Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Contribution of diffusion-weighted MRI to the differential diagnosis of hepatic masses.

PURPOSE To evaluate the diagnostic contribution of diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values to the characterization of hepatic masses and differentiation of benign and malignant lesions. MATERIALS AND METHODS The study included 30 patients that underwent upper abdominal MRI examinations because of hepatic masses that were found to be > or =1 cm in size with conventional sequences, and were additionally evaluated with diffusion-weighted MRI. Diffusion-weighted images and ADC maps in the axial plane were obtained using a 1.5 Tesla MRI device, single shot echo-planar spin echo sequences on 3 axes (x, y, z), and diffusion sensitive gradients with 2 different b values (b = 0 and b = 1000 s/mm (2)). Mean ADC measurements were calculated among the 30 cases involving 41 hepatic masses. RESULTS Of the 41 hepatic masses, 24 were benign and 17 were malignant. Benign lesions included 6 cysts, 14 hemangiomas, 2 abscesses, and 2 hydatid cysts. Malignant masses included 8 metastases, 4 hepatocellular carcinomas, 4 cholangiocellular carcinomas, and 1 gall bladder adenocarcinoma. The highest ADC values were for cysts and hemangiomas. The mean ADC value of benign lesions was 2.57 +/- 0.26 x 10(-3)mm(2)/s, whereas malignant lesions had a mean ADC value of 0.86 +/- 0.11 x 10(-3)mm(2)/s. The mean ADC value of benign lesions was significantly higher than that of malignant lesions (P < 0.01). CONCLUSION Diffusion-weighted MRI with quantitative ADC measurements can be useful in the differentiation of benign and malignant liver lesions.
Sampling from Probabilistic Submodular Models

Submodular and supermodular functions have found wide applicability in machine learning, capturing notions such as diversity and regularity, respectively. These notions have deep consequences for optimization, and the problem of (approximately) optimizing submodular functions has received much attention. However, beyond optimization, these notions allow specifying expressive probabilistic models that can be used to quantify predictive uncertainty via marginal inference. Prominent, well-studied special cases include Ising models and determinantal point processes, but the general class of log-submodular and log-supermodular models is much richer and little studied. In this paper, we investigate the use of Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling to perform approximate inference in general log-submodular and log-supermodular models. In particular, we consider a simple Gibbs sampling procedure, and establish two sufficient conditions, the first guaranteeing polynomial-time, and the second fast (O(n log n)) mixing. We also evaluate the efficiency of the Gibbs sampler on three examples of such models, and compare against a recently proposed variational approach.
The Measurement of Information Systems Success in China: Re-validating IS-Impact in the Chinese Organizational Context

Information system (IS) investments are under increasing scrutiny and pressure to justify their contribution to the productivity and competitiveness of organizations. The impacts from contemporary IS, Enterprise Systems being the quintessence, are arguably difficult to measure. In response (Gable, Sedera, & Chan, 2008) introduced the IS-Impact measurement model ‘a measure at a point in time, of the stream of net benefits from the IS, to date and anticipated, as perceived by all key-user-groups. ’ IS-Impact, though extensively validated with enterprise system (ES) in both public and private sectors in Australia, has yet to be tested in other countries. This paper proposes a study to operationalise a Mandarin version of the IS-Impact model, and to validate the model, instrument and approach in the Chinese organisational context, thereby further validating and generalizing the IS-Impact approach. A context study, in combination with IS-Impact survey results, will also yield valuable insights into the state of ES in China.
Regional heterogeneity in the brain's response to hypoxia measured using BOLD MR imaging

Blood oxygenation level‐dependent (BOLD) magnetic resonance (MR) imaging is sensitive, in part, to the amount of paramagnetic deoxyhemoglobin in a voxel. This project was designed to determine whether there would be differences in the BOLD response between the hippocampus and other brain regions to acute hypoxia. R*2 was quantified using a multi‐echo gradient‐echo sequence. The pyramidal CA1 region of the hippocampus showed a reduced response to changes in arterial oxygenation relative to cortex and basal ganglia and white matter. This difference may relate to the relative hypoxia sensitivity of the hippocampus. It also supports the premise that in functional MR imaging, the magnitude of the MR response to a stimulus may vary with the region of the brain. Magn Reson Med 41;850–854, 1999 © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Ejaculate volume is seriously underestimated when semen is pipetted or decanted into cylinders from the collection vessel.

The total sperm count (number of spermatozoa per ejaculate) rather than sperm concentration (number of spermatozoa per unit volume of semen) is the more important semen variable related to fertility. It reflects testicular volume (Handelsman et al, 1984; Andersen et al, 2000; Behre et al, 2000), and thus is a measure of total testicular sperm output (MacLeod and Wang, 1979), which is directly related to the chances of pregnancy after coitus. The concentration of spermatozoa in the ejaculate, however, depends on the extent of dilution of epididymal spermatozoa by secretions of the prostate and seminal vesicles occurring at ejaculation and is therefore influenced by the secretory capacity of the accessory sex glands. This is an important distinction, for when comparing semen quality from older and younger men, sperm concentrations do not differ, yet semen volume is reduced in the older men, and so the total number of spermatozoa per ejaculate is lower in the older men (Ng et al, 2004; Nieschlag et al, 1982). The total number of spermatozoa per ejaculate is obtained by multiplying the concentration of spermatozoa by the semen volume. The latter is best measured by weighing (Eliasson, 2003), assuming a density of 1.0 g/mL (Auger et al, 1995; Jorgensen et al, 1997, 2001; Brazil et al, 2004), but alternative methods, such as collection into graduated cylinders (Behre et al, 2000), pipetting from the collection vessel (Mortimer 1994; Jorgensen et al, 1997), and pouring from the collection vessel into a graduated tube (Jorgensen et al, 1997), are in current practice. Two recent studies have found that pipetting semen from the collection vessel leads to an underestimation of about 0.5 mL (range 0.3–0.8 mL; Brazil et al, 2004; Iwamoto et al, 2006) compared with weighing, but no data are available about losses incurred when pouring semen into graduated cylinders. Because the area of contact with the sides of the collection vessel while decanting semen into a graduated cylinder is likely to be far larger than that during pipetting, retention within the vessel could be much larger, leading to a larger underestimation of volume with this method. In this study, new data are obtained on the loss of semen volume during decanting to a cylinder and previously published results on losses because of pipetting, and the density of semen is reanalyzed together with additional data.
LTE-Advanced coverage enhancements

Various technologies in LTE/LTE-Advanced have significantly improved the data throughput of 4G systems. However, the coverage of LTE networks, a very important performance metric to operators, receives relatively less attention. In this article we describe the motivations of LTE coverage enhancements from several aspects. Through link budget analysis, the limiting link and channels are identified. Then potential solutions to LTE coverage enhancements are discussed in a comprehensive manner, with the focus on schemes of specification impact. This article provides insights on how to design practical schemes to improve the coverage of LTE/ LTE-Advanced systems.
Distributed Coordination of Asymmetric Compartmental Systems Under Time-Varying Inputs and Its Applications

In this paper, we present new distributed coordination for a set-point regulation of asymmetric compartmental systems under periodically time-varying external inputs. The feature of the proposed coordination is to adjust system parameters, which is directly related to interflow rate among compartments and outflow rate to environment. In contrast to symmetric compartmental systems, there is a difficulty in analysis resulted from a property of compartmental matrix in the asymmetric cases; however, we solve the problem by designing an appropriate coordination range of the system parameters. In order to compensate the time-varying effect in the inputs, we assume that the structure of the inputs is a finite Fourier series, and show that the coordination of the system parameters should have the same structure with the same frequencies. The remainder of the coordination is to determine coefficients of the Fourier series of the system parameters. We develop a distributed update law for obtaining the coefficients. We apply the distributed coordination to water irrigation systems and water distribution systems, and show the effectiveness of the proposed distributed coordination schemes through numerical simulations.
Inflation and gauge hierarchy in Randall-Sundrum compactification

We obtain the general inflationary solutions for the slab of five-dimensional AdS spacetime where the fifth dimension is an orbifold $S^1/Z_2$ and two three-branes reside at its boundaries, of which the Randall-Sundrum model corresponds to the static limit. The investigation of the general solutions and their static limit reveals that the RS model recasts both the cosmological constant problem and the gauge hierarchy problem into the balancing problem of the bulk and the brane cosmological constants.
On the Sampling Problem for H-Colorings on the Hypercubic Lattice

We consider the problem of random H-colorings of rectangular subsets of the hypercubic lattice Zd, with weight λi ∈ (0,∞) for the color i. First, we assume that H is non-trivial in the sense that it is neither the completely looped complete graph nor the complete bipartite graph. We consider quasi-local Markov chains on a periodic box of even side length L, that is, Markov chains that do not change more than a fraction ρ < 1 of the sites in the box in any single move. For any finite, connected, non-trivial H, we show that there are weights {λi} such that all quasi-local ergodic Markov chains have slow mixing in the sense that the mixing time is exponential in Ld−1. Under the same conditions, we prove phase coexistence in the sense that there are at least two extremal Gibbs states. We also prove that, for a large subclass of graphs H, one can choose weights {λi} such that the corresponding Gibbs measure has exponentially fast spatial mixing. Microsoft Research, 1 Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052, borgs@microsoft.com, jchayes@microsoft.com School of Computing, University of Leeds, dyer@comp.leeds. ac.uk. School of Mathematics, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA 30332, tetali@math.gatech. edu. Research supported in part by the NSF Grant No. DMS–9800351
Investigating Actuation Force Fight with Asynchronous and Synchronous Redundancy Management Techniques

Within distributed fault-tolerant systems the term force-fight is colloquially used to describe the level of command disagreement present at redundant actuation interfaces. This report details an investigation of force-fight using three distributed system case-study architectures. Each case study architecture is abstracted and formally modeled using the Symbolic Analysis Laboratory (SAL) tool chain from the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). We use the formal SAL models to produce k-induction based proofs of a bounded actuation agreement property. We also present a mathematically derived bound of redundant actuation agreement for sine-wave stimulus. The report documents our experiences and lessons learned developing the formal models and the associated proofs.
FractalMRC: Online Cache Miss Rate Curve Prediction on Commodity Systems

Shared caches in chip multi-processors (CMPs) have important benefits such as accelerating inter-core communication, yet the inherent cache contention among multiple processes on such architectures can significantly degrade performance. To address this problem, cache partitioning has been studied based on the prediction of the cache miss rate curve (MRC) of the concurrently running programs. On-line MRC prediction, however, either requires special hardware support or incurs a high overhead when conducted purely in software. This paper presents a new MRC prediction scheme based on a fractal model and hence called Fractal MRC. It uses the easily available features in performance monitoring units of modern Intel processors and predicts the MRC of a running program with low overhead and high accuracy. No changes to applications and hardware are required. The prediction is validated against the measured results for 26 applications from SPEC CPU2006 benchmark suite. The highest prediction accuracy is 99.3%, the accuracy of 12 of the applications is over 80%, and the average is 76%. The cost of prediction is 2% slowdown on average. The new, efficient and accurate MRC prediction has enabled a dynamic technique to partition cache between pairs of applications at run time to match or exceed the best performance attainable with static cache partitioning.
Cumulative risk and trends in prostate cancer incidence in Mumbai, India.

BACKGROUND Information relating to cancer incidence trends in a community forms the scientific basis for the planning and organization of prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer. We here estimated the cumulative risk and trends in incidence of prostate cancer in Mumbai, India, using data collected by the Bombay Population-based Cancer Registry from the year 1986 to 2000. METHODS During the 15 year period, a total of 2864 prostate cancer cases (4.7% of all male cancers and 2.4% of all cancers) were registered by the Bombay Population-based Cancer Registry. For evaluation of the trend, we applied a linear regression model based on the logarithm of the observed incidence rates. The annual percentage changes were also computed for the evaluation. Cumulative incidence rates percentages were calculated by adding up the age specific incidence rates at single ages and then expressed as a percentage. RESULTS Analysis of the trends in age-adjusted incidence rates of prostate cancer during the period 1986 to 2000 showed no statistically significant increase or decrease and the rates proved stable across the various age groups (00-49, 50-69 and 70+) also. The probability estimates indicated that one out of every 59 men will contract a prostate cancer at some time in his whole life and 99% of the chance is after he reaches the age of 50. CONCLUSION The stability in age adjusted-incidence rates indicates that there are no changes in the etiological factors for prostate cancer in Mumbai, India. These findings may be of general interest because changes in diagnostic practices are confounded in the time trends of prostate cancer change in many western countries preventing inferences on the changes in risk.
Transmission of optical communication signals by distributed parametric amplification

For the first time, to the authors' knowledge, distributed parametric amplification (DPA), i.e., the use of a transmission fiber itself for parametric amplification of communication signals is proposed and demonstrated. To account for the inevitable fiber loss, solutions were derived for the distributed amplifier, with either one or two pumps: They are obtained in terms of confluent hypergeometric functions. Low-penalty DPA of a 10-Gb/s nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) signal over a 75-km dispersion-shifted fiber (DSF), is demonstrated by using only 66.5 mW of pump power. Three adjacent channels have been simultaneously transmitted, with little penalty due to nonlinear crosstalk. It is experimentally verified that DPA requires less pump power than distributed Raman amplification (DRA), for similar power penalties.
A fast and generalized space vector modulation scheme for multilevel inverters

This paper presents a fast and generalized space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM) scheme for multilevel inverters. The SVPWM scheme generates all the available switching states and switching sequences based on two simple and general mappings, and calculates the duty cycles simply as if for a two-level SVPWM, thus independent of the level of the inverter. Because the switching states, duty cycles, and switching sequences are all obtained by simple calculation in the proposed SVPWM scheme, no lookup table is needed and the scheme is computationally fast. The generalized method of generating the switching states (first mapping), calculating the duty cycles, and determining the switching sequence (second mapping) is provided in the paper. Simulation results of five-, six-, and seven-level inverters are given.
Anomalies in bulk supercooled water at negative pressure

Significance Water is the most familiar liquid, and arguably the most complex. Anomalies of supercooled water have been measured during decades, and competing interpretations proposed. Yet, a decisive experiment remains elusive, because of unavoidable crystallization into ice. We investigate the state of water that is both supercooled and under mechanical tension, or negative pressure. Liquids under negative pressure can be found in plants or fluid inclusions in minerals. Using such water inclusions in quartz, we report, to our knowledge, the first measurements on doubly metastable water down to −15°C and around −100 MPa. We observe sound velocity anomalies that can be reproduced quantitatively with molecular dynamics simulations. These results suggest the possibility to rule out two proposed scenarios for water anomalies, and put further constraints on the remaining ones. Water anomalies still defy explanation. In the supercooled liquid, many quantities, for example heat capacity and isothermal compressibility κT, show a large increase. The question arises if these quantities diverge, or if they go through a maximum. The answer is key to our understanding of water anomalies. However, it has remained elusive in experiments because crystallization always occurred before any extremum is reached. Here we report measurements of the sound velocity of water in a scarcely explored region of the phase diagram, where water is both supercooled and at negative pressure. We find several anomalies: maxima in the adiabatic compressibility and nonmonotonic density dependence of the sound velocity, in contrast with a standard extrapolation of the equation of state. This is reminiscent of the behavior of supercritical fluids. To support this interpretation, we have performed simulations with the 2005 revision of the transferable interaction potential with four points. Simulations and experiments are in near-quantitative agreement, suggesting the existence of a line of maxima in κT (LMκT). This LMκT could either be the thermodynamic consequence of the line of density maxima of water [Sastry S, Debenedetti PG, Sciortino F, Stanley HE (1996) Phys Rev E 53:6144–6154], or emanate from a critical point terminating a liquid–liquid transition [Sciortino F, Poole PH, Essmann U, Stanley HE (1997) Phys Rev E 55:727–737]. At positive pressure, the LMκT has escaped observation because it lies in the “no man’s land” beyond the homogeneous crystallization line. We propose that the LMκT emerges from the no man’s land at negative pressure.
Constructive Social Work: Towards a New Practice

What Do We Mean By Constructive Social Work? The Nature of Contemporary Social Work and its Knowledge Base Some Theoretical Orientations of Constructive Social Work Towards Constructive Practice The Art of Resistance Discipline, for Possibilities Constructive Assessment So Does It Work? Constructive Social Work: Some Examples Some Central Issues for Constructive Social Work
Population-based cohort study investigating the association between weight loss and pyogenic liver abscesses

Background and Aim: Few systematic studies focus on the association between weight loss and pyogenic liver abscesses. The objective of the study was to assess the association between weight loss and pyogenic liver abscesses in adults in Taiwan. Methods: This population-based cohort study utilized the database of the Taiwan National Health Insurance Program. Totally, 8453 subjects aged 20 to 84 years with newly diagnosed weight loss between 2000 and 2012 were assigned as the weight loss group, and 33777 randomly selected subjects without weight loss were assigned as the non-weight loss group. Both the weight loss and the non-weight loss groups were matched according to sex, age, and comorbidities. The incidence of pyogenic liver abscesses at the end of 2013 was measured in both groups. Results: A multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression model was done and presented evidence that the adjusted HR of pyogenic liver abscess was 2.47 (95 %CI 1.21, 5.02) for those subjects with weight loss and without comorbidities, as compared with those subjects without weight loss and without comorbidities. Among the weight loss group, 5% developed pyogenic liver abscesses within 3 months. Conclusion: Weight loss is associated with pyogenic liver abscesses in adults. Yet weight loss might not be an early clinical symptom of undiagnosed pyogenic liver abscesses.
Visual imagery without visual experience: evidence from congenitally totally blind people

We explored the ability of congenitally totally blind people (who were contrasted with age-, sex- and education matched blindfolded sighted subjects) to perform tasks which are mediated by visual mental imagery in sighted people. In the first (pictorial) task, subjects had to mentally compare the shape of the outline of three named objects and to indicate the odd-one-out. In the second (spatial) task the participants were asked to memorise the position of a target cube in two- and three-dimensional matrices, based on a sequence of spatially based imagery operations. In addition, during half of the trials of both imagery tasks subjects were required to perform a concurrent finger tapping task, to investigate whether the blind subjects would be more dependent on spatial processing. Although blind participants made significantly more errors than sighted participants, they were well able to perform the spatial imagery task as well as the pictorial imagery task. Interference from the concurrent tapping task affected both groups to the same extent. Our results shed new light on the question whether early visual experience is necessary for performance on visual imagery tasks, and strongly suggest that vision and haptics may share common representations.