Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cardiac sympathetic denervation from the early stage of Parkinson's disease: clinical and experimental studies with radiolabeled MIBG.

UNLABELLED Autonomic disorder is not infrequent in patients with akinetic-rigid syndromes, including idiopathic Parkinson's disease. In the advanced stage of Parkinson's disease, abnormal blood pressure responses, such as orthostatic hypotension and abnormal circadian blood pressure rhythm, may occur. Few cases of reduced 123I-metaiodobenzylguanidine (MIBG) accumulation in the heart or limbs of Parkinson's disease patients have been reported. However, whether reduced accumulation is caused by damage to the postganglionic sympathetic nervous system or by central autonomic failure corresponding to abnormalities in blood pressure regulation is unknown. METHODS We evaluated sympathetic denervation in 32 Parkinson's disease patients using 123I-MIBG cardiac scintigraphy and compared the findings with those for autonomic dysfunction detected by orthostatic hypotension and diurnal blood pressure variation. Cardiac 125I-MIBG accumulation was also determined in an experimental model of Parkinson's disease using mice pretreated with 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP). RESULTS Cardiac 123I-MIBG accumulation 15 min after injection and 4 h after injection was markedly reduced in the Parkinson's disease patients (heart-to-mediastinum ratio: 1.58 +/- 0.37 and 1.33 +/- 0.28, respectively) compared with 7 healthy volunteers (2.42 +/- 0.27 and 2.60 +/- 0.15, respectively). This reduction was observed even at the earlier stages of physical activity or disease duration and also in patients with normal blood pressure response and variation, indicating that the marked decrease in cardiac 123I-MIBG accumulation may be a special feature of Parkinson's disease. Pretreatment with a total dose of 100 mg/kg MPTP, which is the standard dose used to destroy the dopaminergic neurons in models of Parkinson's disease, significantly reduced cardiac 125I-MIBG accumulation in C57BL/6 mice. Interestingly, the reduction of 125I-MIBG accumulation was still significant when MPTP was reduced to 5 mg/kg. These findings indicated that the postganglionic sympathetic nerves may be damaged by MPTP or unknown toxic substrates in experimental or human Parkinson's disease during the early stage, because dopaminergic neurons and sympathetic nerves are substantially similar in their plasma membrane transporters. CONCLUSION Cardiac scintigraphy with 123I-MIBG may be used as a new imaging approach in the diagnosis and characterization of akinetic-rigid syndromes, especially Parkinson's disease.
Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels are associated with prognosis in hematological malignancies

Abstract It has been proposed that Vitamin D has a significant influence on disease progression in malignancy. This study aims to investigate whether serum levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] are associated with prognosis in patients with hematological malignancies. This study is based on 105 patients with hematological disease (acute and chronic leukemias, myelodysplastic syndromes, monoclonal gammapathies, and chronic lymphoid disorders), seen over a 6-months period. 25(OH)D deficiency (<20 ng/ml) appeared very common and an inverse relationship was observed between 25(OH)D levels and the response to therapy: lower levels being related to poorer response. In acute leukemias, a significant difference was noted between patients with long-term disease-free survival in those tested at diagnosis (P = 0·001) or in those tested at the time of relapse (P = 0·05). Similarly in patients with Philadelphia-positive leukemias, there was a correlation between molecular response and levels of 25(OH)D (P = 0·01). Previously identified factors, such as age, season, gender, or nutritional index, were not related to circulating 25(OH)D levels. Lower levels of circulating 25(OH)D appeared related to a progressive stage of the disease and poor response to therapy, and, therefore, to the aggressiveness of the disease. It is a potential marker of prognosis in patients with leukemia.
Alternative organization of speech perception deficits in children

Children's first‐language perception base takes shape gradually from birth onwards. Empirical research has confirmed that children may continue to fall short of age‐based expectations in their speech perception. The purpose of this study was to assess the contribution of various perception processes in both reading and learning disabled children. A series of experiments was carried out with 450 Hungarian‐speaking schoolchildren: learning disabled, reading disabled and typically developing control first‐, second‐, and third‐graders. Data from seven perception tasks—focusing on acoustic, phonetic and phonological perception processes—were analysed. Results revealed that (i) there is no linear development in all groups across ages, (ii) correct performance is characteristic of both the perception process and the type of disability, and (iii) a specific pattern of organization can be drawn up as a factor in development.
Compact miniature sensors based on tapered lines coupled metamaterial resonators

This work presents two tapered transmission lines coupled quasi-lumped resonators as miniaturized sensors intended for liquid mixtures concentration measurement. The first resonator is designed in the parallel plate's topology, and the second one in the coplanar waveguide topology. The main part of the aforementioned resonator is an interdigital capacitor where the confinement of an intense electric field is ensured. The sensing principle is based on the shift of the resonance frequency according to the liquid fraction variation. Due to their small electric size, small sample volume and other advantages, also in comparison with other sensors based on the use of conventional SRRs, the proposed quasi-lumped resonators offer inexpensive compact structures. Examples of operation of the sensors with methanol/ethanol mixtures samples are presented to highlight the performance of the proposed resonators for near field sensing applications. Simulation results are exploited by using Ansoft High Frequency Software Simulator (HFSS).
A particle swarm optimization-based method for multiobjective design optimizations

A particle swarm optimization (PSO) based algorithm for finding the Pareto solutions of multiobjective design problems is proposed. To enhance the global searching ability of the available PSOs, a novel formula for updating the particles' velocity and position, as well as the introduction of craziness, are reported. To handle a multiobjective design problem using the improved PSO, a new fitness assignment mechanism is proposed. Moreover, two repositories, together with the age variables for their members, are introduced for storing and selecting the previous best positions of the particle as well as that of its companions. Besides, the use of age variables to enhance the diversity of the solutions is also described. The proposed method is tested on two numerical examples with promising results.
Potential Role of Maize-Legume Intercropping Systems to Improve Soil Fertility Status under Smallholder Farming Systems for Sustainable Agriculture in India

The Indian population is growing rapidly (1.25 billion) and it has to fulfill its food and nutrition requirement. A collaborative strategy should be adopted for increasing productivity by intensifying available land use system. Intercropping is advanced management practices of soil fertility status, consisting of cultivating two or more crops in the same space at the same time, which have been practiced in past decades and achieved the goals of agriculture. The most common advantage of intercropping is the production of greater yield on a given piece of land by making more efficient use of the available resources using a mixture of crops of different rooting ability, canopy structure, height, and nutrient requirements based on the complementary utilization of growth resources by the component crops. Moreover, intercropping improves soil fertility through atmosphere nitrogen fixation from atmosphere (150 tons/year) with the use of legumes, increases soil conservation through greater ground cover than sole cropping. Also, intercropping systems are beneficial to the smallholder farmers in the low-input and/or high-risk environment of the sub-tropic, where intercropping of maize and legumes is widespread among smallholder farmers due to the ability of the legume to contribute to addressing the problem of declining levels of soil fertility. The principal reasons for smallholder farmers to intercrop are flexibility, profit maximization, risk minimization, soil conservation, improvement of soil fertility, weed, pests and diseases minimizing and balanced nutrition. However, intercropping has some disadvantages such as the selection of the appropriate crop species, including extra work in preparing and planting the seed mixture and also extra work during crop management practices, including harvest. This is a review paper covering the role of maize legume intercropping systems to improved soil fertility status under smallholder farms of semi-arid area of India. The intercropping systems are useful in terms  Manuscript received April 23, 2015; revised June 26, 2015. of increasing productivity and profitability, water and radiation use efficiency, control of weeds, pests and diseases. The critical role of atmosphere nitrogen fixation and the amounts of N transferred to associated non-leguminous crops determines the extent of benefits. In intercropping, land equivalent ratio (LER), benefit cost ratio (B:C) and monetary advantage index (MAI) are used to assess the system productivity and its economic benefits. In this study, the work carried out by researchers about different intercropping system is discussed, and it would be beneficial to the researchers who are involved in this field.
Development of Proliferative Diabetic Retinopathy in African-Americans and Whites With Type 1 Diabetes

OBJECTIVE To investigate the comparable risk of developing proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) in African-Americans and whites with type 1 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Using a cohort design with the sample drawn from medical records, the sample consisted of 312 people with type 1 diabetes (97 African-Americans, 215 whites) having at least two visits to a Model Demonstration Unit with gradeable fundus photographs (stereo, color, 7 standard fields). Excluded were subjects with preexisting or treated PDR or hemoglobinopathy. Masked grading of the fundus photographs was conducted at the Wisconsin Reading Center. RESULTS At baseline, African-Americans had poorer glycemic control (mean HbA1 of 11.3 vs. 10.0%, P < 0.0001), higher systolic blood pressure (mean of 117 vs. 110 mmHg, P < 0.001), and were older (mean of 26.8 vs. 19.3 years, P < 0.0001) than the white subjects. African-Americans also tended to have slightly longer duration of diabetes and length of follow- up. In the African-Americans, 17.5% developed PDR, compared with 10.2% in the 215 whites, for an odds ratio (OR) of 1.86 (95% CI 0.93–3.70). When adjusted for baseline glycemic control, retinopathy grade, and length of follow-up, race was not a significant risk factor (OR = 0.73, 95% CI 0.30–1.78). CONCLUSIONS African-Americans with type 1 diabetes may have a higher rate of developing PDR. The observed racial difference, however, is attributable to the presence of a worse risk factor profile, especially to poorer glycemic control. Efforts should be expanded to improve the care for all individuals with poor glycemic control.
Discovery of the Twitter Bursty Botnet

Many Twitter users are bots. They can be used for spamming, opinion manipulation and online fraud. Recently we discovered the Star Wars botnet, consisting of more than 350,000 bots tweeting random quotations exclusively from Star Wars novels. The bots were exposed because they tweeted uniformly from any location within two rectangle-shaped geographic zones covering Europe and the USA, including sea and desert areas in the zones. In this paper, we report another unusual behaviour of the Star Wars bots, that the bots were created in bursts or batches, and they only tweeted in their first few minutes since creation. Inspired by this observation, we discovered an even larger Twitter botnet, the Bursty botnet with more than 500,000 bots. Our preliminary study showed that the Bursty botnet was directly responsible for a large-scale online spamming attack in 2012. Most bot detection algorithms have been based on assumptions of `common' features that were supposedly shared by all bots. Our discovered botnets, however, do not show many of those features; instead, they were detected by their distinct, unusual tweeting behaviours that were unknown until now.
Consent-based access control for secure and privacy-preserving health information exchange

Electronic health record exchanges are crucial functions of modern healthcare systems. These components are fundamental in providing quality care and enable for a larger spectrum of services. A framework which protects patient information during data exchanges is essential for healthcare systems. To achieve security and privacy-preservation for information exchange, we propose a consent-based access control CBAC mechanism for healthcare systems. A consent is an authorization initiated by a patient for an intended data requester via an agreement between them. After obtaining the consent from the patient, a healthcare organization can gain access to the data, which is encrypted by a healthcare provider. This is achieved by a cryptographic primitive: conditional proxy re-encryption. By doing so, patient medical data is protected against access of unauthorized parties, including public data center. Additionally, the proposed scheme achieves collusion resistance. Furthermore, mutual authentication and contextual privacy are attained. Performance evaluation demonstrates that the proposed CBAC scheme can achieve security and privacy preservation with high computational efficiency. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Development of String Type Flexible Displacement Sensor to Measure the Movement of Robot and Human Body

An importance of wearable devices in the field of medical treatment such as nursing care and rehabilitation has been strongly recognized. Also, the development of the power assisted device has been done to support the nursing care work for the elderly. The purpose of our study is to develop a flexible displacement sensor and bending sensor which can measure the movement of human body, flexible actuator or flexible joint of the robot by mounting on the surface of them. The developed string type flexible displacement sensor (FDS for short) consists of two fixed electrodes, a slide electrode and a nylon string coated with carbon (NSCC for short). It works as a flexible potentiometer by sliding the slide electrode along NSCC. We confirmed that the proposed sensor worked well by carrying out the position control of a McKibben artificial muscle with the tested sensor. We also proposed the flexible bending sensor that can measure the bending angle for various bending directions such as the movement of flexible joint of robot. The sensor consists of four tested FDSs, a coil spring and two plastic covers. The NSCCs are installed through the coil spring. We investigated the relation between bending angle and output voltages from four FDSs both experimentally and theoretically. As a result, we confirmed that the proposed sensor can work well and the proposed analytical model can predict well the bending angle and bending direction.
RUGRAT: Evaluating program analysis and testing tools and compilers with large generated random benchmark applications

Benchmarks are heavily used in different areas of computer science to evaluate algorithms and tools. In program analysis and testing, open‐source and commercial programs are routinely used as benchmarks to evaluate different aspects of algorithms and tools. Unfortunately, many of these programs are written by programmers who introduce different biases, not to mention that it is very difficult to find programs that can serve as benchmarks with high reproducibility of results. We propose a novel approach for generating random benchmarks for evaluating program analysis and testing tools and compilers. Our approach uses stochastic parse trees, where language grammar production rules are assigned probabilities that specify the frequencies with which instantiations of these rules will appear in the generated programs. We implemented our tool for Java and applied it to generate a set of large benchmark programs of up to 5M lines of code each with which we evaluated different program analysis and testing tools and compilers. The generated benchmarks let us independently rediscover several issues in the evaluated tools. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
New insights into the role of hilar ectopic granule cells in the dentate gyrus based on quantitative anatomic analysis and three‐dimensional reconstruction

The dentate gyrus is one of two main areas of the mammalian brain where neurons are born throughout adulthood, a phenomenon called postnatal neurogenesis. Most of the neurons that are generated are granule cells (GCs), the major principal cell type in the dentate gyrus. Some adult‐born granule cells develop in ectopic locations, such as the dentate hilus. The generation of hilar ectopic granule cells (HEGCs) is greatly increased in several animal models of epilepsy and has also been demonstrated in surgical specimens from patients with intractable temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Herein we review the results of our quantitative neuroanatomic analysis of HEGCs that were filled with Neurobiotin following electrophysiologic characterization in hippocampal slices. The data suggest that two types of HEGCs exist, based on a proximal or distal location of the cell body relative to the granule cell layer, and based on the location of most of the dendrites, in the molecular layer or hilus. Three‐dimensional reconstruction revealed that the dendrites of distal HEGCs can extend along the transverse and longitudinal axis of the hippocampus. Analysis of axons demonstrated that HEGCs have projections that contribute to the normal mossy fiber innervation of CA3 as well as the abnormal sprouted fibers in the inner molecular layer of epileptic rodents (mossy fiber sprouting). These data support the idea that HEGCs could function as a “hub” cell in the dentate gyrus and play a critical role in network excitability.
Non-orthogonal multiple access with weighted sum-rate optimization for downlink broadcast channel

This paper presents a novel non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme applicable to the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) downlink broadcast system. An optimal iterative beamforming design is utilized to the NOMA scheme. The weighted sum rate is used as the objective criterion to design the beamforming matrix at the base station (BS). The users in a typical cluster located in the same radiation beam are precoded in the same weighting factors. We propose an algorithm to schedule the users into clusters to achieve a higher sum-rate. The signals of users in one cluster are precoded in the NOMA scheme. The successive interference cancelation (SIC) technique is used at the receiver to extract the desired signal from a superposition signal. To take advantage of the SIC, a power allocation algorithm is proposed to further increase the sum-rate of this system and guarantee the performance of users with the weak channel condition. Numerical results show that the proposed NOMA scheme, together with the beamforming, user scheduling, and power allocation, can significantly improve the system performance.
Effects of dietary energy concentration on utilisation of energy by broiler chickens and on body composition determined by carcass analysis and predicted using tritium.

Synopsis Groups of 10 male, 10 female and 10 unsexed broiler chickens were given eight diets with energy concentrations ranging from 2.3 to 3.6 Mcal ME/kg in two experiments. Diets with a metabolisable energy concentration of about 3.1 Mcal/kg were found to be optimal for growth to a specified live‐weight. Carcass analysis gave much smaller values for nitrogen retention than did estimates from food intake and excreta. Retention measured by the latter method was influenced by the energy concentration of the diets. Body composition was influenced by both dietary energy concentration and sex. In general, the energy and fat content of the carcass increased with increasing dietary energy concentration although there were overall differences in fat content between male and female chickens, and also between birds in experiment 1 and experiment 2. Tritiated water was used to predict body water space enabling body composition to be estimated. Comparisons between determined body water content and tritiated water sp.
Neurophysiological control of the secretion of gonadotrophin-releasing hormone and luteinizing hormone in the sheep--a review.

The anterior pituitary gland secretes pulses of luteinizing hormone (LH) in response to pulses of gonadotrophin-releasing hormone (GnRH) released into the hypophysial portal blood by the hypothalamus. The pulsatile nature of the secretions is very important because the frequency of the pulses is directly related to the activity of the GnRH neurons. We can therefore take advantage of this phenomenon to develop mechanistic interpretations of responses to experimental treatments designed to unravel the neural pathways that influence what is, arguably, the most important individual signal controlling the activity of the reproductive system. We might also resolve the disagreements in the literature covering the neuropharmacology of gonadotrophin secretion. In this review, we describe work towards this end in the sheep. Most (95%) of the 2500 GnRH cell bodies in the sheep brain are located in a region covering the anterior hypothalamus, the medial preoptic area, the diagonal band of Broca, and the septum. The axons of up to 50% of these cells terminate in the organum vasculosum of the lamina terminalis. The remainder terminate in the median eminence and form the final common pathway for the many factors that affect gonadotrophin secretion. Among the factors known to affect the frequency of the pulses (or the activity of the GnRH neurons) are nutrition, pheromones, photoperiod and gonadal steroids (negative and positive feedback). Factors that affect GnRH pulse amplitude are more difficult to determine because variations in pituitary responsiveness prevent the use of LH patterns as a 'bioassay'. Techniques developed recently have allowed the direct measurement of GnRH pulse amplitude and revealed inhibitory effects of oestradiol, but we do not know whether this effect is due to a reduction in the amount of GnRH released by each neurone or a reduction in the number of neurones releasing a pulse. It is unlikely that the factors that alter pulse frequency do so by directly affecting the GnRH cells. For example, it is obvious that other cells, with specific receptors for pheromonal or nutritional stimuli, formulate a signal that is transferred to the GnRH cells via interneurones. Similarly, it is likely that a hypothalamic clock intervenes between photoperiodic inputs and GnRH output. Opioidergic neurons have been proposed as a link in this system, but the complexity of their action makes it unlikely that they directly affect the GnRH neurons. The responses to steroids are simple and rapid, but steroid receptors have not been found in GnRH cells, so at least one other set of interneurones is involved. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Do metastases metastasize?

Metastatic disease is a major cause of morbidity and mortality. However, it is not clear if all metastases originate from the primary tumour or whether metastases themselves have the capacity to metastasize. In this review, the evidence for the latter phenomenon, and its biological and clinical implications, is discussed. Copyright © 2004 Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.