Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Why less success of the peritoneal dialysis programmes in Europe?

In this issue of NDT, an interesting editorial by Li and Szeto describes the success of the peritoneal dialysis (PD) programme in Hong Kong. The swift expansion of PD in Asia, and particularly in Hong Kong, is in sharp contrast with the tantalizing efforts of the PD community in Europe to prevent PD utilization rates from declining. Whereas in Hong Kong, the prevalence rates of PD are as high as 80%, in Europe, they are around a disappointing 15% [1]. The prevalence rates vary also substantially from country to country inside Europe, being 30% in the United Kingdom [3]. Even within different regions in each country, there are striking differences: in Spain, PD prevalence ranges between 31% in Cantabria and 11% in Catalonia, and in Italy it ranges between 16% in Liguria and 2% in Campania [4]. All these facts make it clear that the penetration rate of PD in Europe is most likely not only attributable to differences in patient mix [5,6]. In this short comment, we will use the successful PD programme in Hong Kong as the benchmark to explore which factors do have an influence, and, more importantly, how they can be changed to improve PD utilization in Europe. Would an increase in peritoneal dialysis utilisation in Europe offer advantages? A first and important point is of course related to patient survival. As shown in the Hong Kong experience, survival rates on PD can be excellent, with 2-year survival rates, unadjusted for age, of 83%. In Europe, the gender- and age-adjusted 2- and 3-year survival rates are 79% and 68%
A New Nerve Growth Factor-Mimetic Peptide Active on Neuropathic Pain in Rats

Analysis of the structure of nerve growth factor (NGF)-tyrosine kinase receptor A (TrkA) complex, site-directed mutagenesis studies and results from chemical modification of amino acid residues have identified loop 1, loop 4, and the N-terminal region of the NGF molecule as the most relevant for its biological activity. We synthesized several peptides mimicking the two loops (1 and 4) linked together with an appropriate spacer, with or without the N-terminal region. Two peptides named NL1L4 and L1L4 demonstrated good NGF agonist activity at a concentration as low as 3 μm. They induced differentiation of chick dorsal root ganglia and stimulated tyrosine phosphorylation of TrkA, but not TrkB, receptor. In addition L1L4 was able to induce differentiation of PC12 cells. More interestingly, the peptide with the highest “in vitro” activity (L1L4) was shown to reduce neuropathic behavior and restore neuronal function in a rat model of peripheral neuropathic pain, thereby suggesting a potential therapeutic role for this NGF-mimetic peptide.
Decoupling Strokes and High-Level Attributes for Interactive Traditional Drawing

We present an interactive system, which allows the user to produce drawings in a variety of traditional styles. It takes as input an image and performs semi-automatic tonal modeling. Our system shifts tedious technical aspects to the computer side, while providing the user with freedom on the creative and aesthetic side. The user has low-level control over stroke placement, and high-level control over the tone, smudging and amount of detail. The drawing is rendered in real-time. The basic component is a thresholding model of strokes that can simulate a large class of styles (e.g. pencil, charcoal, engraving). It provides a controllable simulation of the variation of pencil pressure or stroke thickness traditionally used in tonal modeling. We introduce a novel fast equilibration approach for the resulting thresholding structure. The user can specify smudging and control the amount of detail over each part of the drawing.
Soft Failure Detection Using Factorial Hidden Markov Models

In modern business, educational, and other settings, it is common to provide a digital network that interconnects hardware devices for shared access by the users (e.g., in an office where printers are available for use by all the office workers). In such a context, so-called "soft" failures, where a device silently starts working in degraded mode, may easily go un-noticedfor a long time, resulting in potential productivity loss. It is therefore advantageous to enable system administrators to identify soft failures at an early stage. We propose here a probabilistic method using variational inference on a factorial hidden Markov model to automatically discover soft failures, based on the analysis of simple usage information which is normally logged by the network infrastructure. We propose to mine these logs in order to discover statistically significant deviations in the usage behavior of the overall infrastructure, and we identify such deviations with soft failures, or, in any case, situations of interest to an administrator.
Exponential evaluations in universal random privacy amplification

We derive a new upper bound for Eve’s information in secret key generation from a common random number without communication. This bound improves on Bennett[7]’s bound based on the Ŕenyi entropy of order 2 because the bound obtained here uses the Ŕenyi entropy of order 1+s for s ∈ [0, 1]. This bound is applied to a wire-tap channel. Then, we derive a n exponential upper bound for Eve’s information. Our exponent is compared with Hayashi[8]’s exponent. For the additive case , the bound obtained here is better. The result is applied to secre t key agreement by public discussion.
Approximate Ergodic Capacity of a Class of Fading Two-User Two-Hop Networks

The fading AWGN two-user two-hop network is considered where the channel coefficients are independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) according to a continuous distribution and vary over time. For a broad class of channel distributions, the ergodic sum capacity is characterized to within a constant number of bits/second/hertz, independent of the signal-to-noise ratio. The achievability follows from the analysis of an interference neutralization scheme where the relays are partitioned into M pairs, and interference is neutralized separately by each pair of relays. When M = 1, the proposed ergodic interference neutralization characterizes the ergodic sum capacity to within 4 bits/sec/Hz for i.i. d. uniform phase fading and approximately 4.7 bits/sec/Hz for i.i. d. Rayleigh fading. It is further shown that this gap can be tightened to 4 log π-4 bits/sec/Hz (approximately 2.6) for i.i. d. uniform phase fading and 4-4 log(3π/8) bits/sec/Hz (approximately 3.1) for i.i. d. Rayleigh fading in the limit of large M1.
Eecient Support for Multiple Concurrency Paradigms in Modern Programming Languages

We describe an approach to implementing a wide-range of concurrency paradigms in modern programming languages. The focus of our discussion is sting, a dialect of Scheme, that supports lightweight threads of control and virtual processors as rst-class objects. Given the signiicant degree to which the behavior of these objects may be customized, we can easily express a variety of concurrency paradigms and linguistic structures within a common framework without loss of eeciency. Sting is thus intended to be used as an operating system substrate for modern parallel programming languages. Unlike parallel systems that rely on low-level operating system services for managing concurrency, sting implements concurrency management entirely in terms of Scheme objects and procedures. It, therefore, permits users to optimize the runtime behavior of their applications without requiring knowledge of the underlying runtime system. This paper concentrates on (a) the implications of the design for building asynchronous con-currency structures, (b) the implementation of a thread controller using continuations as its basic control mechanism, (c) the organization of large-scale concurrent computations, and (d) robust programming environments for symbolic computing.
Performance analysis of single and multirate FFH-OCDMA networks based on psk modulation formats

In this paper, the performance of single and multirate fast frequency hopping optical code-division multiple-access (FFH-OCDMA) networks based on coherent modulation formats is addressed. The following modulation formats are assumed: binary and quadrature phase shift keying (BPSK and QPSK). For single rate networks, BPSK and QPSK are used as the modulation formats for all users. On the other hand, for multirate networks, BPSK and QPSK modulation formats are employed for low- and high-rate transmission users, respectively. For both networks, new bit error rate (BER) formalisms regarding the main deleterious source in OCDMA are derived, namely multiple-access interference. The mathematical formalism developed here accounts for any kind of users' signal waveforms (which are accurately accounted for at the desired user's receiver). As a result, it can be successfully used to carry out performance analysis of any OCDMA network. In this paper, it is shown that both low- and high-rate users can surprisingly achieve similar BER levels. In addition, it is demonstrated that incoherent on-off-keying-based networks are not good candidates for future single and multirate FFH-OCDMA implementations in this interference limited scenario. On the other hand, our results pave the way for BPSK- and QPSK-based networks, which are seen as potential candidates for next generation passive optical networks (NG-PON2), where higher data rates and a vast amount of users will be major network requirements.
Density Fluctuations in MHD Turbulence: Spectra, Intermittency, and Topology

We perform three-dimensional (3D) compressible MHD simulations over many dynamical times for an extended range of sonic and Alfvén Mach numbers and analyze the statistics of 3D density and 2D column density, which include probability distribution functions, spectra, skewness, kurtosis, She-Lévêque exponents, and genus. In order to establish the relation between the statistics of the observables, i.e., column densities, and the underlying 3D statistics of density, we analyze the effects of cloud boundaries. We define the parameter space for 3D measures to be recovered from column densities. In addition, we show that for subsonic turbulence the spectra of density fluctuations are consistent with k-7/3 in the case of a strong magnetic field and k-5/3 in the case of a weak magnetic field. For supersonic turbulence we confirm the earlier findings of the shallow spectra of density and Kolmogorov spectra of the logarithm of density. We find that the intermittencies of the density and velocity are very different.
Inability to Reason About an Object's Orientation Using an Axis and Angle of Rotation

The kinematic bases by which humans imagine an object turn from one orientation to another are unknown. The studies reported here show that individuals of high spatial ability are, in most cases, unable to imagine a Shepard-Metzler object rotate about an axis and angle so as to accurately envision its appearance. Nor can they conceive of the axis and angle by which it would rotate in a shortest path between two orientations. Accuracy progressively improves across cases in which neither angle, one of the angles, or both angles between the rotation axis and viewer-environment frame and between the axis and object limb are canonical. When canonical, the angles are more accurately observed from one viewpoint to hold constant in rotation. Such inability, with rare exceptions, is probably true for other kinematic operations requiring fine control of multiple spatial relations. Objects' orientations are not readily represented in terms of shortest path axis and angle.
Zoledronic acid differently affects long bone and jaw bone turnover and induces molar root resorption in female mice

Bisphosphonates (BPs) are widely used to treat bone diseases such as osteoporosis. However, BPs can negatively affect the jaw bone by causing osteonecrosis of the jaw. Previously, we showed that BPs differently affected long bone and jaw osteoclast precursors. Here, we investigated whether in vivo exposure to BPs has a different effect on long bone and jaw osteoclasts and the turnover of these two types of bone. Zoledronic acid (ZA, 0.5 mg/kg weekly) was administered i.p. to 3-month-old female C57BL/6J mice for up to 6 months and its effect on osteoclasts and bone formation was studied. Long-term treatment with ZA reduced the number of jaw bone marrow cells, without affecting the number of long-bone marrow cells. ZA treatment did not affect the osteoclastogenic potential of long bone and jaw bone marrow cells in vitro nor the number of osteoclasts in vivo. Yet, ZA treatment increased bone volume and mineral density of both long bone and jaw. Interestingly, 6 months of treatment inhibited bone formation in the long bones without affecting the jaw. Finally, we showed that BPs can cause molar root resorption. Our results show that BPs differently affect long bone and jaw bone marrow cells and bone turnover in those bones. These findings provide more insight into bone-site-specific effects of bisphosphonates. Also, we showed that BPs can stimulate osteoclasts and their activity at the molar roots.
Understanding the Human Perceptions in Tele-Immersive Shared Activity

Both comparative category rating (CCR) and degradation category rating (DCR) methods [20] have been heavily employed in the subjective evaluations of media systems. The resulting metrics, comparative mean-opinion-score (CMOS) and degradation mean-opinion-score (DMOS), can be used to describe the system subjective quality. However, the subjective metrics may work unsuccessfully when the variance of participant votes is large. The diversity in human interests can appear due to the tradeoffs of multiple quality dimensions, which concurrently dominate the overall quality of the media system. In this paper, we conduct a user study with 19 participants to evaluate the subjective quality of two tele-immersive shared activities (TISA), where media samples of different qualities are evaluated in case of each activity. Our study aims at (1) showing the effectiveness and limitation of CMOS and DMOS using real subjective data, and (2) demonstrating the heterogeneous impacts of TISAs on human perceptions.
Asset Pricing in Consumption Models : A Survey of the Literature

This paper attempts to provide a survey of asset-pricing models b on the principle of maximization of expected utility. I will begin my analys by setting out a simplified, discrete-time version of the model that w developed independently by Lucas (1978) and Breeden (1979). Since studies appeared, intertemporal general-equilibrium models have com occupy an increasingly important place in the economic literature on a pricing. A common characteristic of those models is that prices and yield financial assets are linked, in a general-equilibrium context, to invest decisions about consumption and savings. The yield structure predicte these models is therefore intimately tied to the nature of investo preferences and, in particular, to the parameters of risk aversion intertemporal substitutions. Moreover, in contrast to the capital-asset-pri (CAPM) model of Sharpe (1964) and Lintner (1965), intertemporal gene equilibrium models identify clearly the underlying economic forces th influence the risk-free real interest rate and the compensation that inve earn by accepting risk. 1
Biogenic selenium nanoparticles: characterization, antimicrobial activity and effects on human dendritic cells and fibroblasts

Tailored nanoparticles offer a novel approach to fight antibiotic‐resistant microorganisms. We analysed biogenic selenium nanoparticles (SeNPs) of bacterial origin to determine their antimicrobial activity against selected pathogens in their planktonic and biofilm states. SeNPs synthesized by Gram‐negative Stenotrophomonas maltophilia [Sm‐SeNPs(−)] and Gram‐positive Bacillus mycoides [Bm‐SeNPs(+)] were active at low minimum inhibitory concentrations against a number of clinical isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa but did not inhibit clinical isolates of the yeast species Candida albicans and C. parapsilosis. However, the SeNPs were able to inhibit biofilm formation and also to disaggregate the mature glycocalyx in both P. aeruginosa and Candida spp. The Sm‐SeNPs(−) and Bm‐SeNPs(+) both achieved much stronger antimicrobial effects than synthetic selenium nanoparticles (Ch‐SeNPs). Dendritic cells and fibroblasts exposed to Sm‐SeNPs(−), Bm‐SeNPs(+) and Ch‐SeNPs did not show any loss of cell viability, any increase in the release of reactive oxygen species or any significant increase in the secretion of pro‐inflammatory and immunostimulatory cytokines. Biogenic SeNPs therefore appear to be reliable candidates for safe medical applications, alone or in association with traditional antibiotics, to inhibit the growth of clinical isolates of P. aeruginosa or to facilitate the penetration of P. aeruginosa and Candida spp. biofilms by antimicrobial agents.
Convolution kernels on discrete structures

We introduce a new method of constructing kernels on sets whose elements are discrete structures like strings, trees and graphs. The method can be applied iteratively to build a kernel on a innnite set from kernels involving generators of the set. The family of kernels generated generalizes the family of radial basis kernels. It can also be used to deene kernels in the form of joint Gibbs probability distributions. Kernels can be built from hidden Markov random elds, generalized regular expressions, pair-HMMs, or ANOVA de-compositions. Uses of the method lead to open problems involving the theory of innnitely divisible positive deenite functions. Fundamentals of this theory and the theory of reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces are reviewed and applied in establishing the validity of the method.
Developmental Regulation of Basket/Stellate Cell→Purkinje Cell Synapses in the Cerebellum

We used paired recordings to study the development of synaptic transmission between inhibitory interneurons of the molecular layer and Purkinje cells in the cerebellar cortex of the rat. The electrophysiological data were combined with a morphological study of the recorded cells using biocytin or Lucifer yellow staining. Thirty-one interneuron–Purkinje cell pairs were obtained, and 11 of them were recovered morphologically. The age of the rats ranged from 11 to 31 d after birth. During this period synaptic maturation resulted in an 11-fold decrease in the average current evoked in a Purkinje cell by a spike in a presynaptic interneuron. Unitary IPSCs in younger animals exhibited paired-pulse depression, whereas paired-pulse facilitation was found in more mature animals. These data suggest that reduction in transmitter release probability contributed to the developmental decrease of unitary IPSCs. However, additional mechanisms at both presynaptic and postsynaptic loci should also be considered. The decrease of the average synaptic current evoked in a Purkinje cell by an action potential in a single interneuron suggests that as development proceeds interneuron activities must be coordinated to inhibit efficiently Purkinje cells.
Regulation and 3 dimensional culture of tertiary follicle growth

It has been revealed that multiple cohorts of tertiary follicles develop during some animal estrous cycle and the human menstrual cycle. To reach developmental competence, oocytes need the support of somatic cells. During embryogenesis, the primordial germ cells appear, travel to the gonadal rudiments, and form follicles. The female germ cells develop within the somatic cells of the ovary, granulosa cells, and theca cells. How the oocyte and follicle cells support each other has been seriously studied. The latest technologies in genes and proteins and genetic engineering have allowed us to collect a great deal of information about folliculogenesis. For example, a few web pages (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov; http://mrg.genetics.washington.edu) provide access to databases of genomes, sequences of transcriptomes, and various tools for analyzing and discovering genes important in ovarian development. Formation of the antrum (tertiary follicle) is the final phase of folliculogenesis and the transition from intraovarian to extraovian regulation. This final step coordinates with the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis. On the other hand, currently, follicle physiology is under intense investigation, as little is known about how to overcome women's ovarian problems or how to develop competent oocytes from in vitro follicle culture or transplantation. In this review, some of the known roles of hormones and some of the genes involved in tertiary follicle growth and the general characteristics of tertiary follicles are summarized. In addition, in vitro culture of tertiary follicles is also discussed as a study model and an assisted reproductive technology model.
Ultimately Fast Accurate Summation

We present two new algorithms FastAccSum and FastPrecSum, one to compute a faithful rounding of the sum of floating-point numbers and the other for a result “as if” computed in $K$-fold precision. Faithful rounding means the computed result either is one of the immediate floating-point neighbors of the exact result or is equal to the exact sum if this is a floating-point number. The algorithms are based on our previous algorithms AccSum and PrecSum and improve them by up to 25%. The first algorithm adapts to the condition number of the sum; i.e., the computing time is proportional to the difficulty of the problem. The second algorithm does not need extra memory, and the computing time depends only on the number of summands and $K$. Both algorithms are the fastest known in terms of flops. They allow good instruction-level parallelism so that they are also fast in terms of measured computing time. The algorithms require only standard floating-point addition, subtraction, and multiplication in one working precision, for example, double precision.
On the Stabilization of Linear Systems Under Assigned I/O Quantization

This paper is concerned with the stabilization of discrete-time linear systems with quantization of the input and output spaces, i.e., when available values of inputs and outputs are discrete. Unlike most of the existing literature, we assume that how the input and output spaces are quantized is a datum of the problem, rather than a degree of freedom in design. Our focus is hence on the existence and synthesis of symbolic feedback controllers, mapping output words into the input alphabet, to steer a quantized I/O system to within small invariant neighborhoods of the equilibrium starting from large attraction basins. We provide a detailed analysis of the practical stabilizability of systems in terms of the size of hypercubes bounding the initial conditions, the state transient, and the steady-state evolution. We also provide an explicit construction of a practically stabilizing controller for the quantized I/O case.