Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
HDAC2 promotes loss of primary cilia in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

Loss of primary cilia is frequently observed in tumor cells, including pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) cells, suggesting that the absence of this organelle may promote tumorigenesis through aberrant signal transduction and the inability to exit the cell cycle. However, the molecular mechanisms that explain how PDAC cells lose primary cilia are still ambiguous. In this study, we found that inhibition or silencing of histone deacetylase 2 (HDAC2) restores primary cilia formation in PDAC cells. Inactivation of HDAC2 results in decreased Aurora A expression, which promotes disassembly of primary cilia. We further showed that HDAC2 controls ciliogenesis independently of Kras, which facilitates Aurora A expression. These studies suggest that HDAC2 is a novel regulator of primary cilium formation in PDAC cells.
Emergence from minimally conscious state

Background: Guidelines for defining the minimally conscious state (MCS) specify behaviors that characterize emergence, including “reliable and consistent” functional communication (accurate yes/no responding). Guidelines were developed by consensus because of lack of empirical data. Objective: To evaluate the utility of the operational threshold for emergence from posttraumatic MCS, by determining yes/no accuracy to questions of varied difficulty, including simple orientation questions, using all items from the Yes/No Subscale of the Mississippi Aphasia Screening Test. Method: Prospective observational study of a cohort of responsive patients recovering from traumatic brain injury in an acute inpatient brain injury rehabilitation program. Results: Of the 629 observations from 144 participants, name recognition was the easiest yes/no question, with nonconfused individuals responding with 100% accuracy, whereas only 75% to 78% of confused participants on initial evaluation answered this question correctly. Generalized Estimating Equations analysis revealed that confused participants were more likely to respond inaccurately to all yes/no questions. Nonconfused participants had a reduction in odds of inaccuracy ranging from 45.6% to 99.7% (p = 0.001 to 0.02) depending on the type of yes/no question. Conclusions: Accuracy for simple orientation yes/no questions remains challenging for responsive patients in early recovery from traumatic brain injury. Although name recognition questions are relatively easier than other types of yes/no questions, including situational orientation questions, confused patients still may answer these incorrectly. Results suggest the operational threshold for yes/no response accuracy as a diagnostic criterion for emergence from the minimally conscious state should be revisited, with particular consideration of the type of yes/no questions and the requisite accuracy threshold for responses.
A System for on-Line Recognition of Chinese Characters

The target of this recognition system is the set of handwritten Chinese characters input from tablet devices with stroke-sequence and stroke-count being free but within the constraint of normal writing. A formalism based upon an initial stroke-sequence decision tree and position matching has been developed for recognizing handwritten Chinese characters. This formalism has the advantages of using the features of strokes, stroke-sequence, and geometric relations but avoids the disadvantages caused by the instability of all of the above features. With extensive training, it can be proven that this formalism may provide a very promising result even in handling erroneous writing such as missing a stroke, wrong writing sequence etc.
Progress in High Compression Image Coding

The digital representation of an image requires a very large number of bits. The goal of image coding is to reduce this number, as much as possible, and to reconstruct a faithful duplicate of the original picture. Early efforts in image coding, solely guided by information theory, led to a plethora of methods. The compression ratio reached a plateau around 10: 1 a couple of years ago. Recent progress in the study of the brain mechanism of vision and scene analysis has opened new vistas in picture coding. Directional sensitivity of the neurones in the visual pathway combined with the separate processing of contours and textures has led to a new class of coding methods capable of achieving compression ratios as high as 100: 1. This paper presents recent progress on some of the main avenues of object-based methods. These second generation techniques make use of contour-texture modeling, new results in neurophysiology and psychophisics and scene analysis.
Effectiveness of health care worker training on the oral health of elderly residents of nursing homes.

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of a staff training programme on mouth care on the oral health of elderly residents of long-term care institutions. METHODS Seventy-eight residents of five long-stay institutions were enrolled and underwent a baseline oral health assessment. Staff caring for residents in three of the sites received intensive training in mouth care. This comprised lecture and video material complemented by clinical demonstrations. The oral health of residents at all five sites was reassessed at periods of 3 and 9 months. Staff caring for residents in the remaining two institutions were then provided with mouth care training and all patients were reassessed at 18 months. Statistical analyses were undertaken to examine for significant changes in selected oral health parameters after training, within each group. RESULTS Oral mucosal disease and oral dryness were common at baseline. The staff training was well received. Following staff training, there was a significant reduction in the number of residents left to undertake their own oral care. There were significant improvements in denture hygiene and a reduction in the number of residents wearing dentures overnight. The prevalence of oral mucosal disease dropped, with significant reductions in angular cheilitis and denture stomatitis. CONCLUSION This education programme was effective in changing oral health care procedures within long-stay institutions for the elderly, with measurable improvements in oral health of the residents.
Bringing the Grandmother back into the Picture: A Memory-Based View of Object Recognition

We describe experiments with a versatile pictorial prototype based learning scheme for 3D object recognition. The GRBF scheme seems to be amenable to realization in biophysical hardware because the only kind of computation it involves can be effectively carried out by combining receptive fields. Furthermore, the scheme is computationally attractive because it brings together the old notion of a ``grandmother'''' cell and the rigorous approximation methods of regularization and splines.
The Random Neural Network Model for Texture Generation

The generation of artifical textures is a useful function in image synthesis systems. The purpose of this paper is to describe the use of the random neural network (RN) model developed by Gelenbe to generate various textures having different characteristics. An eight parameter model, based on a choice of the local interaction parameters between neighbouring neurons in the plane, is proposed. Numerical iterations of the field equations of the neural network model, starting with a randomly generated gray-level image, are shown to produce textures having different desirable features such as granularity, inclination, and randomness. The experimental evaluation shows that the random network provides good results, at a computational cost less than that of other approaches such as Markov random fields. Various examples of textures generated by our method are presented.
The Depth and Motion Analysis Machine

In this article, we describe some of the algorithms for depth and motion analysis which have been developed within ESPRIT project 940. Specifically we discuss edge detection, token tracking in sequences of images, and trinocular stereo. These processes have been implemented in hardware to form the core of the Depth and Motion Analysis (DMA) machine which has been developed to provide sophisticated real time vision capabilities for a large variety of robotics tasks.
TEMPORAL LOBE EPILEPSY IS A PROGRESSIVE NEUROLOGIC DISORDER: TIME MEANS NEURONS!

phenotype relation with Alzheimer disease and Mild cognitive impairment. Rejuvenation Res 2006;9:485–493. 5. Vagnucci AH, Li WW. Alzheimer’s disease and angiogenesis. Lancet 2003;361:605–608. 6. Gentile MT, Vecchione C, Maffei A, et al. Mechanisms of soluble beta-amyloid impairment of endothelial function. J Biol Chem 2004;279:48135–48142. 7. Laske C, Stellos K, Stransky E, Leyhe T, Gawaz M. Decreased plasma levels of granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) in patients with early Alzheimer’s disease. J Alzheimer Dis 2009;17:115–123. 8. Urbich C, Dimmeler S. Endothelial progenitor cells: characterization and role in vascular biology. Circ Res 2004;95: 343–353.
Mitoxantrone and cytotoxic drugs' mechanisms of action

Evidence has suggested that early, aggressive intervention may improve both short- and long-term outcomes in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). Cytotoxic agents may offer advantages in this setting, particularly when used as an induction or add-on therapy with immunomodulators. Immunosuppression is the mechanism of action common to all cytotoxic drugs; individual subtleties in immunoregulatory actions are likely of minor importance. In the United States, mitoxantrone is currently the only cytotoxic agent approved for the treatment of MS (secondary-progressive, progressive-relapsing, and worsening relapsing-remitting forms). Therapies in phase III development include cyclophosphamide, mycophenolate mofetil, cladribine, and teriflunomide. All these drugs have exhibited efficacy in controlled clinical trials, although the degree of benefit with respect to MRI and clinical endpoints has varied both within and among the various agents. Further investigations are needed to determine whether cytotoxic drugs represent a substantial improvement over treatments that have a more targeted impact on the immune system.
EMERGENCE FROM MINIMALLY CONSCIOUS STATE: INSIGHTS FROM EVALUATION OF POSTTRAUMATIC CONFUSION

EMERGENCE FROM MINIMALLY CONSCIOUS STATE: INSIGHTS FROM EVALUATION OF POSTTRAUMATIC CONFUSION To the Editor: We read the article by NakaseRichardson et al.1 with interest. The diagnosis of persistent vegetative state (PVS) has been made more difficult by the recognition of minimally conscious state (MCS) as the transition to partial recovery. Another step is to determine diagnostic criteria to predict emergence from MCS to functional recovery.2,3 Nakase-Richardson et al. investigated the utility of the operational threshold for emergence from posttraumatic MCS by assessing yes/no accuracy to questions of varied difficulty. They concluded that confused patients had difficulty giving accurate answers to simple questions, suggesting that the operational threshold for response accuracy should be revisited as a criterion for emergence from MCS. In addition, questions requiring judgment, even based on old knowledge, were difficult for confused patients. The authors attributed this to inconsistent attention, executive dysfunction, and/or language processing deficits.1 Patients were studied during inpatient rehabilitation. We assessed mother’s voice recognition by PVS and MCS cases using quantitative electric tomography inside hospital settings. Because we found nonreliable responses, we moved our neurophysiologic laboratory setting to patient homes. In a patient with PVS, we recorded a broad activation of the EEG power spectrum when his mother talked to him. No significant differences were found when unknown women spoke to him.4 We suggest that patients should be studied in their home environment using ambulatory neurophysiologic systems. Moreover, the questionnaire proposed by Nakase-Richardson et al.1 could be used for setting paradigms to record event-related potentials,5 and/or activation of the EEG power spectrum,2,4 which might support results from questionnaire screenings for assessing emergence from PVS and MCS.
Low-Power High-Speed Class-AB Buffer Amplifiers for Liquid-Crystal Display Signal Driver Application

Two types of low-power, high-speed, but with a large input dynamic range and output swing class-AB output buffer amplifiers which are suitable for the liquid-crystal display signal driver application are proposed. The driving capabilities of the circuits are achieved by adding comparators which sense the rising and falling edges of the input waveform and then turn on an auxiliary driving transistor to help charging/discharging the output load. The auxiliary driving transistors stay at "off" in the stable state, thus drawing no static power. Hence, the buffers draw little current during static but have an improved driving capability during transients. They are demonstrated in a 0.6 μm CMOS technology. The measured data do show that the proposed output buffer circuits are very suitable for the application of liquid-crystal display signal driver.
Using Memory Compression for Energy Reduction in an Embedded Java System

The Java programming language is being increasingly used for application development for mobile and embedded devices. Limited energy and memory resources are important constraints for such systems. Compression is an useful and widely employed mechanism to reduce the memory requirements of the system. As the leakage energy of a memory system increases with its size and because of the increasing contribution of leakage to overall system energy, compression also has a significant effect on reducing energy consumption. However, storing compressed data/instructions has a performance and energy overhead associated with decompression at runtime. The underlying compression algorithm, the corresponding implementation of the decompression and the ability to reuse decompressed information critically impact this overhead. In this paper, we explore the influence of compression on overall memory energy using a commercial embedded Java virtual machine (JVM) and a customized compression algorithm. Our results show that compression is effective in reducing energy even when considering the runtime decompression overheads for most applications. Further, we show a mechanism that selectively compresses portions of the memory to enhance energy savings. Finally, a scheme for clustering the code and data to improve the reuse of the decompressed data is presented.
Challenges in Measuring a New Construct: Perception of Voluntariness for Research and Treatment Decision Making

Reliable and valid measures of relevant constructs are critical in the developing field of the empirical study of research ethics. The early phases of scale development for such constructs can be complex. We describe the methodological challenges of construct definition and operationalization and how we addressed them in our study to develop a measure of perception of voluntariness. We also briefly present our conceptual approach to the construct of voluntariness, which we defined as the perception of control over decision making. Our multifaceted approach to scale development ensured that we would develop a construct definition of sufficient breadth and depth, that our new measure of voluntariness would be applicable across disciplines, and that there was a clear link between our construct definition and items. The strategies discussed here can be adapted by other researchers who are considering a scale development study related to the empirical study of ethics.
Road traffic injury prevention receives boost from Bloomberg Family Foundation

Road traffic injury prevention has long been neglected by most major donors to public health. This has changed recently. The field has received a considerable financial boost with the donation of a US$9 million grant from the Bloomberg Family Foundation to WHO. The grant tasks WHO with a 2-year road safety project that comprises two components: ( a ) a global road safety status report to monitor progress in individual countries worldwide; ( b ) country pilot projects to demonstrate what can be achieved through intensified efforts around select strategies. The report aims to assess the status of road safety in all WHO’s Member States using comparable methodology and measures, in order for countries to assess their status vis-e-vis others, understand the gaps in road safety, and identify key priorities for intervention. The methodology of the report is being developed through wide consultation. The report …
Measurement of Intervertebral Disc Space Height

Six methods of measuring intervertebral disc space height (IVD) were evaluated in experiments using isolated vertebral pairs, intact human cadavers, and living subjects. Accurate measurements of IVD required methods that corrected for radiographic magnification and carefully controlled the source–target-film relationships. Axial rotation beyond 40° and lateral bend beyond 20° prevented accurate measurements. A wide variation In IVD was found in 132 patients who had previously undergone surgical procedures for nerve root compression from herniated discs at the L4–5 and L5–S1 levels 10 or more years before. Disc space narrowing was significantly greater at operated than nonoperated levels (P=0.01), but did not correlate with clinical results. The clinical and research applications of these methods are critically assessed.
Progression of transthyretin amyloid neuropathy after liver transplantation

Objective: To biochemically characterize peripheral nerve amyloid in subjects with transthyretin (TTR) amyloidosis and assess effect of orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) on progression of neuropathy. Methods: Amyloid fibrils were isolated from peripheral nerve tissues of 6 patients with TTR amyloidosis who were heterozygous for an amyloid-associated TTR mutation. Ratio of variant to wild-type TTR in the fibrils was determined by amino acid sequencing of tryptic peptides containing either the variant amino acid residue or the corresponding normal amino acid. Results: Amyloid fibrils from 3 subjects who died without having received a liver transplant were composed of 60%–65% variant TTR and 35%–40% wild-type. Amyloid fibrils from a subject who died 5 years after liver transplantation contained 25% variant and 75% wild-type TTR. Conclusion: Ratios of variant to wild-type TTR in amyloid patients heterozygous for an amyloid-associated TTR mutation are similar to published ratios for amyloid fibrils in cardiac tissue. Survival after liver transplantation for TTR amyloidosis may be associated with progression of neuropathy due to continued deposition of amyloid derived from wild-type TTR.
How localized is localization-related epilepsy?

The most common localization-related epilepsy is temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Traditionally, TLE has been considered a localized disorder given the focal mesial temporal onset of seizures, hippocampal atrophy and sclerosis, and therapeutic response to focal resection of the anteromedial temporal lobe. However, there is growing evidence of more diffuse anatomic and functional abnormalities. Patients with TLE exhibit dysfunction of the anterior temporal lobe (e.g., memory formation and naming), but they also can exhibit abnormal cognitive functions not associated with focal dysfunction of the anterior temporal lobes. The reason for these unanticipated cognitive findings is becoming clearer. MRI studies have provided evidence for reduced volumes in multiple brain regions in TLE including extrahippocampal temporal, frontal, parietal, and occipital lobes, and diverse subcortical structures, which involve not only the hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus, but also the thalamus, caudate, amygdala, and cerebellum.1 Diffuse abnormalities of the cortical mantle also occur, including markers of gray matter complexity and thickness in temporal lobe and in extratemporal regions ipsilateral and contralateral to the side of temporal lobe seizure onset.2 Positron …
Is the lithium-for-ALS genie back in the bottle?

Controversy abounds concerning the use of lithium in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The announcement in November 2007 that none of 16 patients with ALS (PALS) treated with lithium carbonate had died during 15 months of treatment compared to 8 of 28 untreated patients1 resulted in unprecedented pressure from patients to receive this treatment, despite expressed concerns regarding the generalizability of the finding.2 PALS and their physicians generated several responses to this concern (table e-1 on the Neurology ® Web site at www.neurology.org). PatientsLikeMe—a remarkable, patient-generated, Web-supported database—sounded a discordant note in December 2008 when it reported that after 4–6 months' observation of 162 patients, lithium failed to slow decline in self-reported scores on the ALS Functional Rating Scale–Revised (ALSFRS-R). The ALSFRS-R is a composite measure of 12 items reflecting key motor functions. Further, no difference was noted on comparison with controls matched for prognostic factors. Some patients, however, stopped lithium after approximately 4 months because of side effects or lack of perceived efficacy.3 The result was unchanged in a refined analysis.4 This presented a quandary, as PALS and physicians were uncertain whether to forgo a treatment based on unrandomized observational data, using a self-assessed, self-reported outcome measure, with controls selected based on a risk factor algorithm. …
On-Chip Power-Efficient Current Flattening Circuit

This paper presents a control circuit which regulates the current consumption of integrated circuits using current injection and voltage scaling techniques. The control circuit can be integrated with smart cards as a countermeasure against power analysis attacks and electromagnetic emanation analysis attacks. We have designed the proposed circuit in 0.18 μm CMOS technology at 1.8 V power supply. The simulation results show that the circuit controls the current through the power supply pin of a model of a smart card microcontroller and attenuates the peak-to-peak current variations by 95%. The power dissipation overhead of the control circuit is less than 20% of the original power dissipation of the smart card microcontroller. Comparing the layout area of the proposed circuit with that of an ASIC 3-DES algorithm in the same technology shows that the control circuit only constitutes 4% of the cryptographic processor. The proposed circuit proves to be especially useful for smart cards and small portable devices, where power dissipation and chip area are critical.
Preserving Local Manifold in Noise Data Clustering

Adaptive subspace clustering techniques, such as LDA Kmeans (henceforth LDAKM), try to perform clustering on a compact discriminative subspace. However, the subspace extracted by LDAKM may be inferior when encountering noise, so it is with the clustering results. In this paper, we generalize the LDAKM algorithm, and propose the Local Manifold Preserving LDAKM (henceforth LMP–LDAKM) approach, which considers both local manifold structure and discriminative information. A Laplacian similarity matrix is introduced in the subspace extraction subprocess for preserving local manifold information while retaining discrimination of latent clusters, and it is also utilized for the weighted Kmeans clustering subprocess in the subspace to eliminate the influence of distant noise data. Experimental results on both benchmark and artificial datasets indicate the effectiveness and noise-robustness of our method.