Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A comparison between surgical resection and radiofrequency ablation in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma

Purpose The aim of this study was to compare the therapeutic effects of radiofrequency ablation (RFA) and hepatic resection (HR) with regards to procedural morbidity, mortality, overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) rates in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients. Methods Retrospective studies were performed based on the medical records of 129 patients who underwent curative HR, and 57 who patients received RFA for HCC, between 2005 and 2009. The inclusion criteria of HCC were the presence of three or fewer nodules 3 cm or less in diameter or a single nodule of 5 cm or less. Results The 1-, 3- and 5-year OS rates in the HR group were 91.3%, 78.8%, and 64.9%, compared to 94.4%, 74.0%, and 74.0% in the RFA group, with no significant difference between the two groups (P = 0.725). The estimated 1- and 3-year DFS rates were 70.0% and 53.0% in the HR group and 65.2% and 24.7% in the RFA group, respectively. The DFS rates of HR group were significantly higher than RFA group (P = 0.015). Multivariate analysis identified that recurrence (P = 0.036) and portal hypertension (P = 0.036) were associated with OS and that portal hypertension (P = 0.048) and increased serum α-FP (P = 0.008) were the factors significantly associated with DFS. Conclusion HCC within Milan criteria should consider hepatectomy as the primary treatment if the patient's liver function and general conditions are good enough to undergo surgical operation. But in that RFA revealed similar overall survival to HR, RFA can be an alternative therapy for patients who are eligible for surgical resection.
From incoherence to mirth: neuro-cognitive processing of garden-path jokes

In so-called garden-path jokes, an initial semantic representation is violated, and semantic revision reestablishes a coherent representation. 48 jokes were manipulated in three conditions: (i) a coherent ending, (ii) a joke ending, and (iii) a discourse-incoherent ending. A reading times study (N = 24) and three studies with recordings of ERP and pupil changes (N = 21, 24, and 24, respectively) supported the hypothesized cognitive processes. Jokes showed increased reading times of the final word compared to coherent endings. ERP data mainly indicated semantic integration difficulties (N400). Larger pupil diameters to joke endings presumably reflect emotional responses. ERP evidence for increased discourse processing efforts and emotional responses, as assumed to be reflected in modulations of the late left anterior negativity (LLAN) and in an enhanced late frontal positivity (fP600), respectively, remains however incomplete. Processing of incoherent endings was also accompanied by increased reading times, a stronger and sustained N400, and context-sensitive P600 effects. Together, these findings provide evidence for a sequential, non-monotonic, and incremental discourse comprehension of garden-path jokes.
Serum Ghrelin and Leptin Levels in Patients with Depression and the Effects of Treatment

Objective Ghrelin and leptin, appetite-regulating hormones, play a role in mood regulation. Current data about the relation between leptin/ghrelin and depression are still controversial. This study aimed to investigate serum leptin and ghrelin levels in patients with depression and the effects of treatment on these levels. Methods Serum ghrelin and leptin levels were measured before and after treatment with antidepressant drugs and/or electroconvulsive therapy in 28 patients with depression and once in 21 healthy controls. Results Serum ghrelin levels of the patients were high in the pre-treatment. After the treatment, ghrelin levels were not different from those of the controls. We found no difference in serum levels of leptin between the patients and controls and no change with treatment. body mass index of the patients increased after the treatment especially in the drug-treated group. Conclusion The present study found increased serum ghrelin levels in depressive patients and normalization with improving of depression but no alteration in leptin levels.
Efficient Memory Disaggregation with Infiniswap

Memory-intensive applications suffer large performance loss when their working sets do not fully fit in memory. Yet, they cannot leverage otherwise unused remote memory when paging out to disks even in the presence of large imbalance in memory utilizations across a cluster. Existing proposals for memory disaggregation call for new architectures, new hardware designs, and/or new programming models, making them infeasible. This paper describes the design and implementation of INFINISWAP, a remote memory paging system designed specifically for an RDMA network. INFINISWAP opportunistically harvests and transparently exposes unused memory to unmodified applications by dividing the swap space of each machine into many slabs and distributing them across many machines' remote memory. Because one-sided RDMA operations bypass remote CPUs, INFINISWAP leverages the power of many choices to perform decentralized slab placements and evictions. We have implemented and deployed INFINISWAP on an RDMA cluster without any modifications to user applications or the OS and evaluated its effectiveness using multiple workloads running on unmodified VoltDB, Memcached, PowerGraph, GraphX, and Apache Spark. Using INFINISWAP, throughputs of these applications improve between 4× (0:94×) to 15:4× (7:8×) over disk (Mellanox nbdX), and median and tail latencies between 5:4× (2×) and 61× (2:3×). INFINISWAP achieves these with negligible remote CPU usage, whereas nbdX becomes CPU-bound. INFINISWAP increases the overall memory utilization of a cluster and works well at scale.
Alzheimer's Disease Versus Normal Ageing: A Review of the Efficiency of Clinical and Experimental Memory Measures

This paper reviews research findings concerning memory performance in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and normal ageing. Studies using clinical (i.e., episodic) memory tests are compared with studies using various experimental memory paradigms (semantic memory, implicit memory, working memory), in order to determine their efficiency to differentiate between AD and normal ageing. In addition, attention is focused on early and preclinical AD. It is argued that traditional clinical memory tests alone are not best able at detecting AD at an early stage. More specifically, tasks calling upon semantic knowledge may aid to an earlier and more efficient assessment of AD.
A New Criterion of Delay-Dependent Asymptotic Stability for Hopfield Neural Networks With Time Delay

In this brief, the problem of global asymptotic stability for delayed Hopfield neural networks (HNNs) is investigated. A new criterion of asymptotic stability is derived by introducing a new kind of Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional and is formulated in terms of a linear matrix inequality (LMI), which can be readily solved via standard software. This new criterion based on a delay fractioning approach proves to be much less conservative and the conservatism could be notably reduced by thinning the delay fractioning. An example is provided to show the effectiveness and the advantage of the proposed result.
A Compendium of Far-Infrared Line and Continuum Emission for 227 Galaxies Observed by the Infrared Space Observatory

Far-infrared line and continuum fluxes are presented for a sample of 227 galaxies observed with the Long Wavelength Spectrometer on the Infrared Space Observatory. The galaxy sample includes normal star-forming systems, starbursts, and active galactic nuclei covering a wide range of colors and morphologies. The data set spans some 1300 line fluxes, 600 line upper limits, and 800 continuum fluxes. Several fine-structure emission lines are detected that arise in either photodissociation or H II regions: [O III] 52 μm, [N III] 57 μm, [O I] 63 μm, [O III] 88 μm, [N II] 122 μm, [O I] 145 μm, and [C II] 158 μm. Molecular lines such as OH at 53, 79, 84, 119, and 163 μm, and H2O at 58, 66, 75, 101, and 108 μm are also detected in some galaxies. In addition to those lines emitted by the target galaxies, serendipitous detections of Milky Way [C II] 158 μm and an unidentified line near 74 μm in NGC 1068 are also reported. Finally, continuum fluxes at 52, 57, 63, 88, 122, 145, 158, and 170 μm are derived for a subset of galaxies in which the far-infrared emission is contained within the ~75″ ISO LWS beam. The statistics of this large database of continuum and line fluxes, including trends in line ratios with the far-infrared color and infrared-to-optical ratio, are explored.
In Vitro Generation of Novel Pyrimethamine Resistance Mutations in the Toxoplasma gondiiDihydrofolate Reductase

ABSTRACT Pyrimethamine is a potent inhibitor of dihydrofolate reductase and is widely used in the treatment of opportunistic infections caused by the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii. In order to assess the potential role of dhfr sequence polymorphisms in drug treatment failures, we examined the dhfr-ts genes of representative isolates for T. gondii virulence types I, II, and III. These strains exhibit differences in their sensitivities to pyrimethamine but no differences in predicted dhfr-tsprotein sequences. To assess the potential for pyrimethamine-resistantdhfr mutants to emerge, three drug-sensitive variants of the T. gondii dhfr-ts gene (the wild-type T. gondii sequence and two mutants engineered to reflect polymorphisms observed in drug-sensitive Plasmodium falciparum) were subjected to random mutagenesis and transfected into either wild-type T. gondii parasites ordhfr-deficient Saccharomyces cerevisiae under pyrimethamine selection. Three resistance mutations were identified, at amino acid residues 25 (Trp→Arg), 98 (Leu→Ser), and 134 (Leu→His).
Emotional Analysis of Music: A Comparison of Methods

Music as a form of art is intentionally composed to be emotionally expressive. The emotional features of music are invaluable for music indexing and recommendation. In this paper we present a cross-comparison of automatic emotional analysis of music. We created a public dataset of Creative Commons licensed songs. Using valence and arousal model, the songs were annotated both in terms of the emotions that were expressed by the whole excerpt and dynamically with 1 Hz temporal resolution. Each song received 10 annotations on Amazon Mechanical Turk and the annotations were averaged to form a ground truth. Four different systems from three teams and the organizers were employed to tackle this problem in an open challenge. We compare their performances and discuss the best practices. While the effect of a larger feature set was not very apparent in the static emotion estimation, the combination of a comprehensive feature set and a recurrent neural network that models temporal dependencies has largely outperformed the other proposed methods for dynamic music emotion estimation.
A Novel Presentation of Toffoli Gate in Quantum-dot Cellular Automata (QCA)

Quantum dot Cellular Automata (QCA) is one of the emerging nanotechnologies, promising alternative to CMOS technology due to faster speed, smaller size, lower power consumption, higher scale integration and higher switching frequency. The basic element in QCA is majority gate. This paper, present two different design layout of Toffoli gate based on QCA logic gates: majority voter gate (MV), QCA wire and inverter gate. QCADesigner, a common QCA layout design and verification tool is employed to verify and simulate the proposed Toffoli Gate (TG). The simulation result confirmed the correctness of the proposed circuits. The proposed circuit has a promising future in constructing of nano-scale low power exhausting information processing system and can stimulate higher digital applications in QCA. General Terms Nano Technology, Quantum dot Cellular Automata (QCA).
Controllability and elimination of impulsive modes in descriptor systems

As a refined notion, impulsive-mode controllability is suggested for the general class of linear continuous descriptor systems. This notion reveals rich properties of the general descriptor systems in terms of admissibility of initial conditions, admissibility of feedback control, and impulsive-mode elimination. The condition for impulsive-mode controllability is derived and proved to be necessary and sufficient for the existence of admissible feedback controls eliminating impulsive modes. Under impulsive-mode controllability, admissible feedback controls are constructed for eliminating impulsive modes, on the basis of numerically reliable decompositions of the system's coefficient matrices.
The CoRoT space mission : early results Special feature Short-lived spots in solar-like stars as observed by CoRoT

Context. CoRoT light curves have an unprecedented photometric quality, having simultaneously a high signal-to-noise ratio, a long time span and a nearly continuous duty-cycle. Aims. We analyse the light-curves of four bright targets observed in the seismology field and study short-lived small spots in solar-like stars. Methods. We present a simple spot modeling by iterative analysis. Its ability to extract relevant parameters is ensured by implementing relaxation steps to avoid convergence to local minima of the sum of the residuals between observations and modeling. The use of Monte-Carlo simulations allows us to estimate the performance of the fits. Results. Our starspot modeling gives a representation of the spots on these stars in agreement with other well tested methods. Within this framework, parameters such as rigid-body rotation and spot lifetimes seem to be precisely determined. Then, the lifetime/rotation period ratios are in the range 0.5−2, and there is clear evidence for differential rotation.
Fresh State Characteristics of Foam Concrete

This paper deals with the study of the influence of a mixture composition on the properties of foam concrete at the fresh state. The stability of the base mix in terms of the water–solids ratio for getting a stable foam concrete mix of design density was determined for different mixture parameters and their influence on the water–solids ratio requirement was studied. The consistency of the foam concrete mix was measured in terms of the spread percent using a flow cone test and flow time using a Marsh cone test. The fresh state properties of foam concrete, viz; (1) stability of foam concrete and (2) consistency of the foam concrete, were very much affected by the water content in the base mix and the amount of foam added along with the other solid ingredients in the mix. Regression equations for predicting the spread flow value of the foam concrete based on the experimental results were reported. This will help in arriving at the water content of a foam concrete mix for a given consistency requirement. An .
Dual transitions Petri Net based modelling technique for embedded systems specification

This paper presents a new modelling technique capable of modelling both control and data information using a single unified approach. This is achieved by modifying the classical Petri Net structure, allowing it to have two types of transitions and arcs. As a consequence, loops and conditional operations within complex specifications are easily identified. The system dynamic behaviour is modelled using a new marking scheme of the net consisting of a new element called value for data representation in addition to classical tokens used for control purpose. Structural definitions, behavioural rules and graphical representation of the new modelling technique are given. One potential application of the proposed modelling technique is the internal representation of embedded systems specification. Two examples are included illustrating the applicability and efficiency of the proposed modelling technique.
Cultural variation in early feeding pattern and maternal perceptions of infant growth

The perception of healthy growth and weight may differ between cultures, which could influence feeding practises and consequently affect the development of overweight. The present study examined ethnic variation in maternal perceptions of growth and their influence on feeding practises among Turkish and Dutch infants aged 0–6 months. Data were obtained from the mothers of 143 Turkish and 143 Dutch healthy, singleton, term infants with birth weights appropriate for gestational age, using structured interviews at 1, 4 and 6 months after birth. Compared with Dutch mothers, mothers of Turkish descent perceived a chubby infant more often as pretty (43 v. 22 %), and were more often worried about their infant's growth (13 v. 4 %). Turkish mothers were more likely to give full breast-feeding (BF) until at least 6 months (adjusted OR (aOR) 2·1, 95 % CI 1·0, 4·3) and to start introducing complementary feeding, including rice flour porridge, at the age of 6 months (aOR 2·4, 95 % CI 1·1, 4·9). Infants of Turkish descent were fed on average one milk feeding more during the day and, if introduced to complementary foods before 6 months, were more often given uncommon types of foods (e.g. yogurt and cookies) (aOR 2·1, 95 % CI 1·1, 4·3). The differences in perceptions affected differences in feeding practises only to a small extent. Preventive advice offered to Turkish mothers in Child Health Care should include discussing choices of complementary foods and frequency of feeding from an early age onwards. In Dutch mothers, support for the continuation of BF remains an important issue.
Choice of time‐scale in Cox's model analysis of epidemiologic cohort data: a simulation study

Cox's regression model is widely used for assessing associations between potential risk factors and disease occurrence in epidemiologic cohort studies. Although age is often a strong determinant of disease risk, authors have frequently used time‐on‐study instead of age as the time‐scale, as for clinical trials. Unless the baseline hazard is an exponential function of age, this approach can yield different estimates of relative hazards than using age as the time‐scale, even when age is adjusted for. We performed a simulation study in order to investigate the existence and magnitude of bias for different degrees of association between age and the covariate of interest. Age to disease onset was generated from exponential, Weibull or piecewise Weibull distributions, and both fixed and time‐dependent dichotomous covariates were considered. We observed no bias upon using age as the time‐scale. Upon using time‐on‐study, we verified the absence of bias for exponentially distributed age to disease onset. For non‐exponential distributions, we found that bias could occur even when the covariate of interest was independent from age. It could be severe in case of substantial association with age, especially with time‐dependent covariates. These findings were illustrated on data from a cohort of 84329 French women followed prospectively for breast cancer occurrence. In view of our results, we strongly recommend not using time‐on‐study as the time‐scale for analysing epidemiologic cohort data. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Patterns of temporal variation in online media

Online content exhibits rich temporal dynamics, and diverse realtime user generated content further intensifies this process. However, temporal patterns by which online content grows and fades over time, and by which different pieces of content compete for attention remain largely unexplored. We study temporal patterns associated with online content and how the content's popularity grows and fades over time. The attention that content receives on the Web varies depending on many factors and occurs on very different time scales and at different resolutions. In order to uncover the temporal dynamics of online content we formulate a time series clustering problem using a similarity metric that is invariant to scaling and shifting. We develop the K-Spectral Centroid (K-SC) clustering algorithm that effectively finds cluster centroids with our similarity measure. By applying an adaptive wavelet-based incremental approach to clustering, we scale K-SC to large data sets. We demonstrate our approach on two massive datasets: a set of 580 million Tweets, and a set of 170 million blog posts and news media articles. We find that K-SC outperforms the K-means clustering algorithm in finding distinct shapes of time series. Our analysis shows that there are six main temporal shapes of attention of online content. We also present a simple model that reliably predicts the shape of attention by using information about only a small number of participants. Our analyses offer insight into common temporal patterns of the content on theWeb and broaden the understanding of the dynamics of human attention.
A phase I / II trial of the histone deacetylase inhibitor , romidepsin , for adults with recurrent malignant glioma : North American Brain Tumor Consortium Study 0303

Neuro-Oncology Branch, National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Neurological Disorder and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland (F.M.I., H.A.F.); Department of Neurological Surgery, University of California–San Francisco, California (K.R.L., S.M.C., M.D.P.); University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (J.G.K.), and the Department of Neuro-Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas (W.K.A.Y., M.R.G); Center for Neuro-Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts (P.Y.W.); Department of Neurology, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (F.S.L.)
The Transition from Crawling to Walking: Can Infants Elicit an Alteration of Their Parents’ Perception?

Our study was designed to address a gap in the literature on parents’ perception and motivation to protect their infants from potential risk of injury in the transition from crawling to walking. The participants were 260 Italian subjects, of whom 158 were women and 102 men, aged between 20 and 45 years. They were asked to draw two domestic objects (a kitchen table and a CD cover) to assess the possible alterations in the perception of environmental elements seen by the parents as a potentially dangerous cause of unintentional injury for their child. Analysis showed that the group of mothers with children aged 9–18 months had drawn the largest tables, while the table areas of the other two categories of women were much smaller. As for the males, the group that drew the largest tables was the one with children, but not in the age range of 9–18 months, while there was little difference between the other two groups. The final descriptive analysis concerned the average scores on the STAI-Y tests both for state and trait anxiety. In all groups a substantial parity was observed, except for the non-parent men, who had a lower level of state anxiety. Both the fathers and the mothers of children aged 9–18 months obtained lower scores, both for state and trait anxiety. Based on the findings, we demonstrate that children transitioning from crawling to walking can elicit a perceptive reactivity in their mothers, which satisfies their natural need to protect their offspring.