Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Word Processing Is Faster than Picture Processing in Alzheimer's Disease

Objective Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by a slow progressive impairment of episodic memory. Many studies have shown that AD exhibits deterioration of semantic memory during the course of disease progression. We previously reported that AD patients exhibited severe access disorders in the semantic memory system, using the Momentary Presentation Task (20 or 300 ms). In this study, we studied access disorder in patients with AD by the use of object difference (pictures vs words) methods. Methods 56 patients with probable AD (NINCDS-ADRDA, mean age 79.0 years) and 11 healthy controls (HC) (mean age 67.0 years) were studied. Ten pictures and 10 corresponding Japanese Hiragana words were presented arbitrarily for 20 and 300 ms on the monitor screen which were correctly named at the usual confrontation setting (i.e., semantic memory preserved). They were asked to name the pictures or to read the words or nonsense syllables aloud. Results The AD group showed significantly lower scores than the HC group, especially for the 20 ms condition. For the type of stimuli, the AD patients had better performances for words > pictures > nonsense syllables, although no differences for the HC group. The effect of AD severity was noted, moderate > severe stage. Conclusions Our results suggested that the processing speed in AD patients may have reduced, even if the semantic memory were preserved. These data indicated that the difference in the processing speeds by the type of stimuli (pictures, words, and nonsense syllables) may be a character of AD patients.
Problem internet use among children and adolescents from the general practitioner’s perspective

Diagnosis of internet and new technology overuse by young people may, in general, contribute to a rather vague picture of “addiction”, and with it a sense of inadequacy as far as making effective therapeutic recommendations is concerned. Due to the lack of unambiguous recommendations on treatment, this paper provides a review of the state of knowledge about excessive involvement of children and adolescents in internet activity. Particular emphasis was placed on the critical revision of the available knowledge on so-called internet addiction and presenting utilitarian content for the daily paediatrician or family doctor’s clinical practice. The making of differential diagnosis can be difficult. In case of doubt, it is worth directing a young patient to a psychiatrist to exclude other than “adStreszczenie
High sensitivity and versatility fiber sensors based on carbon nanomaterials for in situ monitoring of composites manufacturing

Sensor technology based on carbon nanomaterials (CNM) provides a variety of promising strategies for implementing the self-sensing and diagnostic functionalities of next-generation layered composites. Compared to the study of excess composite structure deformation and cracking, the technology for monitoring the manufacturing stage of composites using CNM is rather limited. This paper systematically investigates carbon nanotubes (CNTs) coated, graphene coated and carbon fiber enabled sensors for monitoring the complete molding process of composites through acquiring the real-time resistance change of sensors. In comparison to graphene-coated and carbon fibers with densely and continuously packed graphitic structures, the CNT coated fiber sensor with the entangled and loosely packed porous network shows far superior performance for sensing different processing stages of composites, including resin infiltration, gelation and curing.
LETTER TO EDITOR: INTERFERON-BASED THERAPY FOR CHRONIC HEPATITIS C: CURRENT AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES

W greatly enjoyed reading the excellent meta-analysis by Alavian and colleagues (1) on the efficacy and safety of peginterferon (PEGIFN) alpha-1a vs. 2b for the treatment of chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. The immune effects of interferons, often in combination with other drugs, have been utilized to treat several diseases, such as HCV and HCV-related autoimmune diseases and liver diseases. Several different types of interferon are approved for use in humans. For instance, in January 2001 the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of pegylated interferon-alpha; in this formulation, polyethylene glycol is added to make the interferon last longer in the body. Peginterferon alpha-2b (Pegintron) was the first treatment approved for public use, and approval for peginterferon alpha-2a (Pegasys), which has a longer duration in serum, followed in October 2002. When used with the antiviral drug ribavirin, pegylated interferon is effective in the treatment of HCV; however, up to now, there is no convincing clinical evidence that peginterferon alpha-2a has a different response than peginterferon alpha-2b treatment. In the meta-analysis reported herein, peginterferon alpha-2a showed an early virological response at treatment week 4 (EVR) and a sustained virological response (SVR) at week 12, and alpha-2a had a better response than did alpha-2b in patients with HCV genotypes 1-4 (OR 1.38) and genotype 2 (OR 4.06). These data are of interest because single studies conducted before 2009 suggested a trend towards peginterferon alpha-2a, but the treatment reached significance only when several studies were pooled together (hereafter the meta-analysis refers to 3,518 grouped patients). In addition, the review also offers important information regarding safety, indicating a difference among the two treatments in only the causation of neutropenia (<750c/mm3), with an overall estimate of OR 0.75 of discontinuing the peginterferon alpha-2a treatment. Usually, the use of a granulocyte colony stimulating factor is effective in correcting neutropenia (2, 3). Thus, the review provides important information about the clinical steps and best practices in the treatment of chronic HCV infection with peginterferon alpha-2a. A limitation of the study is that no data were reported on liver histology, an area that should be explored in the future.
Alkaloids from Plants with Antimalarial Activity: A Review of Recent Studies

Malaria is one of the major health problems in developing countries. The disease kills a large number of people every year and also affects financial status of many countries. Resistance of the plasmodium parasite, the causative agent, to the existing drugs, including chloroquine, mefloquine, and artemisinin based combination therapy (ACT), is a serious global issue in malaria treatment and control. This warrants an urgent quest for novel compounds, particularly from natural sources such as medicinal plants. Alkaloids have over the years been recognized as important phytoconstituents with interesting biological properties. In fact, the first successful antimalarial drug was quinine, an alkaloid, which was extracted from Cinchona tree. In the present review work, the alkaloids isolated and reported recently (2013 till 2019) to possess antimalarial activity are presented. Several classes of alkaloids, including terpenoidal, indole, bisindole, quinolone, and isoquinoline alkaloids, were identified with a promising antimalarial activity. It is hoped that the reports of the review work will spur further research into the structural modification and/or development of the interesting compounds as novel antimalarial drugs.
Multi-Tissue DNA Methylation Remodeling at Mitochondrial Quality Control Genes According to Diet in Rat Aging Models

An adequate mitochondrial quality control system ensures the maintenance of a healthy mitochondrial pool so as to slow down the progressive accumulation of damage affecting mitochondrial function during aging and diseases. The amount and quality of nutrients availability were demonstrated to induce a process of bioenergetics adaptation by influencing the above system via epigenetic modifications. Here, we analyzed DNA samples from differently-aged rats fed a standard or low-calorie diet to evaluate tissue-specific changes in DNA methylation of CpG sites falling within Polg, Polg2, Tfam, Fis1, and Opa1 genes. We found significant changes according to age and tissue type and the administration of the low-calorie diet is responsible for a prevalent increase in DNA methylation levels. Particularly, this increase was more appreciable when this diet was administered during adulthood and at old age. Regression analysis demonstrated that DNA methylation patterns of the analyzed genes were negatively correlated with their expression levels. Data we obtained provide the first evidence about changes in DNA methylation patterns of genes involved in the mitochondrial biogenesis in response to specific diets and demonstrated that epigenetic modifications are involved in the modulation of mitochondrial dynamics driven by age and nutrition.
AUGMENTING PROTEIN NETWORK EMBEDDINGS

Computational methods that infer the function of proteins are key to understanding life at the molecular level. In recent years, representation learning has emerged as a powerful paradigm to discover new patterns among entities as varied as images, words, speech, molecules. In typical representation learning, there is only one source of data or one level of abstraction at which the learned representation occurs. However, proteins can be described by their primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary structure or even as nodes in protein-protein interaction networks. Given that protein function is an emergent property of all these levels of interactions in this work, we learn joint representations from both amino acid sequence and multilayer networks representing tissue-specific protein-protein interactions. Using these hybrid representations, we show that simple machine learning models trained using these hybrid representations outperform existing network-based methods on the task of tissue-specific protein function prediction on 13 out of 13 tissues. Furthermore, these representations outperform existing ones by 14% on average.
On Solvability of an Indefinite Riccati Equation

This note concerns a class of matrix Riccati equations associated with stochastic linear-quadratic optimal control problems with indefinite state and control weighting costs. A novel sufficient condition of solvability of such equations is derived, based on a monotonicity property of a newly defined set. Such a set is used to describe a family of solvable equations.
A Tailless Flapping Wing MAV Performing Monocular Visual Servoing Tasks

In the field of robotics, a major challenge is achieving high levels of autonomy with small vehicles that have limited mass and power budgets. The main motivation for designing such small vehicles is that compared to their larger counterparts, they have the potential to be safer, and hence be available and work together in large numbers. One of the key components in micro robotics is efficient software design to optimally utilize the computing power available. This paper describes the computer vision and control algorithms used to achieve autonomous flight with the [Formula: see text]30[Formula: see text]g tailless flapping wing robot, used to participate in the International Micro Air Vehicle Conference and Competition (IMAV 2018) indoor microair vehicle competition. Several tasks are discussed: line following, circular gate detection and fly through. The emphasis throughout this paper is on augmenting traditional techniques with the goal to make these methods work with limited computing power while obtaining robust behavior.
Influence of Antemortem and Slaughtering Practices on the pH of Pork and Chicken Meats

This study aimed to document and determine the effects of antemortem and slaughtering practices on the post-mortem pH of pork and chicken meats. Assessment of selected hog slaughterhouses (SHs) and poultry dressing plants (PDPs) located in Valenzuela City, Philippines was conducted to gather basic information regarding the practices of each plant. The post-mortem pH at 45 min and 24 h for pork (n = 39) and post-mortem pH at 20 min and 24 h for chicken (n = 24) meats produced on the visited plants were determined. Measured pH values were used as the basis for classifying meat quality as pale, soft, and exudative (PSE); dark, firm, and dry (DFD); and acceptable meat. Early post-mortem temperature was also determined in both types of meat. Ocular plant inspection revealed that the average age of pigs and chickens slaughtered were 4 mo and 40–45 d old, respectively. Animals were transported from farm to slaughterhouse in a forward open cab vehicle with a partition at a distance that ranged from 45–60 km for pigs and 65–172 km for chicken with a travel time of 1–3 h. The resting period of pigs prior to slaughter was 1.5–8 h and 2–4 h for chicken. Generally, a higher percentage of suspected DFD (38.46% vs. 30.30%) and PSE (17.95% vs. 6.06%) in pork meat was observed at early post-mortem pH in comparison to ultimate pH. The majority of the PSE-like meat came from pigs slaughtered using electric stunner while DFD incidence occurred from pigs with a short resting period prior to slaughter (1.5–2 h). For chicken meat, 29% of the samples were suspected PSE based on ultimate pH while the remaining 71% were meat with suspected acceptable quality. PSE-like meat was recorded from chicken transported from farm to abattoir with a longer travel period (3 h).
Lipid metabolism in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

: Dysregulated lipid metabolism plays crucial roles in various diseases, including diabetes mellitus, cancer, and neurodegeneration. Recent studies suggest that alterations in major lipid metabolic pathways contribute to pathogenesis of lung diseases, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). These changes allow lung tissue to meet the energy needs and trigger anabolic pathways that initiate the synthesis of active molecules directly involved in the in ﬂ ammation. In this review, we summarize the changes of catabolism and anabolism of lipids, lipid molecules including lipid mediators, lipid synthesis transcription factors, cholesterol, and phospholipids, and how those lipid molecules partici-pate in the initiation and resolution of in ﬂ ammation in COPD. is converted to acylcarnitine by CPT1 on ther outer mitochondrial membrane and transported to the mitochondrial matrix. In the mitochondrial matrix, fatty acyl-CoA is oxidized to acetyl-CoA through fatty acid oxidation. in lung tissue implicated in alveolar cell apoptosis.
Federalism and Consociationalism in India

The concept and implication of a federal form of governance is becoming increasingly important and relevant in the modern world. From the domestic management of large states with notable socio-cultural differences to the formation of international bodies and systems. Federalism would appear to be the solution to mankind’s quest for an egalitarian and just system of governance. [1] However, as R. Kahn argues; “democratic systems permit – and even promote – people’s right of dissent. ”[2] If the federal and consociational approach is particularly useful as a form of organising the political and cultural life of citizens in multiethnic societies, then the permitted right of descent is surely a dangerous and volatile aspect of it. [3] India is a classic plural society and a massive federal polity and as such is especially relevant as a case study if one hopes to discover the implications of federalism and consociationalism on ethnically diverse societies. [4]
Improving quality of livestock products to meet market and community demands

As consumer interest in the link between diet and human health and in the ethics of food production increases assurances about the background origin of food are sought. In the case of animal-derived foods, such as meat, the animal’s diet is an intrinsic component of the food’s production and of its subsequent nutritional quality. Thus, there is a need to develop ways of validating the authenticity of the animal diet. Among the approaches to authenticate the background diet of ruminants is the measurement of components in meat (muscle and adipose tissue) and other tissues that are directly influenced by the diet, including fatty acids, carotenoids, vitamins, volatile organic compounds and elemental stable isotope ratios, as well as measurement of indirect indices such as spectral properties. While each is useful in its own right, the reliability of different measurements, for diet authentication purposes, depends on the sensitivity of the analytes measured to changes in diet, and on tissue turnover in response to changes in dietary constituents. Of the analyses discussed, stable isotope analysis in muscle and incremental tissues is presented as a particularly powerful tool for diet reconstruction.
Mechanical Properties of Municipal Solid Waste Incinerator (MSWI) Bottom Ash as Alternatives of Subgrade Materials

The rapid development of industrialization, urbanization, and population of the society augments the rising amount of municipal solid waste (MSW). With the advantage of considerably reducing mass and volume of solid wastes and generating energy, the incineration is a widely used treatment method for MSW. During the incineration process, the organic substances contained in the wastes are combusted, and the massive residues are remained. Of the incineration residues, bottom ash takes up to 80–90%, and the remainders are fly ash along with air pollution control residues. Dealing with the municipal solid waste incineration (MSWI) bottom ash in a sustainable manner is the primary principle. Significantly, MSWI bottom ash has been successfully utilized in diverse beneficial applications in recent decades, especially in civil engineering applications. This paper investigates the mechanical properties and validity of MSWI bottom ash as applicable substitutes of conventional subgrade materials. For this reason, a series of direct shear and CBR tests are performed on specimens with different water contents and dry densities.
A Detail-Preserving Cross-Scale Learning Strategy for CNN-Based Pansharpening

The fusion of a single panchromatic (PAN) band with a lower resolution multispectral (MS) image to raise the MS resolution to that of the PAN is known as pansharpening. In the last years a paradigm shift from model-based to data-driven approaches, in particular making use of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), has been observed. Motivated by this research trend, in this work we introduce a cross-scale learning strategy for CNN pansharpening models. Early CNN approaches resort to a resolution downgrading process to produce suitable training samples. As a consequence, the actual performance at the target resolution of the models trained at a reduced scale is an open issue. To cope with this shortcoming we propose a more complex loss computation that involves simultaneously reduced and full resolution training samples. Our experiments show a clear image enhancement in the full-resolution framework, with a negligible loss in the reduced-resolution space.
Modelling Reveals the Decision Making Processes Underlying Negative Judgement Bias in Rats: Modelling Decision Making during Negative Affect

Human decision making is modified by emotional state. Rodents exhibit similar biases during interpretation of ambiguous cues that can be altered by affective state manipulations. In this study, the impact of negative affective state on judgement bias in rats was measured using an ambiguous-cue interpretation task. Acute treatment with an anxiogenic drug (FG7142), and chronic restraint stress and social isolation both induced a bias towards more negative interpretation of the ambiguous cue. The diffusion model was fit to behavioural data to allow further analysis of the underlying decision making processes. To uncover the way in which parameters vary together in relation to affective state manipulations, independent component analysis was conducted on rate of information accumulation and distances to decision threshold parameters for control data. Results from this analysis were applied to parameters from negative affective state manipulations. These projected components were compared to control components to reveal the changes in decision making processes that are due to affective state manipulations. Negative affective bias in rodents induced by either FG7142 or chronic stress is due to a combination of more negative interpretation of the ambiguous cue, reduced anticipation of the high reward and increased anticipation of the low reward.
Understanding the Performance of Components in Betting Against Beta

Betting against beta (BAB) can be seen as the combination of three investable component portfolios: Two cross-sectional components exploiting the beta anomaly attributable to stock selection and rank weighting scheme, and one time-series component with a dynamic net-long position due to “beta-parity”. Virtually all superior performance of BAB stems from the time-series component. The two cross-sectional components only provide hedging benefits in market downturns. The time-series component has modest portfolio turnover. Betting against correlation (BAC) yields similar findings, except that the two cross-sectional components in BAC outperform on a risk-adjusted basis. However, this effect arises purely from the positive association between firm size and stock correlation. Excluding micro-cap stocks, the performance of BAC shrinks more than that of BAB. Overall, only the time-series component remains as the robust source for the profits of the BA-type strategies.
Modelling of Refrigerant Distribution in an Oil-Free Refrigeration System using R134a

Increasing number of refrigeration units has led to an increase of CO2 emissions and the destruction of the ozone layer. Using low global warming potential (GWP) refrigerants, improving the efficiency of vapour compression refrigeration (VCR) units, and minimising refrigerant leakages can reduce the global warming effect. Investigating the refrigerant distribution under varied operating conditions can provide a deeper understanding of refrigerant charge optimization. This study proposed a model of refrigerant mass distribution in a prototype oil-free VCR system using a linear compressor with variable strokes and R134a. The absence of the oil lubricant allows the adoption of compact heat exchangers, such as micro-channels, so that the total refrigerant charge can be reduced significantly. The predicted total refrigerant charge has a Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of 3.7%. The simulation results indicate that refrigerant distributed in the condenser is most sensitive to operating conditions and total refrigerant charges. The refrigerant accumulated in the condenser is 6.8% higher at a total refrigerant charge of 0.33 kg than that of 0.22 kg. For a total refrigerant charge of 0.33 kg, 72.1% of the total refrigerant can accumulate in the condenser. At a fixed pressure ratio, the refrigerant as a two-phase form in the condenser decreases slightly with the increase of compressor strokes, resulting in a larger mass flow rate, thus cooling capacity. The present model can be adapted for optimization of a refrigeration unit and its components.