabulary through Word Consciousness and Language Play. Scott, Miller, Leigh Flinspach, Developing Word Consciousness: Lessons from Highly Diverse Fourth-Grade Classroom. Blachowicz, Fisher, Keep the "Fun" in Fundamental: Encouraging Word Consciousness and Incidental Word Learning in the Classroom through Word Play. Johnson, Johnson, Schlichting, Language Play: Essential for Literacy. Part IV: Special Topics in Vocabulary Instruction. Pearson, Hiebert, Kamil, Vocabulary Assessment: Making Do with What We Have While We Create the Tools We Need. Cunningham, Ryan O'Donnell, Reading and Vocabulary Growth. Manyak, Powerful Vocabulary Instruction for English Learners. Castek, Dalton, Grisham, Using Multimedia to Support Generative Vocabulary Learning. Hiebert, Cervetti, What Differences in Narrative and Informational Texts Mean for the Learning and Instruction of Vocabulary.
A new model for the generation of multimodal referring expressions

We present a new algorithm for the generation of multimodal referring expressions (combining language and deictic gestures). 1 The approach differs from earlier work in that we allow for various gradations of preciseness in pointing, ranging from unambiguous to vague pointing gestures. The model predicts that linguistic properties realized in the generated expression are co-dependent on the kind of pointing gesture included. The decision to point is based on a tradeoff between the costs of pointing and the costs of linguistic properties, where both kinds of costs are computed in empirically motivated ways. The model has been implemented using a graph-based generation algorithm.
Signal transition time effect on CMOS delay evaluation

Realistic modeling of gate delay is of great importance in evaluating circuit path performances. Nonzero signal rise and fall times contribute to gate propagation delays and must be considered for realistic characterization of standard cells. In this paper, we present an accurate and simple method to model output rise and fall times. We show that this can be obtained in a framework of a more general macromodel of delays, using step responses corrected for slow-input ramp duration effects. The concept of fast and slow transitions is clearly explained in terms of the drive current available in the structure. A first validation of this modeling has been obtained by comparing calculated inverter output-ramp duration to simulated ones (HSPICE level and foundry card model on 0.35-/spl mu/m and 0.25-/spl mu/m processes). Finally, both the delay and output-ramp modeling are validated by comparing inverter array calculated and simulated total delay values.
Riskier-than-expected occlusive treatment of ruptured posterior communicating artery aneurysms: treatment and outcome of 620 consecutive patients.

OBJECTIVE: Occlusive treatment of posterior communicating artery (PCoA) aneurysms has been seen as a fairly uncomplicated procedure. The objective here was to determine the radiological and clinical outcome of patients after PCoA aneurysm rupture and treatment and to evaluate the risk factors for impaired outcome. METHODS: In a retrospective clinical follow-up study, data were collected from 620 consecutive patients who had been treated for ruptured PCoA aneurysms at a single center between 1980 and 2014. The follow-up was a minimum of 1 year after treatment or until death. RESULTS: Of the 620 patients, 83% were treated with microsurgical clipping, 8% with endovascular coiling, 2% with the two procedures combined, 1% with indirect surgical methods, and 6% with conservative methods. The most common procedural complications were treatment-related brain infarctions (15%). The occurrence of artery occlusions (10% microsurgical, 8% endovascular) was higher than expected. Most patients made a good recovery at 1 year after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (modified Rankin Scale [mRS] score 0-2: 386 patients [62%]). A fairly small proportion of patients were left severely disabled (mRS score 4-5: 27 patients [4%]). Among all patients, 20% died during the 1st year. Independent risk factors for an unfavorable outcome, according to the multivariable analysis, were poor preoperative clinical condition, intracerebral or subdural hematoma due to aneurysm rupture, age over 65 years, artery occlusion on postoperative angiography, occlusive treatment-related ischemia, delayed cerebral vasospasm, and hydrocephalus requiring a shunt. CONCLUSIONS: Even though most patients made a good recovery after PCoA aneurysm rupture and treatment during the 1st year, the occlusive treatment-related complications were higher than expected and caused morbidity even among initially good-grade patients. Occlusive treatment of ruptured PCoA aneurysms seems to be a high-risk procedure, even in a high-volume neurovascular center.
Subthalamic nucleus stimulation in Parkinson's disease

Objective To compare the efficacy of unilateral pallidotomy and bilateral subthalamic nucleus (STN) stimulation in patients with advanced Parkinson disease (PD) in a randomized, observer-blind, multicenter trial. Methods Thirty-four patients with advanced PD were randomly assigned to have unilateral pallidotomy or bilateral STN stimulation. The primary outcome was the change from baseline to 6 months in the motor part of the Unified PD Rating Scale (motor UPDRS) in the off phase. Secondary outcomes were parkinsonian symptoms in the on phase (motor UPDRS), dyskinesias (Clinical Dyskinesia Rating Scale and dyskinesias UPDRS), functional status (activities of daily living UPDRS and Schwab and England scale), PD Quality of Life questionnaire, changes in drug treatment, and adverse effects. Results The off phase motor UPDRS score improved from 46.5 to 37 points in the group of pallidotomy patients and from 51.5 to 26.5 in the STN stimulation patients (p = 0.002). Of the secondary outcome measures, on phase motor UPDRS and dyskinesias UPDRS improved significantly in favor of the STN stimulation patients. Reduction of antiparkinsonian drugs was greater after STN stimulation than after pallidotomy. One patient in each group had a major adverse effect. Conclusions Bilateral STN stimulation is more effective than unilateral pallidotomy in reducing parkinsonian symptoms in patients with advanced PD.
Mean value coordinates for quad cages in 3D

Space coordinates offer an elegant, scalable and versatile framework to propagate (multi-)scalar functions from the boundary vertices of a 3-manifold, often called a cage, within its volume. These generalizations of the barycentric coordinate system have progressively expanded the range of eligible cages to triangle and planar polygon surface meshes with arbitrary topology, concave regions and a spatially-varying sampling ratio, while preserving a smooth diffusion of the prescribed on-surface functions. In spite of their potential for major computer graphics applications such as freeform deformation or volume texturing, current space coordinate systems have only found a moderate impact in applications. This follows from the constraint of having only triangles in the cage most of the time, while many application scenarios favor arbitrary (non-planar) quad meshes for their ability to align the surface structure with features and to naturally cope with anisotropic sampling. In order to use space coordinates with arbitrary quad cages currently, one must triangulate them, which results in large propagation distortion. Instead, we propose a generalization of a popular coordinate system - Mean Value Coordinates - to quad and tri-quad cages, bridging the gap between high-quality coarse meshing and volume diffusion through space coordinates. Our method can process non-planar quads, comes with a closed-form solution free from global optimization and reproduces the expected behavior of Mean Value Coordinates, namely smoothness within the cage volume and continuity everywhere. As a result, we show how these coordinates compare favorably to classical space coordinates on triangulated quad cages, in particular for freeform deformation.
An Ethnography of Thai Folk Healing in Patients Suffering from Lomammapart, a Stroke-like Condition

Abstract: This paper reports on an ethnographic study using Spradley’s method, that explored the treatment and outcomes of treatment for patients with lomammapart who were cared for by traditional folk healers in Southern Thailand. Lomammapart is the Thai Folk Medicine term for stroke. Many patients with lomammapart in Thailand choose treatment by traditional folk healers. Data generation involved participant observation and in-depth interviews with key informants, ten folk healers who had experience in treating patients with lomammapart as well as general informants, eight patients with the condition. Treatment outcomes for patients with lomammapart were measured using the Barthel Index to assess activities of daily living at baseline and after three months. The findings revealed that the healing methods of lomammapart, based on folk medicine, consisted of Jubsen massage, herbal medicine, ritual, and advice. Jubsen massage was performed to expel the wind in the bodylines from the upper to the lower parts of body. Herbs that were prepared as hot beverages were used to expel wind in the bodylines and intestinal system and to eliminate the toxicity from the body to the excretory system. Rituals were performed to heal the spiritual self. In addition, the perceptions of success or otherwise of the efficacy of the treatments provided and the associated treatment outcomes were reported by folk healers and patients. Measurement of activities of daily living indicated that treatment resulted in the patients having better movement, and in sleeping, feeding, excretion, functioning of the body organs, living in society, and normal sensations. The findings of this study will help nurses’ to understand the health practices of folk healers based on beliefs and culture regarding care of such patients, so that they can try to integrate this knowledge with modern health care services to support patient needs. The rich findings also contribute to understandings of cultural knowledge of care and treatment in Thailand.
Analyzing Covert Channels on Mobile Devices

In this work we investigate the problem of stealthy communication between colluding applications on smartphones running the popular Android operating system. Through collusion, applications can cooperatively perform operations they would not be able to perform separately, thus escalating their privileges. This can result in privacy infringements and user data leakage. In order to collude, the two applications must communicate in a way that can bypass the application isolation put in place by the operating system. Throughout this thesis we present different ways to bypass the isolation and thereby allow application collusion. As covert channels are by definition harder to implement but also harder to detect, we use them to create a circumvention that is harder to defeat. To understand the full extent of this problem, we implement very different overt and covert channels and analyse them by testing their throughput, bit-error percentage and synchronisation time. Using our implemented channels we analyse some previously existing countermeasures, in particular TaintDroid and XManDroid, and comment on the countermeasures strengths and limitations. Finally we use the lessons learned from implementing these channels and propose individual countermeasures, which can reduce the feasibility of creating such channels. In this scenario preventing hidden communication channels remains an open problem that we believe the research community should put more focus on.
The detection of changes of the auditory scene structure using a concept of short-time ICA

We propose a new method for detecting changes in the scene structure. The detection is based on the evaluation of amount of changes in data acquired from the environment and on the character of these changes. We propose a concept of Short-time Independent Component Analysis and a metrics for comparison of two Generalized Gaussian mixture ICA models.