Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Outcomes for patients with sarcoidosis awaiting lung transplantation.

STUDY OBJECTIVES To describe the population of patients with sarcoidosis listed for orthotopic lung transplantation (OLT) in the United States, and to determine outcomes for these subjects relative to persons awaiting OLT for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). DESIGN Retrospective analysis of the United Network for Organ Sharing transplant database over the period between January 1995 and December 2000. PATIENTS All patients listed for OLT with an underlying diagnosis of either sarcoidosis or IPF. MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS During the study period, 427 patients with sarcoidosis and 2,115 patients with IPF were registered on the list for OLT. Demographically, the patients with sarcoidosis were younger and more likely to be female African Americans than were patients with IPF. Pulmonary function was worse in patients with sarcoidosis. The mean FVC was 42.6% of predicted, as compared to 45.0% of predicted in patients with IPF (p = 0.0044). The FEV(1) also differed between the populations (36.0% vs 46.0% of predicted for patients with sarcoidosis and IPF, respectively; p < 0.0001). Only 30.1% of patients with sarcoidosis and 32.4% of patients with IPF lacked functional limitations. For the subset of patients with hemodynamic data available, the mean pulmonary artery pressure was significantly higher in the sarcoidosis population (34.4 mm Hg vs 25.6 mm Hg, respectively; p < 0.0001). Neither the pulmonary capillary wedge pressure nor the cardiac index differed between the groups. Patients with sarcoidosis were less likely to receive a transplant. Approximately 30% of patients with sarcoidosis underwent OLT, compared to 37.3% of IPF patients (p = 0.0102). For those who did undergo transplantation, the median wait until OLT was 803 days for patients with sarcoidosis compared to 555 days for patients with IPF (p < 0.0001). Mortality rates were similar in both groups. In the sarcoidosis group, 28.1% of patients died, compared to 31.1% of patients with IPF (p = not significant). CONCLUSIONS Patients with sarcoidosis are at as high a risk for mortality as patients with IPF while awaiting transplantation. Nonetheless, patients with sarcoidosis are less likely to undergo OLT. Pulmonary hypertension is a major concern in patients with advanced sarcoidosis awaiting transplantation.
Safety and Immunogenicity of a Proteosome-Shigella flexneri 2a Lipopolysaccharide Vaccine Administered Intranasally to Healthy Adults

ABSTRACT We studied the safety and immunogenicity of a Shigella flexneri 2a vaccine comprising native S. flexneri 2a lipopolysaccharide (LPS) complexed to meningococcal outer membrane proteins—proteosomes—in normal, healthy adults. A two-dose series of immunizations was given by intranasal spray, and doses of 0.1, 0.4, 1.0, and 1.5 mg (based on protein) were studied in a dose-escalating design. The vaccine was generally well tolerated. The most common reactions included rhinorrhea and nasal stuffiness, which were clearly dose related (P ≤ 0.05). These reactions were self-limited and generally mild. The vaccine elicitedS. flexneri 2a LPS-specific immunoglobulin A (IgA), IgG, and IgM antibody-secreting cells (ASCs) in a dose-responsive manner. At doses of 1.0 or 1.5 mg, highly significant (P < 0.001) increases in ASCs of all antibody isotypes occurred and 95% of subjects had an ASC response in at least one antibody isotype. Dose-related serum antibody responses were observed, with geometric mean two- to fivefold rises in specific serum IgA and IgG titers and two- to threefold rises in IgM in the 1.0- and 1.5-mg-dose groups (P < 0.0001 for each isotype). Elevated serum antibody levels persisted through day 70. Increases in fecal IgG and IgA and also in urinary IgA specific for S. flexneri 2a LPS were demonstrated. These were most consistent and approached statistical significance (P = 0.02 to 0.12 for various measures) on day 70 after the first dose. The magnitude of immune responses to intranasally administered proteosome-S. flexneri 2a LPS vaccine is similar to those reported for live vaccine candidates associated with protective efficacy in human challenge models, and further evaluation of this product is warranted.
Real-Time Cooperative Communication for Automation Over Wireless

High-performance industrial automation systems rely on tens of simultaneously active sensors and actuators and have stringent communication latency and reliability requirements. Current wireless technologies, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and LTE are unable to meet these requirements, forcing the use of wired communication in industrial control systems. This paper introduces a wireless communication protocol that capitalizes on multiuser diversity and cooperative communication to achieve the ultra-reliability with a low-latency constraint. Our protocol is analyzed using the communication-theoretic delay-limited-capacity framework and compared with baseline schemes that primarily exploit frequency diversity. For a scenario inspired by an industrial printing application with 30 nodes in the control loop, 20-B messages transmitted between pairs of nodes and a cycle time of 2 ms, an idealized protocol can achieve a cycle failure probability (probability that any packet in a cycle is not successfully delivered) lower than 10−9 with nominal SNR below 5 dB in a 20-MHz wide channel.
Object Depth Profile and Reflectivity Restoration From Sparse Single-Photon Data Acquired in Underwater Environments

This paper presents two new algorithms for the joint restoration of depth and reflectivity (DR) images constructed from time-correlated single-photon counting measurements. Two extreme cases are considered: 1) a reduced acquisition time that leads to very low photon counts; and 2) imaging in a highly attenuating environment (such as a turbid medium), which makes the reflectivity estimation more difficult at increasing range. Adopting a Bayesian approach, the Poisson distributed observations are combined with prior distributions about the parameters of interest, to build the joint posterior distribution. More precisely, two Markov random field (MRF) priors enforcing spatial correlations are assigned to the DR images. Under some justified assumptions, the restoration problem (regularized likelihood) reduces to a convex formulation with respect to each of the parameters of interest. This problem is first solved using an adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm that approximates the minimum mean square parameter estimators. This algorithm is fully automatic since it adjusts the parameters of the MRFs by maximum marginal likelihood estimation. However, the MCMC-based algorithm exhibits a relatively long computational time. The second algorithm deals with this issue and is based on a coordinate descent algorithm. Results on single-photon depth data from laboratory-based underwater measurements demonstrate the benefit of the proposed strategy that improves the quality of the estimated DR images.
Asymmetry in Resting Intracortical Activity as a Buffer to Social Threat

Social rejection can create powerful changes in people’s brains and bodies. In the study reported here, we examined brain-based individual differences associated with buffering against cardiovascular threat responses to social rejection. Using EEG source-localization techniques, we examined differences in intracortical asymmetry. We predicted that individuals with greater left relative to right dorsolateral prefrontal activity would show a more approach-motivated response to social rejection. Eighty-four female participants were randomly assigned to one of three stressful situations: social rejection, social evaluation without rejection, or self-evaluation. Among participants assigned to the social-rejection condition, greater left relative to right prefrontal intracortical activity at baseline was associated with more adaptive cardiovascular profiles and more self-reported approach-oriented emotions. Participants in the other conditions did not show these relationships. Our data are the first to show that social context matters when attempting to link individual differences in cortical asymmetry with approach-related cardiovascular and emotional outcomes.
Nonequilibrium discharges in air and nitrogen plasmas at atmospheric pressure

Abstract Diffuse glow discharges were produced in low temperature (<2000 K) atmospheric pressure air and nitrogen plasmas with electron number densities in excess of 1012 cm3, more than six orders of magnitude higher than in thermally heated air at 2000 K. The measured discharge characteristics compare well with the predictions of a two-temperature kinetic model. Experimental and modeling results show that the steady-state electron number density exhibits an S-shaped dependence on the electron temperature, a behavior resulting from competition between ionization and charge-transfer reactions. Non-Maxwellian effects are shown to be unimportant for the prediction of steady-state electron number densities. The power requirements of DC discharges at atmospheric pressure can be reduced by several orders of magnitude using short repetitive high-voltage pulses. Between consecutive pulses, the plasma is sustained by the finite rate of electron recombination. Repetitive discharges with a 100-kHz, 12-kV, 10-ns pulse generator were demonstrated to produce over 1012 electrons/cm3 with an average power of 12 W/cm3, 250 times smaller than a DC discharge at 1012 cm3.
China's Rural Public Health System Performance: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background In the past three years, the Government of China initiated health reform with rural public health system construction to achieve equal access to public health services for rural residents. The study assessed trends of public health services accessibility in rural China from 2008 to 2010, as well as the current situation about the China's rural public health system performance. Methods The data were collected from a cross-sectional survey conducted in 2011, which used a multistage stratified random sampling method to select 12 counties and 118 villages from China. Three sets of indicators were chosen to measure the trends in access to coverage, equality and effectiveness of rural public health services. Data were disaggregated by provinces and by participants: hypertension patients, children, elderly and women. We examined the changes in equality across and within region. Results China's rural public health system did well in safe drinking water, children vaccinations and women hospital delivery. But more hypertension patients with low income could not receive regular healthcare from primary health institutions than those with middle and high income. In 2010, hypertension treatment rate of Qinghai in Western China was just 53.22% which was much lower than that of Zhejiang in Eastern China (97.27%). Meanwhile, low performance was showed in effectiveness of rural public health services. The rate of effective treatment for controlling their blood pressure within normal range was just 39.7%. Conclusions The implementation of health reform since 2009 has led the public health development towards the right direction. Physical access to public health services had increased from 2008 to 2010. But, inter- and intra-regional inequalities in public health system coverage still exist. Strategies to improve the quality and equality of public health services in rural China need to be considered.
Comparing numerical and experimental approaches for the stochastic modeling of the bouncing of a boulder on a coarse soil

ABSTRACT This paper proposes numerical investigations for the stochastic modeling of a boulder impacting a coarse granular soil. The soil is considered as a noncohesive granular medium using a discrete element method and the soil model is calibrated compared to results from half-scale experiments. Based on this numerical model, an extensive numerical simulation campaign is carried out. The statistical analysis of the numerical results allows the definition of a stochastic bouncing model that quantifies most of the variability of the numerical results. Comparisons with classical bouncing models in the field of trajectory analysis highlight that this model expands classical approaches. The comparison of results from real-scale experiments to trajectory simulations based on the stochastic model show the relevance of the proposed approach to modeling rockfall trajectories.
Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are associated with reduced risk of early hepatocellular carcinoma recurrence after curative liver resection: a nationwide cohort study.

PURPOSE The efficacy of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) in reducing the risk of various de novo cancers has been reported; however, its role in reducing hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) recurrence after liver resection still remains unknown. METHODS We have conducted a nationwide cohort study by recruiting all patients with a newly diagnosed HCC who had received curative liver resection as their initial treatment. The use of NSAIDs and the risk of early HCC recurrence have been examined by multivariate and stratified analyses. To avoid immortal time bias, the use of NSAIDs has been treated as a time-dependent variable in Cox proportional hazard ratio models. RESULTS Between January 1997 and December 2010, a total of 15,574 HCC patients who had received liver resection were enrolled in this study. The 1-, 3-, and 5-year overall survival rates were 90.4%, 73.2%, and 59.8%, respectively. The 1-, 3-, and 5-year disease-free survival rates were 80.5%, 59.4%, and 50.2%, respectively. NSAID use (hazard ratio, 0.81; 95% confidence interval, 0.73-0.90) and minor liver resection (hazard ratio, 0.83; 95% confidence interval, 0.78-0.89) were independently associated with a reduced risk of early HCC recurrence after liver resection. In the stratified analyses, NSAID usage was universally associated with reduced risks in most subgroups, particularly for those aged younger than 65 years, male, with underlying diabetes mellitus and receiving major liver resection. CONCLUSIONS The use of NSAIDs can be associated with a reduced risk of early HCC recurrence within 2 years after curative liver resection, regardless of patients' age, extent of liver resection, viral hepatitis status, underlying diabetes, and liver cirrhosis.
Efficient broadcasting in ad hoc wireless networks using directional antennas

Using directional antennas to conserve bandwidth and energy consumption in ad hoc wireless networks (or simply ad hoc networks) is becoming popular. However, applications of directional antennas for broadcasting have been limited. We propose a novel broadcast protocol called directional self-pruning (DSP) for ad hoc wireless networks using directional antennas. DSP is a nontrivial generalization of an existing localized deterministic broadcast protocol using omnidirectional antennas. Compared with its omnidirectional predecessor, DSP uses about the same number of forward nodes to relay the broadcast packet, while the number of forward directions that each forward node uses in transmission is significantly reduced. With the lower broadcast redundancy, DSP is more bandwidth and energy-efficient. DSP is based on 2-hop neighborhood information and does not rely on location or angle-of-arrival (AoA) information. Two special cases of DSP are discussed: the first one preserves shortest paths in reactive routing discoveries; the second one uses the directional reception mode to minimize broadcast redundancy. DSP is a localized protocol. Its expected number of forward nodes is O(1) times the optimal value. An extensive simulation study using both custom and ns2 simulators show that DSP significantly outperforms both omnidirectional broadcast protocols and existing directional broadcast protocols.
Cardiovascular Effects of Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists

Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) is a member of the proglucagon incretin family, and GLP-1 receptor agonists (RAs) have been introduced as a new class of antidiabetic medications in the past decade. The benefits of GLP-1 RAs are derived from their pleiotropic effects, which include glucose-dependent insulin secretion, suppressed glucagon secretion, and reduced appetite. Moreover, GLP-1 RAs also exert beneficial roles on multiple organ systems in which the GLP-1 receptors exist, including the cardiovascular system. Cardiovascular effects of GLP-1 RAs have been of great interest since the burden from cardiovascular diseases (CVD) has been unbearably increasing in a diabetic population worldwide, despite strict glycemic control and advanced therapeutic techniques to treat CVD. Preclinical studies have already demonstrated the beneficial effects of GLP-1 on myocardium and vascular endothelium, and many clinical studies evaluating changes in surrogate markers of CVD have suggested potential benefits from the use of GLP-1 RAs. Data from numerous clinical trials primarily evaluating the antihyperglycemic effects of multiple GLP-1 RAs have also revealed that changes in most CVD risk markers reported as secondary outcomes have been in favor of GLP-1 RAs treatment. However, to date, there is only one randomized clinical trial of GLP-1 RAs (the ELIXA study) evaluating major cardiovascular events as their primary outcomes, and in this study, a neutral cardiovascular effect of lixisenatide was observed in high-risk diabetic subjects. Therefore, the results of ongoing CVD outcome trials with the use of GLP-1 RAs should be awaited to elucidate the translation of benefits previously seen in CVD risk marker studies into large clinical trials with primary cardiovascular outcomes.
Insulin therapy in renal disease

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is the main cause of end‐stage renal disease (ESRD). Conversely, chronic renal failure (CRF) is also associated with diverse alterations in carbohydrate and insulin metabolism. CRF‐induced metabolic disorders should be borne in mind when treating diabetic patients, to ensure the introduction of adequate therapy adjustments that are in line with the onset of renal function decline. Moreover, several specific therapies employed in CRF may also influence pharmacological therapy of DM in uraemic patients. Adequate glycaemic control has also been associated with a reduction in the onset and progression of diabetic nephropathy as well as in the morbidity and mortality in uraemic diabetic patients during dialysis. Intensive insulin therapy can notably improve glycemic control and it should be considered part of the management of insulin‐treated CRF diabetic patients. Insulin analogues have been recently evaluated in CRF diabetic patients, with encouraging results. In this study, we review the more relevant aspects related to insulin therapy in diabetic patients with different degrees of renal failure and in patients with ESRD, both in conservative therapy and dialysis.
Overview of the ImageCLEF 2012 Flickr Photo Annotation and Retrieval Task

ImageCLEF's Flickr Photo Annotation and Retrieval task aims to advance the state of the art in multimedia research by providing a chal- lenging benchmark for visual concept detection, annotation and retrieval in the context of a diverse collection of Flickr photos. The benchmark con- sisted of two separate but closely connected subtasks, where the objective of the first subtask was to accurately detect a wide range of semantic con- cepts for the purpose of automatic image annotation, while the objective of second subtask was to correctly retrieve relevant images for concept- oriented queries inspired by what people actually search for on the inter- net. This paper presents an overview of the benchmark, summarizes the annotation and retrieval techniques proposed by the participating teams and evaluates their performance.
UTILIZATION OF CHOPPED WHEAT STRAW IN COMPLETE RATIONS FOR LACTATING DAIRY COWS

Lactating Hoi stein cows were used to evaluate the effect of varying levels of roughage-concentrate rations and substitution of chopped wheat straw for chopped alfalfa in complete mixes. On a prac­ tical basis the feeding of a complete mixed diet containing both chopped alfalfa and chopped wheat straw presented few problems. The mixtures were easy to handle and feed and the cows readily consumed them. The addition of straw to high quality rations containing alfalfa hay did not detract from the utilization of the feed for the most part seemed to enhance it. The addition of a high fiber feed such as wheat straw as partial replacement for alfalfa in a complete mix, seems to enhance both milk and milk fat production.
Human motor control: learning to control a time-varying, nonlinear, many-to-one system

Human motor control has always presented a great challenge to both scientists and engineers. It has presented most of the problems they have found difficult to handle and manipulate, which is a consequence of it being a distributed, nonlinear, time-varying system with multiple degrees of freedom that include redundancy on many levels. In recent years, the fast development of computers and the emergence of the new scientific field of neural computation have enabled consideration of complex, adaptive, parallel architectures in the modeling of human motor-control performance. In this paper, some of the models that have been used in the study of motor control are reviewed, and some open questions are formalized and discussed. The main topics are adaptive and artificial neural-network control, parameter estimation, nonlinear properties of the muscles, and parallelism and redundancy.
Sequential Shortest Path Interdiction with Incomplete Information

We study sequential interdiction when the interdictor has incomplete initial information about the network and the evader has complete knowledge of the network, including its structure and arc costs. In each time period, the interdictor blocks at most k arcs from the network observed up to that period, after which the evader travels along a shortest path between two (fixed) nodes in the interdicted network. By observing the evader’s actions, the interdictor learns about the network structure and arc costs and adjusts its actions to maximize the cumulative cost incurred by the evader. A salient feature of our work is that the feedback in each period is deterministic and adversarial. In addition to studying the regret minimization problem, we also discuss time stability of a policy, which is the number of time periods until the interdictor’s actions match those of an oracle interdictor with prior knowledge of the network. We propose a class of simple interdiction policies that have a finite regret and detect when the instantaneous regret reaches zero in real time. More importantly, we establish that this class of policies belongs to the set of efficient policies.