Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Statin Use on Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness

Background. Recent studies suggest that statin use may reduce influenza vaccine effectiveness (VE), but laboratory-confirmed influenza was not assessed. Methods. Patients ≥45 years old presenting with acute respiratory illness were prospectively enrolled during the 2004–2005 through 2014–2015 influenza seasons. Vaccination and statin use were extracted from electronic records. Respiratory samples were tested for influenza virus. Results. The analysis included 3285 adults: 1217 statin nonusers (37%), 903 unvaccinated statin nonusers (27%), 847 vaccinated statin users (26%), and 318 unvaccinated statin users (10%). Statin use modified VE and the risk of influenza A(H3N2) virus infection (P = .002) but not 2009 pandemic influenza A(H1N1) virus (A[H1N1]pdm09) or influenza B virus infection (P = .2 and .4, respectively). VE against influenza A(H3N2) was 45% (95% confidence interval [CI], 27%–59%) among statin nonusers and −21% (95% CI, −84% to 20%) among statin users. Vaccinated statin users had significant protection against influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 (VE, 68%; 95% CI, 19%–87%) and influenza B (VE, 48%; 95% CI, 1%–73%). Statin use did not significantly modify VE when stratified by prior season vaccination. In validation analyses, the use of other cardiovascular medications did not modify influenza VE. Conclusions. Statin use was associated with reduced VE against influenza A(H3N2) but not influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 or influenza B. Further research is needed to assess biologic plausibility and confirm these results.
Spatial Variability of Barrow-Area Shore-Fast Sea Ice and Its Relationships to Passive Microwave Emissivity

Aircraft-acquired passive microwave data, laser radar height observations, RADARSAT synthetic aperture radar imagery, and in situ measurements obtained during the AMSR-Ice03 experiment are used to investigate relationships between microwave emission and ice characteristics over several space scales. The data fusion allows delineation of the shore-fast ice and pack ice in the Barrow area, AK, into several ice classes. Results show good agreement between observed and Polarimetric Scanning Radiometer (PSR)-derived snow depths over relatively smooth ice, with larger differences over ridged and rubbled ice. The PSR results are consistent with the effects on snow depth of the spatial distribution and nature of ice roughness, ridging, and other factors such as ice age. Apparent relationships exist between ice roughness and the degree of depolarization of emission at 10, 19, and 37 GHz. This depolarization would yield overestimates of total ice concentration using polarization-based algorithms, with indications of this seen when the NT-2 algorithm is applied to the PSR data. Other characteristics of the microwave data, such as effects of grounding of sea ice and large contrast between sea ice and adjacent land, are also apparent in the PSR data. Overall, the results further demonstrate the importance of macroscale ice roughness conditions such as ridging and rubbling on snow depth and microwave emissivity
Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) in the symptomatic management of chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome: a placebo-control randomized trial.

OBJECTIVE The aim of the study was to investigate the therapeutic efficacy of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) in the symptomatic management of chronic prostatitis pain/chronic pelvic pain syndrome. DESIGN A pretest, posttest randomized double blind design was used in data collection. PARTICIPANT Twenty-four patients diagnosed with chronic prostatitis- category IIIA and IIIB of the National Institute of Health Chronic Pain (NIH-CP) were referred for physiotherapy from the Urology department. INTERVENTION Pre treatment pain level was assessed using the NIH-CP (pain domain) index. The TENS group received TENS treatment, 5 times per week for a period of 4 weeks (mean treatment frequency, intensity, pulse width and duration of 60 Hz, 100 microS, 25 mA and 20 minutes respectively). The Analgesic group received no TENS treatment but continued analgesics; the Control group received no TENS and Analgesic but placebo. All subjects were placed on antibiotics throughout the treatment period. OUTCOME MEASURES Post-treatment pain level was also assessed using NIH-CP pain index. RESULT Findings of the study revealed significant effect of TENS on chronic prostatitis pain at p < 0.05. CONCLUSION TENS is an effective means of non-invasive symptomatic management of chronic prostatitis pain.
Learning Hierarchical Features from Generative Models

Deep neural networks have been shown to be very successful at learning feature hierarchies in supervised learning tasks. Generative models, on the other hand, have benefited less from hierarchical models with multiple layers of latent variables. In this paper, we prove that hierarchical latent variable models do not take advantage of the hierarchical structure when trained with existing variational methods, and provide some limitations on the kind of features existing models can learn. Finally we propose an alternative architecture that do not suffer from these limitations. Our model is able to learn highly interpretable and disentangled hierarchical features on several natural image datasets with no task specific regularization or prior knowledge.
SPARE: Spiking Neural Network Acceleration Using ROM-Embedded RAMs as In-Memory-Computation Primitives

From the little we know about the human brain, the inherent cognitive mechanism is very different from the de facto state-of-the-art computing platforms. The human brain uses distributed, yet integrated memory and computation units, unlike the physically separate memory and computation cores in typical von Neumann architectures. Despite huge success of artificial intelligence, hardware systems running these algorithms consume orders of magnitude higher energy compared to the human brain, mainly due to heavy data movements between the memory unit and the computation cores. Spiking neural networks (SNNs) built using bio-plausible neuron and synaptic models have emerged as the power efficient choice for designing cognitive applications. These algorithms involve several lookup-table (LUT) based function evaluations such as high-order polynomials and transcendental functions for solving complex neuro-synaptic models, that typically require additional storage and thus, bigger memories. To that effect, we propose ‘SPARE’–an in-memory, distributed processing architecture built on ROM-embedded RAM technology, for accelerating SNNs. ROM-embedded RAMs allow storage of LUTs (for neuro-synaptic models), embedded within a typical memory array, without additional area overhead. Our proposed architecture consists of a 2-D array of Processing Elements (PEs), wherein each PE has its own ROM-embedded RAM structure and executes part of the SNN computation. Since most of the computations (including multiple math-table evaluations) are done locally within each PE, unnecessary data transfers are restricted, thereby alleviating the problems arising due to physically separate remote memory unit and the computation core. SPARE thus leverages both, the hardware benefits of distributed, in-memory processing, and also the algorithmic benefits of SNNs. We evaluate SPARE for two different ROM-Embedded RAM structures–CMOS based ROM-Embedded SRAMs (R-SRAMs) and STT-MRAM based ROM-Embedded MRAMs (R-MRAMs). Moreover, we analyze trade-offs in terms of energy, area and performance, for using the two technologies on a range of image classification benchmarks. Furthermore, we leverage the additional storage density to implement complex neuro-synaptic functionalities. This enhances the utility of the proposed architecture by provisioning implementation of any neuron/synaptic behavior as necessitated by the application. Our results show up-to $\sim\! 1.75\times$∼1.75×, $\sim\! 1.95\times$∼1.95× and $\sim \! 1.95\times$∼1.95× improvement in energy, iso-storage area, and iso-area performance, respectively, by using neural network accelerators built on ROM-embedded RAM primitives.
Optimal Levels of All Major Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Younger Age and Functional Disability in Older Age: The Chicago Heart Association Detection Project in Industry 32-Year Follow-Up Health Survey

Background—The associations of optimal levels of all major cardiovascular disease risk factors, that is, low risk, in younger age with subsequent cardiovascular disease morbidity and mortality have been well documented. However, little is known about associations of low-risk profiles in younger age with functional disability in older age. Methods and Results—The sample included 6014 participants from the Chicago Heart Association Detection Project in Industry Study. Low-risk status, defined as untreated systolic/diastolic blood pressure ⩽120/⩽80 mm Hg, untreated serum total cholesterol <5.18 mmol/l, not smoking, body mass index < 25 kg/m2, and no diabetes mellitus, was assessed at baseline (1967 to 1973). Functional disability, categorized as (1) any disability in activities of daily living (ADLs), (2) any disability in instrumental ADLs but not in ADL, or (3) no disability, was assessed from the 2003 health survey. There were 39% women, 4% Black, with a mean age of 43 years and 6% low-risk status at baseline. After 32 years, 7% reported having limitations in performing any ADL and 11% in any instrumental ADL only. The prevalence of any ADL limitation was lowest in low-risk people and increased in a graded fashion with less-favorable risk factor groups (P trend <0.001). Compared with those with 2+ high-risk factors, the multivariable-adjusted odds of having any disability in ADLs versus no disability in people with low risk, any moderate risk, and 1 high-risk factor at baseline were lower by 58%, 48%, and 37%, respectively. Results were similar for instrumental ADLs, in both men and women. Conclusions—Having an optimal cardiovascular disease risk factor profile at younger age is associated with the lowest rate of functional disability in older age.
Advances in Phonetic Word Spotting savitha

Phonetic speech retrieval is used to augment word based retrieval in spoken document retrieval systems, for in and out of vocabulary words. In this paper, we present a new indexing and ranking scheme using metaphones and a Bayesian phonetic edit distance. We conduct an extensive set of experiments using a hundred hours of HUB4 data with ground truth transcript and twenty-four thousands query words. We show improvement of up to 15% in precision compare to results obtained speech recognition alone, at a processing time of 0.5 Sec p er query.
Cumulative learning in the lambda calculus

I design a machine learning system capable of ‘cumulative learning’, which means that it automatically acquires the knowledge necessary for solving harder problems through experience of solving easier ones. Working within the learning framework of inductive programming, I propose that the technique of abstraction, familiar from software engineering, is a suitable mechanism for accumulating knowledge. In abstraction, syntactic patterns in solutions to past problems are isolated as re-usable units and added to background knowledge. For the system’s knowledge representation language, I argue that lambda calculus is a more suitable choice than first-order logic because lambda calculus supports abstraction readily. However, more mature and theoretically well-founded base inference techniques are available within first-order Inductive Logic Programming (ILP). Therefore, my approach is to adapt ILP inference techniques to lambda calculus. Central to ILP is the idea of ‘generality’, and I show that a suitable concept of generality in lambda calculus arises from its standard denotational semantics. Consequently, notions of entailment, subsumption, refinement, and inverse deduction have direct analogues in the lambda calculus setting. I argue that the conventional ‘compression’ measure used in ILP is inflexible in capturing prior assumptions, particularly in the context of an expanding background knowledge. Instead I introduce a non-parametric Bayesian prior over hypotheses and background knowledge. I then design an inductive inference algorithm for the lambda calculus setting based on refinement and proof-directed search. I give a formal proof of correctness of this algorithm. To enable automatic invention of abstractions, I design two algorithms. The first is a heuristic search that uses anti-unification to discovering opportunities for abstraction within a corpus of knowledge. I give a formal characterisation of its search space. The second algorithm performs inverse deduction in order to refactor knowledge in terms of an abstraction. I prove that this refactoring process is semantics-preserving.
The influence of service quality in information system success model as an antecedent of mobile learning in education organisations: case study in Jordan

Mobile learning refers to obtainment or provision of educational curriculum through personal pocket devices online. In the present study, a service quality model based on the Information System IS Success Model is proposed for university m-learning in Jordan, a developing country. This study was conducted through three phases; first, information concerning the students' perception of m-learning services was obtained through a questionnaire distributed to 360 students hailing from different colleges of the Jordan University of Science and Technology JUST. The second phase involved the measurement of Service Quality SQ through Interface Design, Reliability, Responsiveness, Trust and Personalisation, and the measurement of the causal relationship between the learners' perceived service quality and Learner's Satisfaction. Finally, in the third phase, the m-learning system prototype MLSP was developed with the help of Rapid Application Development RAD technique and object-oriented OO approach. The prototype was developed, tested and employed in JUST at Jordan.
Software reliability growth analysis-application of NHPP models and its evaluation

The paper reports on the suitability and stability of the NHPP and trend curve software reliability growth models. For evaluating these characteristics, we applied these models to our actual software development projects. The study shows that the NHPP model fits our projects well. Furthermore, it also suggests quality control limit curves for more effective application of these models.
Retrospective analysis of 271 arteriovenous fistulas as vascular access for hemodialysis

This report describes our experience of arteriovenous fistula (AVF) creation as vascular access for hemodialysis (HD). Study has been carried out in Deenanath Mangeshkar Hospital, Pune from January 2004 to December 2009. A total of 271 AVFs were created in 249 patients. Maximum follow up was 7 years and minimum was 1 year. In this study of 271 cases of AVFs, there were 196 (72.3%) successful cases and 75 (27.7%) failures. Basilic vein was used in 77 (28.4%) cases, cephalic vein in 186 (68.6%), and antecubital vein in 8 (3%) cases. End (vein) to side (artery) anastomosis was done in 170 (63%) cases. Side to side anastomosis was done in 100 (37%) cases. On table bruit was present in 244 (90%) and thrill in 232 (85.6%) cases. During dialysis, flow rate >250 ml/min was obtained in 136 (50.4%) cases. In complications, 16 (5.9%) patients developed distal edema, 32 (11.8%) developed steal phenomenon. Presence of on table thrill and bruit are indicators of successful AVF. If vein diameter is <2 mm, chances of AVF failure are high. During proximal side to side fistula between antecubital/basilic vein and brachial artery, breaking of first valve toward wrist helps to develop distal veins in forearm by retrograde flow. This technique avoids requirement of superficialization of basilic vein in arm.
Significance of incorporation of DNMT 1 and HLA-DRα with TNM staging in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma after curative resection

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common type of hepatic cancer and is particularly a problem in China. Bio-molecular markers have been demonstrated to be of prognostic significance and might help predict tumor behavior. In our study, we aimed to assess the prognostic values of DNA methyltransferase 1 (DNMT1), HLA-DRα, and β-catenin, as well as the combined use of molecular biomarkers, clinicopathological parameters and the TNM staging system to find a method for superior prognostic performance for HCC by analyzing a Chinese HCC cohort. We revealed the significant prognostic roles of DNMT1 (OR: 2.570; 95% CI: 1.401-4.715; P = 0.002) and HLA-DRα (0.350; 0.189-0.616; 0.001), and further developed an estimation formula to predict prognosis in HCC patients after curative resection, based on TNM staging, operative blood loss, abnormal total bilirubin, DNMT1 and HLA-DRα. The receiver operating characteristic curve analysis showed that prediction from the multivariate logistic regression had an area of 0.847 and performed better than the conventional TNM staging system, as well as other current HCC staging systems. Our study demonstrated the prognostic values of DNMT1 and HLA-DRα in HCC patients after curative resection. Additionally, we developed a prognostic estimation formula featured better stratification ability than the conventional TNM staging and provided a practicable stratification method for HCC patients after curative resection.
Cold Boot Attacks are Still Hot: Security Analysis of Memory Scramblers in Modern Processors

Previous work has demonstrated that systems with unencrypted DRAM interfaces are susceptible to cold boot attacks – where the DRAM in a system is frozen to give it sufficient retention time and is then re-read after reboot, or is transferred to an attacker's machine for extracting sensitive data. This method has been shown to be an effective attack vector for extracting disk encryption keys out of locked devices. However, most modern systems incorporate some form of data scrambling into their DRAM interfaces making cold boot attacks challenging. While first added as a measure to improve signal integrity and reduce power supply noise, these scram-blers today serve the added purpose of obscuring the DRAM contents. It has previously been shown that scrambled DDR3 systems do not provide meaningful protection against cold boot attacks. In this paper, we investigate the enhancements that have been introduced in DDR4 memory scramblers in the 6th generation Intel Core (Skylake) processors. We then present an attack that demonstrates these enhanced DDR4 scramblers still do not provide sufficient protection against cold boot attacks. We detail a proof-of-concept attack that extracts memory resident AES keys, including disk encryption keys. The limitations of memory scramblers we point out in this paper motivate the need for strong yet low-overhead full-memory encryption schemes. Existing schemes such as Intel's SGX can effectively prevent such attacks, but have overheads that may not be acceptable for performance-sensitive applications. However, it is possible to deploy a memory encryption scheme that has zero performance overhead by forgoing integrity checking and replay attack protections afforded by Intel SGX. To that end, we present analyses that confirm modern stream ciphers such as ChaCha8 are sufficiently fast that it is now possible to completely overlap keystream generation with DRAM row buffer access latency, thereby enabling the creation of strongly encrypted DRAMs with zero exposed latency. Adopting such low-overhead measures in future generation of products can effectively shut down cold boot attacks in systems where the overhead of existing memory encryption schemes is unacceptable. Furthermore, the emergence of non-volatile DIMMs that fit into DDR4 buses is going to exacerbate the risk of cold boot attacks. Hence, strong full memory encryption is going to be even more crucial on such systems.
Mammalian Myosin-18A, a Highly Divergent Myosin

Background: The myosin superfamily has many classes that have evolved to carry out different functions. Results: Mouse myosin-18A binds actin weakly in an ATP-independent manner and has very low enzymatic activity. Conclusion: Not all myosins exhibit motor activity. Significance: This work demonstrates that myosins may have functions unrelated to their ability to hydrolyze ATP. The Mus musculus myosin-18A gene is expressed as two alternatively spliced isoforms, α and β, with reported roles in Golgi localization, in maintenance of cytoskeleton, and as receptors for immunological surfactant proteins. Both myosin-18A isoforms feature a myosin motor domain, a single predicted IQ motif, and a long coiled-coil reminiscent of myosin-2. The myosin-18Aα isoform, additionally, has an N-terminal PDZ domain. Recombinant heavy meromyosin- and subfragment-1 (S1)-like constructs for both myosin-18Aα and -18β species were purified from the baculovirus/Sf9 cell expression system. These constructs bound both essential and regulatory light chains, indicating an additional noncanonical light chain binding site in the neck. Myosin-18Aα-S1 and -18Aβ-S1 molecules bound actin weakly with Kd values of 4.9 and 54 μm, respectively. The actin binding data could be modeled by assuming an equilibrium between two myosin conformations, a competent and an incompetent form to bind actin. Actin binding was unchanged by presence of nucleotide. Both myosin-18A isoforms bound N-methylanthraniloyl-nucleotides, but the rate of ATP hydrolysis was very slow (<0.002 s−1) and not significantly enhanced by actin. Phosphorylation of the regulatory light chain had no effect on ATP hydrolysis, and neither did the addition of tropomyosin or of GOLPH3, a myosin-18A binding partner. Electron microscopy of myosin-18A-S1 showed that the lever is strongly angled with respect to the long axis of the motor domain, suggesting a pre-power stroke conformation regardless of the presence of ATP. These data lead us to conclude that myosin-18A does not operate as a traditional molecular motor in cells.
Biceps Lesion Associated With Rotator Cuff Tears

Background: Various tenodesis methods are being used for long head of the biceps tendon lesions. However, there is no consensus on the most appropriate surgical method. Hypothesis: There are significant differences in incidence of cosmetic deformity and persistent bicipital pain between open subpectoral and arthroscopic intracuff tenodesis groups. Study Design: Cohort study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: This study included 72 patients who underwent biceps tenodesis and rotator cuff repair between January 2009 and May 2014 and who were followed for at least 1 year. Open subpectoral tenodesis was performed in 39 patients (group A), and arthroscopic intracuff tenodesis was performed in 33 patients (group B). Results: In group A, the mean visual analog scale (VAS) score for pain during motion and mean University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Constant scores significantly improved from 4.6, 18.6, and 64.5 preoperatively to 1.9, 30.5, and 86.5 at last follow-up, respectively (P < .001 for all). In group B, these scores significantly improved from 5.1, 17.6, and 62.9 preoperatively to 1.8, 31.5, and 85.9 at last follow-up, respectively (P < .001 for all). Popeye deformity was noted in 2 (5.2%) patients from group A and 5 (15.6%) patients from group B (P = .231). Additionally, persistent bicipital tenderness was noted in 1 (2.6%) patient from group A and 8 (24.2%) patients from group B (P = .012). Conclusion: Both open subpectoral tenodesis and arthroscopic intracuff tenodesis show good clinical outcomes for long head of the biceps tendon lesions. However, open subpectoral tenodesis may be more appropriate, considering the low incidence of Popeye deformity and tenderness.