Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Structural plasticity of dentate granule cell mossy fibers during the development of limbic epilepsy

Altered granule cell≫CA3 pyramidal cell synaptic connectivity may contribute to the development of limbic epilepsy. To explore this possibility, granule cell giant mossy fiber bouton plasticity was examined in the kindling and pilocarpine models of epilepsy using green fluorescent protein‐expressing transgenic mice. These studies revealed significant increases in the frequency of giant boutons with satellite boutons 2 days and 1 month after pilocarpine status epilepticus, and increases in giant bouton area at 1 month. Similar increases in giant bouton area were observed shortly after kindling. Finally, both models exhibited plasticity of mossy fiber giant bouton filopodia, which contact GABAergic interneurons mediating feedforward inhibition of CA3 pyramids. In the kindling model, however, all changes were fleeting, having resolved by 1 month after the last evoked seizure. Together, these findings demonstrate striking structural plasticity of granule cell mossy fiber synaptic terminal structure in two distinct models of adult limbic epileptogenesis. We suggest that these plasticities modify local connectivities between individual mossy fiber terminals and their targets, inhibitory interneurons, and CA3 pyramidal cells potentially altering the balance of excitation and inhibition during the development of epilepsy. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Down‐regulation of the PI3‐kinase/Akt pathway by ERK MAP kinase in growth factor signaling

The ERK MAP kinase and PI3‐kinase/Akt pathways are major intracellular signaling modules, which are known to regulate diverse cellular processes including cell proliferation, survival and malignant transformation. However, it has not been fully understood how these two pathways interact with each other. Here, we demonstrate that inhibition of the ERK pathway by the MEK inhibitor U0126 or PD98059 significantly potentiates EGF‐ and FGF‐induced Akt phosphorylation at both Thr308 and Ser473. We also show that hyperactivation of the ERK pathway greatly attenuates EGF‐ and FGF‐induced Akt phosphorylation. Furthermore, the enhanced Akt phosphorylation induced by U0126 is inhibited by the PI3‐kinase inhibitor LY294002, and is accompanied by the up‐regulation of Ras activity. These results suggest that the ERK pathway inhibition enhances Akt phosphorylation through the Ras/PI3‐kinase pathway. Thus, our results demonstrate that the ERK pathway negatively modulates the PI3‐kinase/Akt pathway in response to growth factor stimulation.
Complete genome analysis of the mandarin fish infectious spleen and kidney necrosis iridovirus.

The nucleotide sequence of the infectious spleen and kidney necrosis virus (ISKNV) genome was determined and found to comprise 111,362 bp with a G+C content of 54.78%. It contained 124 potential open reading frames (ORFs) with coding capacities ranging from 40 to 1208 amino acids. The analysis of the amino acid sequences deduced from the individual ORFs revealed that 35 of the 124 potential gene products of ISKNV show significant homology to functionally characterized proteins of other species. Some of the putative gene products of ISKNV showed significant homologies to proteins in the GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ databases including enzymes and structural proteins involved in virus replication, transcription, protein modification, and virus-host interaction. In addition, one major repeated sequence showing significant homology to the Red Sea bream iridovirus (RSIV) genome was identified. Based on the information obtained from biological properties (including histopathology, tissue tropisms, natural host range, and geographic distribution), physiochemical and physical properties, and genome analysis, we suggest that ISKNV, RSIV, sea bass iridovirus, grouper iridovirus, and African lampeye iridovirus may belong to a new genus of the Iridoviridae family and are tentatively referred to as cell hypertrophy iridoviruses.
Does the market price the nature and extent of earnings management for firms that beat their earnings benchmark?

This study investigates whether the abnormal returns at the quarterly earnings announcement date varies according to the market’s expectations of the nature (informative vs opportunistic) and extent of discretionary accruals for firms that meet or beat expectations (MBE). In doing so, this study introduces an innovative model that measures the market’s expectation of the informativeness of earnings at the earnings announcement date and assesses the impact on the abnormal return for the interaction between the nature and expected extent of earnings management. A large sample of Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 firms that meet or exceed their earnings expectation over the period of 1998 to 2007 is analyzed. The results reveal that the expected extent of earnings management has a positive (negative) relation with the abnormal return when earnings management is informative (opportunistic).
Demand for Coffee Imports

Basic economic theory suggests that the level of demand for imports of any good for consumption is determined by various factors, though their relative importance may vary from country to country. As far as coffee is concerned, it is believed that factors such as its own prices, prices of its close substitutes, i.e. tea, real income, population, price elasticity, income elasticity, change in the consumer's proference do determine the level of demand for its imports in any country. Based on the above proposition the study aims at building appropriate import demand models for analysing the pattern of imports of coffee for consumption in different countries. Countries considered for the study are - USA, UK, Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
Difference between parental perception and actual weight status of children: a systematic review.

An increasing number of children worldwide are overweight, and the first step in treating obesity is to identify overweight. However, do parents recognise overweight in their child and which factors influence parental perception? The aim of the present review is to systematically study differences between parental perception and the actual weight status of children. Medline, EMbase, CINAHL and PsychINFO were searched. After screening 2497 abstracts and 106 full texts, two reviewers independently scored the methodological quality of 51 articles (covering 35 103 children), which fulfilled the inclusion criteria. The primary outcome parameters were sensitivity and specificity of parental perception for actual weight status of their child. The methodological quality of the studies ranged from poor to excellent. Pooled results showed that according to objective criteria 11 530 children were overweight; of these, 7191 (62.4%) were incorrectly perceived as having normal weight by their parents. The misperception of overweight children is higher in parents with children aged 2-6 years compared with parents of older children. Sensitivity (correct perception of overweight) of the studies ranged from 0.04 to 0.89, while specificity (correct perception of normal weight) ranged from 0.86 to 1.00. There were no significant differences in sensitivity or specificity for different cut-off points for overweight, or between newer and older studies. Therefore we can conclude that parents are likely to misperceive the weight status of their overweight child, especially in children aged 2-6 years. Because appropriate treatment starts with the correct perception of overweight, health care professionals should be aware of the frequent parental misperception of the overweight status of their children.
Environmental factors associated with physician’s engagement in communication activities

Background: Communication between patients and providers is a crucial component of effective care coordination and is associated with a number of desired patient and provider outcomes. Despite these benefits, physician–patient and physician–physician communication occurs infrequently. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between a medical practice’s external environment and physician engagement in communication activities. Methodology/Approach: This was a cross-sectional examination of 4,299 U.S. physicians’ self-reported engagement in communication activities. Communication was operationalized as physician’s time spent on communication with patients and other providers during a typical work day. The explanatory variables were measures of environmental complexity, dynamism, and munificence. Data sources were the Health Tracking Physician Survey, the Area Resource File database, and the Dartmouth Atlas. Binary logistic regression was used to estimate the association between the environmental factors and physician engagement in communication activities. Findings: Several environmental factors, including per capita income (odds ratio range, 1.17–1.38), urban location (odds ratio range, 1.08–1.45), fluctuations in Health Maintenance Organization penetration (odds ratio range, 3.47–13.22), poverty (odds ratio range, 0.80–0.97) and population rates (odds ratio range, 1.01–1.02), and the presence of a malpractice crisis (odds ratio range, 0.22–0.43), were significantly associated with communication. Practice Implications: Certain aspects of a physician’s external environment are associated with different modes of communication with different recipients (patients and providers). This knowledge can be used by health care managers and policy makers who strive to improve communication between different stakeholders within the health care system (e.g., patient and providers).
Computational Social Science and Microblogs - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

According to the Computational Social Science Society of the Americas (CSSSA), computational social science is “The science that investigates social phenomena through the medium of computing and related advanced information processing technologies”. Positioned between the computer and social sciences, this new and emerging interdisciplinary field is fuelled by at least the following two developments: (i) availability of data: With the web, a huge volume of social data is now available which enables the study of traces of social interactions on new scales. (ii) increasing quantification of social theories: With recent advances in the social sciences, social theories become increasingly formal and/or mathematical and thus amenable to quantification. Taken together, these two developments give rise to a whole range of new and interesting problems on the intersection between computer and social sciences. While a multitude of social data is available on the World Wide Web, microblogs are of particular interest due to their real-time nature, their rich social fabric and their presumed on/offline coupling. In this talk, I am going to talk about the potentials and the challenges of doing computational social science based on data obtained from microblogs such as Twitter. In particular, I want to present previous work by my group and others to identify research avenues where progress has already been made or where progress is on the horizon, and contrast these with what I feel are open research challenges in this emerging field. Work that demonstrates the potential of microblogs for computational social science includes for example [1], where we have operationalized a number of theoretical constructs from sociology to characterize the nature of online conversational practices of political parties on Twitter. In another work, we have studied the ways in which users’ fields of expertise can be inferred from microblog data [4]. Work that demonstrates the pitfalls and challenges of doing computational social science with microblog data include for example [5] where we have studied a network of bots who are competing against each other in attacking users on Twitter. In subsequent work, we have found that such attacks have the potential to impact the social graph of Twitter [3], i.e. the network of who follows whom respectively who replies to whom. In other work, [2] have shown that there is a stark difference between the demographics of Twitter and the general population of the US, finding that Twitter users significantly over-represent densely populated regions and are predominantly male. I will argue that these and other factors need to be considered when we aim to unlock the full potential of microblog data for computational social science
Adhesion of neutrophils to fibronectin: role of the cd66 antigens.

Adhesion of neutrophils to substrate is initiated by receptor-ligand interactions that induce outside-in signaling. Inside-out signals and lateral interactions between surface molecules further fine tune the response. This study investigates the role of CD66 in adhesion of neutrophils to fibronectin, using domain-mapped monoclonal antibodies to CD66. Neutrophils express CD66a, CD66b, and CD66c on their surface. The neutrophil surface molecules that bind to fibronectin are the alpha(4)beta(1) and alpha(5)beta(1) integrins. Our results show that the monoclonal antibody Kat4c, which recognizes the AB domain of CD66a, b, and c and the polyclonal anti-CD66 (anti-carcinoembryonic antigen), augments neutrophil adhesion to fibronectin, while monoclonal antibodies to the individual CD66 antigens, the Fab fragment of Kat4c, and a mixture of the individual antibodies to CD66 antigens were unable to affect the adhesion. Thus heterodimerization of CD66a, b, and c is required for promoting neutrophil adhesion to fibronectin. The increased adhesion in presence of Kat4c was inhibited by antibodies to the beta(1) and beta(2) integrins. Antibody ligation of CD66 antigens causes their clustering and concomitant coclustering of the alpha(M) subunit of the beta(2) integrin, thereby activating the integrin. The sugar alpha-methyl mannoside inhibited anti-CD66-mediated clustering, indicating that a carbohydrate-lectin interaction may exist between CD66 and alpha(M) integrin. It also reduced the increased adhesion of neutrophils to fibronectin, suggesting that beta(2) integrin activation precedes beta(1) integrin activation. Further, the anti-CD66-mediated adhesion to fibronectin is accompanied by increased localization of Src family kinases (lyn and hck) to the cytoskeleton and an increase in their kinase activity. These results suggest that crosslinking of CD66a, CD66b, and CD66c promotes activation of the beta(2) integrin and in turn an alteration in the affinity of the beta(1) integrin, which enhances the adhesion of neutrophils to fibronectin.
Relationship between physical impairments and movement patterns during gait in patients with end‐stage hip osteoarthritis

Patients with hip osteoarthritis demonstrate limited range of motion, muscle weakness, and altered biomechanics; however, few studies have evaluated the relationships between physical impairments and movement asymmetries. The purpose of this study was to identify the physical impairments related to movement abnormalities in patients awaiting total hip arthroplasty. We hypothesized that muscle weakness and pain would be related to greater movement asymmetries. Fifty‐six subjects who were awaiting total hip arthroplasty were enrolled. Pain was assessed using a 0–10 scale, range of motion was assessed with the Harris Hip Score and isometric hip abductor strength was tested using a hand‐held dynamometer. Trunk, pelvis and hip angles and moments in the frontal and sagittal planes were measured during walking using three dimensional motion analysis. During gait, subjects had 3.49 degrees less peak hip flexion and 8.82 degrees less extension angles (p < 0.001) and had 0.03 Nm/k*m less hip adduction moment on the affected side (p = 0.043). Weaker hip muscles were related to greater pelvis (r = −0.291) and trunk (r = −0.332) rotations in the frontal plane. These findings suggest that hip weakness drives abnormal movement patterns at the pelvis and trunk in patients with hip osteoarthritis to a greater degree than hip pain. © 2014 Orthopaedic Research Society. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res 33:? –? , 2015.
Putting the Pieces Together: Using “Off-The-Shelf” Software to Safely Transfer Medical Data

Abstract: We describe a new computer-based, network-driven system for administering, transferring, and evaluating reports of spontaneous adverse drug reactions and serious adverse events. The system consists of three regional centers, one coordinating center, and a central database at the national drug regulatory authority. In view of its high level of data security, reliability, easy expandability, and inexpensiveness due to the use of standard shareware products, the system can serve as a model for a clinical health information network.
Host-defence mechanisms in surgical patients: a correlative study of the delayed hypersensitivity skin-test response, granulocyte function and sepsis.

To identify associations between abnormal measurements and development of life-threatening surgical sepsis, host-defence parameters were assessed in 2202 patients upon admission to hospital for operation. Measurements included the response to delayed type hypersensitivity (DTH) skin-test antigens, circulating blood-cell counts and hemoglobin levels, neutrophil adherence, chemotaxis, phagocytic and bactericidal function, and circulating serum albumin, serum globulin, serum immunoglobulin and complement levels. Sepsis was considered to be present when there was bacteremia, proven cholangitis or intracavitary abscess proven by operation or autopsy. The admission DTH response stratified patients into a reactive group (responding to two or more antigens out of five, 1373 patients), a relatively anergic group (with a response to one antigen, 306 patients) and an anergic group (with no antigen response, 523 patients). Sex, age and type of disease were similar in the three groups. There were abnormalities in neutrophil adherence, neutrophil chemotaxis, serum albumin and blood hemoglobin levels in all groups, compared with out-of-hospital controls. The reactive group had an 8% sepsis rate and a mortality of 4%, compared with 21% and 15% in the relatively anergic and 33% and 31% in the anergic groups respectively (chi 2 = 186, p less than 0.0001). The same observation was made in 1184 patients who were studied preoperatively: sepsis rates were 8%, 16% and 31% in the reactive, relatively anergic and anergic groups respectively (chi 2 = 76, p less than 0.0001) and mortality was 4%, 12% and 27% respectively (chi 2 = 99.7, p less than 0.0001). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Interoperability in cloud robotics — Developing and matching knowledge information models for heterogenous multi-robot systems

Every file, document, database and digital information is now going through the Cloud. Leveraged by the developments in information systems, Cloud Robotics is evolving at a steady pace and raised attention in the past 5 years. This recent field of Robotics is allowing engineers to envisage new and exciting applications for robots in the near future. This work proposes Cloud Robotics as a mean to integrate semantic reasoning in a multi-robot system, using self-created knowledge bases in each robot, in order to perform the coordination of complex task allocation. An auction-based coordination method and a knowledge matching algorithm were implemented to study this subject. The obtained results demonstrated that, the coordination of a large multi-robot system and the knowledge matching process can be computationally demanding, thus making them perfect candidate features to be “cloudyfied”.
Poverty and eosinophilia are risk factors for endomyocardial fibrosis (EMF) in Uganda

objective To determine the relative risks of socio‐demographic, dietary, and environmental factors for endomyocardial fibrosis (EMF) in Uganda. method Unmatched case control study in Mulago Hospital, Kampala. Cases (n=61) were sequential patients hospitalized with an echocardiographic diagnosis of EMF from June 1995 to March 1996. Controls (n 120) were concurrent patients with other forms of heart disease (heart controls, n 59) and subjects admitted for trauma or elective surgery (hospital controls, 61). All consenting subjects answered a structured questionnaire administered by trained interviewers. Complete blood counts, malaria films and stool examination for ova and parasites were performed. Questionnaires elicited information on home address, economic circumstances, variables concerned with environmental exposures and usual diet before becoming ill. results After adjustment for age and sex, cases were significantly more likely than controls to have Rwanda/Burundi ethnic origins ( 0.008). Compared with controls, cases had a lower level of education 0.001 for heart controls and 0.07 for hospital controls), were more likely to be peasants 0.001), and to come from Luwero or Mukono Districts ( 0.003). After further adjustment for peasant occupation, cases were more likely than controls to walk barefoot ( 0.015), consume cassava as their staple food 0.001) and to lack fish or meat in dietary sauces ( 0.02). Cases were more likely to exhibit absolute eosinophilia ( 0.006). The effect of cassava diet was more marked in the younger age group, while the effect of eosinophilia was greater in adults. Socio‐economic disadvantage is a risk for EMF. Absolute eosinophilia is a putative cause of EMF, a finding not explained by parasitism. conclusion Data indicate that relative poverty and environmental factors triggering eosinophilia appear to act in a geographically restricted region of Uganda in the aetiology of EMF.
A 10Gb/s CMOS CDR and DEMUX IC with a Quarter-Rate Linear Phase Detector

A 10Gb/s CDR and DEMUX IC in a 0.13mum CMOS consumes 100mA from a 1.2V core supply and 205mA from a 2.5V I/O supply including 18 LVDS drivers. The CDR system uses a quarter-rate linear phase detector and a 4-phase 2.5GHz LC-QVCO to achieve a BER of <10-15 and a jitter tolerance of 0.5UIpp exceeding the OC-192 standard
A roadmap toward the development of Sapienza Smart Campus

University campuses are comparable to cities, despite the differences in dimension and kind of structures. The Smart City model can be scaled and adapted to them in order to create a Smart Campus. In this framework the research project SC2 is based on an integrated Smart planning in order to reach this goal. The strength of the project is its methodological approach characterized by 5 key points: planning, integration and collaboration, flexibility and scalability. SC2 is the starting point to transform universities and single urban elements using a framework which can be extended and scaled to different urban contexts.
Enhancing noise and pitch robustness of children's ASR

It is well known that, when noisy speech is transcribed using automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems trained on clean data, a highly degraded recognition performance is obtained. The problemgets further aggravatedwhen the targeted group happens to be child speakers. For children's speech, the acoustic correlates such as pitch and formant frequency vary significantly with age. This makes the recognition of children's speech very challenging. In this paper, we have explored the ways to enhance the noise robustness of ASR systems for children's speech. Towards addressing the same, recently developed front-end acoustic features based on spectral moments (SMAC) are explored. The SMAC features are reported to be more noise robust than the conventional features like the mel-frequency cepsatral coefficients. At the same time, the SMAC features are also noted to be sensitive to the variations in the pitch. To reduce the pitch sensitivity, a spectral smoothing approach based on adaptive-liftering is proposed. Spectral smoothening prior to the computation of spectral moments results in a significant improvement in the robustness to pitch without affecting the noise immunity. To further enhance noise robustness, a foreground speech segmentation and enhancement module is also included in the proposed front-end speech parameterization technique.