julilili42/papers huggingface dataset:
IMPACT OF CHRONIC VIRAL INFECTION IN HUMAN IMMUNOSENESCENCE: A GLOBAL HEALTH PROBLEM
2017-06-30

It is becoming increasingly apparent that infection with agents that establish latency may have serious occult impacts on health and longevity, many of which may be mediated by effects on host immunity. At one extreme, HIV can establish latency in elite controllers or by virtue of anti-viral treatment but nonetheless appears to accelerate the ageing process. At the other extreme, the recently-discovered torque-teno viruses require constant immune surveillance but development of viremia in immunosuppressed individuals appears symptom-free. In contrast, persistent CMV rarely causes any symptoms in healthy adults but can be a powerful and fatal acute pathogen in immunosuppressed people. Epidemiological and other studies suggest that long-term effects of controlled persistent infection with CMV, as well as HIV and other agents may 1) not be trivial and 2) may be additive. This Symposium addresses these important issues in presentations covering the impact of replicative senescence/telomere-telomerase dynamics in HIV disease, persistent immune activation and carotid atherosclerosis in HIV-Infected people receiving antiretroviral therapy, the long-term immune and non-immune impacts of CMV infection in humans, and the impact of chronic multi-pathogen infection (CMV, HSV, HBV, Helicobacter) on health and longevity
THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE ADAPTIVE IMMUNE SYSTEM TO AGEING
2017-06-30

The human adaptive immune system is particularly sensitive to the effects of ageing because the physiological process of thymic involution at puberty severely reduces the output of naïve T cells in adulthood. As a result, older adults consistently show low levels especially of CD8+ and to a lesser extent also CD4+ naïve T cells. This renders them highly susceptible to infectious disease caused by pathogens to which they were not previously exposed. Moreover, the accumulation of pro-inflammatory late-stage differentiated CD8+ T cells reactive to latent viruses, especially Cytomegalovirus, may contribute to the low-level enhanced chronic inflammatory state in older people, which is thought to facilitate the development of age-associated non-infectious degenerative diseases. These and other age-related changes to adaptive immunity in older adults conspire to reduce fitness to face new antigenic challenges at the same time as having to deal with chronic infections causes damage to the soma.
eXist DB or Saxon/C in PHP. A comparison between two approaches for XSLT 2.0 based websites
2017-06-30

XML and XSLT are very popular technologies among Digital Humanists.&nbsp; However, when it comes to deploying an XSLT 2.0 processor into a website infrastructure some difficulties arrise. This paper discusses two possible approaches for doing XSLT 2.0 transformations on the fly on a Web (Application) Server: Saxon as a PHP extension and Saxon within the popular XML database eXist. The conclusion shows, that both solutions have their pros and cons. In the end, however, the PHP solution wins.
Controlling Perceptual Factors in Neural Style Transfer
2017-07-01

Neural Style Transfer has shown very exciting results enabling new forms of image manipulation. Here we extend the existing method to introduce control over spatial location, colour information and across spatial scale. We demonstrate how this enhances the method by allowing high-resolution controlled stylisation and helps to alleviate common failure cases such as applying ground textures to sky regions. Furthermore, by decomposing style into these perceptual factors we enable the combination of style information from multiple sources to generate new, perceptually appealing styles from existing ones. We also describe how these methods can be used to more efficiently produce large size, high-quality stylisation. Finally we show how the introduced control measures can be applied in recent methods for Fast Neural Style Transfer.
Genome-wide Pleiotropy Between Parkinson Disease and Autoimmune Diseases
2017-07-01

The study findings provide novel mechanistic insights into PD and autoimmune diseases and identify a common genetic pathway between these phenotypes. The results may have implications for future therapeutic trials involving anti-inflammatory agents.
Silent Allosteric Modulation of mGluR5 Maintains Glutamate Signaling while Rescuing Alzheimer’s Mouse Phenotypes
2017-07-01

Metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5) has been implicated in Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology. We sought to understand whether mGluR5's role in AD requires glutamate signaling. We used a potent mGluR5 silent allosteric modulator (SAM, BMS-984923) to separate its well-known physiological role in glutamate signaling from a pathological role in mediating amyloid-β oligomer (Aβo) action. Binding of the SAM to mGluR5 does not change glutamate signaling but strongly reduces mGluR5 interaction with cellular prion protein (PrP<sup>C</sup>) bound to Aβo. The SAM compound prevents Aβo-induced signal transduction in brain slices and in an AD transgenic mouse model, the APPswe/PS1ΔE9 strain. Critically, 4 weeks of SAM treatment rescues memory deficits and synaptic depletion in the APPswe/PS1ΔE9 transgenic mouse brain. Our data show that mGluR5's role in Aβo-dependent AD phenotypes is separate from its role in glutamate signaling and silent allosteric modulation of mGluR5 has promise as a disease-modifying AD intervention with a broad therapeutic window.
Chronotype, Sleep Behavior, and the Big Five Personality Factors
2017-07-01

Chronotype refers to individual differences in sleep timing and in preferences for a given time of day while sleep duration refers to the hours of sleep. Here, we assessed chronotype, sleep duration, and nightmare frequency in relation to the Big Five personality factors. Overall, 2,492 persons (1,437 women, 1,055 men) completed the online survey between March 23, 2015, and April 8, 2015. The mean age of the sample was 47.75 ± 14.41 years. In bivariate correlations, age, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness were related to morningness, and openness to experience and neuroticism were related to eveningness. In the multiple regression, gender, neuroticism, and agreeableness were not related to chronotype. Morning types slept less at weekends than evening types, and evening types showed longer sleep latencies. Neuroticism showed the strongest effect on nightmare frequency followed by openness to experience. Nightmare frequency declined with age, and there was a small but significant effect of conscientiousness on nightmare frequency; persons with higher conscientiousness scores reported slightly more often nightmares. Chronotype was not associated with nightmare frequency. To conclude, chronotype is associated with personality factors and sleep behavior (sleep duration on weekends and sleep latency).
A hybrid brain-machine interface based on EEG and EMG activity for the motor rehabilitation of stroke patients
2017-07-01

Including supplementary information from the brain or other body parts in the control of brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) has been recently proposed and investigated. Such enriched interfaces are referred to as hybrid BMIs (hBMIs) and have been proven to be more robust and accurate than regular BMIs for assistive and rehabilitative applications. Electromyographic (EMG) activity is one of the most widely utilized biosignals in hBMIs, as it provides a quite direct measurement of the motion intention of the user. Whereas most of the existing non-invasive EEG-EMG-hBMIs have only been subjected to offline testings or are limited to one degree of freedom (DoF), we present an EEG-EMG-hBMI that allows the simultaneous control of 7-DoFs of the upper limb with a robotic exoskeleton. Moreover, it establishes a biologically-inspired hierarchical control flow, requiring the active participation of central and peripheral structures of the nervous system. Contingent visual and proprioceptive feedback about the user's EEG and EMG activity is provided in the form of velocity modulation during functional task training. We believe that training with this closed-loop system may facilitate functional neuroplastic processes and eventually elicit a joint brain and muscle motor rehabilitation. Its usability is validated during a real-time operation session in a healthy participant and a chronic stroke patient, showing encouraging results for its application to a clinical rehabilitation scenario.
Social Cognitive Constructs Are Just as Stable as the Big Five Between Grades 5 and 8
2017-07-01

Personality traits and social cognitive variables are central constructs in psychological research. It is often assumed that personality traits are less changeable than social cognitive variables, and thus interventions usually tend to focus on the latter. However, these assumptions about the mutability of personality and social cognitive variables have never been tested side-by-side in a longitudinal study. Using a large longitudinal study with four time points and N = 3,876 students in 136 classes (99 schools), we compared the mutability of the Big Five personality traits and social cognitive constructs more often described as socioemotional skills or motivational variables (individual interest, self-concept, and academic effort in the school subjects math, English, and German). The results indicated that there are no marked differences between personality traits and social cognitive constructs across multiple indicators of stability or changeability.
Does recruitment source moderate treatment effectiveness? A subgroup analysis from the EVIDENT study, a randomised controlled trial of an internet intervention for depressive symptoms
2017-07-01

Objective This study aims to examine whether the effects of internet interventions for depression generalise to participants recruited in clinical settings. Design This study uses subgroup analysis of the results of a randomised, controlled, single-blind trial. Setting The study takes place in five diagnostic centres in Germany. Participants A total of 1013 people with mild to moderate depressive symptoms were recruited from clinical sources as well as internet forums, statutory insurance companies and other sources. Interventions This study uses either care-as-usual alone (control) or a 12-week internet intervention (Deprexis) plus usual care (intervention). Main outcome measures The primary outcome measure was self-rated depression severity (Patient Health Questionnaire-9) at 3 months and 6 months. Further measures ranged from demographic and clinical parameters to a measure of attitudes towards internet interventions (Attitudes towards Psychological Online Interventions Questionnaire). Results The recruitment source was only associated with very few of the examined demographic and clinical characteristics. Compared with participants recruited from clinical sources, participants recruited through insurance companies were more likely to be employed. Clinically recruited participants were as severely affected as those from other recruitment sources but more sceptical of internet interventions. The effectiveness of the intervention was not differentially associated with recruitment source (treatment by recruitment source interaction=0.28, p=0.84). Conclusion Our results support the hypothesis that the intervention we studied is effective across different recruitment sources including clinical settings. Trial registration number ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01636752 .
Stroke lesion location influences the decoding of movement intention from EEG
2017-07-01

Recent studies have demonstrated the efficacy of brain-machine interfaces (BMI) for motor rehabilitation after stroke, especially for those patients with severe paralysis. However, a cerebro-vascular accident can affect the brain in many different manners, and lesions in diverse areas, even from significantly different volumes, can lead to similar or equal motor deficits. The location of the insult influences the way the brain activates when moving or attempting to move a paralyzed limb. Since the essence of a rehabilitative BMI is to precisely decode motor commands from the brain, it is crucial to characterize how lesion location affects the measured signals and if and how it influences BMI performance. This paper compares the performances of an electroencephalography (EEG)-based movement intention decoder in two groups of severely paralyzed chronic stroke patients: 14 with subcortical lesions and 14 with mixed (i.e., cortical and subcortical) lesions. We show that the lesion location influences the performance of the BMI when decoding the movement attempts of the paretic arm. The obtained results underline the need for further developments for a better individualization of BMI-based rehabilitative therapies for stroke patients.
Movement-related brain oscillations vary with lesion location in severely paralyzed chronic stroke patients
2017-07-01

In the past few years, innovative upper-limb rehabilitation methods have been proposed for chronic stroke patients. These methods aim at functional motor rehabilitation using Brain-machine interfaces to constitute an alternate pathway from the brain to the muscles. Even in patients with absence of residual finger movements, recovery could be achieved. The extent to which these interventions are affected by individual lesion topology is yet to be understood. In this study EEG was measured in 30 chronic stroke patients during movement attempts of the paretic arm. We show that the magnitude of the event-related desynchronization was smaller in patients presenting lesions with involvement of the motor cortex. This could have important implications on the design of new rehabilitation schemes for these patients, which might benefit from carefully tailored interventions.
Design of continuous EMG classification approaches towards the control of a robotic exoskeleton in reaching movements
2017-07-01

Myoelectric control of rehabilitation devices engages active recruitment of muscles for motor task accomplishment, which has been proven to be essential in motor rehabilitation. Unfortunately, most electromyographic (EMG) activity-based controls are limited to one single degree-of-freedom (DoF), not permitting multi-joint functional tasks. On the other hand, discrete EMG-triggered approaches fail to provide continuous feedback about muscle recruitment during movement. For such purposes, myoelectric interfaces for continuous recognition of functional movements are necessary. Here we recorded EMG activity using 5 bipolar electrodes placed on the upper-arm in 8 healthy participants while they performed reaching movements in 8 different directions. A pseudo on-line system was developed to continuously predict movement intention and attempted arm direction. We evaluated two hierarchical classification approaches. Movement intention detection triggered different movement direction classifiers (4 or 8 classes) that were trained and tested over a 5-fold cross validation. We also investigated the effect of 3 different window lengths to extract EMG features on classification. We obtained classification accuracies above 70% for both hierarchical approaches. These results highlight the viability of classifying online 8 upper-arm different directions using surface EMG activity of 5 muscles and represent a first step towards an online EMG-based control for rehabilitation devices.
Immunotargeting relapsed or refractory precursor B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia &ndash; role of blinatumomab
2017-07-01

Patients with refractory or relapsed (R/R) acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) have a dismal prognosis of around 5% long-term survival when treated with cytotoxic chemotherapy and allogenic stem cell transplantation. T-cell immunobased strategies open up new therapeutic perspectives. Blinatumomab is the first of a new class of antibody constructs that was labeled bispecific T-cell engager (BiTE): it consists of two single chain variable fragment connected with a flexible linker, one side binding CD3, the other CD19. The tight binding and the close proximity to the CD19-positive B-cells and leukemic cells leads to non-major histocompatibility complex-restricted T-cell activation, polyclonal T-cell expansion and direct target cell killing. Applied by continuous infusion, blinatumomab achieves morphological complete response rates ranging from 39% to 69% in R/R ALL patients (compared to 25% after second-line chemotherapy) with prolonged overall survival (blinatumomab median overall survival, 7.7 months vs chemotherapy, 4.0 months). In comparison to conventional cytotoxic second-line protocols blinatumomab has a favorable safety profile. The main adverse event is related to the mode of action of blinatumomab: the induction of a cytokine-release syndrome that can be managed by interruption and/or the application of steroids or tocilizumab. Another typical complication is the occurrence of neurological side effects, such as seizures and encephalopathy. This neurotoxicity is reversible after application of steroids and/or withdrawal of blinatumomab. Blinatumomab has proven to be a powerful therapeutic option in R/R ALL patients both adult and pediatric because of its efficacy and limited toxicity.
Formation of basic lead phases during fire-setting and other natural and man-made processes
2017-07-01

Basic lead phases are relatively rare compounds occurring in various natural and anthropogenically influenced environments, most importantly those related to fire-setting (FS). The medieval FS mining method and subsequent alteration processes lead to a complex set of basic lead phases including caledonite, hydrocerussite, leadhillite, and lanarkite. Although basic lead phases have been known for over 100 years, their mode of formation and stability relations are only insufficiently known. In this study, the formation of this interesting phase assemblage is described in detail including textures, genesis, and conditions of formation. Samples include ones collected in a medieval mining district in SW-Germany and ones that underwent short-term (50 days) experiments mimicking FS and subsequent mine dump processes. The mode of occurrence and the stability relation of basic lead phases formed during FS is discussed using thermodynamic models that are adapted to also explain their occurrence in other anthropogenic and in natural environments.
Influence of artifacts on movement intention decoding from EEG activity in severely paralyzed stroke patients
2017-07-01

Brain-machine interfaces (BMI) can be used to control robotic and prosthetic devices for rehabilitation of motor disorders, such as stroke. The calibration of these BMI systems is of paramount importance in order to establish a precise contingent link between the brain activity related to movement intention and the peripheral feedback. However, electroencephalographic (EEG) activity, commonly used to build non-invasive BMIs, can be easily contaminated by artifacts of electrical or physiological origin. The way these interferences can affect the performance of movement intention decoders has not been deeply studied, especially when dealing with severely paralyzed patients, which often generate more artifacts by compensatory movements. This paper evaluates the effects of removing artifacts from the data used to train a BMI decoder on a dataset of 28 severely paralyzed stroke patients. We show that cleaning the training datasets reduces the global BMI performance for decoding attempts of movement. Further, we demonstrate that this performance drop especially affects the test trials contaminated by artifacts (i.e., trials that might not reflect cortical activity but noise), but not the clean test trials (i.e., trials representing correct cortical activity). This paper underlines the importance of cleaning the datasets used to train BMI systems to improve their efficacy for decoding movement intention and maximize their neurorehabilitative potential.
Comment on “Remagnetization of the Paleogene Tibetan Himalayan carbonate rocks in the Gamba area: Implications for reconstructing the lower plate in the India‐Asia collision” by Huang et al.
2017-07-01

Abstract The recent publication of “Remagnetization of the Paleogene Tibetan Himalayan carbonate rocks in the Gamba area: Implications for reconstructing the lower plate in the India‐Asia collision” by Huang et al. [J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth, 122, doi: 10.1002/2016JB013662 ] argued for a complete chemical remagnetization on the characteristic remanence of carbonate rocks from the Zongpu Formation (Fm) at Gamba, southern Tibet, and discussed its implications for the reconstruction of India‐Asia collision. To support their conclusion, the authors performed nonparametric fold tests on the paleomagnetic data obtained from the Zongpuxi section, we previously published in Yi et al. [Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., 2011, 309 (1–2):153–165] and argued for a synfolding or postfolding origin. In this comment, we demonstrate that their reinterpretation of the fold tests is invalid, and a prefolding origin of the ChRMs from the Zongpu Fm is still supported by the data. We agree that the new rock magnetic and SEM results are robust evidence for a secondary origin of the magnetite fraction in the Zongpu Fm; however, the associated secondary remanence was most likely acquired shortly after deposition of the carbonates, or even in an early diagenetic stage. We conclude that the paleomagnetic results from Gamba area can still be used for reconstructing the precollisional extent of Greater India.
Imaging characteristics of cardiac metastases in patients with malignant melanoma
2017-07-01

Cardiac metastases can involve every part of the heart possibly in dependence of histological subtype. The awareness of different types of cardiac metastases and their characteristic appearance on CT images is necessary for further investigations and might contribute to targeted therapy.
Influence of trans-spinal magnetic stimulation in electrophysiological recordings for closed-loop rehabilitative systems
2017-07-01

Recent studies have shown the feasibility of spinal cord stimulation (SCS) for motor rehabilitation. Currently, there is an increasing interest in developing closed-loop systems employing SCS for lower-limb recovery. These closed-loop systems are based on the use of neurophysiological signals to modulate the stimulation. It is known that electromagnetic stimulation can introduce undesirable noise to the electrophysiological recordings. However, there is little evidence about how electroencephalographic (EEG) or electromyographic (EMG) activities are corrupted when a trans-spinal magnetic stimulation is applied. This paper studies the effects of magnetic SCS in EEG and EMG activity. Furthermore, a median filter is proposed to ameliorate the effects of the artifacts, and to preserve the neural activity. Our results show that SCS can affect both EEG and EMG, and that, while the median filter works well to clean the EEG activity, it did not improve the contaminations of the EMG activity. The obtained results underline the need of cleaning EMG and EEG signals contaminated by SCS, which is essential for optimal closed-loop rehabilitation.