Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantitation of microcirculatory abnormalities in patients with primary Raynaud's phenomenon and systemic sclerosis by video capillaroscopy.

OBJECTIVE : To assess nailfold capillary density and dimensions in patients with primary Raynaud's phenomenon (PRP), limited cutaneous systemic sclerosis (LSSc) and diffuse cutaneous SSc (DSSc), and healthy control subjects. METHODS : Using the technique of nailfold video capillaroscopy, capillary density and dimensions were averaged from all visible capillaries in a 3 mm length of the nailfold from right and left ring fingers of each subject. Twenty healthy control subjects, 15 patients with PRP, 13 patients with DSSc and 21 patients with LSSc were examined. Intra-observer and inter-observer variability were calculated in 18 and 23 patients, respectively. RESULTS : There were significant trends for capillary density to fall and for all dimensions to rise across the four groups (P < 0. 0001 for density and all dimensions, order healthy controls, PRP, DSSc and LSSc). Intra- and inter-observer reproducibility studies showed that although there was good correlation between and within observers, the limits of agreement were between +/-25-50% indicating lack of reproducibility. CONCLUSIONS : Microcirculatory abnormalities can be quantified using the technique of video capillaroscopy and were most marked in patients with LSSc.
A Tour of Modern Image Processing

Recent developments in computational imaging and restoration have heralded the arrival and convergence of several powerful methods for adaptive processing of multidimensional data. Examples include Moving Least Square (from Graphics), the Bilateral Filter and Anisotropic Diffusion (from Machine Vision), Boosting and Spectral Methods (from Machine Learning), Non-local Means (from Signal Processing), Bregman Iterations (from Applied Math), Kernel Regression and Iterative Scaling (from Statistics). While these approaches found their inspirations in diverse fields of nascence, they are deeply connected. In this paper • I present a practical and unified framework to understand some of the basic underpinnings of these methods, with the intention of leading the reader to a broad understanding of how they interrelate. I also illustrate connections between these techniques and Bayesian approaches. • The proposed framework is used to arrive at new insights, methods, and both practical and theoretical results. In particular, several novel optimality properties of algorithms in wide use such as BM3D, and methods for their iterative improvement (or non-existence thereof) are discussed. • Several theoretical results are discussed which will enable the performance analysis and subsequent improvement of any existing restoration algorithm. While much of the material discussed is applicable to wider class of linear degradation models (e.g. noise, blur, etc.,) in order to keep matters focused, we consider the problem of denoising here.
Association between PPAP2B gene polymorphisms and coronary heart disease susceptibility in Chinese Han males and females

Little is known about gender-related differences in the association between PPAP2B single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and coronary heart disease (CHD) in Chinese Han males and females. We therefore conducted a case-control study with 456 cases and 685 healthy controls divided into male and female subgroups. Five PPAP2B polymorphisms (SNPs) were selected and genotyped using Sequenom Mass-ARRAY technology. Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated using unconditional logistic regression adjusting for age and gender. Allelic model analysis revealed that for PPAP2B rs1759752, allele frequency distributions differed between cases and controls in the male subgroup (p = 0.015, OR: 1.401, 95%CI: 1.066–1.481). Genetic model analysis revealed that in the male subgroup, rs1759752 was associated with increased CHD risk in the dominant model (p = 0.035) and overdominant model (p = 0.045). In the female subgroup, rs12566304 was associated with a decreased CHD risk in the codominant model (p = 0.038) and overdominant model (p = 0.031). Additionally, the “GC” haplotypes of rs1759752 and rs1930760 were protective against CHD in males. These observations shed new light on gender-related differences in the association between PPAP2B gene polymorphisms and CHD susceptibility in the Chinese Han population.
The H I Content of Spirals. II. Gas Deficiency in Cluster Galaxies

We derive the atomic hydrogen content for a total of 1900 spirals in the fields of 18 nearby clusters. By comparing the H I-deficiency distributions of the galaxies inside and outside one Abell radius (RA) of each cluster, we find that two-thirds of the clusters in our sample show a dearth of neutral gas in their interiors. Possible connections between the gaseous deficiency and the characteristics of both the underlying galaxies and their environment are investigated in order to gain insight into the mechanisms responsible for H I depletion. While we do not find a statistically significant variation of the fraction of H I-deficient spirals in a cluster with its global properties, a number of correlations emerge that argue in favor of the interplay between spiral disks and their environment. In the clusters in which neutral gas deficiency is pronounced, we see clear indications that the degree of H I depletion is related to the morphology of the galaxies and not to their optical size; early-type and probably dwarf spirals are more easily emptied of gas than the intermediate Sbc-Sc types. Gas contents below 1/10, and even 1/100, of the expectation value have been measured, implying that gas removal is very efficient. The radial extent of the region with significant gas ablation can reach up to 2RA. Within this zone, the proportion of gas-poor spirals increases continuously toward the cluster center. The wealth of 21 cm data collected for the Virgo region has made it possible to study the two-dimensional pattern of H I deficiency in that cluster. The map of gas deficiency in the Virgo central area points to an scenario in which gas losses result from the interaction of the disks with the inner hot intracluster gas around M87. We also find evidence that gas-poor spirals in H I-deficient clusters move in orbits more radial than those of the gas-rich objects. The implications of all these results on models of how galaxies interact with their environment are reviewed. Hydrodynamic effects appear as the most plausible cause of H I removal.
Incident and prevalent cohorts with pulmonary arterial hypertension: insight from SERAPHIN

In SERAPHIN, a long-term, randomised, controlled trial (NCT00660179) in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), macitentan significantly reduced the risk of morbidity/mortality and PAH-related death/hospitalisation. We evaluated disease progression and the effect of macitentan in treatment-naïve incident and prevalent cohorts. Patients allocated to placebo, or macitentan 3 mg or 10 mg were classified by time from diagnosis to enrolment as incident (≤6 months; n=110) or prevalent (>6 months; n=157). The risk of morbidity/mortality and PAH-related death/hospitalisation was determined using Cox regression. The risk of morbidity/mortality (Kaplan–Meier estimates at month 12: 54.4% versus 26.7%; p=0.006) and PAH-related death/hospitalisation (Kaplan–Meier estimates at month 12: 47.3% versus 19.9%; p=0.006) were significantly higher for incident versus prevalent patients receiving placebo, respectively. There was no significant difference in the risk of all-cause death between incident and prevalent cohorts (p=0.587). Macitentan 10 mg significantly reduced the risk of morbidity/mortality and PAH-related death/hospitalisation versus placebo in incident and prevalent cohorts. Incident patients had a higher risk for PAH progression compared with prevalent patients but not a higher risk of death. Macitentan delayed disease progression in both incident and prevalent PAH patients. In the SERAPHIN trial, incident PAH patients had a higher risk of disease progression than prevalent patients http://ow.ly/RvCei
An iterative water-filling algorithm for maximum weighted sum-rate of Gaussian MIMO-BC

We consider the maximization of weighted rate sum in Gaussian multiple-input-multiple-output broadcast channels. This problem is motivated by optimal adaptive resource allocation policies in wireless systems with multiple antenna at the base station. In fact, under random packet arrival and transmission queues, the system stability region is achieved by maximizing a weighted rate sum with suitable weights that depend on the queue buffer sizes. Our algorithm is a generalization of the well-known Iterative Multiuser Water-Filling that maximizes the rate sum under a total transmit power constraint and inherits from the latter its simplicity. We propose also a variation on the basic algorithm that makes convergence speed very fast and essentially independent of the number of users
Nonfarm Income, Inequality, and Land in Rural Egypt*

The author uses household-level data from a nationally representative survey to analyze the impact of nonfarm income on income inequality in rural Egypt. After pinpointing the importance of nonfarm income to the rural poor, the author decomposes total rural income among five sources, nonfarm, agricultural, livestock, rental, and transfer. He shows that while nonfarm income represents the most important inequality-reducing source of income, agricultural income represents the most important inequality-increasing source. A 1 percent marginal increase in nonfarm income will cause the Gini coefficient of overall income to fall by 12.8 percent. But a 1 percent marginal increase in agricultural income will cause the Gini coefficient to rise by 15.8 percent. The reason for this difference has to do with land, which is distributed very unevenly in this study. Regression analysis of the determinants of income shows that land ownership is positively and statistically related to the receipt of agricultural income but has no statistical relationship to the receipt of nonfarm income. This leads the author to three conclusions: 1) If policymakers are interested in reducing poverty and improving income distribution in rural Egypt, they should focus on nonfarm income - which not only accounts for almost 60 percent of total income for the rural poor but also favorably affects income distribution. 2) Nonfarm income is an inequality-reducing source of income in a land-scarce setting such as rural Egypt because inadequate land"pushes"poorer households out of agriculture and into the nonfarm sector. 3) Agricultural income contributes most to rural income inequality because it is highly correlated with land ownership and with total rural income.
Topological open membranes

We study topological open membranes of BF type in a manifest BV formalism. Our main interest is the effect of the bulk deformations on the algebra of boundary operators. This forms a homotopy Lie algebra, which can be understood in terms of a closed string field theory. The simplest models are associated to quasi-Lie bialgebras and are of Chern-Simons type. More generally, the induced structure is a Courant algebroid, or ``quasi-Lie bialgebroid'', with boundary conditions related to Dirac bundles. A canonical example is the topological open membrane coupling to a closed 3-form, modeling the deformation of strings by a C-field. The Courant algebroid for this model describes a modification of deformation quantization. We propose our models as a tool to find a formal solution to the quantization problem of Courant algebroids.
Characteristics of the Web of Spain

The Web is a massive and interlinked collection of documents, built using a decentralized design to encourage the participation of many authors who publish information through a huge number of Web sites. Its characteristics are the result of the interaction between many organizations and individuals, and those interactions generate a large amount of diversity. This diversity means that several different topics are represented on the Web, and at the same time that the overall quality of pages and Web sites is very variable. The Web is very dynamic and is growing at a very fast pace, and even when some of its properties have been studied, there are several characteristics of it that are still not fully known. This article reports the results of an in-depth study over a large collection of Web pages. On September and October 2004 we downloaded more than 16 million Web pages from about 300,000 Web sites from the Web of Spain. We show the characteristics of this collection at three different granularity levels: Web pages, sites and domains. For each level, we analyze contents, links, and technologies, and present statistics and models. We found that some of the characteristics of this collection resemble the ones of the Web at large, while others are specific to the Web of Spain, or have not been studied in the past.
Radiative electron capture to continuum in relativistic ion?atom collisions

The capture of a target electron to the projectile continuum with simultaneous photon emission, known as radiative ionization (RI), is investigated theoretically for fast, highly charged projectiles colliding with light target atoms. Based on the impulse approximation in its post form, the features of radiative ionization are studied and contrasted with the related processes of radiative electron capture and nonradiative electron capture to continuum (ECC). A large RI cusp asymmetry is found, increasing strongly with projectile charge but decreasing with projectile velocity. However, in contrast to ECC, the cusp is skewed to the high-energy side. Results are shown for 20 MeV amu−1 Kr36+ + H and for 100 and 400 MeV amu−1 U92+ on H and N.
Relaxed imprinting of IGF2 in peripheral blood cells of patients with a history of prostate cancer

Background Insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2) is the predominant IGF in adults and regulates cell growth. In contrast to normal tissues, where IGF2 is imprinted and only expressed from the paternal allele, loss of imprinting (LOI) and biallelic IGF2 expression are observed in many cancers including prostate cancer (PCa). We here studied whether LOI of IGF2 in normal circulating peripheral blood lymphocytes can predict increased PCa risk. Samples and methods We analyzed IGF2 protein levels, IGF2 820G/A genotype and imprinting status, as well as methylation status of the IGF2 imprinting control region (ICR) in 113 blood samples of patients with a history of radical prostatectomy (RPE) for PCa by ELISA, restriction-fragment length polymorphism, and bisulfite-DNA sequencing. Results were compared to 249 male blood donors with unknown prostate specific antigen (PSA) status. Results The 820G/A genotype was enriched in the RPE group and was associated with younger age at cancer diagnosis. LOI in patients was only slightly more frequent than in controls, but IGF2 levels were significantly higher and uncoupled from the imprinting status. Analysis of the IGF2/H19 ICR revealed marked hypermethylation. Conclusions The IGF 820G/A genotype is associated with PCa diagnosis at younger age. Increased IGF2 in patients with PCa appears to be the result of impaired imprinting in non-neoplastic cells rather than a paracrine tumor product. Uncoupling of IGF2 protein levels from imprinting status (not LOI alone) and hypermethylation of the ICR characterized PCa patients and could have the potential to indicate persons at risk in screening programs.
Overhead-aware temporal partitioning on multicore processors

Many previously proposed interface models for composability analysis of hierarchical scheduling are overhead-unaware, which is unsafe for real systems. This paper proposes an overhead-aware schedulability analysis to guarantee temporal partitioning among real-time applications/components hosted on a multicore platform. First, a new interface model and the method to generate an interface for a given component is proposed. Each interface has a tunable parameter d (degree) that can balance between abstraction and accuracy in capturing each component's task-level timing constraints. Second, the problem of constructing an overhead-aware system-level schedule of all the components is addressed. The system designer has the flexibility to select parameters (e.g., allocated processor bandwidth) for each component such that overhead (e.g., preemptions across partitions) is minimized. Third, a slack distribution algorithm to reduce various overhead is proposed and its effectiveness is evaluated using randomly generated interface sets and also using workload of a real space-borne application provided by RUAG Space Sweden AB.
Therapists' Perspective on Virtual Reality Training in Patients after Stroke: A Qualitative Study Reporting Focus Group Results from Three Hospitals

Background. During the past decade, virtual reality (VR) has become a new component in the treatment of patients after stroke. Therefore aims of the study were (a) to get an insight into experiences and expectations of physiotherapists and occupational therapists in using a VR training system and (b) to investigate relevant facilitators, barriers, and risks for implementing VR training in clinical practice. Methods. Three focus groups were conducted with occupational therapists and physiotherapists, specialised in rehabilitation of patients after stroke. All data were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The study was analysed based on a phenomenological approach using qualitative content analysis. Results. After code refinements, a total number of 1289 codes emerged out of 1626 statements. Intercoder reliability increased from 53% to 91% until the last focus group. The final coding scheme included categories on a four-level hierarchy: first-level categories are (a) therapists and VR, (b) VR device, (c) patients and VR, and (d) future prospects and potential of VR developments. Conclusions. Results indicate that interprofessional collaboration is needed to develop future VR technology and to devise VR implementation strategies in clinical practice. In principal, VR technology devices were seen as supportive for a general health service model.
Counting arithmetic lattices and surfaces

We give estimates on the number $AL_H(x)$ of arithmetic lattices $\Gamma$ of covolume at most $x$ in a simple Lie group $H$. In particular, we obtain a first concrete estimate on the number of arithmetic 3-manifolds of volume at most $x$. Our main result is for the classical case $H=PSL(2,R)$ where we compute the limit of $\log AL_H(x) / x\log x$ when $x\to\infty$. The proofs use several different techniques: geometric (bounding the number of generators of $\Gamma$ as a function of its covolume), number theoretic (bounding the number of maximal such $\Gamma$) and sharp estimates on the character values of the symmetric groups (to bound the subgroup growth of $\Gamma$).
Rapamycin-Induced Insulin Resistance Is Mediated by mTORC2 Loss and Uncoupled from Longevity

Dissecting Rapamycin Responses Long-term treatment of mice and other organisms with the drug rapamycin extends life span. But, at the same time, the drug disrupts metabolic regulation and the action of the hormone insulin. Lamming et al. (p. 1638; see the Perspective by Hughes and Kennedy) dissected the action of rapamycin in genetically modified mice and found, encouragingly, that these two actions of rapamycin can be separated. Rapamycin inhibits a protein kinase complex known as mTORC1, and this appears to provide most of the life-lengthening effects of the drug. However, rapamycin also acts on a related complex known as mTORC2, and it is the disruption of mTORC2 action that produces the diabetic-like symptoms of decreased glucose tolerance and insensitivity to insulin. The effect of the drug rapamycin on life span can be separated from its effects on metabolism. Rapamycin, an inhibitor of mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1), extends the life spans of yeast, flies, and mice. Calorie restriction, which increases life span and insulin sensitivity, is proposed to function by inhibition of mTORC1, yet paradoxically, chronic administration of rapamycin substantially impairs glucose tolerance and insulin action. We demonstrate that rapamycin disrupted a second mTOR complex, mTORC2, in vivo and that mTORC2 was required for the insulin-mediated suppression of hepatic gluconeogenesis. Further, decreased mTORC1 signaling was sufficient to extend life span independently from changes in glucose homeostasis, as female mice heterozygous for both mTOR and mLST8 exhibited decreased mTORC1 activity and extended life span but had normal glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity. Thus, mTORC2 disruption is an important mediator of the effects of rapamycin in vivo.
The Contributions of Segmental and Suprasegmental Information in Reading Chinese Characters Aloud

The Chinese writing system provides an excellent case for testing the contribution of segmental and suprasegmental information in reading words aloud within the same language. In logographic Chinese characters, neither segmental nor tonal information is explicitly represented, whereas in Pinyin, an alphabetic transcription of the character, both are explicitly represented. Two primed naming experiments were conducted in which the targets were always written characters. When logographic characters served as the primes (Experiment 1), syllable segmental and tonal information appeared to be represented and encoded as an integral unit which in turn facilitated target character naming. When Pinyin served as the primes (Experiment 2), the explicit phonetic representation facilitated encoding of both segmental and suprasegmental information, but with later access to suprasegmental information. In addition, Chinese speakers were faster to name characters than Pinyin in a simple naming task (Experiment 3), suggesting that Pinyin may be read via a phonological assembly route, whereas characters may be read via a lexical route. Taken together, our findings point to the need to consider the contributions of both segmental and suprasegmental information and the time course in the well-established models for reading aloud, as well as the cognitive mechanisms underlying the reading aloud of logographic characters versus alphabetic Pinyin script.
Linking Affective Commitment, Career Self-Efficacy, and Outcome Expectations

The authors tested a model based on the satisfaction model of social cognitive career theory (SCCT) that links college students’ affective commitment to their major (the emotional identification that students feel toward their area of study) with career decision self-efficacy (CDSE) and career outcome expectations. Results indicate that CDSE mediates the relationship between affective commitment to the major and career outcome expectations, specifically expected career performance and satisfaction. Further, students’ perception of abilities–demands fit with their major interacts with affective commitment to moderate these direct and indirect effects. The authors discuss these findings in light of SCCT and develop recommendations for career counselors and academic advisors based on their results.
Coping with catastrophic risk : the role of (non)-participating contracts

This paper examines how the two fundamentals principles in risk allocation, i.e., the mutuality principle and the transfer principle, can be implemented in order to manage efficiently catastrophic risk. From a decomposition of the insurable loss into idiosyncratic and systemic components, we show that the systemic risk is first filtered through a participating policy with a variable premium based on the realized systemic loss, and then it is transferred through an insurance contract providing a coverage on the variable premium. This model is reconsidered to examine the financing of catastrophe risk with alternative risk tranfer solutions. Group captives, offering participating policies, are shown to be market enhancing.