Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Robotic-Assisted versus Laparoscopic Surgery for Rectal Cancer: An Analysis of Clinical and Financial Outcomes from a Tertiary Referral Center

Background: The popularity of robotic-assisted surgery for rectal cancer is increasing, but its superiority over the laparoscopic approach regarding safety, efficacy, and costs has not been well established. Methods: A retrospective single-center study was conducted comparing consecutively performed robotic-assisted and laparoscopic surgeries for rectal cancer between 1 January 2016 and 31 September 2021. In total, 125 adult patients with sporadic rectal adenocarcinoma (distal extent ≤ 15 cm from the anal verge) underwent surgery where 66 were operated on robotically and 59 laparoscopically. Results: Severe postoperative complications occurred less frequently with robotic-assisted compared with laparoscopic surgery, as indicated by Clavien–Dindo classification grades 3b–5 (13.6% vs. 30.5%, p = 0.029). Multiple logistic regression analyses after backward selection revealed that robotic-assisted surgery was associated with a lower rate of total (Clavien–Dindo grades 1–5) (OR = 0.355; 95% CI 0.156–0.808; p = 0.014) and severe postoperative complications (Clavien–Dindo grades 3b–5) (OR = 0.243; 95% CI 0.088–0.643; p = 0.005). Total inpatient costs (median EUR 17.663 [IQR EUR 10.151] vs. median EUR 14.089 [IQR EUR 12.629]; p = 0.018) and surgery costs (median EUR 10.156 [IQR EUR 3.551] vs. median EUR 7.468 [IQR EUR 4.074]; p < 0.0001) were higher for robotic-assisted surgery, resulting in reduced total inpatient profits (median EUR −3.196 [IQR EUR 9.101] vs. median EUR 232 [IQR EUR 6.304]; p = 0.004). Conclusions: In our study, robotic-assisted surgery for rectal cancer resulted in less severe and fewer total postoperative complications. Still, it was associated with higher surgery and inpatient costs. With increasing experience, the operative time may be reduced, and the postoperative recovery may be further accelerated, leading to reduced surgery and total inpatient costs.
The role of vascular resistance in BOLD responses to progressive hypercapnia

The ability of the cerebral vasculature to regulate vascular diameter, hence resistance and cerebral blood flow (CBF), in response to metabolic demands (neurovascular coupling), and perfusion pressure changes (autoregulation) may be assessed by measuring the CBF response to carbon dioxide (CO2). In healthy individuals, the CBF response to a ramp CO2 stimulus from hypocapnia to hypercapnia is assumed sigmoidal or linear. However, other response patterns commonly occur, especially in individuals with cerebrovascular disease, and these remain unexplained. CBF responses to CO2 in a vascular region are determined by the combined effects of the innate vascular responses to CO2 and the local perfusion pressure; the latter ensuing from pressure‐flow interactions within the cerebral vascular network. We modeled this situation as two vascular beds perfused in parallel from a fixed resistance source. Our premise is that all vascular beds have a sigmoidal reduction of resistance in response to a progressive rise in CO2. Surrogate CBF data to test the model was provided by magnetic resonance imaging of blood oxygen level‐dependent (BOLD) signals. The model successfully generated all the various BOLD‐CO2 response patterns, providing a physiological explanation of CBF distribution as relative differences in the network of vascular bed resistance responses to CO2. Hum Brain Mapp 38:5590–5602, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
On automatic detection of SQL injection attacks by the feature extraction of the single character

The SQL injection attack causes very serious problem to web applications which have database including personal data. To detect the SQL injection attack, the parsing and the black list based on the existed attack have been widely used. However, a new attack method that is not included by the black list has still been developed. In this paper, we proposed the detecting method based on single character, and show the effectiveness of the proposed method experimentally using both attack and normal samples.
Ontogenesis, gender, and molting influence the venom yield in the spider Coremiocnemis tropix (Araneae, Theraphosidae)

The demand for spider venom increases along with the growing popularity of venoms-based research. A deeper understanding of factors that influence the venom yield in spiders would therefore be of interest to both commercial venom suppliers and research facilities. The present study addresses the influence of several factors on the venom yield by systematically analyzing the data obtained from 1773 electrical milkings of the Australian theraphosid spider Coremiocnemis tropix. Gender and ontogenesis were found to cause a major effect on the venom yield, as adult female C. tropix yielded significantly more venom than adult males. During ontogenesis, the venom yield increased with increasing size of the spiders. Furthermore, a significant reduction in the venom yield during the 50-day time interval preceding a molt was found. On the other hand, extended milking intervals (up to 449 days) and different states of nutrition (as an indication of how well the spider was fed) did not significantly affect the venom yield. Overall, the present findings suggest that venom production in spiders is carefully balanced between the demand for venom and the energy costs associated with its production. It can therefore be concluded that, in line with the venom optimization hypothesis, venom is a precious resource for spiders, which have implemented control mechanisms to ensure economical venom production and usage.
CSIF and GOSIF Do Not Accurately Capture the Vegetation Greening During the Spring of 2020

In the spring of 2020, lockdown measures were adopted to control the spread of novel coronavirus, and these measurements had large impacts on air quality, regional climate, and vegetation growth. Accurately capturing the response of vegetation to environmental changes is crucial for ecosystem research. However, there might be some divergences in vegetation growth trends from different satellite datasets. To investigate the response of vegetation growth to environmental changes from January to April 2020, we employed two reconstructed solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) products, continuous SIF (CSIF) and global OCO-2 SIF (GOSIF), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), enhanced vegetation index (EVI), and leaf area index (LAI). Results shows that CSIF, GOSIF, NDVI, EVI, and LAI captured enhanced vegetation growth during January–March 2020 compared with 2015–2019. However, CSIF and GOSIF show an opposite trend to vegetation indices (VIs) and LAI in April. The trends from CSIF and GOSIF also differed with those from TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) SIF and OCO-2 SIF. Biases were attributed to the input MODIS surface reflectance data for reconstructing SIF in the algorithms of GOSIF and CSIF.
Flake tectonics in the Sulu orogen in eastern China as revealed by seismic tomography

Seismic tomographic image reveals a crocodile‐like P‐waves velocity structure beneath the Sulu orogenic belt, which marks the subduction/collision zone between the Sino‐Korean block (SK) and Yangtze block (YZ) in eastern China. It may imply that the upper crust of the YZ was detached from its lower crust and thrust over the SK for a maximum of ∼400 km in the Sulu region, whereas the remnant of the subducted Yangtze lithosphere was lay beneath the SK. This crustal detached structure (flake tectonics) might have occurred after the Triassic subduction/collision.
A Computational Model of Inhibition of HIV-1 by Interferon-Alpha

Type 1 interferons such as interferon-alpha (IFNα) inhibit replication of Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) by upregulating the expression of genes that interfere with specific steps in the viral life cycle. This pathway thus represents a potential target for immune-based therapies that can alter the dynamics of host-virus interactions to benefit the host. To obtain a deeper mechanistic understanding of how IFNα impacts spreading HIV-1 infection, we modeled the interaction of HIV-1 with CD4 T cells and IFNα as a dynamical system. This model was then tested using experimental data from a cell culture model of spreading HIV-1 infection. We found that a model in which IFNα induces reversible cellular states that block both early and late stages of HIV-1 infection, combined with a saturating rate of conversion to these states, was able to successfully fit the experimental dataset. Sensitivity analysis showed that the potency of inhibition by IFNα was particularly dependent on specific network parameters and rate constants. This model will be useful for designing new therapies targeting the IFNα network in HIV-1-infected individuals, as well as potentially serving as a template for understanding the interaction of IFNα with other viruses. Author Summary Interferon-alpha (IFNα) is a key component of the host response to HIV-1, but the details of how IFNα regulates infection are still incompletely understood. To provide a deeper understanding of the dynamics of how IFNα inhibits HIV-1, we simulated the interaction of IFNα and HIV-1 as a computational model and compared this model to an experimental dataset. We identify a model structure that is able to fit many key features of the data. Furthermore, we use the model to predict optimal strategies for targeting the IFNα pathway therapeutically. We anticipate that this model will be useful for further analysis of HIV-IFNα interactions and will help to guide new therapeutic strategies.
Assessing the impact of speech recognition errors on machine translation quality

In spoken language translation, it is crucial that an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system produces outputs that can be adequately translated by a statistical machine translation (SMT) system. While word error rate (WER) is the standard metric of ASR quality, the assumption that each ASR error type is weighted equally is violated in a SMT system that relies on structured input. In this paper, we outline a statistical framework for analyzing the impact of specific ASR error types on translation quality in a speech translation pipeline. Our approach is based on linear mixed-effects models, which allow the analysis of ASR errors on a translation quality metric. The mixed-effects models take into account the variability of ASR systems and the difficulty of each speech utterance being translated in a specific experimental setting. We use mixed-effects models to verify that the ASR errors that compose the WER metric do not contribute equally to translation quality and that interactions exist between ASR errors that cumulatively affect a SMT system’s ability to translate an utterance. Our experiments are carried out on the English to French language pair using eight ASR systems and seven post-edited machine translation references from the IWSLT 2013 evaluation campaign. We report significant findings that demonstrate differences in the contributions of specific ASR error types toward speech translation quality and suggest further error types that may contribute to translation difficulty.
A Single-Query Manipulation Planner

In manipulation tasks, a robot interacts with movable object(s). The configuration space in manipulation planning is thus the Cartesian product of the configuration space of the robot with those of the movable objects. It is the complex structure of such a “composite configuration space” that makes manipulation planning particularly challenging. Previous works approximate the connectivity of the composite configuration space by means of discretization or by creating random roadmaps. Such approaches involve an extensive preprocessing phase, which furthermore has to be redone each time the environment changes. In this letter, we propose a high-level Grasp-Placement Table similar to that proposed by Tournassoud et al. (1987), but which does not require any discretization or heavy pre-processing. The table captures the potential connectivity of the composite configuration space while being specific only to the movable objects: in particular, it does not require to be recomputed when the environment changes. During the query phase, the table is used to guide a tree-based planner that explores the space systematically. Our simulations and experiments show that the proposed method enables improvements in both running time and trajectory quality as compared to existing approaches.
Correlated error reduction in GRACE data over Greenland using extended empirical orthogonal functions

Surface mass change estimates from Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) spherical harmonic solutions are contaminated by north‐south stripe noise due largely to aliasing of high‐frequency variations into monthly samples. These meridional stripes are especially troubling for ice mass balance studies of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) where large ice mass variations are known to occur along north‐south trending coastlines. By assuming that mass variations and noise have different patterns in both space and time over Greenland, we use extended empirical orthogonal functions (EEOFs) to filter out this noise. The method is compared with a conventional approach, by examining both continent‐wide estimates and regional changes. GRACE results are compared with independent regional estimates derived from a climate model. The EEOF filter is effective at separating ice mass change signals from meridional stripe noise, with better rejection of high temporal frequency noise and less signal attenuation and spatial smoothing compared to a conventional method. We use EEOF‐filtered GRACE data to examine regional seasonal variations. Consistent with surface and other data, results show ice mass loss along the west, southwest, and east coasts during summer and gain in these regions during winter. In addition, there is summer ice mass gain in the central region of the GrIS.
Hypoxia-Inducible Factor-1-Independent Regulation of Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor by Hypoxia in Colon Cancer

The induction of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is an essential feature of tumor angiogenesis, and the hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) transcription factor is known to be a key mediator of this process. In colon cancer, the frequently mutated K-ras oncogene also can regulate VEGF expression, but the role that K-ras may play in hypoxia is unknown. Hypoxia induced VEGF promoter activity, mRNA, and protein levels in colon cancer cells. Although HIF-1α was induced by hypoxia, VEGF reporter constructs with selectively mutated hypoxia-response elements remained responsive to hypoxia. In addition, “knockdown” of HIF-1α by RNA interference only minimally inhibited the hypoxic induction of VEGF. A region of the VEGF promoter between −420 and −90 bp mediated this HIF-independent induction by hypoxia. The introduction of K-rasVal12 augmented the hypoxic induction of VEGF, and this was observed in wild-type and HIF-1α knockdown colon cancer cells. Thus, VEGF may be induced by hypoxia through HIF-dependent and HIF-independent pathways, and K-ras also can induce VEGF in hypoxia independent of HIF-1. These findings suggest the existence of multiple mechanisms regulating the hypoxic induction of VEGF in colon cancer.
Behaving as Expected: Public Information and Fairness Norms

What is considered to be fair depends on context. Using a modified version of the Ultimatum Game, we demonstrate that both fair behavior and perceptions of fairness depend upon beliefs about what one ought to do in a situation - that is, upon normative expectations. We manipulate such expectations by creating informational asymmetries about the offer choices available to the Proposer, and find that behavior varies accordingly. Proposers and Responders show a remarkable degree of agreement in their beliefs about which choices are considered fair. We discuss how these results fit into a theory of social norms. Published version: Bicchieri, C. & Chavez, A. (2010) Behaving as Expected: Public information and fairness norms. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 23(2), 161-178.
High denitrification and anaerobic ammonium oxidation contributes to net nitrogen loss in a seagrass ecosystem in the central Red Sea

Abstract. Nitrogen loads in coastal areas have increased dramatically, with detrimental consequences for coastal ecosystems. Shallow sediments and seagrass meadows are hotspots for denitrification, favoring N loss. However, atmospheric dinitrogen (N2) fixation has been reported to support seagrass growth. Therefore, the role of coastal marine systems dominated by seagrasses in the net N2 flux remains unclear. Here, we measured denitrification, anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox), and N2 fixation in a tropical seagrass (Enhalus acoroides) meadow and the adjacent bare sediment in a coastal lagoon in the central Red Sea. We detected high annual mean rates of denitrification (34.9±10.3 and 31.6±8.9 mg N m−2 d−1) and anammox (12.4±3.4 and 19.8±4.4 mg N m−2 d−1) in vegetated and bare sediments. The annual mean N loss was higher (between 8 and 63-fold) than the N2 fixed (annual mean = 5.9±0.2 and 0.8±0.3 mg N m−2 d−1) in the meadow and bare sediment, leading to a net flux of N2 from sediments to the atmosphere. Despite the importance of this coastal lagoon in removing N from the system, N2 fixation can contribute substantially to seagrass growth since N2 fixation rates found here could contribute up to 36 % of plant N requirements. In vegetated sediments, anammox rates decreased with increasing organic matter (OM) content, while N2 fixation increased with OM content. Denitrification and anammox increased linearly with temperature, while N2 fixation showed a maximum at intermediate temperatures. Therefore, the forecasted warming could further increase the N2 flux from sediments to the atmosphere, potentially impacting seagrass productivity and their capacity to mitigate climate change but also enhancing their potential N removal.
High Prevalence of Inducible Erythromycin Resistance among Streptococcus bovis Isolates in Taiwan

ABSTRACT Susceptibilities to 13 antimicrobial agents were determined by measurement of MICs for 60 isolates of Streptococcus bovis from blood cultures. Thirty-eight isolates (63.3%) had high-level resistance to erythromycin (MICs, ≥128 μg/ml). Among the 38 erythromycin-resistant strains, 21 isolates (55%) had inducible resistance to macrolides-lincosamides-streptogramin B (iMLS isolates) and 17 (45%) had constitutive resistance to macrolides-lincosamides-streptogramin B (cMLS isolates). Tetracycline resistance was also found among all of the erythromycin-resistant strains. None of the strains displayed resistance to penicillin, chloramphenicol, or vancomycin. Detection of erythromycin resistance genes by PCR and sequencing indicated that all 17 cMLS isolates were positive for the ermB gene and that 7 of 21 iMLS isolates carried the ermB gene and the remaining 14 iMLS isolates carried the ermT gene. Sequence analysis of amplified partial ermB fragments (594 bp) from S. bovis isolates revealed a 99.8% nucleotide identity and a 100% amino acid homology compared with the sequences from gene banks. The sequences of amplified fragments with primers targeted forermC were shown to be very similar to that ofermGT (ermT) from Lactobacillus reuteri (98.5% nucleotide identity). This is the first report to describe the detection of the ermT class of erythromycin resistance determinants in S. bovis. The high rate of inducible erythromycin resistance among S. bovis isolates in Taiwan was not reported before. The iMLSS. bovis isolates were shown to be heterogeneous by randomly amplified polymorphic DNA analysis. These results indicate that the prevalence of inducible erythromycin resistance in S. bovis in Taiwan is very high and that most of the resistant strains carry the ermT or the ermB gene.
Evaluation of the HadISST1 and NSIDC 1850 onward sea ice datasets with a focus on the Barents-Kara seas

ABSTRACT In recent years, long-term continuous sea-ice datasets have been developed, and they cover the periods before and after the satellite era. How these datasets differ from one another before the satellite era, and whether one is more reliable than the other, is important but unclear because the sea-ice record before 1979 is sparse and not continuous. In this letter, two sets of sea-ice datasets are evaluated: one is the HadISST1 dataset from the Hadley Centre, and the other is the SIBT1850 (Gridded Monthly Sea Ice Extent and Concentration, from 1850 Onward) dataset from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). In view of its substantial importance for climate, the winter sea ice in the Barents and Kara seas (BKS) is of particular focus. A reconstructed BKS sea-ice extent (SIE) is developed using linear regression from the mean of observed surface air temperature at two adjacent islands, Novaya Zemlya and Franz Josef Land (proxy). One validation illustrates that the proxy is substantially coherent with the BKS sea-ice anomaly in the observations and the CMIP5 (phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project) historical experiments. This result indicates that the proxy is reasonable. Therefore, the establishment of the reconstructed BKS SIE is also reasonable. The evaluation results based on the proxy suggest that the sea-ice concentration prior to the satellite era in the NSIDC dataset is more realistic and reliable than that in the Hadley Centre dataset, and thus is more appropriate for use. Graphical Abstract
A Unified Knowledge Based Approach for Sense Disambiguation and Semantic Role Labeling

In this paper, we present a unified knowledge based approach for sense disambiguation and semantic role labeling. Our approach performs both tasks through a single algorithm that matches candidate semantic interpretations to background knowledge to select the best matching candidate. We evaluate our approach on a corpus of sentences collected from various domains and show how our approach performs well on both sense disambiguation and semantic role labeling.
Etiology of Childhood Infectious Diarrhea in a Developed Region of China: Compared to Childhood Diarrhea in a Developing Region and Adult Diarrhea in a Developed Region

In China, great differences in economy, social characteristics and hygiene exist between developing and developed regions. A comparative study of infectious diarrhea between two regions was needed. Three groups of diarrheal patients were collected: children ≤5 year-olds from Beijing (developed region) and Henan Province (developing region), and adults over 18 year-olds from Beijing. A questionnaire was used to survey and feces samples were examined for 16 enteropathogens. We enrolled 1422 children and 1047 adults from developed region and 755 children from developing region. Virus positive rates were 32.98% for children and 23.67% for adults in developed region. The most prevalent pathogen for children was rotavirus whereas for adults was norovirus. Bacterial isolation rates were 13.92% for children from developed region, while 29.14% for children from the developing regions. For the greatest difference, Shigella accounted for 50.79% and was the dominant pathogen in the developing region, whereas in the developed region it was only 1.45%. There was no significant relationship between the local levels of development with diarrheogenic Escherichia coli (DEC) categories. But it was seen the notable differences between the population with different age: enteropathogenic E.coli (EPEC) and enteroaggregative E.coli (EAggEC) were the primary classes of DEC in children from both regions, whereas it was enterotoxigenic E.coli (ETEC) in adults. The symptoms of Shigella and Salmonella infection, such as bloody stools, white blood cells (WBC) and red blood cells (RBC) positivity and fever were similar in children, which may lead to the misidentification. Yersinia enterocolitica and shiga toxin-producing E.coli (STEC) infections were firstly reported in Beijing. There was a large difference in etiology of bacterial diarrhea between children in developing and developed regions of China.