Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Limits of Approximation Algorithms: PCPs and Unique Games (DIMACS Tutorial Lecture Notes)

These are the lecture notes for the DIMACS Tutorial "Limits of Approximation Algorithms: PCPs and Unique Games" held at the DIMACS Center, CoRE Building, Rutgers University on 20-21 July, 2009. This tutorial was jointly sponsored by the DIMACS Special Focus on Hardness of Approximation, the DIMACS Special Focus on Algorithmic Foundations of the Internet, and the Center for Computational Intractability with support from the National Security Agency and the National Science Foundation. The speakers at the tutorial were Matthew Andrews, Sanjeev Arora, Moses Charikar, Prahladh Harsha, Subhash Khot, Dana Moshkovitz and Lisa Zhang. The sribes were Ashkan Aazami, Dev Desai, Igor Gorodezky, Geetha Jagannathan, Alexander S. Kulikov, Darakhshan J. Mir, Alantha Newman, Aleksandar Nikolov, David Pritchard and Gwen Spencer.
Solitary Plasmacytoma of Bone and Extramedullary Plasmacytoma: Two Different Nosological Entities?

Background The relationship between solitary plasmacytoma and multiple myeloma is still unclear, but they can be distinguished by their different clinical course. Indicators of disease activity and extension, and of a possible evolution to multiple myeloma, have not been identified as yet. Methods Two cases of solitary plasmacytoma are described: one of the mandible and one extramedullary plasmacytoma (EMP) of the rhinopharynx. Pathologic data included immunohistochemical staining for heavy and light Ig chains, and for the proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA). Analysis of the peripheral immunological status and serum parameters (β2 microglobulin, thymidine kinase, IL-2, IL-6 and soluble IL-2 receptor) was performed and correlation was made with the clinical status. Flow cytometry analysis of nuclear DNA content and S-phase cell fraction were also studied in both neoplasms. Results Solitary plasmacytoma of bone (SPB) showed important basal immunologic alterations and a marked increase in all serum parameters considered with respect to EMP. Ploidy analysis demonstrated an almost complete aneuploidy cell population for the SPB patient (80%), whereas in the EMP patient only 2% of the cells were aneuploid. The S-phase ceils were 16% and 4%, respectively. PCNA index was 60% in SPB and 10% in EMP. Conclusions Solitary plasmacytoma of the bone appeared to be a more aggressive form of plasmacellular neoplasia, distinct from EMP and similar to multiple myeloma. The study of serum parameters, together with analysis of PCNA, ploidy and S-phase fraction, can aid in better understanding disease activity, and in the choice of more adequate treatment. Moreover, serial analysis of some serum factors might be useful markers for monitoring the disease.
Generative-Adversarial-Network-Based Image Reconstruction for the Capacitively Coupled Electrical Impedance Tomography of Stroke

This study investigated the potential of machine-learning-based stroke image reconstruction in capacitively coupled electrical impedance tomography. The quality of brain images reconstructed using the adversarial neural network (cGAN) was examined. The big data required for supervised network training were generated using a two-dimensional numerical simulation. The phantom of an axial cross-section of the head without and with impact lesions was an average of a three-centimeter-thick layer corresponding to the height of the sensing electrodes. Stroke was modeled using regions with characteristic electrical parameters for tissues with reduced perfusion. The head phantom included skin, skull bone, white matter, gray matter, and cerebrospinal fluid. The coupling capacitance was taken into account in the 16-electrode capacitive sensor model. A dedicated ECTsim toolkit for Matlab was used to solve the forward problem and simulate measurements. A conditional generative adversarial network (cGAN) was trained using a numerically generated dataset containing samples corresponding to healthy patients and patients affected by either hemorrhagic or ischemic stroke. The validation showed that the quality of images obtained using supervised learning and cGAN was promising. It is possible to visually distinguish when the image corresponds to the patient affected by stroke, and changes caused by hemorrhagic stroke are the most visible. The continuation of work towards image reconstruction for measurements of physical phantoms is justified.
Cooperative Spacing Control for Interconnected Vehicle Systems With Input Delays

Time delay is an inevitably negative factor to real-time vehicle control. This paper investigates cooperative spacing control of vehicle platoons with input delays under no communication between vehicles (including the lead vehicle). The spacing control strategy is based solely on self information and onboard measurement of the immediate neighbor vehicles (preceding and succeeding vehicles). Considering the delay constraints, sufficient stability conditions are derived for the vehicle system with input delays. To avoid transient spacing errors to amplify along the string of vehicles, we give conditions that guarantee string stability of the vehicular platoon, by which the upper bound of tolerable delays are derived in terms of controller parameters and the model parameters. An algorithm is then given to determine the controller parameters using the stability and string stability conditions simultaneously. Simulations illustrate the effectiveness and the advantages of the proposed control methodology.
The effect of flywheel complex training with eccentric-overload on muscular adaptation in elite female volleyball players

This study aimed to compare the effects of 8 weeks (24 sessions) between flywheel complex training with eccentric overload and traditional complex training of well-trained volleyball players on muscle adaptation, including hypertrophy, strength, and power variables. Fourteen athletes were recruited and randomly divided into the flywheel complex training with an eccentric-overload group (FCTEO, n = 7) and the control group (the traditional complex training group, TCT, n = 7). Participants performed half-squats using a flywheel device or Smith machine and drop jumps, with three sets of eight repetitions and three sets of 12 repetitions, respectively. The variables assessed included the muscle thickness at the proximal, mid, and distal sections of the quadriceps femoris, maximal half-squats strength (1RM-SS), squat jump (SJ), countermovement jump (CMJ), and three-step approach jump (AJ). In addition, a two-way repeated ANOVA analysis was used to find differences between the two groups and between the two testing times (pre-test vs. post-test). The indicators of the FCTEO group showed a significantly better improvement (p < 0.05) in CMJ (height: ES = 0.648, peak power: ES = 0.750), AJ (height: ES = 0.537, peak power: ES = 0.441), 1RM-SS (ES = 0.671) compared to the TCT group and the muscle thicknes at the mid of the quadriceps femoris (ES = 0.504) after FCTEO training. Since volleyball requires lower limb strength and explosive effort during repeated jumps and spiking, these results suggest that FCTEO affects muscular adaptation in a way that improves performance in well-trained female volleyball players.
Gingival crevicular fluid levels of monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 and tumor necrosis factor-alpha in patients with chronic and aggressive periodontitis.

BACKGROUND Monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) is a well-known chemotactic cytokine that regulates mononuclear inflammatory cell recruitment. This recruitment has particular importance in the oral cavity because inflammatory cells will be challenged with periodontopathogenic bacteria during infections. Tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) is a cytokine that induces bone resorption by stimulating proliferation and differentiation of osteoclasts' progenitors and also stimulates MCP-1 expression. The aims of this study were to investigate the presence of MCP-1 in gingival crevicular fluid (GCF) samples from patients with chronic periodontitis (CP) and aggressive periodontitis (AgP) and to examine the possible correlations between the GCF levels of MCP-1 and TNF-alpha. METHODS Twenty-five CP, 20 AgP, and 20 healthy control (C) patients were selected for the study. Plaque index (PI), gingival index (GI), probing depth (PD), and clinical attachment level (CAL) measurements were recorded from each sampling area. Assays for GCF MCP-1 and TNF-alpha were carried out by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) method. RESULTS The concentration (nanograms per microliters) and total MCP-1 and TNF-alpha (nanograms per site) were not statistically significant between CP and AgP groups, but total MCP-1 and TNF-alpha was statistically different between CP and C and between AgP and C groups (P <0.001). All clinical parameters were statistically different between CP and C and between AgP and C groups (P <0.001). A positive statistical correlation was detected between the levels of MCP-1 and TNF-alpha, and there was also a positive correlation between all clinical parameters and total MCP-1 and TNF-alpha levels. CONCLUSIONS These results suggest that MCP-1 could have an important role in the activation and recruitment of inflammatory and immune cells in periodontal diseases, and both AgP and CP patients may have the same pattern of MCP-1 expression. A strong positive correlation between the GCF levels of MCP-1 and TNF-alpha may account for the mechanism of amplification of inflammatory events in gingival inflammation.
An Analysis of Prospective Science Teacher Students’ Misconceptions on Photosynthesis and Plant Respiration

Misunderstanding in drawing conclusions about a concept caused by errors and incomplete thinking is called misconception. The existing misconception can lead to ongoing misconception if it is not immediately corrected. This study aimed to analyze how the level of misconceptions that occured in prospective science teachers. This study was conducted using a mixed-method with an explanatory sequential design. Methods of collecting data were Three Tier Multiple Choice (TTMC) test questions to analyze the misconception and in-depth interview to determine the factors causing misconceptions. The instrument used in this study was TTMC diagnostic test. Technique used for analyzing misconceptions data were descriptive percentages and for analyzing factors causing misconceptions data were in-depth interview. The results show that 60.4% of prospective science teacher students had misconceptions, which means that the misconceptions that occured were in the high category. Factors causing misconceptions were dominated by incompleteness in understanding the material, the influence of previous learning, the references used contain the wrong concept, low interest in deepening the material to find out the correct concept. This study is expected to help teachers and prospective teachers to decide what learning methods can be used to prevent misconceptions. Remediation can be done to find out where the misconceptions occur so that it can be corrected more quickly.
SCDV : Sparse Composite Document Vectors using soft clustering over distributional representations

We present a feature vector formation technique for documents - Sparse Composite Document Vector (SCDV) - which overcomes several shortcomings of the current distributional paragraph vector representations that are widely used for text representation. In SCDV, word embeddings are clustered to capture multiple semantic contexts in which words occur. They are then chained together to form document topic-vectors that can express complex, multi-topic documents. Through extensive experiments on multi-class and multi-label classification tasks, we outperform the previous state-of-the-art method, NTSG. We also show that SCDV embeddings perform well on heterogeneous tasks like Topic Coherence, context-sensitive Learning and Information Retrieval. Moreover, we achieve a significant reduction in training and prediction times compared to other representation methods. SCDV achieves best of both worlds - better performance with lower time and space complexity.
Serum HER‐2/neu conversion to positive at the time of disease progression in patients with breast carcinoma on hormone therapy

Prolonged exposure of breast carcinoma cells in vitro to tamoxifen results in tamoxifen resistance. Tamoxifen‐resistant cells express increased HER‐2/neu mRNA and protein. The objective of this study was to determine whether patients with metastatic or locally advanced breast carcinoma who have negative serum HER‐2/neu status at the initiation of first‐line hormone therapy with letrozole or tamoxifen convert to positive serum HER‐2/neu status at the time of disease progression and to determine whether serum HER‐2/neu conversion to positive status is associated with response to therapy and overall survival.
Intensity modulated radiotherapy induces pro-inflammatory and pro-survival responses in prostate cancer patients

Intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) is one of the modern conformal radiotherapies that is widely used within the context of cancer patient treatment. It uses multiple radiation beams targeted to the tumor, however, large volumes of the body receive low doses of irradiation. Using γ-H2AX and global genome expression analysis, we studied the biological responses induced by low doses of ionizing radiation in prostate cancer patients following IMRT. By means of different bioinformatics analyses, we report that IMRT induced an inflammatory response via the induction of viral, adaptive, and innate immune signaling. In response to growth factors and immune-stimulatory signaling, positive regulation in the progression of cell cycle and DNA replication were induced. This denotes pro-inflammatory and pro-survival responses. Furthermore, double strand DNA breaks were induced in every patient 30 min after the treatment and remaining DNA repair and damage signaling continued after 18–24 h. Nine genes belonging to inflammatory responses (TLR3, SH2D1A and IL18), cell cycle progression (ORC4, SMC2 and CCDC99) and DNA damage and repair (RAD17, SMC6 and MRE11A) were confirmed by quantitative RT-PCR. This study emphasizes that the risk assessment of health effects from the out-of-field low doses during IMRT should be of concern, as these may increase the risk of secondary cancers and/or systemic inflammation.
Semi-analytical modeling of the transient thermal-elastic-plastic contact and its application to asperity collision, wear and running-in of surfaces

Le champ de contraintes au sein des composants de machines est un indicateur important de defaillance due au contact. Dans ce travail, une analyse transitoire et tridimensionnelle est realisee. Un algorithme rapide et robuste est propose pour la resolution du contact vertical, roulant et glissant. La premiere partie de ce travail decrit l’algorithme utilise pour formuler le contact vertical, qui peut etre traite en imposant soit une charge, soit un deplacement. La maniere de traiter le roulement et le glissement de deux corps en contact consiste a resoudre le contact thermo-elasto-plastique a chaque pas de temps en mettant a jour les geometries ainsi que l’ecrouissage le long de la direction de roulement. L’application a la collision entre deux asperites spheriques en glissement simple est developpee. Finalement un modele pour la prediction de l’usure et du rodage base sur l’enlevement de matiere durant un chargement cyclique est propose
CSV: visualizing and mining cohesive subgraphs

Extracting dense sub-components from graphs efficiently is an important objective in a wide range of application domains ranging from social network analysis to biological network analysis, from the World Wide Web to stock market analysis. Motivated by this need recently we have seen several new algorithms to tackle this problem based on the (frequent) pattern mining paradigm. A limitation of most of these methods is that they are highly sensitive to parameter settings, rely on exhaustive enumeration with exponential time complexity, and often fail to help the users understand the underlying distribution of components embedded within the host graph. In this article we propose an approximate algorithm, to mine and visualize cohesive subgraphs (dense sub components) within a large graph. The approach, refereed to as Cohesive Subgraph Visualization (CSV) relies on a novel mapping strategy that maps edges and nodes to a multi-dimensional space wherein dense areas in the mapped space correspond to cohesive subgraphs. The algorithm then walks through the dense regions in the mapped space to output a visual plot that effectively captures the overall dense sub-component distribution of the graph. Unlike extant algorithms with exponential complexity, CSV has a complexity of O(V2logV) when fixing the parameter mapping dimension, where V corresponds to the number of vertices in the graph, although for many real datasets the performance is typically sub-quadratic. We demonstrate the utility of CSV as a stand-alone tool for visual graph exploration and as a pre-filtering step to significantly scale up exact subgraph mining algorithms such as CLAN.
Multicenter study of complications following surgical dislocation of the hip.

BACKGROUND Surgical hip dislocation enables complete exposure of the hip joint for treatment of various hip disorders.There is limited information regarding the complications associated with this procedure. Our purpose is to report the incidence of complications associated with surgical dislocation of the hip in a large, multicenter patient cohort. METHODS A retrospective, multicenter analysis of patients who had undergone surgical hip dislocation was performed.Patients who had undergone a simultaneous osteotomy were excluded. Complications were recorded, with specific assessment for osteonecrosis, trochanteric nonunion, femoral neck fracture, nerve injury, heterotopic ossification, and thromboembolic disease. We graded complications with a validated classification scheme that includes five grades based on the treatment required to manage the complication and any long-term morbidity. With this classification, a Grade-I complication is one that requires no change in the routine postoperative course, Grade II requires a change in outpatient management, Grade III requires invasive surgical or radiologic management, Grade IV is associated with long-term morbidity or is life-threatening,and Grade V results in death. RESULTS The study included 334 hips in 302 patients seen at eight different North American centers. There were eighteen complications (5.4%) that were classified as Grade I (not clinically relevant and required no deviation from routine postoperative care). There were six complications (1.8%) classified as Grade II (treated on an outpatient basis or with close observation and resolved). There were nine complications (2.7%) classified as Grade III (treatable and resolved with surgery or inpatient management). There was one complication (0.3%) classified as Grade IV (resulting in a long-term deficit). A total of thirty hips had one or more complications, for an overall incidence of 9%. Excluding heterotopic ossification, the complication rate was sixteen (4.8%) of 334. CONCLUSIONS Surgical hip dislocation is a safe procedure with a low complication rate. Many of the complications were clinically unimportant heterotopic ossification. There were no cases of femoral head osteonecrosis or femoral neck fracture, and, with the exception of one sciatic neurapraxia that partially resolved, no other complication resulted in long-term morbidity.
Comparison of a novel chemiluminescence enzyme immunoassay (CLEIA) with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for the determination of MPO-ANCA in patients with ANCA-associated vasculitis

Abstract Background. Myeloperoxidase (MPO) anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA) represents the serological hallmark of ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV). We evaluated the analytical and diagnostic accuracy of chemiluminescence enzyme immunoassay (CLEIA) versus enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for the detection of MPO-ANCA. Methods. A total of 242 sera obtained from 51 patients with AAV and 103 patients without AAV were tested for MPO-ANCA by ELISA (NephroScholor MPOANC II) and CLEIA (the STACIA MEBLux test). Disease activity in the patients with AAV was determined based on the Birmingham Vasculitis Activity Score. We analyzed the correlations between the MPO-ANCA titers determined by the CLEIA and those determined by the ELISA, and also between the MPO-ANCA titers and the disease activity. Results. The MPO-ANCA titers determined by the CLEIA (x) were strongly correlated with those determined by the ELISA (y). The correlation could be expressed by the following equation in this study: y = 1.8x + 7.7 (r = 0.96; p < 0.0001). At the cutoff value of 3.5 U/ml, the CLEIA yielded positive test results for MPO-ANCA in 73 of the 242 sera (30.2%), while at the cutoff value of 20 U/ml, ELISA yielded positive test results in 57 of the 242 sera (23.6%). The CLEIA yielded false-positive test results in 4 of the 120 sera obtained from the non-AAV patients (3.3%), whereas the ELISA yielded a false-positive result in only 1 of the 120 sera obtained from the non-AAV patients (0.8%). The sensitivity and specificity of the CLEIA for the diagnosis of AAV were 100% and 96.7%, respectively, while those of the ELISA were 94.3% and 99.2%, respectively. The sensitivity and specificity of the CLEIA for the prediction of active disease were 100% and 64.4%, respectively, while those of the ELISA were 94.3% and 73.6%, respectively. Conclusion. The false positivity rate of the CLEIA for MPO-ANCA tended to be high as compared with that of the ELISA. Also, according to the correlation coefficient between the results of the CLEIA and the ELISA calculated in this study, it is necessary to pay attention to the differences in the sensitivity and specificity between CLEIA and ELISA.
Distributed auxiliary particle filters using selective gossip

This paper introduces a distributed auxiliary particle filter for target tracking in sensor networks. Nodes maintain a shared particle filter by coming to a consensus about the likelihoods associated with each particle using the selective gossip procedure. Selective gossip provides a mechanism to efficiently identify the particles with largest weights and focus communication on sharing these important weights. We demonstrate through simulations that the algorithm performs well; compared to state-of-the-art approaches it either significantly improves the accuracy at the expense of a small increase in communication overhead, or achieves comparable accuracy with much lower communication overhead.
Telling and Trusting: Reductionism andAnti- Reductionism in the Epistemology of Testimony

Tony Coady's book Testimony is about how we gain knowledge from other people, through learning from their spoken and written reports and other tellings. Several major philosophers, including John Locke, David Hume, Thomas Reid, and Bertrand Russell, have written more briefly on "testimony" in this broad sense (Coady's historical chapters provide us with helpful critical accounts of their views), but this is the first booklength study devoted to the subject. The appearance of such a study is welcome, indeed long overdue: as Coady tells us, with much justice, "testimony is a prominent and underexplored epistemological landscape". The first forays into that terrain made in Testimony yield many important insights. Coady has been pondering the role of testimony in our lives for many years, and this study shows deep and considered thought. It is rich in detailed insights on many matters, and it flows from a firm and firmly held conception of the centrality of testimony, as a source within our structure of empirical knowledge, which has grown on Coady over the years.