Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Changes in multifocal electroretinograms induced by transpupillary thermotherapy.

OBJECTIVE To determine retinal function after transpupillary thermotherapy (TTT) for subfoveal choroidal neovascularization using multifocal electroretinograms (mfERGs). METHODS Multifocal electroretinograms were recorded before and after TTT (wavelength, 810 nm; diameter, 3 mm; duration, 60 seconds; power, 350 mW) in 9 eyes in 9 patients with subfoveal choroidal neovascularizations. The stimulus consisted of 7 hexagons; the central hexagon covered the laser-irradiated area and the surrounding 6 hexagons covered the nonirradiated area. Each recording was completed within 1 minute, and mfERGs were recorded periodically during the first 60 minutes after TTT and also at 24 hours and 1 week after TTT. RESULTS The amplitude of mfERGs from irradiated areas was significantly reduced at 1 minute after TTT (P< .01) and then recovered soon. The peak time was prolonged at 15 minutes after TTT (P< .01), recovered to pre-TTT levels at 60 minutes, and then was prolonged again at 24 hours (P< .05) and 1 week (P< .05) after TTT. The mfERGs in nonirradiated areas were unchanged during the observational period. CONCLUSIONS We found amplitude reduction in central focal ERGs at 1 minute after TTT, transient peak-time delay at 15 minutes, and a delay at 24 hours. Early reduction is probably directly caused by an increase in temperature during TTT as previously reported in focal flicker ERGs. Peak-time delays at 15 minutes and 24 hours may be caused by other factors, such as increased intracellular calcium (Ca(2+)), the release of nitric oxide or heat shock proteins, vasodilation, or change in choroidal neovascularization. Our findings indicate that recording mfERGs may be a useful tool for evaluating TTT procedures.
On-chip quantum storage in a rare-earth-doped photonic nanocavity

Rare-earth-ion doped crystals are state-of-the-art materials for optical quantum memories and quantum transducers between optical and microwave photons. Here we describe our progress towards a nanophotonic quantum memory based on a rare-earth (Neodymium) doped yttrium orthosilicate (YSO) photonic crystal resonator. The Purcell-enhanced coupling of the 883 nm transitions of Neodymium (Nd3+) ions to the nano-resonator results in increased optical depth, which could in principle facilitate highly efficient photon storage via cavity impedance matching. The atomic frequency comb (AFC) memory protocol can be implemented in the Nd:YSO nano-resonator by efficient optical pumping into the long-lived Zeeman state. Coherent optical signals can be stored and retrieved from the AFC memory. We currently measure a storage efficiency on par with a bulk crystal Nd:YSO memory that is millimeters long. Our results will enable multiplexed on-chip quantum storage and thus quantum repeater devices using rare-earth-ions.
Prototypen auf dem Prüfstand. Bedeutsamkeit der Repräsentationsform im Rahmen der Konzeptevaluation

Zusammenfassung Prototyping ermöglicht es bereits in frühen Phasen des Produktentwicklungszyklus Rückmeldung zu Konzeptideen und verschiedenen Varianten der Ausgestaltung einzuholen. Voraussetzung für hilfreiche Einsichten durch Evaluationsstudien ist allerdings die Angemessenheit der Konzeptrepräsentation. Wird die Konzeptidee durch die gewählte Art der Darstellung unzureichend vermittelt, können Studienteilnehmer kein sinnvolles Feedback liefern und Evaluationsergebnisse werden wohlmöglich verfälscht. Die vorliegende Studie exploriert die Auswirkungen der Konzeptrepräsentation anhand der vergleichenden Evaluation eines Produktkonzepts in fünf Repräsentationsformen unterschiedlicher Reichhaltigkeit. Neben Effekten für Konzeptverständnis und Konzeptbeurteilung wurde auch die erlebte Wirkung der Darstellung hinsichtlich Effektivität, Emotionalität und Motivationspotential untersucht. Die Studienergebnisse zeigen, dass auch reduzierte Darstellungsformen bereits umfangreiche Einsichten in das Potential eines Konzepts ermöglichen und hinsichtlich bestimmter Fragestellungen sogar besonders geeignet sein können. Allgemeine Ableitungen zur Auswahl geeigneter Formen der Konzeptrepräsentation werden diskutiert.
Dietary soy isoflavone‐induced increases in antioxidant and eNOS gene expression lead to improved endothelial function and reduced blood pressure in vivo

Epidemiological evidence suggests that populations consuming large amounts of soy protein have a reduced incidence of coronary heart disease (1–5). The cardiovascular risks associated with conventional hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal women (5–7) have precipitated a search for alternative estrogen receptor modulators. Here we report that long‐term feeding of rats with a soy protein‐rich (SP) diet during gestation and adult life results in decreased oxidative stress, improved endothelial function, and reduced blood pressure in vivo measured by radiotelemetry in aged male offspring. Improved vascular reactivity in animals fed an SP diet was paralleled by increased mitochondrial glutathione and mRNA levels for endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) and the antioxidant enzymes manganese superoxide dismutase and cytochrome c oxidase. Reduced eNOS and antioxidant gene expression, impaired endothelial function, and elevated blood pressure in animals fed a soy‐deficient diet was reversed after refeeding them an SP diet for 6 months. Our findings suggest that an SP diet increases eNOS and antioxidant gene expression in the vasculature and other tissues, resulting in reduced oxidative stress and increased NO bioavailability. The improvement in endothelial function, increased gene expression, and reduced blood pressure by soy isoflavones have implications for alternative therapy for postmenopausal women and patients at risk of coronary heart disease.
Supervised Learning Approaches to Link Adaptation in Wireless Communication Systems

Current wireless communication systems require link adaptation method to provide consumers with reliable and efficient services. Adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) based on channel state information is the most common way of implementing link adaptation. Traditional implementation of AMC attempts to solve an optimization problem with the goal of maximizing the channel throughput with packet error rate (PER) constraints. Our project here considers the use of machine learning approaches for adaptive modulation and coding. We employ three supervised learning techniques, namely k-nearest neighbor (k-NN), support vector machine (SVM) and random forest (RF), to enable the transmitter to perform AMC based on the knowledge of post-processing SNRs at the receiver (through feedback). Simulation results based on IEEE 802.11n standard show that AMC with machine learning would be promising in real systems.
Speed and safety distance control in truck driving: comparison of simulation and real-world environment.

Cette etude vise a comparer la vitesse de conduite et la distance de securite de 8 conducteurs professionnels sur le simulateur Renault-V.I. et sur des vehicules poids-lourds reels. 30 conducteurs non-professionnels ont aussi participe aux essais sur simulateur. Le simulateur Renault-V.I. est constitue d'une plate-forme mobile, avec retour auditif et retour visuel frontale et arriere, permettant ainsi une immersion totale des sujets. Lors des differentes sessions experimentales, la tâche des conducteurs etait de (i) controler la vitesse de conduite sans avoir recours a la lecture du tachymetre; (ii) maintenir une distance de securite appropriee par rapport au vehicule precedent. Nous avons analyse le comportement des conducteurs sous differentes conditions de simulation: conduite de jour/ conduite de nuit, presence/ absence de retour auditif et pour deux hauteurs simulees de la cabine du tracteur. Les performances des conducteurs professionnels obtenues sur simulateur ont de plus ete comparees a leurs performances en environnement reel. Cette etude a montre qu'en simulation les deux groupes de sujets on conduit a des vitesses tres proches de la vitesse demandee. Les conducteurs professionnels ont de plus adopte une vitesse tres proche de leur vitesse de conduite en environnement reel. En revanche, la distance de securite qu'ils ont maintenu en simulation correspond a deux fois la distance mesuree en environnement reel. L'analyse de variance de la distance de securite a demontree une difference significative entre conduite reelle et simulee. Le conducteurs non-professionnels ont maintenu en simulation une distance de securite significativement plus importante (47% en moyenne) que celle mesuree pour des conducteurs professionnels. Par ailleurs, nous avons demande a tous les conducteurs de fournir verbalement une estimation de distance absolue (les separant) du vehicule precedent. Leurs reponses ont revele une sous-estimation systematique de la distance, qui pourrait expliquer les differences observees entre conduite en simulation et conduite en condition reelle.
Increased serum levels of the specific AGE-compound methylglyoxal-derived hydroimidazolone in patients with type 2 diabetes.

A time-delayed fluorescence immunoassay was developed for the determination of serum levels of methylglyoxal (MG)-derived hydroimidazolone using a monoclonal antiserum raised against Nalpha-acetyl-Ndelta-(5-hydro-5-methyl)-4-imidazolone, Europium-labeled anti-mouse IgG antiserum as indicator, and MG modified bovine serum albumin (BSA) as standard. Serum levels of hydroimidazolone were measured in 45 patients with type 2 diabetes aged 59.4 +/- 6.1 (mean +/- SD) years and with duration of diabetes of 7.3 +/- 3.1 years, and in 19 nondiabetic controls aged 56.3 +/- 4.3 years. The serum levels of hydroimidazolone were significantly higher in patients compared to controls: median, 3.0 (5-95 percentile, 1.6 to 5.4) U/mg protein versus 1.9 (1.2 to 2.8) U/mg protein (P =.0005). Significant positive correlations were observed between the serum levels of hydroimidazolone and serum levels of advanced glycation end products (AGEs), measured with a polyclonal anti-AGE antibody: r = 0.59 for patients (P <.0001), and r = 0.65 for controls (P =.002). Similarly, significant correlations were also found between serum levels of hydroimidazolone and N(epsilon)-(carboxymethyl)-lysine (CML): r = 0.36 in patients and r = 0.55 for controls (both P =.02). Serum hydroimidazolone levels did not correlate with fasting plasma glucose or hemoglobin A(1c) (HbA(1c)) levels. The observed differences between patients with diabetes and nondiabetic controls seem to be comparable to differences measured for other AGE compounds.
Real Time Object Tracking on GPGPU

We propose a system for tracking objects in a video stream from a stationary camera. Our method, as often used, involves foreground-background separation and optical flow calculation. The major finding is fast feedback process that leads to an accurate detection of background-object and object-object boundaries and maintaining them during object occlusions. The contribution of this paper also includes improvements to computing dense optical flow and foreground separation. The methods described were implemented on a GPGPU and yield performance results sufficient for real time processing. Additionally, our approach makes no a priori assumptions on the characteristics of tracked objects and can be utilized to track both rigid and deformable objects of various shapes and sizes.
Intraepidermal nerve fiber density in patients with painful sensory neuropathy

Article abstract-Despite prominent symptoms of neuropathic pain, patients with small-fiber sensory neuropathies have few objective abnormalities on clinical examination and routine electrodiagnostic studies. We quantified intraepidermal nerve fiber (IENF) density in sections of skin obtained by punch skin biopsy, and found it to be significantly reduced in patients with painful sensory neuropathies compared with age-matched control subjects. In addition, IENF density correlated with clinical estimates of neuropathy severity, as judged by the extent of clinically identifiable sensory abnormalities. IENF density at the calf was lower than that obtained from skin at more proximal sites, indicating the length dependency of small-fiber loss in these neuropathies. NEUROLOGY 1997;48: 708-711
Syntactic and lexical context of pauses and hesitations in the discourse of Alzheimer patients and healthy elderly subjects

Psycholinguistic studies dealing with Alzheimer's disease (AD) commonly consider verbal aspects of language. In this article, we investigated both verbal and non-verbal aspects of speech production in AD. We used pauses and hesitations as markers of planning difficulties and hypothesized that AD patients show different patterns in the process of discourse production. We compared the distribution, the duration and the frequency of speech dysfluencies in the spontaneous discourse of 20 AD patients with 20 age, gender and socio-economically matched healthy peers. We found that patients and controls differ along several lines: patients' discourse displays more frequent silent pauses, which occur more often outside syntactic boundaries and are followed by more frequent words. Overall patients show more lexical retrieval and planning difficulties, but where controls signal their planning difficulties using filled pauses, AD patients do not.
Verification by current control of multi-phase transformer-linked type boost chopper circuit using current sensorless method

A Boost chopper circuit for Electric Vehicle and Hybrid Electric Vehicle are required miniaturization and high power density. Multi-phase transformer-linked type boost chopper circuit is an effective method for miniaturization of the circuit. In this circuit, the miniaturization of a smoothing capacitor and each phase inductor are half as compared with single-phase boost chopper circuit. However, since each phase is asymmetry by parasitic elements, its circuit arise imbalance of current of each phase. Therefore, multi-phase boost converter is necessary for current control such as balance of current of each phase. However, this circuit increases number of phase at the same time as increase number of current sensors too. Increase number of current sensor is become a problem such as increase in cost, grow in size of the circuit, increase of error of the gain of the current sensors of each phase. In this paper, comparison and verification of current control of both are using current sensorless method in multiphase transformer-linked type boost chopper circuit. In the result, average current mode control is confirmed by simulation and experimental result that the response of the control is better than current balancing control.
Diagnostic Approach to Atypical Parkinsonian Syndromes

ABSTRACTPurpose of Review: Although increasingly recognized, atypical parkinsonian syndromes remain challenging to diagnose and are underrecognized due to overlap with other parkinsonisms. This article provides a diagnostic approach to atypical parkinsonian syndromes, including progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), multiple system atrophy (MSA), corticobasal degeneration (CBD), and dementia with Lewy bodies. The goal of this review is to aid the clinician in recognizing key clinical and pathologic features and to raise awareness of recent advances in diagnostics and treatment.Recent Findings: Diagnostic criteria for atypical parkinsonian syndromes are evolving to encompass increasingly recognized heterogeneity in the presentation of these disorders and information gleamed from clinicopathologic correlations. PSP and CBD in particular now share similar pathologic clinical features and include a number of phenotypic variants. Pathologic diagnoses are increasingly used in clinical practice, and there is frequent reference now by clinicians to tauopathies, including PSP and CBD, and the synucleinopathies, which include MSA and dementia with Lewy bodies (as well as Parkinson disease). Research into biomarkers, including both tissue and imaging modalities and genetics, has the potential to increase disease recognition and make earlier diagnosis and treatment possible. Although novel therapeutics are being studied for atypical parkinsonian syndromes such as PSP, no new breakthrough interventions have emerged for the treatment of PSP, CBD, and MSA. Current therapeutic management for these disorders frequently uses a multidisciplinary team approach.Summary: The approach to atypical parkinsonian syndromes requires recognition of a constellation of overlapping but distinct clinical features that help with identifying and distinguishing them from Parkinson disease and other similar disorders.
The human eye: structure and function

A brief history of eyes. Part 1 Ocular systems: formation of the human eye ocular geometry and topography the orbit the extraocular muscles the nerves of the eye and orbit blood supply and drainage the eyelids and the lacrimal system. Part 2 Components of the eye: the cornea and the sclera the limbus and the anterior chamber the iris and pupil the cillary body and choroid the lens and vitreous retina I - photoreceptors and functional organization retina II - editing photoreceptor signals retina III - regional variation and spatial organization the retina "in vivo" and the optic nerve. Epilogue - time and change.
On the extraction methods for MOSFET series resistance and mobility degradation using a single test device

Parasitic series resistances and mobility degradation are limiting the development of advanced MOSFETs. We review, scrutinize, and critically compare five parameter extraction methods that use DC data measured from a single test device. The use of a single device facilitates individual characterization and avoids the impact of device-to-device model parameter variation that affects other common methods that require using measurements from arrays of transistors with several different geometries.
Behavioral Problems and Cognitive Performance at 5 Years of Age After Very Preterm Birth: The EPIPAGE Study

OBJECTIVES. We compared the frequency of behavioral problems in very preterm and term children at 5 years of age. We hypothesized that behavioral problems would be associated with cognitive impairment and environmental factors and that differences between the 2 groups would be reduced but persist after adjusting for cognitive performance and environmental factors. PATIENTS AND METHODS. The Etude Epidémiologique sur les Petits Ages Gestationnels (EPIPAGE) study was a prospective population-based cohort study that included all births occurring between 22 and 32 weeks' gestation and a control group of infants born at 39 to 40 weeks' gestation in 1997 in 9 French regions. Neonatal and obstetrics data were collected at birth. At 5 years of age, sociodemographic status and neurodevelopmental and cognitive development of the children, as well as maternal mental well-being, were assessed. The behavioral problems of 1102 very preterm and 375 term singletons without major impairments were studied by using the parent-completed Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. RESULTS. Parents of very preterm children reported significantly more behavioral problems, with a twofold higher prevalence compared with term children for hyperactivity/inattention, emotional symptoms, and peer problems. Behavioral problems were associated with low cognitive performance, developmental delay, hospitalizations of the child, young maternal age, and poor maternal mental well-being. Very preterm children were still at higher risk of behavioral problems compared with term children after adjustment for cognitive performance and all others factors. CONCLUSIONS. Behavioral problems were strongly related to cognitive impairment, but very preterm children were still at higher risk even after adjusting for cognitive performance. Early screening for behavioral problems should be encouraged for all very preterm children, and maternal well-being should also be the focus of special attention.
Prolonged overexpansion of extracellular water in elderly patients with sepsis.

OBJECTIVE To compare the sequential changes in extracellular water (ECW) expansion in elderly patients receiving intensive care for severe sepsis with those in a similar group of younger patients. DESIGN Inception cohort study. SETTING Critical Care Unit and University Department of Surgery in a single tertiary care center. PATIENTS A consecutive series of 14 patients older than 60 years (n=8) or younger than 40 years (n=6) with severe sepsis who completed sequential measurements of body composition during a 21-day period. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Sequential measurements of body composition including ECW by bromide dilution, total body water by tritium dilution, and fat-free body mass by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry were performed during 21 days after resuscitation. Excess ECW was estimated from the difference between measured ECW and ECW predicted from fat-free body mass corrected to normal hydration. RESULTS On the first study day, ECW was overexpanded by 9.05+/-1.87 L (mean+/-SEM) and 10.33+/-1.79 L in the young and elderly groups, respectively (P=.66). Whereas the young group excreted most of this excess ECW by day 5 (P=.008), the elderly group remained overexpanded until day 10 before mobilization of ECW occurred (P=.003). The changes over time of ECW excess were significantly different (P=.02 for group x time interaction). The elderly group required more prolonged inotropic (P=.009) and ventilatory (P=.004) support and remained in intensive care longer (P=.008) than the young group. CONCLUSIONS The period of ECW expansion is more prolonged in elderly patients with sepsis and contributes to a poorer outcome from critical illness. This new finding is of fundamental importance to the treatment of elderly patients recovering from severe sepsis.
Tumour suppressor activity of human imprinted gene PEG3 in a glioma cell line

Mouse imprinted gene Peg3 encodes a large C2H2 type zinc finger protein with unique characteristics. Peg3 knockout mice were found to show an impairment in maternal behaviour of the adult female. Mouse Peg3 is located on the proximal region of chromosome 7 which is syntenic to the long arm of human chromosome 19. It has been reported that a loss of heterozygosity (LOH) of chromosome 19q occurs frequently in several glioma types.