Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An efficient hierarchical scheme for locating highly mobile users

To accommodate the increase in user population in future personal communication systems, hierarchical architectures of location databases have been proposed. In this paper, a scheme based on forwarding pointers is presented, that reduces the cost of the overall network and database traac generated by frequent location updates in such hierarchical architectures. To reduce the number of forwarding pointers that need to be traversed to locate a user, auxiliary caching techniques are presented. Various conditions for purging the chain of forwarding pointers and updating the database are also introduced. Special care is given so that the scheme correctly supports the concurrent execution of updates and lookups. The applicability of the scheme and the performance of the caching techniques are demonstrated through a number of experiments for a range of call to mobility ratios and for a variety of moving and calling behaviors. 1 Introduction Advances in wireless telecommunications and in the development of portable computers have provided for the emergence of mobile computing. In mobile computing, users are not attached to a xed geographical location, instead their point of attachment to the network changes as they relocate from one support environment to another. Besides mobility in wireless networks, other forms of moving objects are also emerging. Software mobile agents, that roam the Internet searching for information, provide a popular such example. Since delivering any message to mobile objects requires locating them rst, deriving eecient strategies for tracking moving users is central to mobile computing. In particular, for future Personal Communication Service (PCS) systems, with high user populations and numerous customer services, such signaling and database traac for locating users is expected to increase dramatically 15]. To locate users, distributed location databases are deployed that maintain the current location of mobile users. To accommodate the increased traac associated with locating moving users, hierarchical distributed database architectures are built 15, 1,
Quantification of muscle fat in patients with low back pain: comparison of multi-echo MR imaging with single-voxel MR spectroscopy.

PURPOSE To compare lumbar muscle fat-signal fractions derived from three-dimensional dual gradient-echo magnetic resonance (MR) imaging and multiple gradient-echo MR imaging with fractions from single-voxel MR spectroscopy in patients with low back pain. MATERIALS AND METHODS This prospective study had institutional review board approval, and written informed consent was obtained from all study participants. Fifty-six patients (32 women; mean age, 52 years ± 15 [standard deviation]; age range, 20-79 years) with low back pain underwent standard 1.5-T MR imaging, which was supplemented by dual-echo MR imaging, multi-echo MR imaging, and MR spectroscopy to quantify fatty degeneration of bilateral lumbar multifidus muscles in a region of interest at the intervertebral level of L4 through L5. Fat-signal fractions were determined from signal intensities on fat- and water-only images from both imaging data sets (dual-echo and multi-echo fat-signal fractions without T2* correction) or directly obtained, with additional T2* correction, from multi-echo MR imaging. The results were compared with MR spectroscopic fractions. The Student t test and Bland-Altman plots were used to quantify agreement between fat-signal fractions derived from imaging and from spectroscopy. RESULTS In total, 102 spectroscopic measurements were obtained bilaterally (46 of 56) or unilaterally (10 of 56). Mean spectroscopic fat-signal fraction was 19.6 ± 11.4 (range, 5.4-63.5). Correlation between spectroscopic and all imaging-based fat-signal fractions was statistically significant (R(2) = 0.87-0.92; all P < . 001). Mean dual-echo fat-signal fractions not corrected for T2* and multi-echo fat-signal fractions corrected for T2* significantly differed from spectroscopic fractions (both P < .01), but mean multi-echo fractions not corrected for T2* did not (P = .11). There was a small measurement bias of 0.5% (95% limits of agreement: -6.0%, 7.2%) compared with spectroscopic fractions. CONCLUSION Large-volume image-based (dual-echo and multi-echo MR imaging) and spectroscopic fat-signal fractions agree well, thus allowing fast and accurate quantification of muscle fat content in patients with low back pain.
Delta Neutrophil Index: A Promising Diagnostic and Prognostic Marker for Sepsis

ABSTRACT Delta neutrophil index (DN) is the immature granulocyte fraction provided by a blood cell analyzer (ADVIA 2120; Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, Deerfield, Ill), which is determined by subtracting the fraction of mature polymorphonuclear leukocytes from the sum of myeloperoxidase-reactive cells. The purpose of this study was to define the role of DN in differential diagnosis and prognosis prediction of patients with sepsis. Hospital records of 273 patients were retrospectively collected: 47 with systemic inflammatory response syndrome, 78 with sepsis, 51 with severe sepsis, and 97 control subjects. Delta neutrophil index and C-reactive protein data on the day of the first blood culture were compared among the groups, and 28-day mortality associated with sepsis was assessed. Median values of DN were 0.0% (interquartile range, 0.0%–0.0%) in the control group, 0.8% (0.0%–1.7%) in the systemic inflammatory response syndrome group, 3.4% (1.5%–5.3%) in the sepsis group, and 18.6% (9.3%–24.7%) in the severe sepsis group. Furthermore, there were significant differences among the groups. The receiver operating characteristic curves showed that DN was a better predictor of sepsis than C-reactive protein. The best cutoff value for DN for predicting sepsis was 2.7%. Delta neutrophil index was significantly higher in those who died than in the survivors (median [interquartile range], 11.5% [3.5%–25.0%] vs. 4.7% [2.2%–10.6%], P = 0.008) and was identified to be an independent predictor for 28-day mortality in patients with sepsis by Cox proportional hazards model. Delta neutrophil index may serve as a facile and useful marker for early diagnosis and prognostic assessment of patients with sepsis, as it is included in a routine complete blood count.
Antibiogram and heavy metal tolerance of bullfrog bacteria in Malaysia

Bacterial isolates from 30 farmed bullfrogs (Lithobates catesbeianus) weighing 500-600 g at Johore, Malaysia with external clinical signs of ulcer, red leg and torticollis were tested for their antibiograms and heavy metal tolerance patterns. A total of 17 bacterial species with 77 strains were successfully isolated and assigned to 21 antibiotics and 4 types of heavy metal (Hg2+, Cr6+, Cd2+, Cu2+). Results revealed that bacteria were resistant against lincomycin (92%), oleandomycin (72.7%) and furazolidone (71.4%) while being susceptible to chloramphenicol and florfenicol at 97.4%. The multiple antibiotic resistance (MAR) index for C. freundii, E. coli and M. morganii was high with the value up to 0.71. Bacterial strains were found to exhibit 100 % resistance to chromium and mercury. High correlation of resistance against both antibiotics and heavy metals was found (71.4 to 100%) between bullfrog bacteria isolates, except bacteria that were resistant to kanamycin showed only 25% resistance against Cu2+. Based on the results in this study, bacterial pathogens of bullfrog culture in Johore, Malaysia, were highly resistant to both antibiotics and heavy metals.
Regression of left ventricular hypertrophy.

—Sloppy use of terminology has never been a sign of good research. Dr Schmieder and colleagues 1 state that they used the databases MEDLINE, DIMDI, RINGDOC, "ADES," and EMBASE as data sources. Three of these 5 terms (60%) are wrong, outdated, or incorrect. DIMDI (ie, Deutsches Institut fuer Medizinische Dokumentation und Information) is not a database, but a German database host, offering an array of more than 90 databases in the medical field, including MEDLINE. The database RINGDOC changed its name several years ago to DERWENT DRUG FILE when it became available to users outside the pharmaceutical industry. The proper spelling for "ADES" is ADIS, a database offered by ADIS Press Inc in New Zealand. From the collection of terms that the authors used, it is obvious that they as well as many other end users did not care to delve into the intricacies of the MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) thesaurus,
Scaling Limit for a Drainage Network Model

We consider the two-dimensional version of a drainage network model introduced in Gangopadhyay, Roy and Sarkar (2004), and show that the appropriately rescaled family of its paths converges in distribution to the Brownian web. We do so by verifying the convergence criteria proposed in Fontes, Isopi, Newman and Ravishankar (2002).
Errors in blood transfusion in Britain: survey of hospital haematology departments

Blood transfusion laboratories aim to provide a high quality service with minimum risk to patients. British guidelines for good practice in transfusion medicine exist,1 and most hospitals have local protocols. If these procedures fail incompatible blood may be transfused, which could lead to potentially fatal haemolytic reactions. As no system of collecting data centrally exists in Britain failures of the transfusion process are not documented. In contrast, in the United States the Food and Drug Administration requires all establishments that are registered to process blood to report all errors and deaths associated with transfusion. We aimed to investigate the incidence of recognised transfusion errors in Britain in 1990 and 1991 and the cause and clinical outcome of these errors. ### and results A short questionnaire about errors in blood transfusion procedures and …
Bats and Emerging Zoonoses: Henipaviruses and SARS

Nearly 75% of all emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) that impact or threaten human health are zoonotic. The majority have spilled from wildlife reservoirs, either directly to humans or via domestic animals. The emergence of many can be attributed to predisposing factors such as global travel, trade, agricultural expansion, deforestation/habitat fragmentation, and urbanization; such factors increase the interface and/or the rate of contact between human, domestic animal, and wildlife populations, thereby creating increased opportunities for spillover events to occur. Infectious disease emergence can be regarded as primarily an ecological process. The epidemiological investigation of EIDs associated with wildlife requires a trans‐disciplinary approach that includes an understanding of the ecology of the wildlife species, and an understanding of human behaviours that increase risk of exposure. Investigations of the emergence of Nipah virus in Malaysia in 1999 and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in China in 2003 provide useful case studies. The emergence of Nipah virus was associated with the increased size and density of commercial pig farms and their encroachment into forested areas. The movement of pigs for sale and slaughter in turn led to the rapid spread of infection to southern peninsular Malaysia, where the high‐density, largely urban pig populations facilitated transmission to humans. Identifying the factors associated with the emergence of SARS in southern China requires an understanding of the ecology of infection both in the natural reservoir and in secondary market reservoir species. A necessary extension of understanding the ecology of the reservoir is an understanding of the trade, and of the social and cultural context of wildlife consumption. Emerging infectious diseases originating from wildlife populations will continue to threaten public health. Mitigating and managing the risk requires an appreciation of the connectedness between human, livestock and wildlife health, and of the factors and processes that disrupt the balance.
Chronic urticaria: an internet survey of health behaviours, symptom patterns and treatment needs in European adult patients

Summary Background Chronic urticaria (CU) is a common skin disorder characterized by spontaneous outbreaks of itchy weals and/or angio‐oedema over a period of 6 weeks or longer. Very little is known about the health behaviour, symptom patterns or unmet treatment needs of patients with CU.
𝒽∞ Filtering for Continuous-time Linear Systems with Delay

The problem of /spl Hscr//sub /spl infin// filtering for continuous-time linear systems with time-delayed measurement is investigated. The authors develop a methodology for designing linear filters which ensure a prescribed bound on the /spl Lscr//sub 2/-induced gain from the noise signals to the estimation error. Filtering problems for time varying systems over a finite-horizon, as well as stationary infinite-horizon filtering for time-invariant systems, are tackled. In the finite-horizon case, our estimation procedure entails an overdesign that stems from the last d seconds of the time interval [0,T], where d is the delay length. This overdesign becomes smaller as T increases, and it vanishes in the infinite-horizon case.
Gall stone dyspepsia.

One of the syndromes commonly encountered in the outpatient clinic is flatulent dyspepsia. By this we mean epigastric discomfort after meals, a feeling of fullness so that tight clothing is loosened, eructation with temporary relief, and regurgitation of sour fluid to the mouth with heartburn. The patient is usually a middle-aged obese woman. Radiological investigation may reveal gall stones, a hiatus hernia, a peptic ulcer, various combinations of these conditions, or nothing. We are particularly interested in the cases with gall stones. Are these cause or coincidence ? When the patient asks, " If you take out my gall bladder, shall I lose my indigestion ? " what is the surgeon to say ? Price (1963) investigated 142 women aged 50-70 in one general practice and found dyspepsia just as common in women with normal cholecystograms as in those with stones; he concluded that the dyspepsia was not due to the gall stones and should not influence the treatment. Smith and Sherlock (1964) claim that cholecystectomy gives excellent results unless the dyspepsia is really due to a duodenal ulcer, a hiatus hernia, diverticulitis coli, chronic constipation, overeating, or an unfaithful husband; since most of these patients at least overeat, this rather begs the question. According to Maingot (1956), cholecystectomy has little or no effect in curing the unpleasant symptoms of flatulent dyspepsia. Capper et al. (1967) provided an explanation for the dyspepsia associated with gall stones, and were promptly rebuked by French (1967) for perpetuating the myth that gall stones commonly cause flatulent dyspepsia.
3D tracking targets via kinematic model weighted particle filter

Automatically and reliably tracking numerous flying objects in 3D space is of great significance for not only scientific researches such as collective behavior analysis, but also practical applications such as designing multi-agent robots. However, it remains a challenging task due to the large population, similar appearance, and severe occlusion happening in 2D images. This paper proposes a 3D tracking method that is capable of tracking individuals of a swarm of flying objects using the particle filtering technique. Each particle is not only weighted by the observation model but also weighted by the kinematic model. The kinematic model is modeled by learning a long short-term memory network on sequences of velocities. Experimental results show that the kinematic model significantly improves the efficiency of estimating target's motion state, and show that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods.
δ2H, δ13C and δ18O from whole wood, α-cellulose and lignin methoxyl groups in Pinus sylvestris: a multi-parameter approach

Novel tree ring parameters – δ13C and δ2H from methoxyl groups – have been developed to reconstruct palaeoclimate. Tests with δ13C and δ18O derived from whole wood and cellulose samples, however, indicated differences in the isotopic composition and climate signal, depending on the extracted wood component. We assess this signal dependency by analysing (i) δ13C and δ18O from whole wood and cellulose and (ii) δ13C and δ2H from methoxyl groups, using Pinus sylvestris L. growing near Altenkirchen (Germany). Results indicate significant correlations among the time series derived from whole wood, cellulose, and lignin methoxyl groups. Compared with the whole wood samples, δ13C from methoxyl groups showed a different and overall lower response to climate parameters. On the other hand, δ2H from methoxyl groups showed high correlations with temperature and was also correlated with ring width, indicating its potential as a temperature proxy. Isotope time series with the highest correlation with climatic parameter were: (i) whole wood and cellulose δ13C with growing season precipitation and summer temperature; (ii) methoxyl groups with spring precipitation; (iii) whole wood and cellulose δ18O correlates with annual evapotranspiration and water balance; and (iv) methoxyl group δ2H with spring temperatures. These findings reveal that multiple climate elements can be reconstructed from different wood components and that whole wood proxies perform comparably to cellulose time series.
FACTORS AFFECTING THE CONDITIONS OF SULFATE REDUCTION AND MERCURY METHYLATION IN THE RIVER AMUR ICE

Results of the layer-by-layer studies of distribution of organic matter (OM) and mercury in ice cores sampled from the Amur River near the Khabarovsk city: its mainstream and the Pemzenskaya and Amurskaya branches, are presented. Comprehensive investigation of ice performed at the end of the freeze-up period allows making a retrospective analysis of the river ecosystem pollution during winter. Analysis of the total content of dissolved organic substances and aromatic compounds, determining a level of humification of the aquatic environment, was carried out with a spectrophotometer Shimadzu UV-3600 at 254 and 275 nm. The mercury content was determined by inductively coupled plasmamass spectrometry (ICP-MS). The number of cultured heterotrophic bacteria, sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) and their resistance to mercury (0.0005 and 0.001 mg/L) were used as indicators of biogeochemical processes going on in vitro. The maximum resistance to mercury at concentration of 0.001 mg/l was revealed from the sulfate-reducing bacteria in cores taken from the upper ice layer (0-10 cm) near the right bank of the Amurskaya branch. Periodical high mercury contamination of ice (up to 0.71 mkg/L) is estimated as a risk factor. In Pemzenskoy branch, the main factors for the mercury methylation in the ice were fine detritus, coming at the reservoir discharges, and the SRB resistant to mercury. These microorganisms were found in upper layers of the ice (10-35 cm) near the left bank and in the middle of the water stream (60–80 cm). A layer of ice (70–117 cm) with conditions also favourable for the sulfate reduction and the mercury methylation had been revealed in the mainstream of the Amur River near its right bank that is the cross-boundary area in the zone of influence of the Songhua river runoff. Among these conditions are high levels of OM, the presence of heterotrophic bacteria, which are destructors of high-molecular compounds, the potential producers of metabolites with methyl radicals, and the activity of the SRB resistant to mercury.
Blood and Violence: Exploring the Impact of Gore in Violent Video Games

Violence is a key element in video games and despite the extensive research in video game violence, there is still a debate on its psychophysiological effect. There is a lack of understanding on the elements of video game violence that influence aggression. The present pilot study examines the effect of blood and gore in a first-person shooter with participants playing in one of the two conditions, with or without blood and gore. To assess the effect of blood and gore, and thus violence, a number of elements were measured including physical arousal, individual differences, personality, and game experience. The results suggested that blood and gore had no effect on aggression-related associations and cognitive processes. The findings did suggest that previous game experience had a significant effect on increased physiological arousal when engaging in violent content featuring blood and gore. Furthermore, a personality trend emerged showing an effect on arousal and cognitive processes. As the study was preliminary, definitive conclusions cannot be drawn, however the findings warrant further investigation.
Capriccio: scalable threads for internet services

This paper presents Capriccio, a scalable thread package for use with high-concurrency servers. While recent work has advocated event-based systems, we believe that thread-based systems can provide a simpler programming model that achieves equivalent or superior performance.By implementing Capriccio as a user-level thread package, we have decoupled the thread package implementation from the underlying operating system. As a result, we can take advantage of cooperative threading, new asynchronous I/O mechanisms, and compiler support. Using this approach, we are able to provide three key features: (1) scalability to 100,000 threads, (2) efficient stack management, and (3) resource-aware scheduling.We introduce linked stack management, which minimizes the amount of wasted stack space by providing safe, small, and non-contiguous stacks that can grow or shrink at run time. A compiler analysis makes our stack implementation efficient and sound. We also present resource-aware scheduling, which allows thread scheduling and admission control to adapt to the system's current resource usage. This technique uses a blocking graph that is automatically derived from the application to describe the flow of control between blocking points in a cooperative thread package. We have applied our techniques to the Apache 2.0. 44 web server, demonstrating that we can achieve high performance and scalability despite using a simple threaded programming model.
Highly activated and expanded natural killer cells for multiple myeloma immunotherapy

Background Patients with gene expression profiling-defined high-risk myeloma in relapse have poor outcomes with current therapies. We tested whether natural killer cells expanded by co-culture with K562 cells transfected with 41BBL and membrane-bound interleukin-15 could kill myeloma cells with a high-risk gene expression profile in vitro and in a unique model which recapitulates human myeloma. Design and Methods OPM2 and high-risk primary myeloma tumors were grown in human fetal bone implanted into non-obese diabetic severe combined immunodeficiency mice with a deficient interleukin-2 receptor gamma chain. These mice are devoid of endogenous natural killer and T-cell activity and were used to determine whether adoptively transferred expanded natural killer cells could inhibit myeloma growth and myeloma-associated bone destruction. Results Natural killer cells from healthy donors and myeloma patients expanded a median of 804- and 351-fold, respectively, without significant T-cell expansion. Expanded natural killer cells killed both allogeneic and autologous primary myeloma cells avidly via a perforin-mediated mechanism in which the activating receptor NKG2D, natural cytotoxicity receptors, and DNAX-accessory molecule-1 played a central role. Adoptive transfer of expanded natural killer cells inhibited the growth of established OPM2 and high-risk primary myeloma tumors grown in the murine model. The transferred, expanded natural killer cells proliferated in vivo in an interleukin-2 dose-dependent fashion, persisted up to 4 weeks, were readily detectable in the human bone, inhibited myeloma growth and protected bone from myeloma-induced osteolysis. Conclusions These studies provide the rationale for testing expanded natural killer cells in humans.