Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The complexity of daily occupations in multiple sclerosis

The aims of this study were to describe which self-care, productivity, and leisure occupations individuals with multiple sclerosis (MS) perceive as difficult to perform on admission to rehabilitation and the individuals’ own perception of the importance of, performance of, and satisfaction with these occupations. Whether the reported self-care, productivity, and leisure occupations were related to sex, age, disease severity, and living arrangements was also investigated. Forty-seven men and women (mean age 49.4 years) were assessed with the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM) on admission to rehabilitation. The individuals reported 366 occupations (median 8, range 3–15), which were categorized as self-care (51%), productivity (30%), and leisure (19%). Three COPM subcategories—household management (26%), personal care (21%), and functional mobility (20%)—accounted for two-thirds of the reported occupations. All prioritized occupations (n=238; (median 5, range 2–7) had high ratings for importance and the ratings for performance and satisfaction were generally low. Men reported significantly more occupations related to self-care than women, but no significant difference between the sexes could be found for productivity and leisure. No significant differences between the occupational areas were found when age, disease severity, or/and living arrangements were included in the analysis. In conclusion, individuals with MS perceive difficulties with occupations related to all aspects of daily life. This underscores the need to use assessment tools that capture the complexity of daily occupations.
Effects of carcinogenesis on colonic thymidine kinase activity in familial adenomatous polyposis.

Thymidine kinase (TK) activity of polyp tissue from patients with familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP) was measured and compared with that of non-tumorous colon, sporadic polyp and colorectal carcinoma tissues. Total TK activity in colonic carcinoma was 3-fold that of non-tumorous colon; its increase seems attributable mainly to increased activity of cytosolic TK isozyme activity. By using DEAE-cellulose column chromatography, the colorectal TK isozymes were separated into two types, i.e. two isozymes, referred to as the fetal (predominantly cytosolic) and adult (predominantly mitochondrial) types. However, FAP polyp samples from 15 patients showed an average elevation of only 1.8-fold over non-tumorous region of colon. Examined individually, only 5 of the 15 FAP samples showed significant elevations in total TK activity. Furthermore, TK isozyme analysis revealed variable patterns of the cytosolic isozyme activity, which was elevated in some cases (8/15) and remained low in others. Thus FAP polyps seem to be a heterogeneous population with respect to DNA replicative activity, and cytosolic TK isozyme activity may constitute a biochemical marker for the subsequent development of colorectal carcinoma in FAP.
Spatio-temporal cross-city comparison using multi-sensoral remote sensing for Mexican cities

Our planet is more and more transforming into an urban world, in which the dynamics of urbanization have overcome the ability to govern cities. In a situation of uncoordinated urban growth, regional and urban planning lack technologies and methodologies to measure, monitor and analyze the spatio-temporal pattern of dynamic urban sprawl. This paper focuses on methods using remote sensing data to analyze, quantify and compare spatial urbanization processes. Urban sprawl is detected at the level of urban footprints using a post-classification change detection approach based on multi-sensoral Landsat and TerraSAR-X data. Spatio-temporal analysis combines absolute parameters (e.g. areal growth), location-based zonal statistics and gradient analysis (e. g. urban core versus the urban fringes) as well as spatial metrics (e.g. Largest Patch Index) to quantitatively characterise the spatial pattern of city developments. The study aims to detect spatial analogies as well as differences for the four largest Mexican urban agglomerations.
Automatic detection of the truck position using stereoscopy

The productivity of port container terminals depends on the speed of loading and unloading the ships by means of ship-to-shore cranes. Due to a fast growth in container transport, ports have to increase the efficiency in order to maintain competitiveness. The focus of this paper is on the stage of positioning the truck under the ship-to-shore crane. Currently, the speed of this process is mainly dependant on the experience of truck drivers, which causes unwanted delays in the (un)loading process. A solution is proposed which is based on acquisition of live stereoscopic images of the truck, object recognition on captured images and calculation of the truck position using stereoscopy. The aim of this system is not only to increase the speed of the unloading process but also to improve the overall productivity of port container terminals.
Medication overuse and chronic migraine: a critical review according to clinical pharmacology

Introduction: Chronic migraine is often complicated by medication-overuse headache (MOH), a headache due to excessive intake of acute medications. Chronic migraine and MOH are serious and disabling disorders. Since chronic migraine derives from the progression of originally episodic migraine, the fundamental therapeutic strategy is prevention. This narrative review describes how to try to prevent the development of MOH and how to manage it once it has appeared. Areas covered: A PubMed database search (from 1988 to January 2015) and a review of published studies on chronic migraine and MOH were conducted. Expert opinion: In spite of progress in migraine treatment, the prevalence of chronic headaches and MOH has not changed in the course of time. Today, a large number of migraine patients have turned to numerous expert physicians and experienced all sorts of prophylactic treatments without decisive benefits. Their condition seems to have crystallized even more as chronic and intractable. This means that to prevent chronification and MOH, we need more effective drugs and better strategies to use them. In particular, we must detect disease biomarkers and predictive factors for drug response that allow for personalized treatment when migraine is still episodic and make analgesic overuse pointless.
High-Q Sensor Based on Symmetrical Split Ring Resonator With Spurlines for Solids Material Detection

This paper presents novel structures of planar microwave sensors for detecting and characterizing the dielectric properties in common solid materials which produce high Q-factors with capability to suppress undesired harmonic spurious. These sensors are based on novel planar symmetrical split ring resonator with spurlines filters by employing the perturbation theory, in which the dielectric properties of the resonator affect the Q-factor and resonance frequency. The proposed sensors achieve narrow resonance with low insertion loss and high-Q and sensitivity which peaked up to 652 at 2.22 GHz operating frequency. By using a specific experimental methodology, practical materials are applied as standards (Roger 5880, Roger 4350, FR4) to validate the sensitivity of the sensors for permitting potentially material characterization and detection. Accordingly, the mathematical equation is derived to extract the materials with unknown properties. The average accuracy percentage of the measured results for all cases of the designed sensors is found within 97%–98% compared with those in the literature for the same tested standard materials. It is believed that these sensors would lead for a promising solution of characterizing material particularly in determining material properties and quality, such as in food industry, bio-sensing medicine applications, and therapeutics goods detections.
Generalized Hot-Carrier Degradation and Its Mechanism in Poly-Si TFTs Under DC/AC Operations

In the previous report, we had reported the mechanism for the degradation of poly-Si TFTs under OFF region gate ac operation with the source and drain electrodes grounded. In this paper, the study is extended to the degradation of the devices under various ac and dc operation conditions. It is discovered that, though these stress conditions are different, the corresponding degradation behaviors in their I-V and C-V curves all resemble the degradation behavior of the device under dc hot-carrier stress. Two important factors, namely, the electric field across the junction and the number of carriers flowing through the junction, are taken into discussion in this paper and comparison of these stress conditions. It is then categorized that these operation conditions can be described as the “generalized hot-carrier effect,” since the degradation is found to occur near the junctions by the energized carriers, just as that under dc hot-carrier stress. The qualitative comparison of the electric field and carrier flow through the junction for the four stress conditions as well as the difference in the degradation mechanism between MOSFETs and poly-Si TFTs are also provided.
Effective software refactoring process

According to the plan-driven software development processes, software creation is comprised of a sequence of activities which starts with requirement analysis and continues with system design, implementation, testing and deployment and finally ends with maintenance phase. Although each phase contributes to the total development cost, research shows that more than 60% of it comes from maintenance. The quality and clarity of the system design or implementation subsequently is responsible for the cost of maintenance. Therefore, it is of great importance to detect and eliminate any design or implementation flaws to reduce the cost of development especially incurred by maintenance phase. This study discusses the importance of refactoring in software engineering and difficulties one may face with applying refactoring. We also lay out the factors that affect execution of certain refactoring. We present a discussion that takes us to a conceptual solution for more effective refactoring research and we share our observations and personal opinions in how to apply refactoring more effectively.
Difficulty influence on motivation over time in video games using survival analysis

In this paper, we study the link between difficulty and player's motivation in two games developed by Ubisoft®: Rayman®Legends and Tom Clancy's The Division®. We describe a method to estimate players' difficulty over time and link it's time varying effect with players retention. Results confirm flow and self-efficacy theory. Also, for the first hours of playtime, results differ between the two games. We explain that discrepancy with regard to attribution theory : in Rayman Legends, failure can be mainly attributed to the player skills, while in Tom Clancy's The Division, avatar's strength plays a fundamental role and can always be relatively quickly improved.
DETERMINATION OF OPTIMAL PATENT LENGTH IN FAVOR OF INNOVATION AND GROWTH

Patent policy aims not only to protect industrial property, but also to create incentives for innovation and thus to encourage companies to invest more in research and development. This policy should not consider excessive protection and should not constitute a barrier to the dissemination of knowledge. Indeed, by privatizing the knowledge of innovations, excessive protection is an obstacle to the dissemination of new ideas and a barrier to entry. This could therefore slow down innovation in the long term. The purpose of this article is to determine the optimal length of the patent in favor of innovation and growth. ISAEG MACMA
Super-resolution reconstruction of image sequences compressed with DWT-based techniques

Spatial domain based super-resolution reconstruction techniques, which were designed for uncompressed video to produce high-resolution image or image sequences, may not work well when applied directly to compressed videos, especially to those with severe quantization errors. Here a reconstruction approach designed for videos or image sequences, which were compressed using DWT-based techniques, is presented. This method utilizes the theory of projection onto convex sets (POCS) with a new projection operator based on Discrete Wavelet Transformation (DWT) for reducing blurring artifacts. It also applies maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation techniques to remove ringing noises from restored images. Experimental results show that such approach could effectively recover objects ' edges and details that were blurred during compressing process while, expanding image 's size simultaneously.
Towards Sustainable Development of Online Communities in the Big Data Era: A Study of the Causes and Possible Consequence of Voting on User Reviews

This paper focuses on the review voting in online communities, which allows users to express their own opinions in terms of User-generated Content (UGC). However, the sustainable development of online communities is likely to be affected by the social influence of UGC. In this paper, we study the so-called crowd intelligence paradox of review voting in online communities. The crowd intelligence paradox means that the quality of reviews is not highly connected with the increasing of review votes. This implies that a review with many votes is likely to be of low quality, and a review with few votes is likely to be of high quality. The crowd intelligence paradox existing in online communities inhibits users’ wishes of participating in social networks and may impact the sustainable development of online communities. Aiming to demonstrate the existence of the crowd intelligence paradox in online communities, we first analyzed a large set of reviews crawled from Net Ease Cloud Music, which is one of the most popular online communities in China. The maximum likelihood (ML) and the hierarchical regression approaches are used in this step. Then, we construct a new research model called the Voting Adoption Model (VAM) to study how different factors impact the crowd intelligence paradox in online communities. Particularly, we propose six hypotheses based on the VAM model and conduct experiments based on the measurement model and the structural model to evaluate the hypotheses. The results show that the quality of reviews is not influential to review votes, and the hot-site attribute is a dominant factor influencing review voting. In addition, the variables of the VAM model, including information credibility, perceived ease of use, and social influence have significant impacts on review voting. Finally, based on the empirical study, we present some research implications and suggestions for online communities to realize healthy and sustainable development in the future.
Systematic Diversification Using Beta

Higher-risk investments deserve higher expected returns to compensate for the extra risk, or so theory tells us. Historically, this has not always been the case for U.S. and other developed-market stocks. This “beta anomaly,” which is now well established by academics, has started to gain traction with investors. This is demonstrated by the large flows into the numerous low-beta and low-volatility strategies that were established in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. The authors examine the beta anomaly in the academic literature and provide an empirical analysis for stocks in the U.S., developed, and emerging markets. Their primary finding is that beta is not a strong predictor of expected returns, but it is useful when used to help reduce risk in a portfolio. The authors present results for an investment strategy that filters out the highest-beta stocks while controlling for concentration risks by country and sector. The study finds mixed results for beta as an anomaly: Low beta outperforms for international markets, underperforms in emerging markets, and is flat in the U.S. markets. None of these differences appears to be statistically significant. The authors find beta is very useful, however, as a tool for controlling risk, especially in the context of strategies that diversify across countries and sectors.
Ten- and ninety-day toxicity studies of 1,2-dichlorobenzene administered by oral gavage to Sprague-Dawley rats.

Ten- and ninety-day toxicity studies of 1,2-dichlorobenzene (DCB) were conducted in male and female Sprague-Dawley rats to meet the needs of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for toxicity data on this chemical for use in their determination of possible health risks related to human exposure. 1,2-Dichlorobenzene was administered at doses of 37.5, 75, 150, and 300 mg/kg/day (10-day), and 25, 100, and 400 mg/kg/day (90-day) in corn oil by oral gavage; control animals received corn oil. At time of sacrifice, gross necropsies were performed and selected tissues were weighed and prepared for histological evaluation. Blood was taken for hematology and clinical chemistries. In the 10-day study, exposure of 300 mg DCB/kg body weight to male rats resulted in a statistically significant decrease in final body weight, organ weights (heart, kidneys, spleen, testes, and thymus), and relative organ weights (spleen and thymus). A significant increase in absolute and relative liver weights was also noted in this dose group. Males also displayed significant increases in water consumption (300 mg/kg group), ALT (300 mg/kg) and leukocyte count (150 and 300 mg/kg). A significant increase in the incidence of hepatocellular necrosis was seen in the 300 mg/kg group of males compared to controls. In the 90-day study, male rats exposed to 400 mg DCB/kg displayed a statistically significant decrease in body weight, organ weight (spleen), and relative organ weight (spleen). The absolute weights of kidney and liver and the relative weights for heart, kidney, liver, lung, brain, and testes were increased significantly for this dose group. The absolute and relative weights of both the kidney and liver were significantly increased in the female 400 mg/kg dose group. The only clinical chemistry parameters statistically different than control were increased ALT (100 and 400 mg/kg groups), BUN and total bilirubin in the male 400 mg/kg group and total bilirubin in the 400 mg/kg female group. Histopathological evaluation showed hepatocellular lesions associated with DCB treatment which included centrolobular degeneration and hypertrophy, and single cell necrosis in male and females receiving 400 mg DCB/kg. The NOAEL observed in this study is 25 mg/kg/day.
Peroxisome dynamics during development of the fungus Podospora anserina

Peroxisomes are versatile and dynamic organelles that are required for the development of diverse eukaryotic organisms. We demonstrated previously that in the fungus Podospora anserina different peroxisomal functions are required at distinct stages of sexual development, including the initiation and progression of meiocyte (ascus) development and the differentiation and germination of sexual spores (ascospores). Peroxisome assembly during these processes relies on the differential activity of the protein machinery that drives the import of proteins into the organelle, indicating a complex developmental regulation of peroxisome formation and activity. Here we demonstrate that peroxisome dynamics is also highly regulated during development. We show that peroxisomes in P. anserina are highly dynamic and respond to metabolic and environmental cues by undergoing changes in size, morphology and number. In addition, peroxisomes of vegetative and sexual cell types are structurally different. During sexual development peroxisome number increases at two stages: at early ascus differentiation and during ascospore formation. These processes are accompanied by changes in peroxisome structure and distribution, which include a cell-polarized concentration of peroxisomes at the beginning of ascus development, as well as a morphological transition from predominantly spherical to elongated shapes at the end of the first meiotic division. Further, the mostly tubular peroxisomes present from second meiotic division to early ascospore formation again become rounded during ascospore differentiation. Ultimately the number of peroxisomes dramatically decreases upon ascospore maturation. Our results reveal a precise regulation of peroxisome dynamics during sexual development and suggest that peroxisome constitution and function during development is defined by the coordinated regulation of the proteins that control peroxisome assembly and dynamics.
PERMASALAHAN PENDAFTARAN PEMILIH PADA PEMILIHAN BUPATI DAN WAKIL BUPATI KABUPATEN SIJUNJUNG TAHUN 2015

PERMASALAHAN PENDAFTARAN PEMILIH PADA PEMILIHAN BUPATI DAN WAKIL BUPATI KABUPATEN SIJUNJUNG TAHUN 2015 Oleh: Mega Ardila (1620869020) Dibawah bimbingan: Dr. Asrinaldi, M.Si ABSTRAK Kisruh daftar pemilih selalu menjadi masalah yang berulang di Indonesia. Kesalahan atau kurang akuratnya data pemilih bukan hanya berdampak langsung terhadap kelengkapan administrasi pemilu akan tetapi juga pada legitimasi pemilu. Oleh karena itu, Daftar pemilih yang akurat, komperhensif dan mutakhir merupakan prasyarat mutlak yang harus dipenuhi dalam melaksanakan demokrasi electoral. Dengan adanya daftar pemilih yang akurat akan meningkatkan kualitas proses demokrasi electoral dengan membuka ruang seluas-luasnya kepada warga negara untuk menggunakan hak pilihnya. Tujuan penelitian ini untuk mengetahui permasalahan dalam tahapan pendaftaran pemilih yang selalu terjadi disetiap pemilu. Selanjutnya juga diteliti apa saja upaya yang telah dilakukan oleh KPU Kabupaten Sijunjung sebagai penyelenggara pemilu yang bertanggung jawab langsung dalam pemenuhan daftar pemilih yang akurat, komperhensif dan mutakhir. Penelitian ini dilakukan dengan metode deskriptif kualitatif melalui wawancara mendalam dengan berbagai informan kunci yaitu penyelenggara pemilu di Kabupaten Sijunjung (KPU dan panitia ad hock) serta Dinas Kependudukan dan Catatan Sipil Kabupaten Sijunjung dan Peserta Pemilu. Selain itu sumber tertulis (data sekunder) berupa hasil penelitian dan dokumen resmi dari instansi yang berwenang. Hasil penelitian diuraikan secara deskriptif untuk kemudian dianalisis dan diinterprestasikan dalam rangka menemukan jawaban atas pertanyaan penelitian. Dari hasil penelitian ini memperlihatkan bahwa permasalahan dari daftar pemilih ini disebabkan karena tata kelola pemilu (electoral governance) yang tidak berjalan dengan baik. Mulai dari level rule making yang kurang menjadi perhatian dalam proses penyusunan regulasi oleh pembuat kebijakan, sehingga berdampak kepada level rule aplication mulai dari permasalahan sumber data awal penyusunan daftar pemilih, tahapan sinkronisasi, sampai kepada petugas pemutakhiran data pemilih. Kemudian keterlibatan pihak-pihak lain mulai dari masyarakat, tim sukses pasangan serta rule adjudication, yakni penyelesaian berbagai permasalahan yang terkait dengan tahapan pendaftaran pemilih ini. Keyword: Pilkada, Electoral Governance, Pendaftaran Pemilih
Integrin activation

Integrin-mediated cell adhesion is important for development, immune responses, hemostasis and wound healing. Integrins also function as signal transducing receptors that can control intracellular pathways that regulate cell survival, proliferation, and cell fate. Conversely, cells can modulate the affinity of integrins for their ligands a process operationally defined as integrin activation. Analysis of activation of integrins has now provided a detailed molecular understanding of this unique form of “inside-out” signal transduction and revealed new paradigms of how transmembrane domains (TMD) can transmit long range allosteric changes in transmembrane proteins. Here, we will review how talin and mediates integrin activation and how the integrin TMD can transmit these inside out signals. [BMB Reports 2014; 47(12): 655-659]