nils-herrmann/clean_scirepeval huggingface dataset:
Exercise induced changes of cerebrospinal fluid vascular endothelial growth factor in adult chronic hydrocephalus patients
Venue: Journal of Clinical Neuroscience

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is a growth factor demonstrated to be a key factor in cerebral angiogenesis and neurogenesis. It has been considered a critical component in hippocampus neurogenesis and memory formation and has been observed to increase in the rat hippocampus after exercise. We previously found increased VEGF levels in experimental chronic hydrocephalus in several brain areas and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) suggesting a role in the adaption to chronic hypoxia. Here we investigate the ability of moderate exercise to increase CSF VEGF levels in adult chronic hydrocephalus patients. Lumbar CSF samples were collected from 17 normal pressure hydrocephalus patients. During CSF collection, 11 patients (exercise group) underwent a standard in room occupational therapy session; six patients (no exercise group) did not undergo a physical therapy session. CSF VEGF levels were evaluated for increase related to exercise and the clinical response to CSF drainage. CSF VEGF levels in the exercise group demonstrated significant increases 1 3 hours post exercise compared with the levels 1 2 hours pre exercise (p=0.04) and also showed significantly higher levels than the no exercise groups (p=0.03) The post exercise CSF VEGF level in the group that did not clinically improve was significantly higher than both their own pre exercise level (p=0.02) and that seen in the clinically improving group (p=0.05) after exercise. We conclude that CSF VEGF levels can increase after moderate exercise even in elderly hydrocephalus patients. This suggests that a potential benefit of exercise, especially in CSF drainage non improved patients, may exist via a central VEGF mechanism.
A Novel Experimental Animal Model of Adult Chronic Hydrocephalus.
Venue: Neurosurgery

The pathogenesis of adult chronic hydrocephalus is not fully understood, and the temporal relationship between development of the radiological changes and neurological deterioration is unknown.  To clarify the progression of radiological histological changes and subsequent clinical manifestations of adult chronic hydrocephalus.  Kaolin was injected bilaterally into the subarachnoid space overlying the cranial convexities in 20 adult rats. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was obtained by using an 11.7 T scanner at 14, 60, 90, and 120 days after kaolin injection. Locomotor, gait, and cognitive evaluations were performed independently. Kaolin distribution and the associated inflammatory and fibrotic responses were histologically analyzed.  Evans index of ventriculomegaly showed significant progressive growth in ventricular size over all time points examined. The greatest enlargement occurred within the first 2 months. Evans index also correlated with the extent of kaolin distribution by MRI and by pathological examination at all time points. First gait changes occurred at 69 days, anxiety at 80, cognitive impairment at 81, and locomotor difficulties after 120 days. Only locomotor deterioration was associated with Evans index or the radiological evaluation of kaolin extension. Inflammatory/fibrotic response was histologically confirmed over the cranial convexities in all rats, and its extension was associated with ventricular size and with the rate of ventricular enlargement.  Kaolin injected into the subarachnoid space over the cerebral hemispheres of adult rats produces an inflammatory/fibrotic response leading in a slow onset communicating hydrocephalus that is initially asymptomatic. Increased ventricular size eventually leads to gait, memory, and locomotor impairment closely resembling the course of human adult chronic hydrocephalus.  NPH, normal pressure hydrocephalus.
High fibrosis indices in cerebrospinal fluid of patients with shunt dependent post traumatic chronic hydrocephalus
Venue: Translational neuroscience

A possible relationship between fibrosis along the route of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow and the subsequent development of hydrocephalus has been indicated in previous studies. These changes in the fibrosis index may reflect the severity of hydrocephalus and could potentially become a diagnostic tool. The object of this study was to analyze the levels of procollagen type I C terminal propeptide (PICP) procollagen type III N terminal propeptide (PIIINP) hyaluronic acid (HA) and laminin (LN) in the CSF of patients with post traumatic hydrocephalus and determine the significance of their presence. Subjects and methods Forty four patients were included in the study: 24 patients with shunt dependent post traumatic hydrocephalus (group A hydrocephalus group) ten brain trauma patients without any sign of hydrocephalus (group B trauma group) ten patients without brain trauma and hydrocephalus (group C normal control group) CSF levels of PICP, PIIINP, HA, LN and transforming growth factor b1(TGF b1) were detected using enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) Results Levels of PICP, PIIINP, HA, and LN in the group of hydrocephalus patients were significantly higher than those in the post trauma patients without hydrocephalus (p 0.05) and normal control patients (p 0.05) Moreover, the increased levels of PICP, PIIINP, HA, and LN were positively correlated with the level of TGF b1 (p 0.05)  We demonstrated an increase of fibrosis factors including PICP, PIIINP, HA, and LN, that was positively correlated with TGF b1 levels. This indicates an important role for the process of fibrosis in the development of post traumatic chronic hydrocephalus and shows the potential utility of PICP, PIIINP, HA, and LN as a diagnostic index in shunt dependent post traumatic chronic hydrocephalus.
Cognitive Aging Trajectories and Burdens of Disability, Hospitalization and Nursing Home Admission Among Community living Older Persons.
Venue: The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences

The course of cognitive aging has demonstrated substantial heterogeneity. This study attempted to identify distinctive cognitive trajectories and examine their relationship with burdens of disability, hospitalization, and nursing home admission.  Seven hundred and fifty four community living persons aged 70 years or older in the Yale Precipitating Events Project were assessed with the Mini Mental State Examination every 18 months for up to 108 months. A group based trajectory model was used to determine cognitive aging trajectories while adjusting for age, sex, and education. Cumulative burden of disabilities, hospitalizations, and nursing home admissions over 141 months associated with the cognitive trajectories were evaluated using a generalized estimating equation Poisson model.  Five distinct cognitive trajectories were identified, with about a third of participants starting with high baseline cognitive function and demonstrating No decline during the follow up period. The remaining participants diverged with Minimal (prevalence 41% Moderate (16% Progressive (8% and Rapid (3% cognitive decline. Participants with No decline incurred the lowest incidence rates (per 1,000 person months) of disability in activities of daily living (ADL; 75, 95% confidence intervals: 60 95) and instrumental ADL (492, 453 535) hospitalization (29, 26 33) and nursing home admission (18, 12 27) whereas participants on the Rapid trajectory experienced the greatest burden of ADL disability (612, 595 758) and those on the Progressive trajectory had the highest nursing home admission (363, 292 451)  Community living older persons follow distinct cognitive aging trajectories and experience increasing burdens of disability, hospitalization, and nursing home placement as they age, with greater burdens for those on a declining cognitive trajectory.
Steganography integrated into linear predictive coding for low bit rate speech codec
Venue: Multimedia Tools and Applications

The extensive use of Voice over IP (VoIP) applications makes low bit rate speech stream a very suitable steganographic cover media. To incorporate steganography into low bit rate speech codec, we propose a novel approach to embed information during linear predictive coding (LPC) process based on Matrix Embedding (ME) In the proposed method, a mapping table is constructed based on the criterion of minimum distance of Linear Predictive Coefficient Vectors, and embedding position and template are selected according to a private key so as to choose the cover frames. The original speech data of the chosen frames are partially encoded to get the codewords for embedding and then the codewords that need to be modified for embedding are selected according to the secret bits and ME algorithm. The selected codeword will be changed into its best replacement codeword according to the mapping table. When embedding k (k 1) bits into 2k 1 codewords, the embedding efficiency of our method is k times as that of LPC based Quantization Index Modulation method. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated in two aspects: distortion in speech quality introduced by embedding and security under steganalysis. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach leads to a better performance with less speech distortion and better security.
Modified linear predictive coding approach for moving target tracking by Doppler radar

Doppler radar is a cost effective tool for moving target tracking, which can support a large range of civilian and military applications. A modified linear predictive coding (LPC) approach is proposed to increase the target localization accuracy of the Doppler radar. Based on the time frequency analysis of the received echo, the proposed approach first real time estimates the noise statistical parameters and constructs an adaptive filter to intelligently suppress the noise interference. Then, a linear predictive model is applied to extend the available data, which can help improve the resolution of the target localization result. Compared with the traditional LPC method, which empirically decides the extension data length, the proposed approach develops an error array to evaluate the prediction accuracy and thus, adjust the optimum extension data length intelligently. Finally, the prediction error array is superimposed with the predictor output to correct the prediction error. A series of experiments are conducted to illustrate the validity and performance of the proposed techniques.
News Classification: A Data Mining Approach

Text classification is one of the important applications of data mining. Text classification classifies text documents on the basis of words, phrases, combination of words etc. into predefined class labels.  Present study classifies news data into four predefined classes namely Business, Entertainment, sports and Technology. For text classification WEKA an open source data mining tool is used. Different classification algorithms are applied on News data set. A comparative study of these algorithms is done based on Accuracy, Time, Errors and ROC to predict the best algorithm for news data set classification.  Present study analyzed result on the basis of accuracy, time, error and ROC curve. Present work concludes that NaiveBayes Multinomial algorithm is best for news classification.
Understanding Museum visitors' experience through an Eye tracking study and a Living Lab approach
Venue: 2016 International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation/IEEE lnternational Technology Management Conference (ICE/ITMC)

User centered and participatory innovation practices like Living Labs are nowadays increasingly been used to integrate, design and improve users' experience (UX) in different fields. These methods that had emerged from web and mobile design fields can contribute to the UX in several other fields. Museum visitors experience is a field that can benefit from them. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the museum visitors' experience through the use of tools from UX and usability studies. Among those techniques, field trials studies can help to better understand users' preferences as experience is tested in a real life setting. Exposition curators and managers can then use these understandings to improve visitors' experience. We present a study held at the Museum Aquarium of Nancy MAN (France) In this study were evaluated visitors' preferences among four different information supports in an exhibition module using a protocol that combines eyes tracking and an after use survey. Results show that interactive supports, as tablets and screens, even if not preferred by the majority of participants, once engaged with these supports, they interact for longer time. Found evidences let us to conclude that supports that are different and uncommon are preferred by most of the participants but they don't keep them engaged for long time.
Additive manufacturing of polymer derived ceramics
Venue: Science

Printing ceramics into complex shapes Some materials, such as thermoplastics and metals, are naturally suited to being 3D printed because the individual particles can be fused together by applying heat. In contrast, ceramics do not fuse together the same way. Eckel et al. developed a way to pattern specific preceramic monomers using either 3D printing or stereolithography into complex, curved, and porous shapes. Upon heating, they observed almost no shrinkage, and the formed parts showed exceptional thermal stability. Science, this issue p. 58 Preceramic monomers can be patterned, using stereolithography or 3D printing, into complex shapes and cellular architectures. The extremely high melting point of many ceramics adds challenges to additive manufacturing as compared with metals and polymers. Because ceramics cannot be cast or machined easily, three dimensional (3D) printing enables a big leap in geometrical flexibility. We report preceramic monomers that are cured with ultraviolet light in a stereolithography 3D printer or through a patterned mask, forming 3D polymer structures that can have complex shape and cellular architecture. These polymer structures can be pyrolyzed to a ceramic with uniform shrinkage and virtually no porosity. Silicon oxycarbide microlattice and honeycomb cellular materials fabricated with this approach exhibit higher strength than ceramic foams of similar density. Additive manufacturing of such materials is of interest for propulsion components, thermal protection systems, porous burners, microelectromechanical systems, and electronic device packaging.
Comparison of activation media and pyrolysis temperature for activated carbons development by pyrolysis of potato peels for effective adsorption of endocrine disruptor bisphenol A.
Venue: Journal of colloid and interface science

Activated carbon prepared from potato peels, a solid waste by product has been studied for the adsorption of an endocrine disruptor, Bisphenol A, from aqueous solutions. The potato peels biomass was activated with H3PO4, KOH and ZnCl2 in order the effect of the activation agent to be evaluated. The activated biomass was carbonized at 400, 600 and/or 800 degC in order the effect of carbonization temperature on the texture, surface chemistry and adsorption properties to be found. The activated carbons prepared were characterized by nitrogen adsorption, Scanning Electron Microscope, thermal analysis and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy. Equilibrium adsorption data followed both Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms. Adsorption followed second order rate kinetics. The adsorption capacity calculated from the Langmuir isotherm was found 454.62 mg g( 1) at an initial pH 3 at 25 degC for the phosphoric acid activated carbon carbonized at 400 degC that proved to be the best adsorbent.
Neuron Glia Interactions in Neural Plasticity: Contributions of Neural Extracellular Matrix and Perineuronal Nets
Venue: Neural plasticity

Synapses are specialized structures that mediate rapid and efficient signal transmission between neurons and are surrounded by glial cells. Astrocytes develop an intimate association with synapses in the central nervous system (CNS) and contribute to the regulation of ion and neurotransmitter concentrations. Together with neurons, they shape intercellular space to provide a stable milieu for neuronal activity. Extracellular matrix (ECM) components are synthesized by both neurons and astrocytes and play an important role in the formation, maintenance, and function of synapses in the CNS. The components of the ECM have been detected near glial processes, which abut onto the CNS synaptic unit, where they are part of the specialized macromolecular assemblies, termed perineuronal nets (PNNs) PNNs have originally been discovered by Golgi and represent a molecular scaffold deposited in the interface between the astrocyte and subsets of neurons in the vicinity of the synapse. Recent reports strongly suggest that PNNs are tightly involved in the regulation of synaptic plasticity. Moreover, several studies have implicated PNNs and the neural ECM in neuropsychiatric diseases. Here, we highlight current concepts relating to neural ECM and PNNs and describe an in vitro approach that allows for the investigation of ECM functions for synaptogenesis.
Molecular Mechanisms of Dendritic Spine Development and Plasticity
Venue: Neural plasticity

Dendritic spines were first described by Santiago Ramon y Cajal more than one hundred years ago when he examined Golgi stained cerebellar Purkinje cells of birds. Since then, considerable effort has been put towards understanding how these structures are formed and what their functions in the central nervous system are. It is now well established that dendritic spines represent specialized subcellular compartments on the postsynaptic neuron where the majority of excitatory synapses are located. Therefore, the density of dendritic spines is a rough indication of how much excitatory input a particular neuron receives. One notable feature of these structures is the large heterogeneity of their dimensions and shapes. They can exist as short stubby spines, long thin spines, and mushroom shaped spines. Moreover, they are highly dynamic, such that ongoing spine growth, turnover, and morphological changes occur in both developing and adult brains. Although excitatory synapses can form and function outside of dendritic spines, their location on spine heads likely confers additional properties. For example, the presence of the spine neck is thought to create an isolated biochemical compartment on the spine head, where individual synapses of the postsynaptic neuron can function and be regulated independently of each other. Changes in the dimension and shape of individual spines also allow modulation of synaptic efficacy between specific neuronal partners and therefore contribute to synaptic plasticity and provide the cellular basis of learning and memory. Indeed, many molecular players that regulate dendritic spine morphogenesis also turn out to be essential for learning related synaptic plasticity and memory formation. In this special issue, reviews and original research papers have been collected to address various questions on dendritic spine biology. These include the process of spine development, the functional differentiation of large and small spines, the relationships between spine changes and learning, the signaling pathways that control spine morphogenesis, and the link between spine abnormalities and brain disorders.
Do Institutional Investors Demand Lower Cost Stickiness?

This study explores the association between institutional ownership and the degree of cost stickiness. We find that when institutional ownership is higher, costs are less sticky. This result supports the argument that compared with individual investors, institutional investors are more likely to demand lower cost stickiness for mitigating the agency problems of empire building behaviors. We also find that the above association originates from the institutions that are likely to monitor managers (We name this type of institutions investors as institutional monitors) Furthermore, the negative association between ownership by institutional monitors and cost stickiness is stronger among the firms where managers have more opportunities to access resources based on available cash flows and their tenures. This result is consistent with the notion that when managers have more opportunities to empire build, institutional monitors tend to monitor more heavily to keep the costs in check.
Hidden Cost of Better Bank Services: Carefree Depositors in Riskier Banks?

Better customer service helps banks attract core deposits and increase funding stickiness by raising depositors' switching costs and enhancing their loyalty. This funding stickiness, however, could impair market discipline and lead to excessive risk taking. We find that banks providing better services attract more core deposits, pay less for their funding, and are exposed to lower funding outflow risks. At the same time, these banks carry lower quality loans. We argue that this contradictory finding of cheaper funding cost with lower asset quality stems from the lack of risk monitoring by loyal, sticky depositors, which exacerbates agency problems.
Managerial discretion and agency cost in Indian market

This paper investigates empirically the impact of managerial discretion on agency cost from the perspective of SG&A cost asymmetry and examines how corporate governance moderates this relationship. The analysis shows mixed evidence in favor for cost behavior and managerial choices in the Indian market. The cost asymmetry involves not only cost stickiness but also the anti sticky behavior of SG&A cost under certain circumstances. The main drivers for this disparity are owing to manager's resource adjustment decision, the future expectation of sales and managers' empire building behavior. Furthermore, findings suggest that strong corporate governance alleviates empire building behavior of managers. Additional analysis shows, the asymmetric behavior of SG&A cost in crisis period is mainly a result of managers' resource adjustment decision and future expectation of sales change. Manager's empire building behavior does not play an explicit role in this period. Next, the findings show that managers' discretion is influenced by future value creation potential of SG&A cost. Manager's empire building behavior is more pronounced in low value creation sample firms compared to high value creation sample. Thus, manager's choice for resource adjustment decision and empire building behavior changes according to the future value creation of SG&A cost, financial conditions and corporate governance mechanisms in Indian companies. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study performed in Indian capital market where the SG&A cost asymmetry tests the managers' empire building behavior. Overall, findings of the study indicate manager's resource adjustment decisions and empire building behavior caused by their consideration and this results in a form of agency costs. In comparison with developed markets, Indian markets have relatively less agency problem due to managerial empire building behavior.
An Image Splicing Detection Method Based on PCA Minimum Eigenvalues
Venue: J. Inf. Hiding Multim. Signal Process.

This paper presents a novel and effective image splicing forgery detection method based on the inconsistency of irrelevant components between the original and the tampered regions. The specific irrelevant components can be described by the minimum eigenvalues obtained by the principal component analysis (PCA) without knowing any prior information. To avoid the impact of local structures, a pixel and its nearest neighbors are taken as a block and the input matrix of PCA are gotten through self similarity pixel strategy (SSS) from the block, which extracts a local minimum eigenvalue for every pixel. The experimental results on several forged image datasets demonstrate that our method achieves competitive detection accuracy compared with two other region based methods.