Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Human hand image analysis extracting finger coordinates and axial vectors: Finger axis detection using blob extraction and line fitting

This paper presents a finger cut-off algorithm for accurate calculation of fingertip coordinates based on hand contours. It provides not only information on exact fingertip position but also orientation and lengths of all fingers in the image. Algorithm can be used for development of user interfaces based on human gesture analysis, such as TouchTable, multimodal gesture based user interface developed by the author. Advantages of proposed algorithm over fingertip detection algorithm originally used in TouchTable are described.
Cannabis for dyskinesia in Parkinson disease

Background: The long-term treatment of Parkinson disease (PD) may be complicated by the development of levodopa-induced dyskinesia. Clinical and animal model data support the view that modulation of cannabinoid function may exert an antidyskinetic effect. The authors conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial to examine the hypothesis that cannabis may have a beneficial effect on dyskinesia in PD. Methods: A 4-week dose escalation study was performed to assess the safety and tolerability of cannabis in six PD patients with levodopa-induced dyskinesia. Then a randomized placebo-controlled crossover study (RCT) was performed, in which 19 PD patients were randomized to receive oral cannabis extract followed by placebo or vice versa. Each treatment phase lasted for 4 weeks with an intervening 2-week washout phase. The primary outcome measure was a change in Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) (items 32 to 34) dyskinesia score. Secondary outcome measures included the Rush scale, Bain scale, tablet arm drawing task, and total UPDRS score following a levodopa challenge, as well as patient-completed measures of a dyskinesia activities of daily living (ADL) scale, the PDQ-39, on-off diaries, and a range of category rating scales. Results: Seventeen patients completed the RCT. Cannabis was well tolerated, and had no pro- or antiparkinsonian action. There was no evidence for a treatment effect on levodopa-induced dyskinesia as assessed by the UPDRS, or any of the secondary outcome measures. Conclusions: Orally administered cannabis extract resulted in no objective or subjective improvement in dyskinesias or parkinsonism.
Extension of Kirchhoff method under stationary phase approximation to determination of polarimetric thermal emission of the sea

Wind direction over the sea can be determined from radiometric measurements of the third Stokes parameter (T/sub U/). The Kirchhoff method is extended under the stationary phase approximation to compute the dependence of T/sub U/ on frequency, wind speed and incidence angle. Numerical predictions, in agreement with experimental measurements, are presented.
Beta-glucan, a "specific" biologic response modifier that uses antibodies to target tumors for cytotoxic recognition by leukocyte complement receptor type 3 (CD11b/CD18).

beta-Glucans were identified 36 years ago as a biologic response modifier that stimulated tumor rejection. In vitro studies have shown that beta-glucans bind to a lectin domain within complement receptor type 3 (CR3; known also as Mac-1, CD11b/CD18, or alphaMbeta2-integrin, that functions as an adhesion molecule and a receptor for factor I-cleaved C3b, i.e., iC3b) resulting in the priming of this iC3b receptor for cytotoxicity of iC3b-opsonized target cells. This investigation explored mechanisms of tumor therapy with soluble beta-glucan in mice. Normal mouse sera were shown to contain low levels of Abs reactive with syngeneic or allogeneic tumor lines that activated complement, depositing C3 onto tumors. Implanted tumors became coated with IgM, IgG, and C3, and the absent C3 deposition on tumors in SCID mice was reconstituted with IgM or IgG isolated from normal sera. Therapy of mice with glucan- or mannan-rich soluble polysaccharides exhibiting high affinity for CR3 caused a 57-90% reduction in tumor weight. In young mice with lower levels of tumor-reactive Abs, the effectiveness of beta-glucan was enhanced by administration of a tumor-specific mAb, and in SCID mice, an absent response to beta-glucan was reconstituted with normal IgM or IgG. The requirement for C3 on tumors and CR3 on leukocytes was highlighted by therapy failures in C3- or CR3-deficient mice. Thus, the tumoricidal function of CR3-binding polysaccharides such as beta-glucan in vivo is defined by natural and elicited Abs that direct iC3b deposition onto neoplastic cells, making them targets for circulating leukocytes bearing polysaccharide-primed CR3. Therapy fails when tumors lack iC3b, but can be restored by tumor-specific Abs that deposit iC3b onto the tumors.
Adefovir dipivoxil in the treatment of chronic hepatitis B virus infection

Adefovir dipivoxil (Hepsera®, Gilead Sciences) is a prodrug of adefovir, with potent antiviral activity against hepatitis B virus. Adefovir dipivoxil therapy, 10 mg daily for 48 weeks, is effective in hepatitis B e antigen-positive and -negative chronic hepatitis B. In hepatitis B e antigen-negative chronic hepatitis B, adefovir dipivoxil was recently found to maintain its efficacy even after 3 years of therapy. Adefovir dipivoxil is effective in patients with compensated or decompensated chronic viral B liver disease, and in pre- and post-transplant hepatitis B virus patients who develop resistance to lamivudine (Epivir®, GlaxoSmithKline). It is well-tolerated and safe even after the third year of long-term therapy, and is associated with low rates of viral resistance. All these characteristics make adefovir dipivoxil an important drug for the treatment of hepatitis B virus infection and an excellent candidate for long-term maintenance therapy in chronic viral B liver disease.
Li-Fraumeni Syndrome: a p53 Family Affair

The p53 alterations frequently found in human tumors are missense mutations in the DNA binding domain. These p53 mutations have been shown to have gain-of-function or dominant negative properties in multiple experiments. The consequences of these p53 mutations at physiological levels on the development of a tumor were unclear. Using mouse models, three recent papers have shed light on the mechanisms of mutant p53 and its family members, p63 and p73, in tumorigenesis. Interestingly, the p53 point mutant mice had a similar phenotype to p53 family compound mutant mice suggesting that there is an interplay between the p53 family members in tumorigenesis and Li-Fraumeni syndrome.
Screening for domestic violence in an oncology clinic: barriers and potential solutions.

PURPOSE/OBJECTIVES To evaluate the implementation of a domestic violence screening protocol in an oncology clinic. DESIGN A retrospective review of a random sample of clinic medical records and qualitative surveys of nursing staff. SETTING A gynecologic oncology clinic in a large teaching hospital. SAMPLE 204 charts were abstracted and six oncology nurses completed surveys. METHODS A random sample of patients from clinic appointment schedules was selected 6 and 12 months after the implementation of a domestic violence screening protocol. A brief written survey of nursing staff also was conducted. MAIN RESEARCH VARIABLES Documentation of domestic violence screening, barriers to screening and documentation, and potential solutions to the barriers. FINDINGS Sixty-three percent of the charts reviewed had a domestic violence screening record present, but only 12% of the charts with a screening record had documentation. Patients with domestic violence screening documentation were more likely to have had five or more clinic visits during the study period. The most frequent barriers to protocol implementation cited by nursing staff were forgetting to screen or document domestic violence screening. Nursing staff recommended adding domestic violence screening questions to forms and providing reminders to screen. CONCLUSIONS Several barriers to successful implementation of a domestic violence screening protocol in a gynecologic oncology clinic, including documentation issues, were encountered. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING Nurses interested in implementing a domestic violence screening protocol in their oncology clinic should consider reviewing the barriers to domestic violence screening and documentation and the potential solutions identified in this study.
Character recognition by best anisotropic local bases and neural networks

The best basis paradigm is a lower cost alternative to the principal component analysis (PCA) for feature extraction in pattern recognition applications. Its main idea is to build a collection of bases and search for the best one in terms of e.g. best class separation. Recently, fast best basis search algorithms have been generalized for anisotropic wavelet packet bases. Anisotropy is preferable for 2-D objects since it helps capturing local image features in a better way. In this contribution, the best anisotropic basis search framework is applied to the problem of recognition of characters captured from gray-scale pictures of car license plates. The goals are to simplify the classifier and to avoid a preliminary binarization stage by extracting features directly from the gray-scale images. The collection of bases is formed by anisotropic wavelet packets. The search algorithm seeks for a basis providing the lowest-dimensional data representation preserving the inter-class separability for given training data set, measured as Euclidean distance between class centroids. The relationship between the feature extractor and classifier complexity is clarified by training neural networks for different local bases. The proposed methodology shows its superiority to PCA as it yields equal and even lower classification error rate with considerably reduced computational costs.
Is Consciousness Computationally Functional?

Consciousness is a major feature of mammalian nervous systems. Recent evidence indicates it may extend from mammals to birds and even cephalopods (Edelman, Seth 2009). Since all major biological adaptations are functional, or sequelae of biofunctions, and since brains perform computations, it would seem that consciousness must have a basic biocomputational function. Biologically, that means of course that consciousness endows nervous systems with one or more adaptive advantages leading to higher gene frequencies for those brains. Given that mammals have existed for some 200 million years, and that mammals share the thalamocortical core that supports conscious states, it is very likely that conscious brains have gathered not just one but many biocomputational functions. That certainly accords with our common sense notions of conscious (as well as unconscious) activities.
Is self-positive information more appealing than money? Individual differences in positivity bias according to depressive symptoms

ABSTRACT The self-positivity bias, which is inherent to healthy people, is known to be blunted in depression. The lack of positive or excessive negative self-reference is considered to be a potential mechanism underlying depressive rumination. However, the motivational factors that drive people to approach and avoid emotional self-related materials are still unclear. Therefore, we measured intrinsic motivation that is associated with emotional self-references by using a reward-based decision-making task (pay-per-view paradigm). Forty-nine undergraduates completed two tasks in which they were asked to choose between negative vs. positive references (Task 1) and self vs. other references (Task 2) for variable monetary rewards. Participants with lower levels of depressive symptoms showed a self-positivity bias, sacrificing rewards for the opportunity to engage in positive self-reference, whereas those with higher levels of depressive symptoms had no specific preference for either negative or positive self-reference (Task 1). However, all participants sacrificed monetary rewards for the opportunity for self-reference versus other reference, regardless of the symptom level or the primed valence (Task 2). Together, these findings suggest that depressive cognition could be characterised by the lack of intrinsic motivation for positive self-reference, which is attributable to the biased valence selection, but not to self–other preferences.
The sinusoidal galvanic body-sway response.

Galvanic body-sway responses to sinusoidal stimulus currents were obtained from eight neurootologically normal young adult male subjects. In all subjects, the body swayed sinusoidally in response to the sinusoidal stimulus. The most effective stimulus frequency differed in different subjects and ranged from 0.025 Hz to 0.200 Hz. The responses of all subjects declined abruptly as frequency was increased above 0.200 Hz and were barely recognizable at 0.800 Hz. Trapezoidal galvanic-response wave form and sinusoidal frequency response appeared to be related. Subjects with “a.c. ” trapezoidal responses had negative sinusoidal stimulus-response phase angles at low frequencies and a low-frequency “cutoff. ” Subjects with “d.c.” trapezoidal responses had positive phase angles at low frequencies and relatively flat frequency-response curves across the low-frequency range. Clinical cases demonstrating depression of the sinusoidal galvanic body-sway response coincident with depression of the trapezoidal response are p.
Electric field analysis for the design of LT-GaAs photoconductive terahertz antennas

To design photoconductive terahertz antennas with better performance, we have studied the electric field characteristics between the electrodes of the antennas by testing the terahertz radiation pulses emitted from five biased low-temperature-grown GaAs (LT-GaAs) antennas with different gap sizes and electrode shapes. The experimental results indicate that the electric field is mainly distributed near the two electrodes, especially near the anode. Two main reasons of this phenomenon are the different mobilities of the electrons and holes and the Schottky contact between the metal electrode and the substrate.
Reproducibility of multiple breath washout indices in the unsedated preterm neonate

Multiple breath inert gas washout (MBW) is gaining popularity for measurements of resting lung volume and ventilation inhomogeneity. Test reproducibility is an important determinant of the clinical applicability of diagnostic tests. The between‐test reproducibility of variables derived from MBW tests in newborn infants is unknown. We aimed to determine the within‐test repeatability and short‐term between‐test reproducibility of MBW variables in unsedated preterm infants. We hypothesized that measurements obtained within a 3‐day interval in clinically stable preterm infants would be reproducible and suitable for use as an objective clinical outcome measurement. In this cross‐sectional observational study, clinically stable hospitalized preterm infants whose parents had given informed consent for MBW studies were tested twice within 72 hr during quiet, unsedated sleep. Functional residual capacity (FRC), lung clearance index (LCI), and the first and second to zeroeth moment ratios (M1:M0; M2:M0) were computed from MBW traces obtained using a mainstream ultrasonic flowmeter and 4% sulphur hexafluoride (MBWSF6). Within‐test repeatability and between‐test reproducibility were determined. Within‐test repeatability (expressed as a coefficient of variability (Cv)) for differences between two and four replicate measurements on the same test occasion, were 9.3% (FRC), 9.0% (LCI), 7.6% (M1:M0), and 15.6% (M2:M0), respectively. The within‐test Cv's were not statistically different to the between‐tests Cv's, which were 7.7% (FRC), 10.3% (LCI), 6.1% (M1:M0), and 13.0% (M2:M0), respectively. Among unsedated preterm infants, between‐test reproducibility over a 3‐day interval was similar to within‐test repeatability. The wide limits of agreement may limit the application of these measures to detect a clinically significant change in condition in small preterm infants. Pediatr Pulmonol. 2010; 45:62–70. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Kinetics of Homoacetic Fermentation of Lactate by Clostridium formicoaceticum

Clostridium formicoaceticum homofermentatively converted lactate to acetate at mesophilic temperatures (30 to 42°C) and at pHs between 6.6 and 9.6. The production of acetate was found to be growth associated. Approximately 0.96 g of acetic acid and 0.066 g of cells were formed from each gram of lactic acid consumed at 37°C. The concentration of the substrate (lactate) had little or no effect on the growth rate; however, the fermentation was inhibited by acetic acid. The bacterium grew at an optimal pH of 7.6 and an optimal temperature of 37°C. Small amounts of bicarbonate were stimulatory to bacterial growth. Bacterial growth was enhanced, however, by the use of higher concentrations of bicarbonate in the media, only because higher buffer capacities were obtained and proper medium pH could be maintained for growth. Based on its ability to convert lactate to acetate, this homoacetic bacterium may be important in the anaerobic methanogenic process when lactate is a major intermediary metabolite.
Mucosal T cells: mediators or guardians of inflammatory bowel disease?

Because the mucosal immune system is continuously exposed to a myriad of potentially harmful environmental antigens, it frequently reacts with antiinflammatory/regulatory T cell responses driven by TGF‐&bgr;‐producing TH3 cells and IL‐10‐producing regulatory T cells. Intestinal inflammation in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases is thought to result from an overwhelming uncontrolled activation of the mucosal immune system induced by antigens of the normal luminal flora in genetically susceptible individuals. Inflammatory bowel disease appears to be mediated by subsets of CD4+ T lymphocytes or NK T cells secreting high levels of proinflammatory cytokines such as TNF‐&agr;. The increased expression of integrins/addressins in the inflamed gut and the increased expression of adhesion molecules on T cells facilitate migration of these pathogenic T cell subsets into the lamina propria. Additionally, the local activation of antiapoptotic pathways in pathogenic T lymphocytes leads to a further accumulation of these cells in the lamina propria, causing perpetuation and chronicity of inflammatory bowel disease. This concept is underlined by the finding that most potent immunosuppressive drugs used in treatment of inflammatory bowel disease seem to work by inducing T cell apoptosis via inhibition of STAT‐3 and NF&kgr;B‐dependent antiapoptotic pathways. Taken together, distinct T cell subsets appear to act as mediators or guardians of inflammatory bowel disease, and thus they play a central role in controlling the delicate balance between proinflammatory and antiinflammatory immune responses in the gut.
Heterogeneity of the early outward current in ventricular cells isolated from normal and hypertrophied rat hearts.

1. The nature, magnitude and kinetics of the 4‐aminopyridine‐sensitive early outward current (Ito) were analysed in isolated ventricular myocytes from the septum, the apex and the left ventricular free wall of rat ventricles using the whole‐cell voltage clamp method. The modulatory effect of pressure overload‐induced cardiac hypertrophy on the regional variations of Ito was assessed in each topographical class of cells. 2. Voltage clamp experiments were performed at room temperature (20‐25 degrees C) in the absence of Na+ on both sides of the membrane and in the presence of 3 mM CoCl2. Ito was studied from a holding potential of ‐80 mV and determined by subtraction of total outward currents elicited by the same protocols in the presence of 3 mM 4‐aminopyridine (4‐AP) from those obtained in its absence. 3. In normal hearts, membrane passive properties were very similar in each topographical class of cells. Our results confirmed that the predominant early outward current in rat ventricular cells was 4‐AP‐sensitive, time and voltage dependent, and demonstrated that the magnitude of the current varied on a regional basis: current density of Ito in left ventricular free wall cells (30.1 +/‐ 9.2 pA/pF at +60 mV) was larger than in apex cells (20.2 +/‐ 1.7 pA/pF) or in septum cells (11.9 +/‐ 3.3 pA/pF). We noticed a larger variability in data from left ventricular free wall compared with other regions. 4. No shift in steady‐state voltage dependence of Ito activation and inactivation was found. However, the maximal computed chord conductances were (in microS/pF): 0.18 +/‐ 0.07 for left ventricular free wall cells, 0.13 +/‐ 0.02 for apex cells, and 0.08 +/‐ 0.02 for septum cells. These findings might reflect a differential distribution in functional channel densities. 5. No difference in voltage‐dependent Ito activation kinetics was present with respect to topography. However, inactivation time constants in septum were longer than those of both other groups. 6. Left ventricular hypertrophy was induced by abdominal aortic constriction and its effects compared to the findings from normal rats. Hypertrophied cells had similar resting potentials but higher capacitance values than normal cells. Although Ito magnitude appeared not to be modified, the current density‐voltage curves were slightly shifted to more positive potentials and significantly decreased as compared to normal cells (in pA/pF, at +60 mV): 8.4 +/‐ 5.0 in the left free wall group, 11.6 +/‐ 2.0 in the apex group, and 3.8 +/‐ 1.5 in the septum group. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
FIRST The Promise and Limitations of Genome-wide Association Studies

AS OF MAY 30, 2012, THE CATALOG OF PUBLISHED GEnome-wide association studies (GWAS) lists an impressive 1269 GWAS, covering a broad spectrum of conditions including Alzheimer disease, breast cancer, and human immunodeficiency virus susceptibility. The catalog also contains studies on common traits such as height and freckles, as well as responses to drugs for various medical conditions. It is difficult to discuss GWAS without sounding megalomaniacal. Considerably more than 1000 published GWAS, replication studies, and metaanalyses have been conducted in an unprecedented global research effort in only 7 years. Most GWAS have included hundreds or even thousands of patients and controls, have hundreds of thousands of participants worldwide, and although genotyping costs have plummeted in recent years, hundreds of millions of research dollars have been spent on GWAS since 2005. A 2007 fact sheet released by the National Human Genome Research Institute, in the early days of GWAS, raised expectations that personalized medicine, including individual risk prediction, disease prevention, and specific treatment, was just around the corner. “With the first GWAS published in 2005, . health professionals will be able to use such tools to provide patients with individualized information about their risks of developing certain diseases . to tailor prevention programs to each person’s unique genetic makeup . to select the treatments most likely to be effective and least likely to cause adverse reactions. ” Has the promise of GWAS been realized 5 years later? Although there is no simple answer to this question, it is helpful to consider 3 important and closely intertwined features of GWAS, ie, sample size, characterization of probands (samples), and effect size.