Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Curl-Based Finite Element Reconstruction of the Shear Modulus Without Assuming Local Homogeneity: Time Harmonic Case

In elasticity imaging, the shear modulus is obtained from measured tissue displacement data by solving an inverse problem based on the wave equation describing the tissue motion. In most inversion approaches, the wave equation is simplified using local homogeneity and incompressibility assumptions. This causes a loss of accuracy and therefore imaging artifacts in the resulting elasticity images. In this paper we present a new curl-based finite element method inversion technique that does not rely upon these simplifying assumptions. As done in previous research, we use the curl operator to eliminate the dilatational term in the wave equation, but we do not make the assumption of local homogeneity. We evaluate our approach using simulation data from a virtual tissue phantom assuming time harmonic motion and linear, isotropic, elastic behavior of the tissue. We show that our reconstruction results are superior to those obtained using previous curl-based methods with homogeneity assumption. We also show that with our approach, in the 2-D case, multi-frequency measurements provide better results than single-frequency measurements. Experimental results from magnetic resonance elastography of a CIRS elastography phantom confirm our simulation results and further demonstrate, in a quantitative and repeatable manner, that our method is accurate and robust.
The 1.9-Å crystal structure of the noncollagenous (NC1) domain of human placenta collagen IV shows stabilization via a novel type of covalent Met-Lys cross-link

Triple-helical collagen IV protomers associate through their N- and C-termini forming a three-dimensional network, which provides basement membranes with an anchoring scaffold and mechanical strength. The noncollagenous (NC1) domain of the C-terminal junction between two adjacent collagen IV protomers from human placenta was crystallized and its 1.9-Å structure was solved by multiple anomalous diffraction (MAD) phasing. This hexameric NC1 particle is composed of two trimeric caps, which interact through a large planar interface. Each cap is formed by two α1 fragments and one α2 fragment with a similar previously uncharacterized fold, segmentally arranged around an axial tunnel. Each monomer chain folds into two structurally very similar subdomains, which each contain a finger-like hairpin loop that inserts into a six-stranded β-sheet of the neighboring subdomain of the same or the adjacent chain. Thus each trimer forms a quite regular, but nonclassical, sixfold propeller. The trimer–trimer interaction is further stabilized by a previously uncharacterized type of covalent cross-link between the side chains of a Met and a Lys residue of the α1 and α2 chains from opposite trimers, explaining previous findings of nonreducible cross-links in NC1. This structure provides insights into NC1-related diseases such as Goodpasture and Alport syndromes.
Simulating the effects of atrial fibrillation induced electrical remodeling: A comprehensive simulation study

Mechanisms underlying atrial fibrillation (AF) are poorly understood. In this study, we computationally evaluated the functional roles of AF induced electrical remodeling (AFER) on atrial electrical excitations. Experimental data of AFER on human atrial myocytes were incorporated into a biophysically detailed model of human atrial cells to simulate the effects of AFER at cellular and tissue levels. Our results show that AFER dramatically abbreviated atrial action potential duration (APD90) and effective refractory period that were quantitatively consistent with experimental data. A typical feature of loss in rate dependent accommodation of APD90 was observed. AFER slowed down atrial conduction velocity, but facilitated atrial conduction at high excitation rates. AFER increased tissue's spatial vulnerability for initiation and maintenance of AF remarkably. The overall susceptibility of human atrium to arrhythmia was increased. Most importantly AFER increased the stability of reentrant waves in 2D and 3D models prolonging their lifespan. While reentrant excitation waves self-terminated under Control conditions, the same became persistent or degenerated into multiple wavelets leading to spatio-temporal chaos under AFER conditions with accelerated re-entrant excitation rates. There was an increase in dominant frequency. In conclusion, our simulations substantiated a link between AFER and persistence of AF, providing mechanistic insights towards better understanding of “AF begets AF”.
Niche partitioning and the role of intraspecific niche variation in structuring a guild of generalist anurans

Intra-population niche differences in generalist foragers have captured the interest of ecologists, because such individuality can have important ecological and evolutionary implications. Few researchers have investigated how these differences affect the relationships among ecologically similar, sympatric species. Using stable isotopes, stomach contents, morphology and habitat preference, we examined niche partitioning within a group of five anurans and determined whether variation within species could facilitate resource partitioning. Species partitioned their niches by trophic level and by foraging habitat. However, there was considerable intraspecific variation in trophic level, with larger individuals generally feeding at higher trophic levels. For species at intermediate trophic levels, smaller individuals overlapped in trophic level with individuals of smaller species and larger individuals overlapped with the smallest individuals from larger species. Species varied in carbon isotopes; species with enriched carbon isotope ratios foraged farther from ponds, whereas species with depleted carbon isotope values foraged closer to ponds. Our study shows that these species partition their niches by feeding at different trophic levels and foraging at different distances from ponds. The intraspecific variation in trophic level decreased the number of individuals from each species that overlapped in trophic level with individuals from other species, which can facilitate species coexistence.
Affective and Engagement Issues in the Conception and Assessment of a Robot-Assisted Psychomotor Therapy for Persons with Dementia

The interest in robot-assisted therapies (RAT) for dementia care has grown steadily in recent years. However, RAT using humanoid robots is still a novel practice for which the adhesion mechanisms, indications and benefits remain unclear. Also, little is known about how the robot's behavioral and affective style might promote engagement of persons with dementia (PwD) in RAT. The present study sought to investigate the use of a humanoid robot in a psychomotor therapy for PwD. We examined the robot's potential to engage participants in the intervention and its effect on their emotional state. A brief psychomotor therapy program involving the robot as the therapist's assistant was created. For this purpose, a corpus of social and physical behaviors for the robot and a “control software” for customizing the program and operating the robot were also designed. Particular attention was given to components of the RAT that could promote participant's engagement (robot's interaction style, personalization of contents). In the pilot assessment of the intervention nine PwD (7 women and 2 men, M age = 86 y/o) hospitalized in a geriatrics unit participated in four individual therapy sessions: one classic therapy (CT) session (patient- therapist) and three RAT sessions (patient-therapist-robot). Outcome criteria for the evaluation of the intervention included: participant's engagement, emotional state and well-being; satisfaction of the intervention, appreciation of the robot, and empathy-related behaviors in human-robot interaction (HRI). Results showed a high constructive engagement in both CT and RAT sessions. More positive emotional responses in participants were observed in RAT compared to CT. RAT sessions were better appreciated than CT sessions. The use of a social robot as a mediating tool appeared to promote the involvement of PwD in the therapeutic intervention increasing their immediate wellbeing and satisfaction.
A Submillimeter Study of the Star-forming Region NGC 7129

New molecular (13CO J = 3-2) and dust continuum (450 and 850 μm) maps of the NGC 7129 star-forming region are presented. The maps include the Herbig Ae/Be star LkHα 234, the far-infrared source NGC 7129 FIRS 2, and several other prestellar sources embedded within the molecular ridge. The data are complemented with C18O J = 3-2 spectra at several positions within the mapped region. Both the submillimeter and the 13CO emission show a similar morphology, displaying a sharp boundary toward the cavity. The submillimeter maps also reveal a second source, SMM 2, which is not clearly seen in any earlier data set. This is either a prestellar core or possibly a protostar. Also, the highest continuum peak emission is identified with the deeply embedded source IRS 6 a few arcseconds away from LkHα 234. These new 450 and 850 μm observations are combined with previous continuum observations of the three compact far-infrared sources in the field, in order to make fits to the spectral energy distributions and to obtain the source sizes, dust temperatures, luminosities, and masses. For nine positions where both 13CO and C18O spectra are available, gas masses have been obtained and compared with masses derived from the continuum fluxes. The masses are found to be consistent, implying little or no CO depletion onto grains. The dust emissivity index is found to be low toward the dense compact sources, β ~ 1-1.6, and high, β ~ 2.0, in the surrounding cloud.
The Evolution of First Person Vision Methods: A Survey

The emergence of new wearable technologies, such as action cameras and smart glasses, has increased the interest of computer vision scientists in the first person perspective. Nowadays, this field is attracting attention and investments of companies aiming to develop commercial devices with first person vision (FPV) recording capabilities. Due to this interest, an increasing demand of methods to process these videos, possibly in real time, is expected. The current approaches present a particular combinations of different image features and quantitative methods to accomplish specific objectives like object detection, activity recognition, user-machine interaction, and so on. This paper summarizes the evolution of the state of the art in FPV video analysis between 1997 and 2014, highlighting, among others, the most commonly used features, methods, challenges, and opportunities within the field.
Treatment of superficial human neoplasms by local hyperthermia induced by ultrasound

This study was designed to test the safety and efficacy of local heating of superficial tumors by ultrasound. Twenty‐five patients were treated who had recurrent or metastatic tumor in superficial locations refractory to conventional treatment modalities. Heating was done with high intensity ultrasound fields produced by a 2 cm or 4 cm piezoelectric transducer at frequencies of 1‐3 MHz. Tumors were held at 43, 44, or 45 C center temperature for 30 minutes each treatment. Analysis of response was done after 6 treatments. Ultrasound and thermal fields were carefully mapped. Some nonuniformity of tumor heating was noted despite relatively uniform output of ultrasound energy by the transducer. Twenty‐one of the 25 patients were evaluable after 26 courses of local hyperthermia. Fourteen of 26 courses of treatment resulted in objective tumor response (54%) However, most responses were partial and median follow‐up time was short (5 weeks) because many patients had systemic disease and died or were put on chemotherapy after treatment. Eight of 12 lesions in patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck regressed. Response rate did not correlate with central tumor temperature. Treatment was, in general, well tolerated although 10/26 courses of treatment caused significant local pain. Pain always subsided after treatment. Five of 26 courses of treatment resulted in small (0.5 cm) cutaneous burns. Previous irradiation did not limit heating. We conclude that superficial tumors can be safely and effectively heated by ultrasound. Objective tumor responses were seen with hyperthermia alone, although we stress that, because of the short follow‐up time and, because most responses were partial, it is likely that the effects noted were transitory.
Optimizing Admission Control for Multiservice Wireless Networks With Bandwidth Asymmetry Between Uplink and Downlink

Next-generation wireless networks need to support multiclass services with asymmetric bandwidth allocation between uplink and downlink to match the asymmetric traffic load brought by some data services. For the design of call admission control (CAC) policy in such networks, how to decrease the average system cost is a key issue. In this paper, we study the optimal admission policy for minimizing the system cost. We consider the CAC problem as a decision process. By modeling the admission control problem into a Markov decision process (MDP) and analyzing the corresponding value function, we obtain some monotonicity properties of the optimal policy. These properties suggest that the optimal admission control policy for the bandwidth asymmetry wireless networks should have a threshold structure and the threshold specified for a class of calls may change with the system state. Due to the prohibitively high complexity for computing the thresholds in a system with large state-space, we propose a heuristic CAC policy called call-rate-based dynamic threshold (CRDT) policy to approximate the theoretical optimal policy based on the insights we obtain from the modeling and the analytical study on the properties of the optimal policy. The CRDT policy is efficient and can be easily implemented. The numerical results show that the performance of average system cost of the proposed CRDT policy is close to that of the optimal policy from the MDP model and is better than that of some known existing CAC schemes, including those performing well in bandwidth asymmetry wireless networks
DNA barcoding and morphological analysis for rapid identification of most economically important crop-infesting Sunn pests belonging to Eurygaster Laporte, 1833 (Hemiptera, Scutelleridae)

Abstract The genus Eurygaster Laporte, 1833 includes ten species five of which inhabit the European part of Russia. The harmful species of the genus is E. integriceps. Eurygaster species identification based on the morphological traits is very difficult, while that of the species at the egg or larval stages is extremely difficult or impossible. Eurygaster integriceps, E. maura, and E. testudinaria differ only slightly between each other morphologically, E. maura and E. testudinaria being almost indiscernible. DNA barcoding based on COI sequences have shown that E. integriceps differs significantly from these closely related species, which enables its rapid and accurate identification. Based on COI nucleotide sequences, three species of Sunn pests, E. maura, E. testudinarius, E. dilaticollis, could not be differentiated from each other through DNA barcoding. The difference in the DNA sequences between the COI gene of E. integriceps and COI genes of E. maura and E. testudinarius was more than 4%. In the present study DNA barcoding of two Eurygaster species was performed for the first time on E. integriceps, the most dangerous pest in the genus, and E. dilaticollis that only inhabits natural ecosystems. The PCR-RFLP method was developed in this work for the rapid identification of E. integriceps.
Small Reflectors for Ground Motion Monitoring With InSAR

In recent years, synthetic aperture radar interferometry has become a recognized geodetic tool for observing ground motion. For monitoring areas with low density of coherent targets, artificial corner reflectors (CRs) are usually introduced. The required size of a reflector depends on radar wavelength and resolution and on the required deformation accuracy. CRs have been traditionally used to provide a high signal-to-clutter ratio (SCR). However, large dimensions can make the reflector bulky, difficult to install and maintain. Furthermore, if a large number of reflectors are needed for long infrastructure, such as vegetation-covered dikes, the total price of the reflectors can become unaffordable. On the other hand, small reflectors have the advantage of easy installation and low cost. In this paper, we design and study the use of small reflectors with low SCR for ground motion monitoring. In addition, we propose a new closed-form expression to estimate the interferometric phase precision of resolution cells containing a (strong or weak) point target and a clutter. Through experiments, we demonstrate that the small reflectors can also deliver displacement estimates with an accuracy of a few millimeters. To achieve this, we apply a filtering method for reducing clutter noise.
Observation of high-lying resonances in the H- ion.

Several series of doubly excited resonances have been observed in H − photodetachment, appearing as dips in the production cross section of excited neutral hydrogen. At least three resonances are clearly visible converging on each of the thresholds n=5, 6, 7, and 8. The data support recent theoretical calculations for the energies of doubly excited resonances and verify a Rydberg-dipole formula for the main resonance positions
Seasonal carriage of pfcrt and pfmdr1 alleles in Gambian Plasmodium falciparum imply reduced fitness of chloroquine-resistant parasites.

BACKGROUND Observations in natural Plasmodium falciparum populations after removal of failing drugs suggest that there is a fitness cost of drug resistance. METHODS To examine the effect of transient removal of drug pressure, we analyzed seasonal changes in the prevalence of chloroquine (CQ)-resistant parasite genotypes in The Gambia. Parasite isolates from 441 children presenting with uncomplicated falciparum malaria over 5 seasons (1998-2002) were linked to weekly rainfall data. RESULTS The prevalence of CQ-resistant parasites increased slightly over 5 years, with the 76T allele of pfcrt (odds ratio [OR] per year, 1.16; P=.03) and the 86Y allele of pfmdr1 (OR per year, 1.18; P=.02) becoming significantly more common. However, intraseasonal analysis showed that these alleles decreased in prevalence each dry season. Wild-type parasites with respect to both loci predominated as transmission began each year, with resistant parasites becoming more common as drug use increased. This pattern was seen for both pfcrt-76T (OR per week, 1.09; P=.001) and pfmdr1-86Y (OR per week, 1.07; P=.001) and could not be explained by seasonal changes in the clonal complexity of infections. CONCLUSIONS The fitness cost of CQ resistance works against the persistence of resistant parasites through the dry season.
Impact of Rural Residence and Health System Structure on Quality of Liver Care

Background Specialist physician concentration in urban areas can affect access and quality of care for rural patients. As effective drug treatment for hepatitis C (HCV) becomes increasingly available, the extent to which rural patients needing HCV specialists face access or quality deficits is unknown. We sought to determine the influence of rural residency on access to HCV specialists and quality of liver care. Methods The study used a national cohort of 151,965 Veterans Health Administration (VHA) patients with HCV starting in 2005 and followed to 2009. The VHA’s constant national benefit structure reduces the impact of insurance as an explanation for observed disparities. Multivariate cox proportion regression models for each quality indicator were performed. Results Thirty percent of VHA patients with HCV reside in rural and highly rural areas. Compared to urban residents, highly rural (HR 0.70, CI 0.65-0.75) and rural (HR 0.96, CI 0.94-0.97) residents were significantly less likely to access HCV specialty care. The quality indicators were more mixed. While rural residents were less likely to receive HIV screening, there were no significant differences in hepatitis vaccinations, endoscopic variceal and hepatocellular carcinoma screening between the geographic subgroups. Of note, highly rural (HR 1.31, CI 1.14-1.50) and rural residents (HR 1.06, CI 1.02-1.10) were more likely to receive HCV therapy. Of those treated for HCV, a third received therapy from a non-specialist provider. Conclusion Rural patients have less access to HCV specialists, but this does not necessarily translate to quality deficits. The VHA's efforts to improve specialty care access, rural patient behavior and decentralization of HCV therapy beyond specialty providers may explain this contradiction. Lessons learned within the VHA are critical for US healthcare systems restructuring into accountable care organizations that acquire features of integrated systems.
Expression and release of LAG‐3‐encoded protein by human CD4+ T cells are associated with IFN‐γ production

The lymphocyte activation gene (LAG) ‐3 is a member of the immunoglobulin superfamily that is selectively transcribed in human activated T and NK cells. In this work, the possibility that LAG‐3 expression by human CD4+ T cells was preferentially related to one or another phenotype of cytokine secretion was investigated. Surface LAG‐3 expression correlated with IFN‐γ, but not IL‐4, production in antigen‐stimulated T cells and it was up‐ regulated by IL‐12. Most activated CD4+ T cell clones with established Thl or Th0 profiles of cytokine secretion expressed LAG‐3 on their surface, whereas the great majority of Th2 clones showed 1 neither surface LAG‐3 nor LAG‐3 mRNA expression. After activation, the majority of CD4+ T cell clones also released soluble LAG‐3‐related peptides, and such a release correlated positively with the production of IFN‐γ and inversely with the production of IL‐4. Thus, LAG‐3 expression by activated CD4+ human T cells appear to be preferentially associated with the differentiation/activation pathway leading to the production of IFN‐γ. —Annunziato, F. , Manetti R. , Tomase vie, L. , Guidizi, M. ‐G. , Biagiotti, R. , Giannö, V. , Germano, P., Mavilia, C. , Maggi, E. , Romagnani, S. Expression and release of LAG‐3‐encoded protein by human CD4+ T cells are associated with IFN‐γ production. FASEB J. 10, 769‐775 (1996)
The Relationship Between Bleeding on Probing and Subgingival Deposits. An Endoscopical Evaluation

Background: Bleeding on probing (BOP) is an indicator of tissue inflammatory response to bacterial pathogens. Due to anatomical limitations, the entity and physical state of microbial aggregations located under the gingival margin and their relations to BOP have been hardly investigated till now. The recent introduction of the endoscopy has allowed clinicians to observe the subgingival environment in a non-traumatic way. The aim of this study is to evaluate the correlation between BOP and subgingival deposits by using this new technology. Methods: 107 teeth (642 individual sites) from 16 periodontal patients, treated with scaling and root planing, were evaluated for plaque index (PI), gingival index (GI), probing pocket depth (PPD), bleeding on probing (BOP), endoscopic biofilm index (EBI), and endoscopic calculus index (ECI) at one-month revaluation. Results: A linear association between BOP and PD, EBI, and ECI was detected. The BOP provided a high level of specificity but quite low sensitivity values both for ECI (sensitivity 40%, specificity 86%) and EBI (sensitivity 37%, specificity 89%). The BOP sensitivity was directly linked to the amount of subgingival deposits. Conclusions: This study demonstrates a direct relationship between BOP and presence/amount of subgingival deposits. More investigations on larger samples are, however, needed.