Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Associations between maternal clinical features and fetal outcomes in pregnancies of mothers with connective tissue diseases

Abstract Objectives: The purpose of this study is to clarify associations between maternal clinical features and adverse pregnancy outcomes (APOs) in mothers with connective tissue diseases (CTDs). Methods: We retrospectively examined maternal clinical features including backgrounds, autoantibodies, CTD flare-ups, and therapies during pregnancies as well as fetal outcomes in 90 pregnancies (66 mothers) at our hospital from January 2006 to September 2016. Results: Underlying CTDs were SLE (N = 41), MCTD (N = 10), RA (N = 15), SS (N = 10), and others (N = 14). Anti-SS-A antibody was detected in 60.3%, lupus anticoagulant (LAC) was in 11.4%, and anti-cardiolipin-β2glycoprotein1 antibody was in 18.5%. Flare-ups of CTDs occurred in 20 pregnancies (22.2%). Corticosteroids (CS) was administered in 73 pregnancies, immunosuppressants in four, and biologics in one. Among the 85 pregnancies other than five early abortions within 12 weeks of gestational age, 33 cases had APOs while the remaining 52 cases were normal. Although disease duration, MCTD, high dose of CS, flare-ups of CTDs, and positive LAC significantly correlated with APOs by univariate analysis, only MCTD was a significant independent predictor for APOs by multivariate analysis. Conclusion: Disease duration, MCTD, high dose of CS, flare-ups of CTDs, and LAC might be possible predictive risk factors for APOs in pregnancies with CTDs. Of these, MCTD was a significant independent risk factor.
Lymph Node Transplantation Decreases Swelling and Restores Immune Responses in a Transgenic Model of Lymphedema

Introduction Secondary lymphedema is a common complication of cancer treatment and recent studies have demonstrated that lymph node transplantation (LNT) can decrease swelling, as well as the incidence of infections. However, although these results are exciting, the mechanisms by which LNT improves these pathologic findings of lymphedema remain unknown. Using a transgenic mouse model of lymphedema, this study sought to analyze the effect of LNT on lymphatic regeneration and T cell-mediated immune responses. Methods We used a mouse model in which the expression of the human diphtheria toxin receptor is driven by the FLT4 promoter to enable the local ablation of the lymphatic system through subdermal hindlimb diphtheria toxin injections. Popliteal lymph node dissection was subsequently performed after a two-week recovery period, followed by either orthotopic LNT or sham surgery after an additional two weeks. Hindlimb swelling, lymphatic vessel regeneration, immune cell trafficking, and T cell-mediated immune responses were analyzed 10 weeks later. Results LNT resulted in a marked decrease in hindlimb swelling, fibroadipose tissue deposition, and decreased accumulation of perilymphatic inflammatory cells, as compared to controls. In addition, LNT induced a marked lymphangiogenic response in both capillary and collecting lymphatic vessels. Interestingly, the resultant regenerated lymphatics were abnormal in appearance on lymphangiography, but LNT also led to a notable increase in dendritic cell trafficking from the periphery to the inguinal lymph nodes and improved adaptive immune responses. Conclusions LNT decreases pathological changes of lymphedema and was shown to potently induce lymphangiogenesis. Lymphatic vessels induced by LNT were abnormal in appearance, but were functional and able to transport antigen-presenting cells. Animals treated with LNT have an increased ability to mount T cell-mediated immune responses when sensitized to antigens in the affected hindlimb.
The Lambeosaurine Dinosaur Magnapaulia laticaudus from the Late Cretaceous of Baja California, Northwestern Mexico

The taxonomy, osteology, phylogenetic position, and historical biogeography of the lambeosaurine hadrosaurid Magnapaulia laticaudus (new combination) are revised. The diagnosis of this species is amended on the basis on two autapomorphies (i.e., longest haemal arches of proximal caudal vertebrae being at least four times longer than the height of their respective centra; base of prezygapophyses in caudal vertebrae merging to form a bowl-shaped surface) and a unique combination of characters (i.e., downturned cranioventral process of the maxilla; tear-shaped external naris with length/width ratio between 1.85 and 2.85; neural spines of dorsal, sacral, and proximal caudal vertebrae being at least four times the height of their respective centra). A maximum parsimony analysis supports a sister taxon relationship between M. laticaudus and Velafrons coahuilensis. Both taxa constitute a clade of southern North American lambeosaurines, which forms a sister relationship with the diverse clade of helmet-crested lambeosaurines from northern North America that includes well-known genera like Corythosaurus, Lambeosaurus, and Hypacrosaurus. According to the results of a Dispersal-Vicariance analysis, southern North American lambeosaurines split from the northern forms via vicariance from a common ancestor that lived in both the northern and southern regions of the continent.
NDDR-CNN: Layerwise Feature Fusing in Multi-Task CNNs by Neural Discriminative Dimensionality Reduction

In this paper, we propose a novel Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) structure for general-purpose multi-task learning (MTL), which enables automatic feature fusing at every layer from different tasks. This is in contrast with the most widely used MTL CNN structures which empirically or heuristically share features on some specific layers (e.g., share all the features except the last convolutional layer). The proposed layerwise feature fusing scheme is formulated by combining existing CNN components in a novel way, with clear mathematical interpretability as discriminative dimensionality reduction, which is referred to as Neural Discriminative Dimensionality Reduction (NDDR). Specifically, we first concatenate features with the same spatial resolution from different tasks according to their channel dimension. Then, we show that the discriminative dimensionality reduction can be fulfilled by 1x1 Convolution, Batch Normalization, and Weight Decay in one CNN. The use of existing CNN components ensures the end-to-end training and the extensibility of the proposed NDDR layer to various state-of-the-art CNN architectures in a "plug-and-play" manner. The detailed ablation analysis shows that the proposed NDDR layer is easy to train and also robust to different hyperparameters. Experiments on different task sets with various base network architectures demonstrate the promising performance and desirable generalizability of our proposed method. The code of our paper is available at https://github.com/ethanygao/NDDR-CNN.
Injected Human Muscle Precursor Cells Overexpressing PGC-1α Enhance Functional Muscle Regeneration after Trauma

While many groups demonstrated new muscle tissue formation after muscle precursor cell (MPC) injection, the capacity of these cells to heal muscle damage, for example, sphincter in stress urinary incontinence, in long-term is still limited. Therefore, the first goal of our project was to optimize the functional regenerative potential of hMPC by genetic modification to overexpress human peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator 1-alpha (hPGC-1α), key regulator of exercise-mediated adaptation. Moreover, we aimed at establishing a feasible methodology for noninvasive PET visualization of implanted cells and their microenvironment in muscle crush injury model. PGC-1α-bioengineered muscles showed enhanced marker expression for myogenesis (α-actinin, MyHC, and Desmin), vascularization (VEGF), neuronal (ACHE), and mitochondrial (COXIV) activity. Consistently, use of hPGC-1α_hMPCs produced significantly increased contractile force one to three weeks postinjury. PET imaging showed distinct differences in radiotracer signals ([18F]Fallypride and [11C]Raclopride (both targeting dopamine 2 receptors (D2R)) and [64Cu]NODAGA-RGD (targeting neovascularization)) between GFP_hMPCs and hD2R_hPGC-1α_hMPCs. After muscle harvesting, inflammation levels were in parallel to radiotracer uptake amount, with significantly lower uptake in hPGC-1α overexpressing samples. In summary, we facilitated early functional muscle tissue regeneration, introducing a novel approach to improve skeletal muscle regeneration. Besides successful tracking of hMPCs in muscle crush injuries, we showed that in high-inflammation areas, the specificity of radioligands might be significantly reduced, addressing a possible bottleneck of neovascularization PET imaging.
Visual Measurement and Prediction of Ball Trajectory for Table Tennis Robot

A high-speed stereovision system with two smart cameras is presented to track a table tennis ball, which adopts a distributed parallel processing architecture based on a local area network. A set of novel algorithms with little computation and good robustness running in the smart cameras is also proposed to recognize and track the ball in the images. A computer receives the image coordinates of the ball from the cameras via the local area network and computes its 3-D positions in the working frame. Then, the flying trajectory of the ball is estimated and predicted according to the measured positions and the flying and rebound models. The main motion parameters of the ball such as the landing point and striking point are calculated from its predicted trajectory. Experimental results show that the developed image-processing algorithms are robust enough to distinguish the ball from a complex dynamic background. The predicted landing point and striking point of the ball have satisfactory precision.
LINC00152 is a potential biomarker involved in the modulation of biological characteristics of residual colorectal cancer cells following chemoradiotherapy

Concurrent radiotherapy and chemotherapy is a widely used, comprehensive treatment for rectal cancer. By studying the impact of concurrent chemoradiotherapy on the invasion and migration of colorectal cancer (CRC) cells and researching the associated molecular mechanisms, the present study aimed to provide a novel method to improve the therapeutic effect of this treatment against CRC. Human HCT116 and HT29 CRC cells were simultaneously treated with 4 Gy of 6 MV X-rays and 10 µmol/l 5-fluorouracil to establish a residual cell model. Transwell migration and invasion experiments were used to analyse the invasion and migration of the cells. The expression of long non-coding (lnc)RNAs was detected using a gene chip, and reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction analysis was used to determine lncRNA expression levels. Specific small interfering RNAs were transfected into HCT116 residual cells to silence the expression of the identified key genes. The migration and invasion of residual CRC cells were demonstrated to be significantly increased compared with the original cells. Pvt1 oncogene, long-chain non-protein-coding RNA 152 (LINC00152), and MIR22 host gene were selected as potential targets. However, the migration and invasion of residual HCT116 cancer cells were only significantly decreased following silencing of LINC00152 expression. LINC00152 may therefore be a potential biomarker involved in modulation of the biological characteristics of residual CRC cells following chemoradiotherapy.
A multigrid for image deblurring with Tikhonov regularization

In the resolution of certain image deblurring problems with given boundary conditions we obtain two‐level structured linear systems. In the case of shift‐invariant point spread function with Dirichlet (zero) boundary conditions, the blurring matrices are block Toeplitz matrices with Toeplitz blocks. If the periodic boundary conditions are used, then the involved structures become block circulant with circulant blocks. Furthermore, Gaussian‐like point spread functions usually lead to numerically banded matrices which are ill‐conditioned since they are associated to generating functions that vanish in a neighbourhood of (π,π). We solve such systems by applying a multigrid method. The proposed technique shows an optimality property, i.e. its cost is of O(N) arithmetic operations (like matrix–vector product), where N is the size of the linear system. In the case of images affected by noise we use two Tikhonov regularization techniques to reduce the noise effects. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Hybrid beamforming for 5G millimeter-wave multi-cell networks

Multi-cell wireless systems usually suffer both intra-cell and inter-cell interference, which can be mitigated via coordinated multipoint (CoMP) techniques. Previous works on multi-cell analysis for the microwave band generally consider fully digital beamforming that requires a complete radio-frequency chain behind each antenna, which is less practical for millimeter-wave (mmWave) systems where large amounts of antennas are necessary to provide sufficient beamforming gain and to enable transmission and reception of multiple data streams per user. This paper proposes four analog and digital hybrid beamforming schemes for multi-cell multi-user multi-stream mmWave communication, leveraging CoMP. Spectral efficiency performances of the proposed hybrid beamforming approaches are investigated and compared using both the 3rd Generation Partnership Project and NYUSIM channel models. Simulation results show that CoMP based on maximizing signal-to-leakage-plus-noise ratio can improve spectral efficiency as compared to the no-coordination case, and spectral efficiency gaps between different beamforming approaches depend on the interference level that is influenced by the cell radius and the number of users per cell.
Is the observed NAO variability during the instrumental record unusual?

Observed multidecadal variability (30 yr running means, trends, and moving standard deviations) of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) during the instrumental record is compared to that simulated by two different coupled general circulation models in extended‐range control experiments. Simulated NAO exhibits strong low frequency fluctuations, even on multi‐centennial time scale. Observed multi‐decadal NAO variations agree well with the model variability. Trend probability distribution functions, observed and simulated, were not found to be different with statistical significance. Thus, multi‐decadal NAO changes similar to those observed during the instrumental record, including the recent increase in 1965–1995, may be internally generated within the coupled atmosphere‐ocean system without considering external forcing.
Correlated Genetic and Ecological Diversification in a Widespread Southern African Horseshoe Bat

The analysis of molecular data within a historical biogeographical framework, coupled with ecological characteristics can provide insight into the processes driving diversification. Here we assess the genetic and ecological diversity within a widespread horseshoe bat Rhinolophus clivosus sensu lato with specific emphasis on the southern African representatives which, although not currently recognized, were previously described as a separate species R. geoffroyi comprising four subspecies. Sequence divergence estimates of the mtDNA control region show that the southern African representatives of R. clivosus s.l. are as distinct from samples further north in Africa than they are from R. ferrumequinum, the sister-species to R. clivosus. Within South Africa, five genetically supported geographic groups exist and these groups are corroborated by echolocation and wing morphology data. The groups loosely correspond to the distributions of the previously defined subspecies and Maxent modelling shows a strong correlation between the detected groups and ecoregions. Based on molecular clock calibrations, it is evident that climatic cycling and related vegetation changes during the Quaternary may have facilitated diversification both genetically and ecologically.
REAL-TIME SOIL PROFILE WATER CONTENT AS INFLUENCED BY WEED-CORN COMPETITION

Weeds compete with crops for belowground resources; however, there is little detailed information on relative dynamics of soil water during competitive interactions. This research was conducted to determine changes in soil-water storage (CSWS) in rain-fed no-tillage corn (Zea mays L.) production in the presence or absence of weed competition over two droughty growing seasons. Weeds at the experimental site were composed primarily of fall panicum (Panicum dichotomiflorum Michx.), which represented >90% of plants present in both years. Corn-row soil-water infiltration and losses as CSWS were studied with multisensory capacitance probes that determined water status at depths of 5-15, 15-25, 25-35, and 35-45 cm on 10-min intervals. Total biomass (corn plus weed) was higher in weedy plots than in weed-free plots. Compared with weed-free plots, corn biomass was reduced by 28% in 1998 and by 21% in 1999 by weeds; a decrease defined by the same linear rate of 0.85 g corn per 1 g of weed in both years. Early-season CSWS was higher in weedy than weed-free corn and was most likely accounted for by water accessed by the approximately 10-fold higher weed than corn population. The differential in early-season CSWS between weedy and weed-free corn was highest at the 15- to 25-cm depth, and corn biomass was most correlated with this early-season CSWS values at 15 to 25 cm. Multisensor probes allowed quantitative assessment of soil-water changes within different soil layers during the growing seasons. These results suggest that the water deficit created by early root proliferation and water uptake by weeds specifically at 15 to 25 cm was most likely the cause of corn biomass reductions in these two experimental years.
A hierarchical, HMM-based automatic evaluation of OCR accuracy for a digital library of books

A number of projects are creating searchable digital libraries of printed books. These include the Million Book Project, the Google book project and similar efforts from Yahoo and Microsoft. Content-based on line book retrieval usually requires first converting printed text into machine readable (e.g. ASCII) text using an optical character recognition (OCR) engine and then doing full text search on the results. Many of these books are old and there are a variety of processing steps that are required to create an end to end system. Changing any step (including the scanning process) can affect OCR performance and hence a good automatic statistical evaluation of OCR performance on book length material is needed. Evaluating OCR performance on the entire book is non-trivial. The only easily obtainable ground truth (the Gutenberg e-texts) must be automatically aligned with the OCR output over the entire length of a book. This may be viewed as equivalent to the problem of aligning two large (easily a million long) sequences. The problem is further complicated by OCR errors as well as the possibility of large chunks of missing material in one of the sequences. We propose a hidden Markov model (HMM) based hierarchical alignment algorithm to align OCR output and the ground truth for books. We believe this is the first work to automatically align a whole book without using any book structure information. The alignment process works by breaking up the problem of aligning two long sequences into the problem of aligning many smaller subsequences. This can be rapidly and effectively done. Experimental results show that our hierarchical alignment approach works very well even if OCR output has a high recognition error rate. Finally, we evaluate the performance of a commercial OCR engine over a large dataset of books based on the alignment results
The Magnetic Resonance Imaging Scan Findings in Adult Nigerians with Low Back Pain

In the adult population 50-90% suffer from low back pain at least once in their life time, the pain could be excruciating and disabling. This leads to extensive and expensive investigations. At present, magnetic resonance imaging is the gold standard for diagnosing the aetiology of low back pain; its use has been associated with 82.6% accuracy. This study aimed to investigate the pattern of MRI findings in patients with low back pain in a Sub-Saharan Tertiary Hospital. This is a retrospective study of the MRI images and medical record of 270 patients between February 2010 and May 2011. The mean age was 54.5±12.5 years, with one-third (32%) of patients in the age range of 50-59 years, male patients constituted (65.5%) and females (34.5%). The most common abnormality seen on MRI was disc desiccation (66%), others includes disc height reduction (62%), multiple disc herniation (59.7%), posterior protrusion (44.7%), posterior extrusion (24.7%), disc degeneration (37%) and disc bulge (3.5%). The morphological abnormalities involved multiple discs in 65.5% of patients. Conclusion- We observed that disc desiccation is not uncommon in our environment, however; disc bulge was a rare finding. The morphological abnormalities increased with age.
Asthma and smoking-induced airway disease without spirometric COPD

Due to the high prevalence rates of cigarette smoking and asthma, current and ex-smokers frequently develop chronic airway disease without spirometric evidence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), either alone or associated with asthma. This review considers the classification, clinical outcomes, inflammatory and imaging variables, phenotypes, and management of current and ex-smokers with airway disease without COPD, focusing on overlaps in those with and without asthma. These individuals have more respiratory symptoms, worse quality of life, increased exacerbation rates, reduced lung function and more comorbidities than never-smokers with asthma or healthy never-smokers. As well as clinical features, airway inflammatory and structural changes in smoking-induced airway disease without COPD overlap with those found in smokers with asthma. Cigarette smoking is associated with worse clinical outcomes in some phenotypes of asthma. Management involves public health measures to control exposure to tobacco smoke, personal advice on smoking cessation and the use of appropriate targeted therapies, although evidence is limited on their effectiveness. Understanding the mechanisms, natural history and management of current and ex-smokers with asthma and smoking-induced airway disease without COPD is a priority for future research. Cigarette smokers without COPD develop chronic respiratory symptoms due to asthma and smoking-induced airway disease http://ow.ly/rTaS308SLll
An Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search Heuristic for the Pickup and Delivery Problem with Time Windows

The pickup and delivery problem with time windows is the problem of serving a number of transportation requests using a limited amount of vehicles. Each request involves moving a number of goods from a pickup location to a delivery location. Our task is to construct routes that visit all locations such that corresponding pickups and deliveries are placed on the same route, and such that a pickup is performed before the corresponding delivery. The routes must also satisfy time window and capacity constraints. This paper presents a heuristic for the problem based on an extension of the large neighborhood search heuristic previously suggested for solving the vehicle routing problem with time windows. The proposed heuristic is composed of a number of competing subheuristics that are used with a frequency corresponding to their historic performance. This general framework is denoted adaptive large neighborhood search. The heuristic is tested on more than 350 benchmark instances with up to 500 requests. It is able to improve the best known solutions from the literature for more than 50% of the problems. The computational experiments indicate that it is advantageous to use several competing subheuristics instead of just one. We believe that the proposed heuristic is very robust and is able to adapt to various instance characteristics.