Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Association of Paraoxonase 1 Gene Polymorphisms With the Risk of Hepatitis B Virus-related Liver Diseases in a Guangxi Population

AbstractParaoxonase 1 (PON1), a liver-induced glycoprotein enzyme responsible for antioxidant defense against reactive oxygen species and anti-inflammatory, has been linked to various cancers. The objective of this study was to explore the association of PON1 rs662 and rs705382 with the risk of chronic hepatitis B (CHB), hepatitis B virus-related liver cirrhosis (LC), and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in patients living in the Guangxi region of southern China.The PON1 rs662 and rs705382 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were genotyped by polymerase chain reaction–restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) in 99 CHB patients, 84 LC patients, 258 HCC patients, and 221 healthy controls.Significant associations with CHB risk were observed for the rs705382 SNP after adjusting for sex, age, ethnicity, smoking, alcohol consumption, and body mass index. When stratified by sex and age, this positive association was significantly strengthened among men and individuals over 40 years old. Moreover, a decreased risk of LC was associated with the rs705382 CG and the combined GG + CG genotypes among women, with borderline statistical significance. In haplotype analyses, the haplotype GA was associated with a 1.68-fold increase in the risk of HCC.Our results showed that the PON1 rs705382 SNP might be a risk factor for CHB in Guangxi populations.
The Amygdala and Basal Forebrain as a Pathway for Motivationally Guided Attention

Visual stimuli associated with rewards attract spatial attention. Neurophysiological mechanisms that mediate this process must register both the motivational significance and location of visual stimuli. Recent neurophysiological evidence indicates that the amygdala encodes information about both of these parameters. Furthermore, the firing rate of amygdala neurons predicts the allocation of spatial attention. One neural pathway through which the amygdala might influence attention involves the intimate and bidirectional connections between the amygdala and basal forebrain (BF), a brain area long implicated in attention. Neurons in the rhesus monkey amygdala and BF were therefore recorded simultaneously while subjects performed a detection task in which the stimulus–reward associations of visual stimuli modulated spatial attention. Neurons in BF were spatially selective for reward-predictive stimuli, much like the amygdala. The onset of reward-predictive signals in each brain area suggested different routes of processing for reward-predictive stimuli appearing in the ipsilateral and contralateral fields. Moreover, neurons in the amygdala, but not BF, tracked trial-to-trial fluctuations in spatial attention. These results suggest that the amygdala and BF could play distinct yet inter-related roles in influencing attention elicited by reward-predictive stimuli.
Sequential oxygen and alkali intercalation of epitaxial graphene on Ir(111): enhanced many-body effects and formation of pn-interfaces

High quality epitaxial graphene films can be applied as templates for tailoring graphene–substrate interfaces that allow for precise control of the charge carrier behavior in graphene through doping and many-body effects. By combining scanning tunneling microscopy, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and density functional theory we demonstrate that oxygen intercalated epitaxial graphene on Ir(111) has high structural quality, is quasi free-standing, and shows signatures of many-body interactions. Using this system as a template, we show that pn-interfaces can be patterned by adsorption and intercalation of rubidium, and that the n-doped graphene regions exhibit a reduced Coulomb screening via enhanced electron–plasmon coupling. These findings are central for understanding and tailoring the properties of graphene-metal contacts e.g. for realizing quantum tunneling devices.
Performance evaluation of random access response estimation scheme for IoT communications

This paper analyzed the performance of the LTE random access (RA). We describes a RA performance analysis simulator for LTE to support massive number of devices. To evaluate the performance, we developed new modules to simulate LTE's RA procedures because there is a limit when it accommodate massive number of devices in existing LTE module. This paper also represents performance analysis results according to the number of preambles and maximum number of preamble transmissions in the same environment with 3GPP TR 37.868. With this results, we proposed the random access response (RAR) estimation scheme. As a result, the performance of RA is greatly improved compared to conventional RA.
Uncertainty Relations for Analog Signals

In the past several years there has been a surge of research investigating various aspects of sparse representations and compressed sensing. Most of this work has focused on the finite-dimensional setting in which the goal is to decompose a finite-length vector into a given finite dictionary. Underlying many of these results is the conceptual notion of an uncertainty principle: a signal cannot be sparsely represented in two different bases. Here, we extend these ideas and results to the analog, infinite-dimensional setting by considering signals that lie in a finitelygenerated shift-invariant (SI) space. This class of signals is rich enough to include many interesting special cases such as multiband signals and splines. By adapting the notion of coherence defined for finite dictionaries to infinite SI representations, we develop an uncertainty principle similar in spirit to its finite counterpart. We demonstrate tightness of our bound by considering a bandlimited low-pass comb that achieves the uncertainty principle. Building upon these results and similar work in the finite setting, we show how to find a sparse decomposition in an overcomplete dictionary by solving a convex optimization problem. The distinguishing feature of our approach is the fact that even though the problem is defined over an infinite domain with infinitely many variables and constraints, under certain conditions on the dictionary spectrum our algorithm can find the sparsest representation by solving a finite dimensional problem.
Anonymizing transaction databases for publication

This paper considers the problem of publishing "transaction data" for research purposes. Each transaction is an arbitrary set of items chosen from a large universe. Detailed transaction data provides an electronic image of one's life. This has two implications. One, transaction data are excellent candidates for data mining research. Two, use of transaction data would raise serious concerns over individual privacy. Therefore, before transaction data is released for data mining, it must be made anonymous so that data subjects cannot be re-identified. The challenge is that transaction data has no structure and can be extremely high dimensional. Traditional anonymization methods lose too much information on such data. To date, there has been no satisfactory privacy notion and solution proposed for anonymizing transaction data. This paper proposes one way to address this issue.
The effect of bodily illusions on clinical pain: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract This systematic review and meta-analysis critically examined the evidence for bodily illusions to modulate pain. Six databases were searched; 2 independent reviewers completed study inclusion, risk of bias assessment, and data extraction. Included studies evaluated the effect of a bodily illusion on pain, comparing results with a control group/condition. Of the 2213 studies identified, 20 studies (21 experiments) were included. Risk of bias was high due to selection bias and lack of blinding. Consistent evidence of pain decrease was found for illusions of the existence of a body part (myoelectric/Sauerbruch prosthesis vs cosmetic/no prosthesis; standardized mean differences = −1.84, 95% CI = −2.67 to −1.00) and 4 to 6 weeks of mirror therapy (standardized mean differences = −1.11, 95% CI = −1.66 to −0.56). Bodily resizing illusions had consistent evidence of pain modulation (in the direction hypothesized). Pooled data found no effect on pain for 1 session of mirror therapy or for incongruent movement illusions (except for comparisons with congruent mirrored movements: incongruent movement illusion significantly increased the odds of experiencing pain). Conflicting results were found for virtual walking illusions (both active and inactive control comparisons). Single studies suggest no effect of resizing illusions on pain evoked by noxious stimuli, no effect of embodiment illusions, but a significant pain decrease with synchronous mirrored stroking in nonresponders to traditional mirror therapy. There is limited evidence to suggest that bodily illusions can alter pain, but some illusions, namely mirror therapy, bodily resizing, and use of functional prostheses show therapeutic promise.
Metallurgical Affects of Three Dimensional Printing Based Rapid Casting Solution

Three dimensional printing (3DP) as rapid casting (RC) solutions has transformed over centuries from black art to science, but the metallurgical impinge on the process responsible for change in mechanical properties (like: surface finish, hardness, dimensional stability etc.) are still disputed. The purpose of the present research paper is to review metallurgical affect of 3DP based RC solution. The result of study suggests that prominent reason found to be responsible for improving the mechanical properties of RC is control of heat transfer rate while solidification (thus reducing dendrite formation).
A comparison study of static mapping heuristics for a class of meta-tasks on heterogeneous computing systems

Heterogeneous computing (HC) environments are well suited to meet the computational demands of large, diverse groups of tasks (i.e., a meta-task). The problem of mapping (defined as matching and scheduling) these tasks onto the machines of an HC environment has been shown, in general, to be NP-complete, requiring the development of heuristic techniques. Selecting the best heuristic to use in a given environment, however, remains a difficult problem, because comparisons are often clouded by different underlying assumptions in the original studies of each heuristic. Therefore, a collection of eleven heuristics from the literature has been selected, implemented, and analyzed under one set of common assumptions. The eleven heuristics examined are opportunistic load balancing, user-directed assignment, fast greedy, min-min, max-min, greedy, genetic algorithm, simulated annealing, genetic simulated annealing, tabu, and A*. This study provides one even basis for comparison and insights into circumstances where one technique will outperform another. The evaluation procedure is specified, the heuristics are defined, and then selected results are compared.
Consensus seeking in multi-agent systems with noisy and delayed communication in digraphs having spanning tree

This paper studies the consensus problem of continuous-time single-integrator multi-agent systems with measurement noises and time delays under directed fixed topologies. Each agent in the team receives imprecise and delayed information from its neighbours. The noises are considered white noises, and time delays are assumed to be uniform for all the received information states. An analysis framework based on graph theory and stochastic tools is followed to derive conditions under which the asymptotic unbiased mean square linear χ-consensus is achieved in directed fixed topologies having a spanning tree. Then, conditions to achieve asymptotic unbiased mean square average consensus are deduced for fixed balanced digraphs having a spanning tree. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithms is proved through some simulations.
Classification-Based Detection of Glottal Closure Instants from Speech Signals

In this paper a classification-based method for the automatic detection of glottal closure instants (GCIs) from the speech signal is proposed. Peaks in the speech waveforms are taken as candidates for GCI placements. A classification framework is used to train a classification model and to classify whether or not a peak corresponds to the GCI. We show that the detection accuracy in terms of F1 score is 97.27%. In addition, despite using the speech signal only, the proposed method behaves comparably to a method utilizing the glottal signal. The method is also compared with three existing GCI detection algorithms on publicly available databases.
Factors Contributing to Posttraumatic Growth and Its Buffering Effect in Adult Children of Cancer Patients Undergoing Treatment

This study examined relationships among demographic, clinical, and psychosocial variables in adult children of cancer patients. Two hundred and fourteen participants completed measures of posttraumatic growth (PTG), distress, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, social support, and family functioning. Significant gender differences in all PTG dimensions were found, as well as associations among PTG, gender, parental dependency, distress, PTSD, and family functioning. Social support was not a mediator in the relationship between gender and PTG. Gender, education, disease duration, dependency, distress, and family flexibility predicted PTG. Finally, PTG had a moderating effect in the relationship between distress and PTSD/social support. These results may guide psychosocial interventions in this population.
The Anatomical and Surgical Consequences of Right Colectomy for Cancer

BACKGROUND: Current practice when performing right colectomy for cancer is to divide the feeding vessels for the right colon on the right side of the superior mesenteric vein. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to show that arterial stumps can be visualized through an early postoperative CT and analyze their anatomical and surgical characteristics. DESIGN: This study presents a retrospective review of prospective data. SETTINGS: The study was conducted at the Department of Surgery, Vestfold Hospital, Tonsberg, Norway. PATIENTS: Patients with leakage after a right colectomy for cancer (2003–2011) were identified through a local prospective complication registry (FileMaker Pro 9.0v3 software). INTERVENTIONS: Both preoperative and postoperative CTs were retrieved, reanalyzed, and 3-dimensionally reconstructed (Osirix v.3.0.2./Mimics v.13.1.). Patients without postoperative CTs were excluded. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The main outcomes measured were length, caliber of presumed and actual arterial stumps, and their position relative to the superior mesenteric vein. RESULTS: Eighteen patients, median age 69 (10 men) were included. All patients had postoperative CTs, and 15 patients had preoperative CTs. Median time from operation to postoperative CT was 5 days. The ileocolic artery was found in 14 (11 CT pairs) patients, and the right colic artery was found in 5 (4 pairs) patients. Actual stump lengths were 28.0 mm (SD 9.3) and 37.3 mm (SD 14.9). A significant statistical difference between presumed and actual ileocolic artery stump lengths was found (P = .002). Posterior crossing to the superior mesenteric vein was noticed in 8 of 14 ileocolic arteries and in 3 of 5 right colic arteries. There was no statistical difference in mean caliber for the preoperative and postoperative right colic artery (P = .505) and ileocolic artery (P = .474). LIMITATIONS: Difficulties when interpreting the postoperative images, due to intra-abdominal effusion, staples, edema, and altered syntopy of blood vessels, were overcome through comparison with preoperative CTs. CONCLUSION: An early postoperative CT can show arterial stumps after right colectomy for cancer. These stumps appear to be significantly longer than presumed; implying a significant improvement potential when specimen size is concerned.
Please Scroll down for Article the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Semantic Size Does Not Matter: " Bigger " Words Are Not Recognized Faster

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Preliminary Evidence of a High Risk of Bleeding on Aspirin plus Clopidogrel in Aspirin-Naïve Patients in the Acute Phase after TIA or Minor Ischaemic Stroke

Background: Aspirin plus clopidogrel (A+C) may be more effective than aspirin only (AO) acutely after TIA and minor stroke, but the risk of bleeding in the acute phase is uncertain. We determined this risk, focusing particularly on aspirin-naïve patients. Methods: We studied consecutive referrals to the EXPRESS study clinic from 1/4/02 to 31/3/08. A 30- to 90-day course of A+C was given to patients presenting acutely. Bleeding events were identified by face-to-face follow-up, diagnostic coding, and blood transfusion data. Unpublished data from the FASTER pilot trial were also studied. Results: Among 633 EXPRESS patients treated with aspirin (+/– clopidogrel), there were 12 spontaneous bleeds (6 minor, 6 major/life-threatening) within 90 days after assessment, with a higher risk for A+C vs. AO (8/247 vs. 4/386, p = 0.047 overall; 5/247 vs. 1/386, p = 0.03 for major/life-threatening bleeds). The excess of major/life-threatening bleeds on A+C vs. AO was seen in aspirin-naïve patients, (4/137 vs. 0/273, p = 0.01), but not in prior-aspirin patients (1/110 vs. 1/113, p = 0.98). All symptomatic bleeds in the FASTER pilot also occurred in aspirin-naïve patients randomized to A+C (6/104 vs. 0/94, p = 0.03). In a pooled analysis, major/life-threatening bleeding on A+C occurred in 9/241 aspirin-naïve patients (90-day risk = 4.8%, 1.6–8.0) versus 1/204 prior-aspirin patients (p = 0.009). Conclusion: Although based on relatively few outcomes, the high risk of major bleeding on A+C acutely after TIA or minor stroke in aspirin-naïve patients is a cause for concern. The potential risk to patients is sufficient to mandate detailed monitoring of bleeding risk in ongoing trials and stratify results by whether patients were aspirin-naïve.
Chapter 3 Mobile opportunities : poverty and mobile telephony in Latin America and the Caribbean . The case of Mexico

While the use of mobile telephony continues to expand at unexpected rates, academic literature seeks to explain the causes for this phenomenon as well as its social and economic impact. Not only is the speed at which mobile telephony is being adopted surprising, so to is the great extent to which it has penetrated low income sectors. This paper, through a survey of households in poor urban areas on Mexico, offers evidence of patterns of mobile telephony use and is part of a broader research conducted in seven Latin American Countries and the Caribbean by researchers from the network Regional Dialogue on the Information Society (DIRSI). The survey explores how and why acces to mobile telephony can be used to tackle the many obstacles to development faced by poor urban sectors in Mexico. It seeks to identify the perceptions of this sector of the population on the impact of this service on their day to day lives. In particular, it looks into the perceptions of users regarding cost and its value in relation to other expenses in order to gain a better understanding of the demand for mobile communication. This survey seeks to identify the implications of access to mobile telephony to aspects such as employment opportunities and income, as well as access to government services and mobile commerce. Lastly, we attempt to identify the barriers that non-users of these services face in terms of affordability and coverage, as well as business models that offer these services. Results show that users consider keeping in touch with family, friends and during emergencies to be the main use of access to mobile telephony; in other words, to strengthen social networks. These results are compatible with other studies that document how mobile services create and strengthen characteristics such as shared values and trust, which are key components of social capital (Chapman, 2004). Communication for work or business purposes do not play a key role; however, it is interesting to note that users that do employ mobile telephony for business use it much more intensively. Given that the mobile applications offerd by governments, banks and businesses are still in their infancy, it is not surprizing that they are seldom accessed. The main barrier that was identified for non-users to adopt mobile telephony continues to be affordability.
Feature Selection for SVMs

We introduce a method of feature selection for Support Vector Machines. The method is based upon finding those features which minimize bounds on the leave-one-out error. This search can be efficiently performed via gradient descent. The resulting algorithms are shown to be superior to some standard feature selection algorithms on both toy data and real-life problems of face recognition, pedestrian detection and analyzing DNA microarray data.
Filling algorithms and analyses for layout density control

In very deep-submicron very large scale integration (VLSI), manufacturing steps involving chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP) have varying effects on device and interconnect features, depending on local characteristics of the layout. To reduce manufacturing variation due to CMP and to improve performance predictability and yield, the layout must be made uniform with respect to certain density criteria, by inserting "fill" geometries into the layout. To date, only foundries and special mask data processing tools perform layout post-processing for density control. In the future, better convergence of performance verification flows will depend on such layout manipulations being embedded within the layout synthesis (place-and-route) flow. In this paper, we give the first realistic formulation of the filling problem that arises in layout optimization for manufacturability. Our formulation seeks to add features to a given process layer, such that (1) feature area densities satisfy prescribed upper and lower bounds in all windows of given size and (2) the maximum variation of such densities over all possible window positions in the layout is minimized. We present efficient algorithms for density analysis, notably a multilevel approach that affords user-tunable accuracy. We also develop exact solutions to the problem of fill synthesis, based on a linear programming approach. These include a linear programming (LP) formulation for the fixed-dissection regime (where density bounds are imposed on a predetermined set of windows in the layout) and an LP formulation that is automatically generated by our multilevel density analysis. We briefly review criteria for fill pattern synthesis, and the paper then concludes with computational results and directions for future research.