Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Escholarship@umms Infectious Diseases and Immunology Publications and Presentations Infectious Diseases and Immunology Superior Immunogenicity of Inactivated Whole Virus H5n1 Influenza Vaccine Is Primarily Controlled by Toll-like Receptor Signalling Repository Citation Superior Immunogenicity of Ina

Superior immunogenicity of inactivated whole virus H5N1 influenza vaccine is primarily controlled by Toll-like receptor signalling" (2008). Infectious Diseases and Immunology Publications and Presentations. Paper 75. Abstract In the case of an influenza pandemic, the current global influenza vaccine production capacity will be unable to meet the demand for billions of vaccine doses. The ongoing threat of an H5N1 pandemic therefore urges the development of highly immunogenic, dose-sparing vaccine formulations. In unprimed individuals, inactivated whole virus (WIV) vaccines are more immunogenic and induce protective antibody responses at a lower antigen dose than other formulations like split virus (SV) or subunit (SU) vaccines. The reason for this discrepancy in immunogenicity is a long-standing enigma. Here, we show that stimulation of Toll-like receptors (TLRs) of the innate immune system, in particular stimulation of TLR7, by H5N1 WIV vaccine is the prime determinant of the greater magnitude and Th1 polarization of the WIV-induced immune response, as compared to SV-or SU-induced responses. This TLR dependency largely explains the relative loss of immunogenicity in SV and SU vaccines. The natural pathogen-associated molecular pattern (PAMP) recognized by TLR7 is viral genomic ssRNA. Processing of whole virus particles into SV or SU vaccines destroys the integrity of the viral particle and leaves the viral RNA prone to degradation or involves its active removal. Our results show for a classic vaccine that the acquired immune response evoked by vaccination can be enhanced and steered by the innate immune system, which is triggered by interaction of an intrinsic vaccine component with a pattern recognition receptor (PRR). The insights presented here may be used to further improve the immune-stimulatory and dose-sparing properties of classic influenza vaccine formulations such as WIV, and will facilitate the development of new, even more powerful vaccines to face the next influenza pandemic.
Improved Motion Description for Action Classification

Even though the importance of explicitly integrating motion characteristics in video descriptions has been demonstrated by several recent papers on action classification, our current work concludes that adequately decomposing visual motion into dominant and residual motions, i.e.: camera and scene motion, significantly improves action recognition algorithms. This holds true both for the extraction of the space-time trajectories and for computation of descriptors. We designed a new motion descriptor – the DCS descriptor – that captures additional information on local motion patterns enhancing results based on differential motion scalar quantities, divergence, curl and shear features. Finally, applying the recent VLAD coding technique proposed in image retrieval provides a substantial improvement for action recognition. These findings are complementary to each other and they outperformed all previously reported results by a significant margin on three challenging datasets: Hollywood 2, HMDB51 and Olympic Sports as reported in (Jain et al. (2013)). These results were further improved by (Oneata et al. (2013); Wang and Schmid (2013); Zhu et al. (2013)) through the use of the Fisher vector encoding. We therefore also employ Fisher vector in this paper and we further enhance our approach by combining trajectories from both optical flow and compensated flow. We as well provide additional details of DCS descriptors, including visualization. For extending the evaluation, a novel dataset with 101 action classes, UCF101, was added.
Potential genetic predisposition for anthracycline-associated cardiomyopathy in families with dilated cardiomyopathy

Objective Anthracyclines are successfully used in cancer treatment, but their use is limited by their cardiotoxic side effects. Several risk factors for anthracycline-associated cardiomyopathy (AACM) are known, yet the occurrence of AACM in the absence of these known risk factors suggests that other factors must play a role. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether a genetic predisposition for dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) could be a potential risk factor for AACM. Methods A hospital-based registry of 162 DCM families and two hospital-based registries of patients with cancer treated with systemic cancer therapy (n>6000) were reviewed focusing on AACM. Selected patients with AACM/DCM families with possible AACM (n=21) were analysed for mutations in cardiomyopathy-associated genes and presymptomatic cardiological evaluation of first-degree relatives was performed. Results We identified five DCM families with AACM and one patient with AACM with a family member with a possible early sign of mild DCM. Pathogenic MYH7 mutations were identified in two of these six families. The MYH7 c.1633G>A (p.Asp545Asn) and c.2863G>A (p.Asp955Asn) mutations (one double mutant allele) were identified in a DCM family with AACM. The MYH7 c.4125T>A (p.Tyr1375X) mutation was identified in one patient with AACM. Conclusions This study further extends the hypothesis that a genetic predisposition to DCM could be a potential risk factor for AACM.
MicroRNAs add a new dimension to cardiovascular disease.

Cardiovascular disease is the predominant cause of human morbidity and mortality in developed countries. Thus, extraordinary effort has been devoted to determining the molecular and pathophysiological characteristics of the diseased heart and vasculature with the goal of developing novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies to combat cardiovascular disease. The collective work of multiple research groups has uncovered a complex transcriptional and posttranscriptional regulatory circuit, the integrity of which is essential for the maintenance of cardiac homeostasis. Mutations in or aberrant expression of various transcriptional and posttranscriptional regulators have now been correlated with human cardiac disease, and pharmacological modulation of the activity of these target genes is a major focus of ongoing research. Recently, a novel class of small noncoding RNAs, called microRNAs (miRNAs), was identified as important transcriptional and posttranscriptional inhibitors of gene expression thought to “fine tune” the translational output of target messenger RNAs (mRNAs). 1,2 miRNAs are implicated in the pathogenesis of various cardiovascular diseases and have become an intriguing target for therapeutic intervention. This review focuses on the basic biology and mechanism of action of miRNAs specifically pertaining to cardiovascular disorders and addresses the potential for miRNAs to be targeted therapeutically in the treatment of cardiovascular disease. miRNAs originate from longer precursor RNAs called primary miRNAs that are regulated by conventional transcription factors and transcribed by RNA polymerase II. Primary miRNAs are hundreds to thousands of nucleotides long and are processed in the nucleus into an ≈70- to 100-nucleotide hairpin-shaped precursor miRNA by the RNase III enzyme Drosha and the double-stranded RNA binding protein DGCR8. The precursor miRNA is then transported into the cytoplasm by the nuclear export factor exportin 5 and further processed into an ≈19- to 25-nucleotide double-stranded RNA by the RNaseIII enzyme Dicer. This duplex miRNA is then incorporated into the RNA-induced silencing complex. One …
What do patients value in their hospital care? An empirical perspective on autonomy centred bioethics

Objective: Contemporary ethical accounts of the patient-provider relationship emphasise respect for patient autonomy and shared decision making. We sought to examine the relative influence of involvement in decisions, confidence and trust in providers, and treatment with respect and dignity on patients’ evaluations of their hospital care. Design: Cross-sectional survey. Setting: Fifty one hospitals in Massachusetts. Participants: Stratified random sample of adults (N=27 414) discharged from a medical, surgical, or maternity hospitalisation between January and March, 1998. Twelve thousand six hundred and eighty survey recipients responded. Main outcome measure: Respondent would definitely be willing to recommend the hospital to family and friends. Results: In a logistic regression analysis, treatment with respect and dignity (odds ratio (OR) 3.4, 99% confidence interval (CI) 2.8 to 4.2) and confidence and trust in providers (OR 2.5, CI 2.1 to 3.0) were more strongly associated with willingness to recommend than having enough involvement in decisions (OR 1.4, CI 1.1 to 1.6). Courtesy and availability of staff (OR 2.5, CI 2.1 to 3.1), continuity and transition (OR 1.9, CI 1.5 to 2.2), attention to physical comfort (OR 1.8, CI 1.5 to 2.2), and coordination of care (OR 1.5, CI 1.3 to 1.8) were also significantly associated with willingness to recommend. Conclusions: Confidence and trust in providers and treatment with respect and dignity are more closely associated with patients’ overall evaluations of their hospitals than adequate involvement in decisions. These findings challenge a narrow emphasis on patient autonomy and shared decision making, while arguing for increased attention to trust and respect in ethical models of health care.
Empirical Evaluation and Combination of Advanced Language Modeling Techniques

We present results obtained with several advanced language modeling techniques, including class based model, cache model, maximum entropy model, structured language model, random forest language model and several types of neural network based language models. We show results obtained after combining all these models by using linear interpolation. We conclude that for both small and moderately sized tasks, we obtain new state of the art results with combination of models, that is significantly better than performance of any individual model. Obtained perplexity reductions against Good-Turing trigram baseline are over 50% and against modified Kneser-Ney smoothed 5-gram over 40%.
Effects of Botulinum Toxin on Pathophysiology in Spasmodic Dysphonia

To determine the mechanism of symptom relief with treatment by botulinum toxin injection in persons with adductor spasmodic dysphonia (ADSD), we evaluated the effects of unilateral thyroarytenoid muscle injections on both injected and noninjected muscles in 10 subjects with ADSD, using electromyography on both sides of the larynx before and after treatment. The subjects' speech symptoms were reduced (p = .005) 2 weeks following injection, when the electromyographic study occurred. Muscle activation levels and the numbers of spasmodic muscle bursts decreased significantly (p ≤ .03) postinjection in both the injected and noninjected muscles. The reductions in laryngeal muscle bursts correlated with symptom reduction (r ≥ .7) in all muscles. Reductions in laryngeal muscle bursts did not relate to either absolute or normalized levels of muscle activity before or after botulinum toxin injection. The results suggest that changes in the central pathophysiology are responsible for changes in speech symptoms following treatment.
A Proof-of-Concept Demonstration of Visual Teach and Repeat on a Quadrocopter Using an Altitude Sensor and a Monocular Camera

This paper applies an existing vision-based navigation algorithm to a micro aerial vehicle (MAV). The algorithm has previously been used for long-range navigation of ground robots based on on-board 3D vision sensors such as a stereo or Kinect cameras. A teach-and-repeat operational strategy enables a robot to autonomously repeat a manually taught route without relying on an external positioning system such as GPS. For MAVs we show that a monocular downward looking camera combined with an altitude sensor can be used as 3D vision sensor replacing other resource-expensive 3D vision solutions. The paper also includes a simple path tracking controller that uses feedback from the visual and inertial sensors to guide the vehicle along a straight and level path. Preliminary experimental results demonstrate reliable, accurate and fully autonomous flight of an 8-m-long (straight and level) route, which was taught with the quadrocopter fixed to a cart. Finally, we present the successful flight of a more complex, 16-m-long route.
The Spectra of Random Graphs with Given Expected Degrees

In the study of the spectra of power law graphs, there are basically two competing approaches. One is to prove analogues of Wigner's semicircle law while the other predicts that the eigenvalues follow a power law distributions. Although the semicircle law and the power law have nothing in common, we will show that both approaches are essentially correct if one considers the appropriate matrices. We will show that (under certain conditions) the eigenvalues of the (normalized) Laplacian of a random power law graph follow the semicircle law while the spectrum of the adjacency matrix of a power law graph obeys the power law. Our results are based on the analysis of random graphs with given expected degrees and their relations to several key invariants. Of interest are a number of (new) values for the exponent β where phase transitions for eigenvalue distributions occur. The spectrum distributions have direct implications to numerous graph algorithms such as randomized algorithms that involve rapidly mixing Markov chains, for example.1
DPP-4 Inhibitor–Related Pancreatitis: Rare but Real!

Following the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Guidance issued in 2008 to demonstrate cardiovascular safety for the purpose of regulatory approval of new glucose-lowering agents for type 2 diabetes management, the number of placebo-controlled randomized clinical trials has increased exponentially. As previously proposed by members of the Diabetes Care editorial committee (1), these regulatory-required large cardiovascular outcome trials (CVOTs) can provide unique opportunities to learn more about the overall safety and potential off-target effects of these new drugs beyond their cardiovascular safety. Carefully conducted pooled analyses of patient-level data emanating from these CVOTs can better estimate potential adverse events that may occur infrequently or perhaps may only be seen as tenuous inconclusive signals in smaller, shorter duration, randomized controlled phase 3 trials or may emerge once the new agents are widely prescribed in clinical practice. Indeed, one such adverse event is acute pancreatitis related to incretin-based therapies consistently noted as numerical imbalances occurring in many randomized clinical trials (2). Acute pancreatitis has been a safety issue of major controversy with conflicting reports from observational retrospective studies often based on administrative insurance and prescription claim data and/or clinical practice registries. So far, reliable assessments of the relationship between pancreatitis and dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP-4) inhibitors and glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists based on these observational reports have been hampered by the inherent methodological shortcomings with limitations such as confounding by indication, missing data, lag-time biases, unknown residual confounding, etc. (3). Even rigorously conducted epidemiological analyses adjusting for multiple confounders cannot provide definitive answers (4). The FDA MedWatch reporting system is another unreliable source with incomplete clinical information often influenced by the media and difficult to interpret without data on the denominator. Large-scale CVOTs have now been reported for three DPP-4 inhibitors: saxagliptin, alogliptin, and sitagliptin (5–7). There were …
Author Manuscript, Published in "international Symposium on Non-photorealistic Animation and Rendering (npar) Structure-preserving Manipulation of Photographs

Figure 1: Our approach takes as input an image (left), and allows a user to manipulate its structure in order to create abstracted or enhanced output images. Here we show a line drawing with line thickness proportional to their structural importance (middle), and a reconstruction of color information that focuses on the bee and removes detail around it (right). Abstract Visual content is often better communicated by simplified or exaggerated images than by the " real world like " images. In this paper, we offer a tool for creating such enhanced representations of photographs in a way consistent with the original image content. To do so, we develop a method to identify the relevant image structures and their importance. Our approach (a) uses edges as the basic structural unit in the image, (b) proposes tools to manipulate this structure in a flexible way, and (c) employs gradient domain image processing techniques to reconstruct the final image from a " cropped " gradient information. This edge-based approach to non-photorealistic image processing is made feasible by two new techniques we introduce: an addition to the Gaussian scale space theory to compute a perceptually meaningful hierarchy of structures, and a contrast estimation method necessary for faithful gradient-based reconstructions. We finally present various applications that manipulate image structure in different ways.
Crowdsourced Multi-View Live Video Streaming using Cloud Computing

Advances and commoditization of media generation devices enable capturing and sharing of any special event by multiple attendees. We propose a novel system to collect individual video streams (views) captured for the same event by multiple attendees, and combine them into multi-view videos, where viewers can watch the event from various angles, taking crowdsourced media streaming to a new immersive level. The proposed system is called Cloud-based Multi-View Crowdsourced Streaming (CMVCS), and it delivers multiple views of an event to viewers at the best possible video representation based on each viewer’s available bandwidth. The CMVCS is a complex system having many research challenges. In this paper, we focus on resource allocation of the CMVCS system. The objective of the study is to maximize the overall viewer satisfaction by allocating available resources to transcode views in an optimal set of representations, subject to computational and bandwidth constraints. We choose the video representation set to maximize QoE using Mixed Integer Programming. Moreover, we propose a Fairness-Based Representation Selection (FBRS) heuristic algorithm to solve the resource allocation problem efficiently. We compare our results with optimal and Top-N strategies. The simulation results demonstrate that FBRS generates near optimal results and outperforms the state-of-the-art Top-N policy, which is used by a large-scale system (Twitch).
Distinguishing adolescents who think about self-harm from those who engage in self-harm.

BACKGROUND Adolescent self-harm is a major public health concern, yet little is known about the factors that distinguish adolescents who think about self-harm but do not act on these thoughts from those who act on such thoughts. AIMS Within a new theoretical model, the integrated motivational-volitional model, we investigated factors associated with adolescents having thoughts of self-harm (ideators) v. those associated with self-harm enaction (enactors). METHOD Observational study of school pupils employing an anonymous self-report survey to compare three groups of adolescents: self-harm enactors (n = 628) v. self-harm ideators (n = 675) v. those without any self-harm history (n = 4219). RESULTS Enactors differed from ideators on all of the volitional factors. Relative to ideators, enactors were more likely to have a family member/close friend who had self-harmed, more likely to think that their peers engaged in self-harm and they were more impulsive than the ideators. Enactors also reported more life stress than ideators. Conversely, the two self-harm groups did not differ on any of the variables associated with the development of self-harm thoughts. CONCLUSIONS As more adolescents think about self-harm than engage in it, a better understanding of the factors that govern behavioural enaction is crucial in the effective assessment of the risk of self-harm.
Fast performance analysis of bus-based system-on-chip communication architectures

This paper addresses the problem of efficient and accurate performance analysis to drive the exploration and design of bus-based system-on-chip (SOC) communication architectures. Our technique fills a gap in existing techniques for system-level performance analysis, which are either too slow to use in an iterative communication architecture design framework (e.g., simulation of the complete system), or are not accurate enough to drive the design of the communication architecture (e.g., techniques that perform a static analysis of the system performance). The proposed system-level performance analysis technique consists of: initial co-simulation performed after HW/SW partitioning and mapping, with the communication between components modeled in an abstract manner (e.g., as events or data transfers); extraction of abstracted symbolic traces, represented as a bus and synchronization event (BSE) graph, that captures the activity of the various system components and their communication over time; and manipulation of the BSE graph using the bus parameters, to derive the behavior of the system accounting for effects of the bus architecture. We present experimental results on several example systems, including a TCP/IP network interface card sub-system. The results indicate that our performance estimation technique is over two orders of magnitude faster than performing a complete system simulation, while being very accurate (within 2.2% of performance estimates derived from accurate HW/SW co-simulation).
Parametric Yield Modeling and Simulations of FPGA Circuits Considering Within-Die Delay Variations

Variations in the semiconductor fabrication process results in differences in parameters between transistors on the same die, a problem exacerbated by lithographic scaling. Field-Programmable Gate Arrays may be able to compensate for within-die delay variability, by judicious use of reconfigurability. This article presents two strategies for compensating within-die stochastic delay variability by using reconfiguration: reconfiguring the entire FPGA, and relocating subcircuits within an FPGA. Analytical models for the theoretical bounds on the achievable gains are derived for both strategies and compared to models for worst-case design as well as statistical static timing analysis (SSTA). All models are validated by comparison to circuit-level Monte Carlo simulations. It is demonstrated that significant improvements in circuit yield and timing are possible using SSTA alone, and these improvements can be enhanced by employing reconfiguration-based techniques.
Best-First Search for Treewidth

Finding the exact treewidth of a graph is central to many operations in a variety of areas, including probabilistic reasoning and constraint satisfaction. Treewidth can be found by searching over the space of vertex elimination orders. This search space differs from those where best-first search is typically applied, because a solution path is evaluated by its maximum edge cost instead of the sum of its edge costs. We show how to make best-first search admissible on max-cost problem spaces. We also employ breadth-first heuristic search to reduce the memory requirement while still eliminating all duplicate nodes in the search space. Our empirical results show that our algorithms find the exact treewidth an order of magnitude faster than the previous state-of-the-art algorithm on hard benchmark graphs.