Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of clinical features and drug therapies among European and Latin American patients with juvenile dermatomyositis.

OBJECTIVES To compare the demographic features, presenting manifestations, diagnostic investigations, disease course, and drug therapies of children with juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM) followed in Europe and Latin America. METHODS Patients were inception cohorts seen between 1980 and 2004 in 27 paediatric rheumatology centres. The following information was collected through the review of patient charts: sex; age at disease onset; date of disease onset and diagnosis; onset type; presenting clinical features; diagnostic investigations; course type; and medications received during disease course. RESULTS Four hundred and ninety patients (65.5% females, mean onset age 7.0 years, mean disease duration 7.7 years) were included. Disease presentation was acute or insidious in 57.1% and 42.9% of the patients, respectively. The course type was monophasic in 41.3% of patients and chronic polycyclic or continuous in 58.6% of patients. The more common presenting manifestations were muscle weakness (84.9%), Gottron's papules (72.9%), heliotrope rash (62%), and malar rash (56.7%). Overall, the demographic and clinical features of the 2 continental cohorts were comparable. European patients received more frequently high-dose intravenous methylprednisolone, cyclosporine, cyclophosphamide, and azathioprine, while methotrexate and antimalarials medications were used more commonly by Latin American physicians. CONCLUSIONS The demographic and clinical characteristics of JDM are similar in European and Latin American patients. We found, however, several differences in the use of medications between European and Latin American paediatric rheumatologists.
On Machine Learning and Programming Languages

The complexity of Machine Learning (ML) models and the frameworks people are using to build them has exploded along with ML itself. State-of-the-art models are increasingly programs, with support for programming constructs like loops and recursion, and this brings out many interesting issues in the tools we use to create them — that is, programming languages (PL). This paper1, discusses the necessity for a first class language for machine learning, and what such a language might look like. ACM Reference Format: Mike Innes, Stefan Karpinski, Viral Shah, David Barber, Pontus Stenetorp, Tim Besard, James Bradbury, Valentin Churavy, Simon Danisch, Alan Edelman, Jon Malmaud, Jarrett Revels, and Deniz Yuret. 2018. On Machine Learning and Programming Languages. In Proceedings of SysML conference (SysML 2018). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/
Bacterial Persistence as a Phenotypic Switch

A fraction of a genetically homogeneous microbial population may survive exposure to stress such as antibiotic treatment. Unlike resistant mutants, cells regrown from such persistent bacteria remain sensitive to the antibiotic. We investigated the persistence of single cells of Escherichia coli with the use of microfluidic devices. Persistence was linked to preexisting heterogeneity in bacterial populations because phenotypic switching occurred between normally growing cells and persister cells having reduced growth rates. Quantitative measurements led to a simple mathematical description of the persistence switch. Inherent heterogeneity of bacterial populations may be important in adaptation to fluctuating environments and in the persistence of bacterial infections.
Relation of marital separation and divorce to suicide: a report.

This paper examines the relation of marital separation and divorce to suicide. The persons studied are applicants to the Benjamin Rush Center, the crisis clinic division of the Didi Hirsch Community Mental Health Center/Los Angeles Psychiatric Service. The sample consists of 238 subjects, of whom 39, or 16.4% were suicidal, and 23 had made one or more suicide attempts at some prior date. Those seriously discussing separation, but not actually separated, tended to be less frequently suicidal than the long-term separated/divorced (.05 less than p less than .10). The study further examined the relationship of important events and interspouse transactions to suicide potential. Significant associations were found in the relationship of suicide potential to verbal attack by spouse (p = .03), vacillation in the last two weeks (p = .02), and vacillation since the first serious discussion of divorce (p = .02). Several other associations approached statistical significance. The authors believe that the findings in regard to vacillation and interspouse aggression are especially interesting and merit further study.
Structural matching for stereo vision

An approach for solving the stereo correspondence problem is suggested that is based on extracting local image structures and matching similar structures between two images. The individual matches are represented as nodes in a graph. Arcs in this graph represent local photometric, geometrical, and topological similarities between the two images. Left/right correspondences are equivalent with sets of mutually compatible nodes, which are found as maximal cliques in the graph. The best clique selected according to an evaluation procedure is considered to be the best available match. An algorithm based on this approach is described and evaluated. Some experimental results obtained by applying this algorithm to a pair of images representing an indoor scene are reported. <<ETX>>
Prediction of Clinical Non‐Spine Fractures in Older Black and White Men and Women With Volumetric BMD of the Spine and Areal BMD of the Hip: The Health, Aging, and Body Composition Study

In a prospective study of 1446 black and white adults 70–79 yr of age (average follow‐up, 6.4 yr), vertebral TrvBMD from QCT predicted non‐spine fracture in black and white women and black men, but it was not a stronger predictor than total hip aBMD from DXA. Hip aBMD predicted non‐spine fracture in black men.
Cluster Detection of Rolled-up Kelvin-Helmholtz Vortices at the Magnetopause : Comparison with Simulations

1Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA 2Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Meguro, Tokyo, Japan 3Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA 4Centre d’Etude Spatiale Rayonnements, Toulouse, France 5Space and Atmospheric Physics Group, Imperial College, London, UK 6Space Sciences Division, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Didcot, Oxfordshire, UK
Remembering a Conversation – A Conversational Memory Architecture for Embodied Conversational Agents

Abstract This paper addresses the role of conversational memory in Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs). It describes an investigation into developing such a memory architecture and integrating it into an ECA. ECAs are virtual agents whose purpose is to engage in conversations with human users, typically through natural language speech. While several works in the literature seek to produce viable ECA dialog architectures, only a few authors have addressed the episodic memory architectures in conversational agents and their role in enhancing their intelligence. In this work, we propose, implement, and test a unified episodic memory architecture for ECAs. We describe a process that determines the prevalent contexts in the conversations obtained from the interactions. The process presented demonstrates the use of multiple techniques to extract and store relevant snippets from long conversations, most of whose contents are unremarkable and need not be remembered. The mechanisms used to store, retrieve, and recall episodes from previous conversations are presented and discussed. Finally, we test our episodic memory architecture to assess its effectiveness. The results indicate moderate success in some aspects of the memory-enhanced ECAs, as well as some work still to be done in other aspects.
Design and Implementation of Speech Generation System using MATLAB

The main idea of this project is to recognize the text character and convert it into speech signal. The text contained in the page is first pre-processed. The pre-processing module prepares the text for recognition. Then the text is segmented to separate the character from each other. Segmentation is followed by extraction of letters and resizing them and stores them in the text file. These processes are done with the help of MATLAB. This text is then converted into speech.
Pharmacological treatment of depression in patients with a primary brain tumour.

BACKGROUND Patients with a primary brain tumour often experience depression, for which drug treatment may be prescribed. However, these patients are also at high risk of epileptic seizures, cognitive impairment and fatigue, all of which are potential side-effects of antidepressants. The benefit, or harm, of pharmacological treatment of depression in brain tumour patients is unclear. OBJECTIVES To assess the benefits and harms of pharmacological treatment of depression in patients with a primary brain tumour. SEARCH STRATEGY We searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) (The Cochrane Library 2009, Issue 3), MEDLINE (1950 to July 2009) and EMBASE (1980 to July 2009). We searched PsycINFO, the British Nursing Index, LILACS, Psyndex, the NHS National Research Register, the NHS Centre for Reviews and Disseminations' Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness (DARE) and Web of Knowledge (covering Science Scisearch, Social Sciences Citation Index and Biological Abstracts) (up to July 2009). We handsearched Neuro-oncology, the Journal of Neuro-oncology, the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry and the Journal of Clinical Oncology (July 1999 to June 2009) and wrote to all the pharmaceutical companies manufacturing antidepressants for use in the UK. SELECTION CRITERIA We included all randomised controlled trials (RCTs), controlled clinical trials, cohort studies and case-control studies of any pharmacological treatment of depression in patients with a histologically diagnosed primary brain tumour. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS No studies met the inclusion criteria for this review. MAIN RESULTS We found no eligible studies evaluating the benefits or harms of any pharmacological treatment of depression in brain tumour patients suffering from depression. AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS No high-quality studies have examined the value of any drug treatment of depression in patients with primary brain tumours. Detailed prospective studies and RCTs are needed to inform the safe and effective treatment of this common and important complication of brain tumours.
The long-term antiproteinuric effect of eplerenone, a selective aldosterone blocker, in patients with non-diabetic chronic kidney disease

Introduction: There is still insufficient data concerning the clinical effects of eplerenone, a selective aldosterone blocker, in patients with non-diabetic chronic kidney disease (CKD). Methods: This study included non-diabetic CKD patients with urinary protein excretion (UPE) of 1.0 g/gCr or more in spite of long-term treatment with renin–angiotensin system (RAS) inhibitors. The clinical effects of eplerenone (25–50 mg/day) were investigated for 12 months. Results: Eplerenone treatment was associated with a 38% reduction in UPE after 12 months. There was only a slight increase in the serum potassium level. The reduction of proteinuria was observed more prominently in patients with modestly impaired renal function than in those with preserved renal function at baseline. Conclusion: The long-term administration of low-dose eplerenone was effective and safe for the treatment of non-diabetic CKD patients who showed persistent proteinuria in spite of therapy with RAS inhibitors.
Speaker adaptation by a linear transformation with optimised parameters

Speaker dependence of automatic speech recognition systems can be reduced by applying speaker-specific transformations to adapt the speech signal of a new speaker to that of the reference speaker. Initial investigations showed that speaker adaptation can be performed by transformations using spectral weighting and spectral warping. These heuristic methods can be substituted by a general linear matrix transformation, the parameters of which are determined by mean square error optimisation. The improvement of the recognition rate achievable by this matrix transformation is very high, but the method needs a large learning set. This can be reduced by restriction of the matrix to a band including the main diagonal in the middle. This banded matrix yields results close to those of the general matrix. Adaptation can be performed speaker-specifically as well as speaker- and class-specifically. As the cost of phoneme class-specific adaptation is very high, a grouping of phonemes is proposed so that one adaptation parameter set is used for all phonemes that belong to any one group.
I/sub DDQ/ characterization in submicron CMOS

The effectiveness of I/sub DDQ/ testing requires appropriate discriminability of defective and non-defective quiescent currents. Consequently, the interest in characterizing these currents is growing. In this paper we focus our attention on the non-defective I/sub DDQ/ current characterization. The dependence of I/sub DDQ/ on the channel length spread in scaled down devices is examined. The I/sub DDQ/ distribution of a subthreshold current dominant technology is obtained. Finally, I/sub DDQ/ test limits depending on acceptable yield loss and standard deviation of the channel length are determined.
The effect of sterilization on transforming growth factor β isolated from demineralized human bone

Growth factors have been identified as the primary cause of osteoinduction in bone healing. Transforming growth factor β (TGF‐β) has been shown to promote bone formation and is present in bone in high quantities. The aims of the present study were to isolate TGF‐β from human bone, demonstrate its biologic activity, and analyze the effects of conventional sterilization techniques on activity. Bone, obtained from femoral heads of five patients (mean age, 70 years) was ground, demineralized, and freeze‐dried, and samples from each patient were divided into three groups: no treatment, sterilization with 1.60 to 1.94 Mrad of 60Co irradiation, and sterilization with ethylene oxide (ETO). Carrier‐free recombinant TGF‐β control was also treated and was totally inactivated by ETO but not by irradiation (p < 0.01). TGF‐β activity in demineralized bone was not significantly diminished (p > 0.1) by either sterilization procedure, and substantial amounts of active TGF‐β were recovered in all bone samples: 1.04 ± 0.77 ng per mg of protein in irradiated samples, 0.67 ± 0.26 ng per mg in ETO‐treated samples, and 1.04 ± 0.33 in untreated samples, respectively (mean ± SD). Although a recent report demonstrated that the osteoinductive activity of bone morphogenetic protein in bone powder is diminished considerably by ETO and by 2.5 Mrad of irradiation sterilization of bone powder, these data demonstrate that TGF‐β activity, with its osteoinductive properties, was not destroyed in more coarsely ground, demineralized bone by ETO or by lower doses of irradiation. These findings support the use of human bone allografts in clinical instances involving impaired bone formation.
Silicon nitride supported platinum catalysts for the total oxidation of methane

The total oxidation of methane has been studied over Pt (0.12 wt%-0.9 wt%) catalysts supported on Ot-Si3N4. The catalysts were characterised by chemical analysis, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy. The correlation between the expected and real Pt content of the catalysts was established. It has been found that the catalytic activity of Pt catalysts depends strongly on the mean particle size. The decrease of activity of the platinum catalysts due to the sintering of metallic particles was observed under the reaction conditions.
Regional brain abnormalities in schizophrenia measured with magnetic resonance imaging.

OBJECTIVE To determine general and regional indices of structural brain abnormality in schizophrenia. DESIGN Case-control comparison study. SUBJECTS Fifty-two patients diagnosed as having schizophrenia according to the criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Revised Third Edition, were compared with 90 healthy volunteers recruited from the community. MEASUREMENTS Structural brain images were acquired using magnetic resonance; measurements were obtained using three-dimensional visualization of volume-rendered brains and an automated atlas-based dissection of specific regions. General measures included the volume of total brain tissue, total cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and CSF within the ventricular system. Regional measures included the volume of tissue and CSF in the frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes and the cerebellum. RESULTS Compared with the controls, the patients had a smaller average volume of total brain tissue and a greater average volume of total and ventricular CSF. A specific relative decrease in brain tissue was found only in the frontal lobes, although the volume of CSF was greater in patients than in controls in all brain regions. CONCLUSION In addition to the generalized brain abnormalities observed in schizophrenia, a regional abnormality may be present in frontal regions. Since the frontal lobes integrate multimodality information and perform a variety of "higher" cognitive and emotional functions that are impaired in schizophrenia, the frontal abnormality noted is consistent with the clinical presentation of the illness. Impaired frontal function and a disruption in its complex circuitry (including thalamocortical projections) may explain why patients with schizophrenia often have significant deficits in formulating concepts and organizing their thinking and behavior.
Selective hypometabolism in the inferior frontal lobe in depressed patients with Parkinson's disease

Depression is a frequent finding in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). Regional cerebral glucose metabolism was measured in depressed and nondepressed patients with PD and in age‐comparable normal control subjects using 2‐[18F]‐fluoro‐2‐deoxy‐D‐glucose and positron emission tomography (PET). Relative metabolic activity in the caudate and orbital‐inferior region of the frontal lobe was significantly lower in the depressed patients with PD as compared to both nondepressed patients and control subjects. There was a significant inverse correlation between relative glucose metabolism in the orbital‐inferior area of the frontal lobe and depression scores. This study suggests that depression in PD is associated with dysfunction in the caudate and orbital‐inferior area of the frontal lobe. This metabolic pattern is unlike that seen in patients with PD who have other behavioral deficits such as dementia, and suggests that disruption of basal ganglia circuits involving the inferior region of the frontal lobe may affect the regulation of mood.
Relation between subunit structure and temperature-sensitivity of mutant phenylalanyl RNA synthetases of Escherichia coli.

Four independent temperature-sensitive phenylalanyl RNA synthetase mutants of Escherichia coli differ from the wild type in that cell-free extracts contain phenylalanyl RNA synthetase cross-reacting material exclusively of about half the size of the wild type enzyme. It therefore seems probable that dissociation or at least weakening of subunit interactions might be the cause of the thermolability of the mutant enzymes. Further evidence supporting this assumption comes from the fact that the wild type enzyme can be dissociated in vitro by treatment with guanidine or urea under reducing conditions. The resulting dissociation products have the same size as the mutant cross-reacting material. Neither the subunits arising by in vitro dissociation of the wild type enzyme nor those present in mutant extracts show any catalytic activity. Direct demonstration of thermal dissociation of phenylalanyl RNA synthetase was made possible by means of a revertant strain possessing an enzyme with intermediate stability. Heat inactivation of this revertant enzyme is accompanied by a size change of phenylalanyl RNA synthetase cross-reacting material.
Animal reservoirs in the transmission of Helicobacter heilmannii. Results of a questionnaire-based study.

BACKGROUND Infection with either Helicobacter heilmannii or H. pylori causes gastritis in humans. Whereas the route of transmission of H. pylori appears to be human-human, it has been suggested that H. heilmannii is transmitted by animals. METHODS Two hundred and two patients with histologically confirmed H. heilmannii gastritis and 600 randomly selected patients with H. pylori gastritis were sent a questionnaire, in which they were asked whether they had had or still have regular contact with dogs, cats, rodents, horses, birds, cattle, pigs, or wild animals. RESULTS The questionnaires of 177 patients with H. heilmannii and 485 with H. pylori infection were evaluated. In comparison with H. pylori, H. heilmanii infection was strongly associated with contact with dogs, cats, cattle, or pigs. Logistic regression analysis showed that contact with pigs, cats, and dogs leads to a significant risk of H. heilmannii infection (odds, 4.990, 1.710. and 1.462). CONCLUSION Pigs, cats, and dogs appear to be reservoirs in the transmission of H. heilmannii.
Piecewise-linear classifiers, formal neurons and separability of the learning sets

The design of piecewise-linear classifiers from formal neurons is considered. The design classifiers are based on hierarchical, multilayer neural networks. The described procedure allows to find both the structure of network (the numbers of layers and neurons) and weights of single neurons. The main principle of the synthesis procedure is to preserve separability of learning sets during data compression by successive neural layers. Different procedures aiming at improving the network compression ability are also considered.
The distribution of wavelength and orientation selective cells in different areas of monkey visual cortex

The distribution of orientation and wavelength selective cells in visual areas V1, the V4 complex and V5 of macaque monkey cortex was studied by recording from regions representing equivalent eccentricities in each and characterizing cells for their orientational and wavelength preferences. The results showed: (a) that in VI wavelength selective cells are concentrated in the region of foveal representation (central 0-2°) and decline at increasing eccentricities; (b) that in the V4 complex the concentration of such cells does not vary with eccentricity ; rather, there are regional variations that are not eccentricity dependent but follow other, and unknown, rules; (c) that in V5 there are virtually no wavelength selective cells even at central eccentricities; (d) that in VI fewer than 50 % of cells with receptive fields in the central 0-2° are orientation selective and that the proportion of such cells increases to reach a high of about 80% at eccentricities of between 10 and 30°; (e) that in the V4 complex and in V5 the concentration of orientation selective cells decreases at increasing eccentricities; (f) that very few wavelength selective cells in VI and in the V4 complex are orientation selective. The implications of these findings for a comparison between visual areas of the monkey cortex are discussed.