Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive spatial harmonic analysis of EEG data using Laplacian eigenspace

Electroencephalography is an important diagnostic tool for functional investigations of the human brain. Recent EEG measurement technologies provide high numbers of electrodes and sampling rates, which results in a considerable quantity of data. For the analysis of this EEG data, efficient signal analysis and decomposition methods are essential. In this paper a new method for spatial harmonic analysis of EEG data using the Laplacian eigenspace of the meshed surface of electrode positions is presented. The resulting eigenspace enables the spatial harmonic analysis, filtering, denoising and decomposition of EEG data. For a proof of concept, the proposed approach is applied to an 128 channel EEG recording of visual evoked potentials. A set of harmonic spatial basis functions for the EEG electrode setup is estimated. The EEG data are spatially decomposed and low pass filtered using the harmonic spatial basis functions.
Use of High-Nicotine/Tar-Yield (Full-Flavor) Cigarettes and Risk for Nicotine Dependence in Nationally Representative Samples of US Smokers.

INTRODUCTION The present study examines whether use of machine-estimated high-nicotine/tar-yield (full-flavor) cigarettes predicts greater risk of nicotine dependence after controlling for the influence of potential confounding factors in US nationally representative samples. METHODS Data were obtained from multiple years of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). Nicotine dependence was measured by (1) the Nicotine Dependence Syndrome Scale and (2) latency to first cigarette after waking. Associations between use of high-nicotine/tar-yield cigarettes and risk for nicotine dependence were examined using multiple logistic regression. RESULTS The odds of nicotine dependence were reliably greater among users of high- compared to lower-nicotine/tar-yield cigarettes even after adjusting for sociodemographic and other smoking characteristics (Ps < .0001). This relationship was (1) generally graded across differing nicotine/tar-yield cigarettes, (2) discernible across two definitions of nicotine dependence and multiple NSDUH survey years, and (3) observed among adult and adolescent smokers. CONCLUSION Use of high-nicotine/tar-yield cigarettes is associated with increased odds of nicotine dependence, a relationship that has important tobacco regulatory implications. Whether the widespread marketing and availability of high-nicotine/tar-yield cigarettes is increasing risk of nicotine dependence among US smokers warrants further research. IMPLICATIONS This study adds additional empirical evidence to the relation of machine measured high-yield cigarettes and likelihood of nicotine dependence, and draws some implications in regards to regulation.
Current Topics in Artificial Intelligence : Regularization

This short survey discusses the role of regularization in current deep learning research. Up till now, dropout remains the most popular choice of all deep neural network regularization techniques, and is what this survey is centered around. We first give a general introduction and interpretation of dropout (Section 1), followed by some follow-up works which either improve speed or offer analysis (Section 2). Then methods other than dropout, namely DropConnect and Batch Normalization, are introduced (Section 3) to provide comparison and contrast. Finally the necessity of regularization is argued (Section 4). This is the second of the four short surveys. 1 Dropout Regularization is important for deep neural networks, because they usually have millions of parameters to learn, and given the limited training data, overfitting is quite likely to happen. Dropout [1] stood out as a simple yet effective regularization technique, and first attracted major attention when it greatly alleviated the overfitting problem of AlexNet [2], the ILSVRC 2012 winner. 1.1 Formulation and Intuition The idea of dropout is quite simple. It introduces stochasticity into the neural network by (temporarily) dropping random units out, along with all its incoming and outgoing connections. This is equivalent to sampling a “thinned” network from the complete architecture. Concretely: • During each training iteration, drop each unit in a layer out with probability p (usually set to 0.5, which means randomly dropping half of the units in the current layer). • During testing, multiply all the outgoing weights of the units by p and make final prediction using all the units. The intuition behind dropout is as follows. If the capacity of the network is much larger than the data it is representing, then overfitting is likely to happen. In terms of weights, this could mean that a large number of weights have learned to “cooperate” or “co-adapt” to fit the data point. These complex co-adaptations could go wrong on the new test data. On the other hand, by randomly dropping half of the units, a unit is forced to work with different “co-workers” during each iteration of training. As a result, it is likely to learn something that is individually useful. But after learning is done, we no longer want to use the “thinned” networks and would like to utilize all the knowledge that the network has learned. Since the weights of the next layer is learned when we drop out half of the units in the current layer, if we fix the outgoing weights of all the units, then
A Cartography for 2x2 Symmetric Games

A bidimensional representation of the space of 2x2 Symmetric Games in the strategic representation is proposed. This representation provides a tool for the classification of 2x2 symmetric games, quantification of the fraction of them having a certain feature, and predictions of changes in the characteristics of a game when a change in done on the payoff matrix that defines it.
Faculty and the Observation of Trainees’ Clinical Skills: Problems and Opportunities

The clinical skills of medical interviewing, physical examination, and counseling remain vital to the effective care of patients, yet research continues to document serious deficiencies in clinical skills among students and residents. The most important method of evaluation is the direct observation of trainees performing these clinical skills. Standardized patients and other simulation technologies are important and reliable tools for teaching clinical skills and evaluating competence and will be incorporated in the near future as part of the United States Medical Licensing Examination. Standardized patients and simulation, however, cannot and should not replace the direct observation by faculty of trainees’ clinical skills with actual patients. Faculty are in the best position to document improvement over time and to certify trainees have attained sophisticated levels of skill in medical interviewing, physical examination, and counseling. Unfortunately, current evidence suggests significant deficiencies in faculty direct observation evaluation skills. The author outlines the nature of the problems in clinical skills and their evaluation by faculty and ends with recommendations to improve the current state of faculty skills in evaluation.
MEASUREMENT OF CHRONIC DAMAGE IN THE DONOR KIDNEY AND GRAFT SURVIVAL

Background. So-called marginal kidneys are used increasingly in renal transplantation, but features of marginal kidneys are disputed. Methods. To help define marginal, a morphometric measure, the index of chronic damage, was applied retrospectively to 500 implantation biopsy specimens of cadaveric grafts, and death-censored graft survival was calculated, up to 14 years after transplantation. Results. An index of 0% (n=242) was associated with better survival than 1%, with little difference between 1% and 39% (n=249). An index of 40% or more (n=9) was associated with the worst survival (χ2=14.2, 2 df, P <0.001). After controlling for donor age, the only values of the index related to survival were 40% and above (hazard ratio, 2.96; P =0.01). Donor age group 10 to 39 years old (n=238) had better survival than 1 to 9 years old (n=26) and 40 to 73 years old (n=236) (hazard ratios, 2.83 and 2.06, respectively; P <0.001). An early episode of acute rejection affected survival even at 6 years and later after transplantation (hazard ratio, 1.94; P <0.04). Conclusions. Marginal kidneys are identified using the index of chronic damage, but they are so rare that measurement is not necessary on every graft. After routine graft allocation and in the absence of acute rejection, a kidney from virtually any donor in an age group has the same potential as a graft from nearly all others in that group.
Ozonation followed by coagulation/flocculation and flotation as post-treatment of the effluent from an anaerobic baffled reactor treating domestic sewage.

This paper reports on the use of ozonation and dissolved air flotation as a post-treatment of the effluent from an anaerobic baffled reactor treating domestic sewage. After preliminary essays, the present experiment was performed fixing coagulant doses and, to all of them, some ozone doses were investigated. Later, the pH value and the ozone dose which provided the best removal efficiencies of all the parameters involved were tested, changing the coagulant dose and varying, for each of them, two ozone doses: the zero one and the optimum. Considering the best conditions of coagulation/flotation (ferric chloride dose of 65 mg.L-1 and pH around 5.5), the ozone dose application of 6 mg.L-1 led to a significant level in the removal efficiency of COD (80.4%), BOD (79.0%), total phosphate (93.4%), apparent color (91.9%) and turbidity (97.0%), demonstrating that the system seems to be efficient and capable of promoting a high degree of sewage post-treatment, reducing the coagulant dose until 30%, with a consequent reduction in the sludge generation.
Cycloid Psychoses: Diagnosis and Heuristic Value

The concept of “a motility psychosis” was introduced by Wernicke at the turn of the century in opposition to Kraepelin's “two entities principle. ” The term cycloid psychosis was utilized by Kleist in 1926 for this group, which was further subdivided into “anxiety-elation,” “confusion,” and “motility” psychoses by Leonhard. This diagnostic concept is presently used in Germany and Scandinavia, but two recent British investigations have shown that similar patients occur in London, where they comprise 8 to 10 per cent of admissions for acute psychosis. The diagnosis depends on the presence of “confusion” or a polymorphic disease picture with a mixture of affective and schizophrenic symptoms, often rapidly changing from one to the other. Some of these patients would be diagnosed as mania, others as schizophrenia in Britain and as schizoaffective or mood-incongruent affective disorder in the United States. Follow-up of the London patients showed that the cycloids had an exceptionally good prognosis—much better than schizophrenia, and at least as good as manic-depressive patients, but their clinical picture did not correspond to the group of patients diagnosed as suffering from bipolar affective disorder. However, there is some evidence to suggest a relationship between cycloid and manic-depressive disorders, including the beneficial effect of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and lithium in both the cycloid patients and the bipolar affective disorder patients. American psychiatry has recently decided to adopt a very strict view of schizophrenia, limiting the diagnosis to patients with hebephrenia or chronic paranoid hallucinatory psychoses. This will leave a large group of patients previously considered to be suffering from “acute schizophrenia” who fit very awkwardly into the category of the affective disorders. It is from this group that cycloid patients are recruited so that the concept may enable psychiatrists to collect and study a fairly homogeneous group which was previously scattered among several widely different diagnostic classes.
Observations of the vibration of the basilar membrane in squirrel monkeys using the Mössbauer technique.

The amplitude and the phase of vibration of the basilar membrane and the bony limbus of the cochlea were measured in living squirrel monkeys using the Mossbauer technique. In the middle ear, the vibration of the malleus (and occasionally the incus) was measured. The Mossbauer technique makes possible the measurement of very small velocities, e.g., 0.2 mm/sec. This sensitivity permits measurement of the motion of the malleus at sound‐pressure levels (SPLs) of 90 to 110 dB and measurement of the motion of the basilar membrane at 70 to 120 dB SPL, depending on the frequency. The basilar membrane vibrates nonlinearly for frequencies which produce the largest deflections at the spot on the basilar membrane under observation. The ratio of the displacement of the basilar membrane to that of the malleus was observed to have the following characteristics: (1) As the frequency is increased from a low value, its amplitude increases at 6 dB/oct until just below the maximum ratio where the slope increases to about 24 .
Estimation of Joint Stiffness Using Instantaneous Loads via an Electromyogram and Application to a Master–Slave System with an Artificial Muscle Manipulator

Master–slave systems and human-assisted systems in which robots can work together with humans have been widely developed. Such systems are necessary to communicate human intentions to a robot. Therefore, it is important for these systems to be able to estimate human joint characteristics such as torque, position and stiffness. In this context, we focus on the myoelectric (ME) potential. In many previous studies, an electric motor has been used as an actuator, and the torque and position are estimated from the ME potential. However, the joint stiffness of humans has not been studied extensively. In this study, we propose a method to estimate the stiffness of the human elbow by using antagonistic muscles when an instantaneous load is applied. Furthermore, we apply our method to a 1-d.o. f. manipulator with an artificial muscle. In the case of eccentric contraction, it has been shown that the stiffness of a joint can be estimated solely by an electromyogram of the triceps. Then, the stiffness and angle control of the artificial muscle manipulator that used it as the slave side is proposed. Furthermore, the estimated joint stiffness is set as a desired value for joint stiffness control of the artificial muscle manipulator. Experimental results of stiffness control indicate that the angle and the stiffness of the 1-d.o. f. artificial muscle manipulator can be adequately controlled for a master–slave system. Safer remote control systems can be developed by using this system.
A SiGe BiCMOS Class A power amplifier targeting 5.5GHz application

This paper discusses a 5.5GHz fully integrated high-linearity Class A power amplifier based on 0. 18μm SiGe BiCMOS technology. According to the post simulation results, the maximum output power can reach 24.18 dBm, and the PAE is 17.42% at P1dB. The designed PA based on SiGe BiCMOS technology demonstrates a competive linearity performance compared with RF CMOS and GaAs when considering the factors of cost and process complexity. It can be used in 802.11a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) application.
Long term results of tracheal support surgery for emphysema.

SUMMARY 1.Nineteen patients with obstructive lung disease and associated large airway collapse have undergone tracheal support surgery. 2.Ten patients have expired (average survival 18 months), four from the primary lung disease or complications of surgery. 3.Nine patients are still living 8–56 months from time of surgery (average 31 months). Sustained improvement in two patients with preoperative MBC values of 12 and 18 L/min is documented. 4.Further observations on clinical and laboratory evaluation and surgical management are discussed. A new prosthesis for surgically supporting the collapsing trachea is described.
Health-Promoting Behaviours of University Nursing Students in Jordan

The purpose of this study was to determine health-promoting behaviours of university nursing students in Jordan. This descriptive cross-sectional study used convenient sampling technique to recruit 167 undergraduate nursing students in Jordan. Data were collected by using an Arabic version of Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile II. The study results revealed that the mean item score for total Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile II was (127.24 ± 21.03). The students obtained highest scores in spiritual growth (25.04 ± 4.70) and lowest in physical activity subscales (16.27 ± 5.21). Significant difference was found between Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile II subscales (stress management, health responsibility, and interpersonal relations) and students’ age and gender.
A novel algorithm to improve the blind receiver for convolutive MIMO systems

A novel approach is presented to convert the convolutive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system with specified number of real receive antennas to an instantaneous MIMO system with virtual larger number of receive antennas. To achieve this goal the signal model in subspace-based channel shortening for the blind separation of convolutive mixtures has been reformulated and the corresponding virtual MIMO system has been presented. Then independent component analysis (ICA) algorithm is employed to evaluate the transmitted data. By virtual increase of the number of antennas the performance of the system improves significantly. Also a modification on the proposed approach for the case of BPSK modulation reduces the required number of receive antennas to half. Overall results have been verified via simulation.
Early prediction of anthracycline induced cardiotoxicity

Aim: The purpose of this study is to evaluate echocardiographically determined cardiac functions with serum levels of brain natriuretic peptide (BNP), cardiac troponin I (cTnI) and total antioxidant status (TAOS) in childhood leukemia treated with chemotherapeutics containing anthracyclines.
Age, Anxiety, and Self-Reported Health

A sample of 472 normal males ranging in age from twenty-five to eighty-two was divided into anxious and adjusted groups on the basis of a cluster analysis of the Cattell 16PF test, and compared for scores on a self-report measure of health. While the anxious men reported more symptoms than the adjusted in the young and middle age groups, there was no difference in the old group. Although anxiety was found to be unrelated to health as evaluated by physicians' examinations, the anxious men indeed reported more health problems in eight major areas of health concern than was warranted by their actual physical health status. This relation also did not hold in the old group. Anxious men seemed to be more vigilant about their health in young and middle age groups, but not in the old group. This was interpreted as a defensive denial of symptoms in the old anxious group; for a person with trait anxiety, anxiety about approaching death and increasing health problems is just too much to bear, and he resorts to denying symptoms in an effort to diminish his anxiety.
Inflammatory Events at the Blood Brain Barrier: Regulation of Adhesion Molecules, Cytokines, and Chemokines by Reactive Nitrogen and Oxygen Species

Recruitment of inflammatory cells into the CNS during pathological processes associated with neurodegeneration, trauma, autoimmune disease, and infection involves the generation of signaling molecules that are both cell-associated and soluble. Alteration in the permeability of the blood brain barrier, adhesion of blood-borne leukocytes to cerebral vessels, activation of chemoattractants and their receptors, and migration of inflammatory cells into the CNS are events that have been proposed to be regulated by cytokines and reactive oxygen and nitrogen species. In this review we propose associative connections between these events and the molecules involved as they may relate to CNS inflammation, placing illustrative emphasis on multiple sclerosis and the animal model for MS, experimental allergic encephalomyelitis.
The Gal4 Activation Domain Binds Sug2 Protein, a Proteasome Component, in Vivo and in Vitro *

An in vivo protein interaction assay was used to search a yeast cDNA library for proteins that bind to the acidic activation domain (AD) of the yeast Gal4 protein. Sug2 protein, a component of the 19 S regulatory particle of the 26 S proteasome, was one of seven proteins identified in this screen.In vitro binding assays confirm a direct interaction between these proteins. SUG2 and SUG1, another 19 S component, were originally discovered as a mutation able to suppress the phenotype of a Gal4 truncation mutant (Gal4Dp) lacking much of its AD. Sug1p has previously been shown to bind the Gal4 AD in vitro. Taken together, these genetic and biochemical data suggest a biologically significant interaction between the Gal4 protein and the 19 S regulatory particle of the proteasome. Indeed, it is demonstrated here that the Gal4 AD interacts specifically with immunopurified 19 S complex. The proteasome regulatory particle has been shown recently to play a direct role in RNA polymerase II transcription and the activator-19 S interaction could be important in recruiting this large complex to transcriptionally activeGAL genes.
Pretreatment plasma testosterone and estradiol levels in patients with locally advanced or metastasized prostatic cancer

Studies concerning pretreatment plasma hormonal environment in relation to stage of prostatic cancer have given conflicting results. The aim of the present study was to compare the pretreatment plasma testosterone (T), free T (fT), estradiol (E2), and free E2 (fE2) levels in patients with locally advanced (T3–4 M0) and metastatic (T1–4 M1) prostatic cancer, and to further examine the effect of the patients' general condition on these levels.
Pet feeding practices of dog and cat owners in the United States and Australia.

Most pet dogs and cats in developed countries are fed commercial foods, but there is growing interest in the use of noncommercial foods for pets, including homemade and raw food diets. A survey of dog and cat owners in the United States and Australia revealed that > 90% of pets were fed commercial foods, but that noncommercial foods comprised at east 25% of the diet for 17.3% of dogs and 6.3% of cats.
Depressive symptoms and severity of illness in multiple sclerosis: epidemiologic study of a large community sample.

OBJECTIVE Previous research has shown high prevalence rates of depression in multiple sclerosis patients seen in specialty clinics. The relationships among depressive symptoms and severity, duration, and course of multiple sclerosis are controversial. METHOD A survey was mailed to members of the Multiple Sclerosis Association of King County (Wash.). Of the 1,374 eligible participants, 739 returned the survey, a response rate of 53.8%. Data about demographic characteristics, employment, and duration and course of multiple sclerosis were collected. Severity of multiple sclerosis was determined by the Expanded Disability Status Scale, self-report version. Severity of depressive symptoms was evaluated with the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D Scale). Analysis of covariance was used to compare mean CES-D Scale scores across categories of multiple sclerosis, and logistic regression was used to identify variables associated with clinically significant depression. RESULTS Clinically significant depressive symptoms (CES-D Scale score > or =16) were found in 41.8% of the subjects, and 29.1% of the subjects had moderate to severe depression (score > or =21). Subjects with advanced multiple sclerosis were much more likely to experience clinically significant depressive symptoms than subjects with minimal disease. Shorter duration of multiple sclerosis was associated with a greater likelihood of significant depressive symptoms, but the pattern of illness progression was not. CONCLUSIONS In this large community sample, the severity of multiple sclerosis was more strongly associated with depressive symptoms than was pattern of illness. Clinicians should evaluate depression in patients with recent diagnoses of multiple sclerosis, major changes in functioning, or limited social support.