Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quality of life, level of physical activity and depression in dialysis patients

PURPOSE: The main objectives of our study are to assess the QOL depression and the level of physical activity in hemodialysis patients. METHOD: The self reported measures WHO BREF Questionnaire, Beck depression inventory scale and Global physical activity questionnaire were given to the participants who were receiving hemodialysis and age matched normal individuals at the time of study and consented. And the data was collected with the necessary personal and demographical data. In data Analysis descriptive statistics and non parametric man Whitney and spearman's correlation were done using SPSS v. 15. RESULT: The non parametric man Whitney u test was done to compare the means of total QOL score, physical health, psychological health, social relationship, environment and depression score. The groups compared show a significant difference and are not equal. The physical activity hypothesis testing showed significance with chi- square value 15.306, p<. 05 which indicate there is difference between the patient group and normal in terms of physical activity. The non parametric correlation analysis was done between the QOL and depression scores. There was positive relationship between total raw QOL score and physical health, psychological health. The physical health was positively related to psychological health, environment score and negatively related to depression score. The psychological health was positively related to environment and negatively related to depression score. CONCLUSION: The present study showed compromised health related quality of life, low level physical activity and moderate level of depression among hemodialysis patients. The relationship between physical and psychological dimensions and low level of physical activity pronounces the importance of regular exercises or supervised physiotherapy training to improve the compromised health related quality of life.
Improved vehicle detection system based on customized HOG

Recently, obstacles detection and identification task in ADAS is a well-established research field. Histogram of oriented gradients (HOG) is one of the most effective obstacle feature extraction approaches to the study. In this paper, an optimization detection system based on a customized HOG descriptor is presented and investigated to achieve an accurate vehicle recognition system. The key concept is to distribute an amplification factor for each bin weight according to its contribution in the vehicle-extracted features. Performance studies using a Linear SVM classifier in MATLAB and heterogeneous databases of vehicle and non-vehicle images prove the effectiveness of our approach. Keywords— ADAS; HOG features; vehicle detection; MATLAB.
Xenografts as models of clonal selection and acquired resistance to therapy.

Featured Article: Ding L, Ellis MJ, Li S, Larson DE, Chen K, Wallis JW, et al. Genome remodeling in a basal-like breast cancer metastasis and xenograft. Nature 2010; 464:999–1005.2 In our 2010 Nature article featured here, we described a next-generation sequencing-based whole-genome study to compare 4 related genomes from a single patient: a primary triple negative breast cancer, its counterpart xenograft [or “patient-derived xenograft” (PDX)], and a brain metastasis that occurred upon disease progression, all compared with the blood-derived normal DNA. This comparison identified a high degree of genomic similarity between all 3 tumor samples, and for the first time in a solid tissue malignancy we explored the alterations in genomic heterogeneity that occurred in the transitions from primary to metastatic disease, and from primary to PDX. Effectively, we demonstrated that somatic structural alterations remained constant across all 3 tumor genomes but that there were changes in clonality (inferred from the allele frequencies of point mutations) when comparing the primary to the metastasis and to the …
Analysis of implant parameters in high voltage TRIPLE RESURF LDMOS for advanced SoC applications

This paper presents the design of RESURF based non-conventional LDMOS and its parametric analysis. The work investigates the impact of three primary parameters relating to p-implant, namely implant placement distance, implant doping and implant thickness, on device performance and premature avalanche breakdown. To avoid undesirable implant-drain punch-through, a boundary of limits is proposed near drain. Further, the implant parameters are optimized to maximize the ratio of Breakdown Voltage Vs On-resistance Ron to enhance the suitability of the device for High Voltage I/O applications in Sub-micron RF-SoC. A breakdown voltage of 21V at a very low Ron of 2. 5kΩ was achieved for a device gate length of 250nm and gate oxide thickness of 5nm.
The relative rates of protein synthesis and degradation in a growing culture of Escherichia coli.

Attempts to distinguish classes of intracellular proteins of Escherichia coli by their rates of degradation and extent of turnover have been hampered by the lack of suitable experimental methods. We therefore used a high resolution, two-dimensional electrophoretic technique and a double label procedure to measure changes in the radioactivity of isolated proteins rather than the loss of radioactivity from intact cells. Proteins were doubly labeled by first growing cells for 11 h to early log phase in medium supplemented with [3H]leucine and then for different times in medium supplemented with [‘Tlleucine. CelI fractions collected during the second growth phase were subjected to a two-dimensional procedure that combined isoelectric focusing and electrophoresis. With this technique, it was possible to isolate about 250 soluble proteins. Ratios of 14C to 3H indicated that most of the proteins were synthesized exponentially and were not degraded to any appreciable extent. A second group, consisting of three proteins, was degraded relatively rapidly as shown by an increased incorporation of [‘4C]leucine and a loss of r3H]leucine due to degradation. A third group, also consisting of three proteins, had increased ratio values resulting from an increased incorporation of [‘T]leutine only. For those proteins which are degraded and subsequently resynthesized (turnover), kinetic equations were derived which allowed estimates to be made of the half-life of these proteins in growing cells. Thus, in contrast to mammalian organisms, where virtually every protein is continually degraded and resynthesized, in at least one strain of E. co& the bulk of the protein is not catabolized at an appreciable rate. This paper investigates methods to isolate and study those proteins in growing cells which are subject to turnover.
A 3.6-mW 50-MHz PN Code Acquisition Filter via Statistical Error Compensation in 180-nm CMOS

In this brief, we present a novel architecture for pseudorandom (PN) code acquisition based on statistical error compensation (SEC), which achieves significant power savings. SEC treats errors in hardware as noise in communication networks, and employs robust estimation theory to compensate for errors. We apply SEC to a 256-tap PN code acquisition filter in a 180-nm CMOS process. Multiple (five) dies were tested under voltage overscaling to achieve a near constant detection probability (Pdet) above 90%. The minimum energy consumption ranged from 72.89 to 210.59 pJ (ave 122.52 pJ) for supply voltages between 0.69 and 0.70 V. These operating conditions result in raw error rates of 85.83%-91.23% (ave 88.99%). Energy savings over a conventional errorfree design ranges from 2.4× to 5.8× (ave 3.86×). Energy savings over past work ranges from 1.55× to 3.79× (ave 2.52×). Improvement in error-tolerance over existing error-tolerant designs range from 2146× to 2281× (ave 2225×). The large energy savings were found to be due to a combination of voltage scaling and activity factor reduction. The proposed design achieves a 2.5× improvement in the figure of merit [normalized power/(#taps * precision * sample rate)] compared with conventional PN code acquisition filters.
Analysis of Web Trust Networks

Many online communities allow their users to express trust of other users in order to facilitate users' assessment of reliable information sources and encourage trustworthy behavior in the community. Such Web trust networks are central to several emerging innovations, including trust-based recommendation and viral marketing. However, prior studies mainly focus on technology development for these applications but pay less attention on understanding Web trust networks. In this study, we analyze characteristics of Web trust networks and properties of trust relationships, using three Web trust networks extracted from epinions.com. Our empirical analysis suggests that the Web trust networks of different product categories exhibit different characteristics, members with different trust intensity share similar trusting behavior, and people who trust more (or less) trustworthy members tend to be more (or less) trustworthy. Finally, our analysis also finds that trust reciprocality is contingent on members' trust intensity.
Learning Bayesian Belief Networks Based on the Minimum Description Length Principle: An Efficient Algorithm Using the B & B Technique

Support structures for highway signs and barricades include collapsible assemblies which cause the structure, upon impact by a vehicle, to rotate away from the impact without flying apart. The collapsible assemblies utilize a connector fixture to couple a first member to a second member. The connector fixture includes a pivot pin which provides an axis of rotation for the second member and shear pins which hold the second member in a fixed orientation until the application to the second member of an impact. The impact fractures one of the shear pins and the second member rotates about the pivot pin away from the impact. Single post and multiple post support structures are disclosed. A support structure having two vertical members collapses to a flattened position when struck from any direction. The vehicle passes over the flattened support structure. In an alternate embodiment, the support structure rotates upward upon impact and passes over the vehicle.
A single sequence change destabilizes the influenza virus neuraminidase tetramer.

A single change (E119G) in the influenza A virus N9 neuraminidase (NA) results in resistance of the enzyme to the NA inhibitor 4-Guanidino-Neu5Ac2en (4-GuDANA). This change causes a salt link between Glu119, which sits in a pocket in the bottom of the active site of the enzyme, and the 4-guanidinium moiety of the inhibitor to be lost. NA "heads" of the resistant enzyme produced only a few small crystals under conditions in which the wild-type enzyme readily formed large crystals. These small crystals were of sufficient quality to yield X-ray crystallographic data which confirmed the E119G change and demonstrated the presence of electron density representing either a strong structural-water molecule or an anionic species in place of the glutamate carboxylate. NA heads of the resistant enzyme also have greatly reduced NA activity per milligram of total protein. We have now found that the mutant NA heads consist predominantly of monomers with a few dimers and tetramers, as determined by electron microscopic analysis of the protein. The low level of enzymatic activity as well as the small number of crystals obtained were probably from the few tetramers remaining intact in the preparation. The purified wild-type and 4-GuDANA-resistant enzymes were treated with the homobifunctional NHS-ester cross linker, DTSSP. SDS-PAGE analysis of the treated enzymes clearly revealed cross-linked dimers of the wild-type enzyme. In contrast, only a small proportion of the 4-GuDANA-resistant neuraminidase was cross-linked. An examination of the known X-ray crystallographic structure of the wild-type NA reveals a salt bridge between Glu119 and Arg156 of the same monomer. Arg156 is a conserved amino acid that is situated at the interface between monomers, and a salt link between this amino acid and Glu119 may contribute to the stability of enzyme tetramers. It is suggested that the E119G alteration in the 4-GuDANA-resistant NA leads to the abrogation of this interaction and thus to the instability of the NA tetramers.
Local Discriminant Space Alignment

Dimensionality reduction has been demonstrated to be an effective way for feature extraction in the pattern recognition task. In this paper, a new manifold learning algorithm, Local Discriminant Space Alignment (LDSA), is developed for nonlinear dimensionality reduction. In LDSA, the discriminant structure and the local geometry of data manifold is learned by constructing a local space for each data point through local discriminant analysis, and those discriminant subspaces are aligned to give the internal global coordinates of data points with respect to the underlying manifold. To solve the out of sample problem, the linearization of LDSA (LLDSA) is also proposed and is applied to face recognition. The Experimental results on ORL and Yale database showed the effectiveness of LLDSA in comparison with existing dimensionality reduction algorithms designed for feature extraction.
Effect of polyphenol-rich grape seed extract on ambulatory blood pressure in subjects with pre- and stage I hypertension

Dietary polyphenols, such as those from grape products, may exert beneficial effects on cardiovascular health, including anti-hypertensive effects. We investigated the effect of a specific grape seed extract (GSE) rich in low-molecular-weight polyphenolic compounds on ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) in untreated subjects with pre- and stage I hypertension. In addition, potential mechanisms that could underlie the hypothesised effect of GSE on blood pressure (BP), and platelet aggregation, were explored. The study was designed as a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomised, parallel-group intervention study including seventy healthy subjects with systolic BP between 120 and 159 mmHg. A 1-week run-in period was followed by an 8-week intervention period, during which subjects consumed capsules containing either 300 mg/d of GSE or a placebo (microcrystalline cellulose). Before and after the intervention, daytime ABP readings, 24 h urine samples and fasting and non-fasting blood samples were taken. The mean baseline systolic BP was 135·8 (se 1·3) mmHg and diastolic BP was 81·5 (se 0·9) mmHg. BP values were modestly, but not significantly, affected by the polyphenol-rich GSE treatment v. placebo with an effect of − 3·0 mmHg for systolic BP (95 % CI − 6·5, 0·5) and − 1·4 mmHg for diastolic BP (95 % CI − 3·5, 0·6). Vasoactive markers including endothelin-1, NO metabolites and asymmetric dimethylarginine, plasma renin activity and platelet aggregation were not affected by the GSE intervention. Our findings show that consumption of polyphenol-rich GSE does not significantly lower ABP in untreated subjects with pre- and stage I hypertension.
A tutorial tool for switch logic

This paper presents a tutorial tool for switch logic. The tool has a set of features that allow a student to understand Boolean logic functions as well as its implementations with CMOS transistors viewed as switches. The user is able to specify Boolean functions and obtain minimal implementation by using either pass transistor logic or static CMOS complex gate implementation. Besides, the tool works with the concept of NPN and P equivalencies, developing the idea of which cells should be used to compose a cell library.
The Effect of Lace-up Ankle Braces on Injury Rates in High School Football Players

Background: Although ankle injuries occur frequently in high school football players, no prospective studies have been performed to determine if wearing lace-up ankle braces will reduce the incidence and severity of ankle and other lower extremity injuries in these athletes. Purpose: This study was conducted to determine if lace-up ankle braces reduce the incidence and severity of lower extremity injuries sustained by high school football players. Design: Randomized controlled trial; Level of evidence, 1. Methods: A total of 2081 players from 50 high schools were randomly assigned to a braced or control group. Braced group players wore lace-up ankle braces during the 2010 football season. Athletic trainers recorded brace compliance, athlete-exposures, and injuries. Cox proportional hazards models were utilized to compare injury rates between groups. Injury severity (days lost) was tested with Wilcoxon rank sum. Results: The rate of acute ankle injury (per 1000 exposures) was 0.48 in the braced group compared with 1.12 in the control group (Cox hazard ratio [HR] = 0.39; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.24-0.65; P < .001). The severity (median days lost) of acute ankle injuries was the same (5 days) in both groups (P = .985). The rate of acute knee injury was 0.70 in the braced group compared with 0.69 in the control group (HR = 0.92; 95% CI, 0.57-1.47; P = .721). There was no difference (P = .242) in the severity of knee injuries between the groups (controls = 11.5 days, braced = 17 days). The rate of other lower extremity injuries was 0.95 in the braced group and 1.32 in the control group (HR = 0.72; 95% CI, 0.48-1.09; P = .117), while the severity was similar in both groups (6 days vs 7 days; P = .295). Conclusion: Players who used lace-up ankle braces had a lower incidence of acute ankle injuries but no difference in the incidence of acute knee or other lower extremity injuries. Braces did not reduce the severity of ankle, knee, or other lower extremity injuries.
Public Perceptions of Service Dogs, Emotional Support Dogs, and Therapy Dogs

As service dogs, emotional support dogs, and therapy dogs have become more prevalent in the USA, so too has the controversy surrounding their legitimacy. Yet, there is a lack of objective data regarding the public’s understanding of the role played by each of these types of animals, as well as their perceptions regarding the legitimacy of their integration. An anonymous, online survey was distributed to examine the perceptions of US adults who do not own any type of assistance animal. A total of 505 individuals responded to the online survey, yielding 284 usable responses. Results suggest widespread misconceptions about definitions, rules, regulations, and rights associated with each type of assistance dog. In general, service dogs are more likely to be perceived as helping with a legitimate need, and their access to public spaces is viewed favorably. While there are some concerns about the legitimacy and necessary access rights for emotional support dogs, members of the public correctly identified the roles and rights of therapy dogs. Despite the media’s focus on abuses and false representation of these dogs, most participants reported feeling the majority of people are not taking advantage of the system.
[Housing in France].

French people in dire need of lodgings while the rest of the population would be happy to exchange their present living quarters for better ones. Certainly, a tragic dearth of housing exists in France as in many other countries. This article attempts to present the relevant factors which have made the housing situation in that country one of the acute problems facing the government. In France the building of new dwellings has decreased steadily ever since about 1880 and during the past ten years ceased altogether. The steadily increasing tempo of France's industrialization brought in its wake the movement of large segments of the population from rural to urban areas. In 1851, 24.4%o of the population was classified as urban population; this percentage increased to 34.8% up to 1881; to 44.2% up to 1911; and to 52.0% up to 1936. This has been a major factor in bringing housing conditions to their present low level. Paris, for example, excluding the suburbs, increased by twenty thousand people each year between 1881 and 1914. During that period, the excess of total construction over total demolition was, on the average, only 440. The corresponding figure for other additions, consisting of remodeling and rebuilding partial demolition was 680 per year. From 1920 to 1930, the population in Paris increased annually by about 3,000 and the excess figure of total construction amounted to 300, and of additions, 450. Between 1931 and 1940 the population continued to increase annually by three to four thousand, but the excess figures decreased to 30 and 340, respectively. Beginning with 1940 no new construction and no
The pseudo-copulative verbs "verse" and "sentirse": diachronic and conceptual aspects

This paper has as its purpose to present a diachronic analysis of the pseudo-copulative verbs verse and sentirse carried out from the theoretical postulates of cognitive semantics and the grammaticalization theory. It will be proved that these two pseudo-copulas in Spanish have been formed within a historical process determined by the conceptual properties of the transitive verbs ver [see] and sentir [feel], additionally highlighting the main functional differences between verse and sentirse and their specific semantic nuances.
Performance of a computer-aided program for automated matching of metastatic pulmonary nodules detected on follow-up chest CT.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of a computer-aided program that allows automated matching of metastatic pulmonary nodules imaged with two serial clinical chest CT studies. MATERIALS AND METHODS The cases of 30 patients with metastatic pulmonary nodules depicted on two serial clinical MDCT scans (16- or 64-MDCT, 5-mm section thickness) were studied. The number of nodules per patient varied from a minimum of two to innumerable. A maximum of 10 well-defined solid nodules per patient, a total of 210 nodules, were selected from each baseline CT scan and were evaluated for matching detection in follow-up CT by means of an automated program. Substantial changes in lung findings and lung volumes between serial scans were visually assessed. The effects on matching rate of interval lung changes and location, size, and total number of nodules in the lung were analyzed with contingency tables. Chi-square tests were used to evaluate patterns for statistical significance. RESULTS The nodule-matching rate per patient ranged from 0 to 100% (median, 87.5%). By nodule, the overall matching rate was 140 of 210 (66.7%). Matching rate was highly associated with changes in lung quality between serial studies. Matching of 122 of 148 nodules (82.4%) occurred in 23 patients with relatively unchanged lung findings, compared with 18 of 62 nodules (29.0%) in seven patients with substantial interval changes (p < 0.001). The matching rate decreased with an increased total number of nodules per lung. For 10 or fewer nodules per lung, matching was successful for 31 of 36 nodules; for 11-50 nodules per lung, 60 of 73 nodules; for 51-100 nodules per lung, 33 of 47 nodules; and for more than 100 nodules per lung, 16 of 54 nodules (p < 0.001). The matching rate was not significantly different with location or size of nodules. CONCLUSION The rate of automated matching of metastatic pulmonary nodules on clinical serial CT scans was high (82.4%) when the lung findings and lung expansion between the serial scans were relatively unchanged. The rate decreased significantly, however, with substantial interval changes in the lung and a larger number of nodules.
Abcès du coude révélant la maladie des griffes du chat: à propos d’un cas

La maladie des griffes du chat (MGC) apparaît comme une cause fréquente de lymphadénopathie chronique bénigne chez l'enfant et l'adulte jeune. L'agent responsable de la maladie est Bartonella henselae. Les symptômes habituels sont une lymphadénopathie régionale associée à une fièvre. Nous rapportons une observation cliniquement atypique et potentiellement trompeuse de MGC, révélée par un abcès du coude chez une fille de 18 ans.