Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Cross-sectional Study of Chest Kinematics and VO2 in Children With Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis During Steady-state Walking

Study Design. A cross-sectional study. Objective. The aim of this study was to identify the differences in oxygen consumption in children with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) and age-matched control subjects using traditional methods and chest kinematics. Summary of Background Data. AIS is a disorder affecting 2 to 3% of children between the ages of 10 and 16 and accounts for up to 85% of all scoliosis cases. The spinal deformities and subsequent rib conformational changes associated with AIS can have a significant deleterious effect on the oxygen consumption for children with mild to severe scoliosis. Previous studies found that the oxygen consumption in children with AIS was significantly more than that of peers and during walking require more energy than typically developing children. Methods. Thirty children (four male, 26 female), 11.7 to 18.7 years of age, were enrolled: 15 adolescent children diagnosed with mild to moderate AIS (mean cobb angle 36.2 degrees) and 15 matched adolescents. Oxygen consumption during steady-state treadmill walking was measured using a traditional methods and simultaneous kinematic analysis of the chest wall. Results. There were no significant differences in the volume of oxygen consumed in any of the phases of treadmill walking (resting, exercise, and recovery) or in breath per minute ventilation and tidal volume between control subjects and children with scoliosis (P > 0.05). Significant differences were found between assessment methods, with the kinematic analysis overestimating the average tidal volume while walking (P < 0.05). Conclusion. Children with mild to moderate AIS and typically developing children do not demonstrate oxygen consumption differences when walking at a steady state on a treadmill. However, kinematic analysis of the chest wall tends to overestimate the tidal volume when walking. An offset equation is required for some variables when using kinematic data to assess oxygen consumption in children who would otherwise not comply with traditional oxygen consumption testing. Level of Evidence: 3
Prospective Discrimination of Controllers From Progressors Early After Low-Dose Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infection of Cynomolgus Macaques using Blood RNA Signatures

The cynomolgus macaque model of low-dose Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection recapitulates clinical aspects of human tuberculosis pathology, but it is unknown whether the 2 systems are sufficiently similar that host-based signatures of tuberculosis will be predictive across species. By blind prediction, we demonstrate that a subset of genes comprising a human signature for tuberculosis risk is simultaneously predictive in humans and macaques and prospectively discriminates progressor from controller animals 3-6 weeks after infection. Further analysis yielded a 3-gene signature involving PRDX2 that predicts tuberculosis progression in macaques 10 days after challenge, suggesting novel pathways that define protective responses to M. tuberculosis.
Genesis and Dissemination of Highly Pathogenic H5N6 Avian Influenza Viruses

ABSTRACT Clade 2.3. 4.4 highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses (H5Nx) have spread from Asia to other parts of the world. Since 2014, human infections with clade 2.3. 4.4 highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N6 viruses have been continuously reported in China. To investigate the genesis of the virus, we analyzed 123 H5 or N6 environmental viruses sampled from live-poultry markets or farms from 2012 to 2015 in Mainland China. Our results indicated that clade 2.3. 4.4 H5N2/N6/N8 viruses shared the same hemagglutinin gene as originated in early 2009. From 2012 to 2015, the genesis of highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N6 viruses occurred via two independent pathways. Three major reassortant H5N6 viruses (reassortants A, B, and C) were generated. Internal genes of reassortant A and B viruses and reassortant C viruses derived from clade 2.3. 2.1c H5N1 and H9N2 viruses, respectively. Many mammalian adaption mutations and antigenic variations were detected among the three reassortant viruses. Considering their wide circulation and dynamic reassortment in poultry, we highly recommend close monitoring of the viruses in poultry and humans. IMPORTANCE Since 2014, clade 2.3. 4.4 highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5Nx) viruses have caused many outbreaks in both wild and domestic birds globally. Severe human cases with novel H5N6 viruses in this group were also reported in China in 2014 and 2015. To investigate the genesis of the genetic diversity of these H5N6 viruses, we sequenced 123 H5 or N6 environmental viruses sampled from 2012 to 2015 in China. Sequence analysis indicated that three major reassortants of these H5N6 viruses had been generated by two independent evolutionary pathways. The H5N6 reassortant viruses had been detected in most provinces of southern China and neighboring countries. Considering the mammalian adaption mutations and antigenic variation detected, the spread of these viruses should be monitored carefully due to their pandemic potential.
Profile of secukinumab in the treatment of psoriasis: current perspectives

Secukinumab (Cosentyx™) is a human monoclonal IgG1k antibody that has been developed to target and block the actions of IL-17A. It is known that this cytokine is elevated in lesions of psoriasis. Interleukins in the Th17 pathway play a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of psoriasis and have thus become targets for recent biologic drug development. As a monoclonal antibody immune modulator, secukinumab exhibits the expected pharmacokinetic properties of slow subcutaneous absorption, low clearance, and long half-life, although formal studies examining the impact of impaired hepatic or renal function on the overall pharmacokinetic profile have not been conducted. Both Phase II and III clinical trials have demonstrated the effectiveness of secukinumab in the treatment of moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, and noninfectious uveitis. In June 2015, secukinumab was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of adults with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis, with a wealth of clinical trials showcasing its efficacy in improving psoriasis area and severity index scores, and it is superior to other comparable biologics on the market, including the TNF inhibitor etanercept. As such, this review focuses on the marquee clinical trials involving secukinumab treatment of plaque psoriasis, while also exploring this drug’s efficacy in treating patients with psoriatic arthritis, a disease that has a well-documented comorbidity in patients diagnosed with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis. Finally, the safety and tolerability of this drug in a variety of clinical trials to date have also been reviewed, and will undoubtedly have a large impact on this drug’s postmarketing surveillance and future studies regarding its long-term safety.
The UPennalizers RoboCup Standard Platform League Team Description Paper 2017

This paper presents the current research and software system for humanoid soccer robots developed by the UPennalizers the robot soccer team from University of Pennsylvania. The team has been involved in RoboCup for over a decade to foster the research in the areas of robotic vision, machine learning, motion control and artificial intelligence. The current software system integrates perception, locomotion and behavior modules together to enable a team of robots to play soccer autonomously. This work mainly describes the improvements made across all modules for the preparation of the RoboCup 2017 Standard Platform League (SPL) competition in Nagoya, Japan.
Detecting Alzheimer's Disease Using Gated Convolutional Neural Network from Audio Data

We propose an automatic detection method of Alzheimer's diseases using a gated convolutional neural network (GCNN) from speech data. This GCNN can be trained with a relatively small amount of data and can capture the temporal information in audio paralinguistic features. Since it does not utilize any linguistic features, it can be easily applied to any languages. We evaluated our method using Pitt Corpus. The proposed method achieved the accuracy of 73.6%, which is better than the conventional sequential minimal optimization (SMO) by 7.6 points.
The Role of Surge Pricing on a Service Platform with Self-Scheduling Capacity

Recent platforms, like Uber and Lyft, offer service to consumers via "self-scheduling" providers who decide for themselves how often to work. These platforms may charge consumers prices and pay providers wages that both adjust based on prevailing demand conditions. For example, Uber uses a "surge pricing" policy, which pays providers a fixed commission of its dynamic price. With a stylized model that yields analytical and numerical results, we study several pricing schemes that could be implemented on a service platform, including surge pricing. We find that the optimal contract substantially increases the platform's profit relative to contracts that have a fixed price or fixed wage or both, and although surge pricing is not optimal, it generally achieves nearly the optimal profit. Despite its merits for the platform, surge pricing has been criticized because of concerns for the welfare of providers and consumers. In our model, as labor becomes more expensive, providers and consumers are better off with surge pricing because providers are better utilized and consumers benefit both from lower prices during normal demand and expanded access to service during peak demand. We conclude, in contrast to popular criticism, that all stakeholders can benefit from the use of surge pricing on a platform with self-scheduling capacity. The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2017. 0618 .
Interpreting the Relationship between Galaxy Luminosity, Color, and Environment

We study the relationship between galaxy luminosity, color, and environment in a cosmological simulation of galaxy formation. Using a simple prescription to assign colors and luminosities to simulated galaxies, we compare the predicted relationship with that observed for SDSS galaxies and find that the model successfully predicts most of the qualitative features seen in the data, but also shows some interesting differences. Specifically, the simulation predicts that the local density around bright red galaxies is a strong increasing function of luminosity, but does not depend much on color at fixed luminosity. Moreover, we show that these trends are due to central galaxies in dark matter halos whose baryonic masses correlate strongly with halo mass. The simulation also predicts that the local density around blue galaxies is a strong increasing function of color, but does not depend much on luminosity at fixed color. We show that these trends are due to satellite galaxies in halos whose stellar ages correlate with halo mass. Finally, the simulation fails to predict the luminosity dependence of environments observed around low-luminosity red galaxies. However, we show that this is most likely due to the simulation's limited resolution. A study of a higher resolution, smaller volume simulation suggests that this dependence is caused by the fact that all low-luminosity red galaxies are satellites in massive halos, whereas intermediate-luminosity red galaxies are a mixture of satellites in massive halos, and central galaxies in less massive halos.
Super-resolution imaging of synaptic and Extra-synaptic AMPA receptors with different-sized fluorescent probes

Previous studies tracking AMPA receptor (AMPAR) diffusion at synapses observed a large mobile extrasynaptic AMPAR pool. Using super-resolution microscopy, we examined how fluorophore size and photostability affected AMPAR trafficking outside of, and within, post-synaptic densities (PSDs) from rats. Organic fluorescent dyes (≈4 nm), quantum dots, either small (≈10 nm diameter; sQDs) or big (>20 nm; bQDs), were coupled to AMPARs via different-sized linkers. We find that >90% of AMPARs labeled with fluorescent dyes or sQDs were diffusing in confined nanodomains in PSDs, which were stable for 15 min or longer. Less than 10% of sQD-AMPARs were extrasynaptic and highly mobile. In contrast, 5–10% of bQD-AMPARs were in PSDs and 90–95% were extrasynaptic as previously observed. Contrary to the hypothesis that AMPAR entry is limited by the occupancy of open PSD ‘slots’, our findings suggest that AMPARs rapidly enter stable ‘nanodomains’ in PSDs with lifetime >15 min, and do not accumulate in extrasynaptic membranes.
Comparison between electromagnetic transponders and radiographic imaging for prostate localization: A pelvic phantom study with rotations and translations

Abstract The aim of this study was to evaluate the differences in target localization between Calypso®, kV orthogonal imaging and cone‐beam computed tomography (CBCT) for combined translations and rotations of an anthropomorphic pelvic phantom. The phantom was localized using all three systems in 50 different positions, with applied translational and rotational offsets randomly sampled from representative normal distributions of prostate motion. Lin's concordance correlation coefficient (ρc) and 95% confidence intervals were calculated to assess the agreement between the localization systems. Mean differences and difference vectors between the three systems were also calculated. Agreement between systems for lateral, vertical, and longitudinal translations was excellent, with ρc values of greater than 0.98 between all three systems in all axes. There was excellent agreement between the systems for rotations around the lateral axis (pitch) (ρc > 0.99), and around the vertical axis (yaw) (ρc > 0.97). However, somewhat poorer agreement for rotations around the longitudinal axis (roll) was observed, with the lowest correlation observed between Calypso and kV orthogonal imaging (ρc = 0.895). Mean differences between the phantom position reported by Calypso and the radiographic systems were less than 1 mm and 1° for all translations and rotations. The results for translations are consistent with the publications of previous authors. There is no comparable published data for rotations. While there is lower correlation between the three systems for roll than for the other angles, the mean differences in reported rotations are not clinically significant.
Efficacy of direct hemoperfusion using polymyxin B-immobilized fiber column (PMX-DHP) in rapidly progressive interstitial pneumonias: results of a historical control study and a review of previous studies

Background: Direct hemoperfusion using polymyxin B-immobilized fiber column (PMX-DHP) therapy has been approved for sepsis-associated acute respiratory distress syndrome, but its efficacy for other rapidly progressive interstitial pneumonias (RPIPs) is unclear. The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of PMX-DHP therapy for acute respiratory failure in patients with RPIPs, when compared with a historical control receiving conventional treatment without PMX-DHP. Methods: This study comprised 77 patients with RPIPs in our institute between January 2002 and December 2015. The initial 36 patients between January 2002 and March 2007 were treated without PMX-DHP (historical control group), and the following 41 patients between April 2007 and December 2015 were treated with PMX-DHP (PMX-DHP group) once daily for two successive days concurrently with corticosteroids and/or immunosuppressive agents. The 90-day mortality and clinical factors were compared between the groups. Cox proportional hazards models were constructed to analyze 90-day mortality and identify predictors. Results: The 90-day mortality rate was significantly lower in the PMX-DHP group than in the controls (41.5% versus 66.7%, p = 0.019). PMX-DHP therapy was significantly associated with mortality (hazard ratio 0.505; 95% confidence interval, 0.270–0.904; p = 0.032). There were significant differences in the serial changes in the PaO2/FiO2 ratio, SOFA score, and blood neutrophil counts from days 0–5 after PMX-DHP between the survivor and non-survivor groups (p = 0.015, p < 0.001, p = 0.035, respectively). The improved PaO2/FiO2 ratio on day 3 significantly correlated with the change in blood neutrophil counts (rs = −0.431, p = 0.006). Conclusions: PMX-DHP therapy may be effective in RPIPs patients accompanied by acute respiratory failure and is expected to reduce mortality rates.
Towards Faster Training of Global Covariance Pooling Networks by Iterative Matrix Square Root Normalization

Global covariance pooling in convolutional neural networks has achieved impressive improvement over the classical first-order pooling. Recent works have shown matrix square root normalization plays a central role in achieving state-of-the-art performance. However, existing methods depend heavily on eigendecomposition (EIG) or singular value decomposition (SVD), suffering from inefficient training due to limited support of EIG and SVD on GPU. Towards addressing this problem, we propose an iterative matrix square root normalization method for fast end-to-end training of global covariance pooling networks. At the core of our method is a meta-layer designed with loop-embedded directed graph structure. The meta-layer consists of three consecutive nonlinear structured layers, which perform pre-normalization, coupled matrix iteration and post-compensation, respectively. Our method is much faster than EIG or SVD based ones, since it involves only matrix multiplications, suitable for parallel implementation on GPU. Moreover, the proposed network with ResNet architecture can converge in much less epochs, further accelerating network training. On large-scale ImageNet, we achieve competitive performance superior to existing counterparts. By finetuning our models pre-trained on ImageNet, we establish state-of-the-art results on three challenging fine-grained benchmarks. The source code and network models will be available at http://www.peihuali. org/iSQRT-COV.
Diabetic microvascular complications: possible targets for improved macrovascular outcomes

The results of recent outcome trials challenge hypotheses that tight control of both glycohemoglobin and blood pressure diminishes macrovascular events and survival among type 2 diabetic patients. Relevant questions exist regarding the adequacy of glycohemoglobin alone as a measure of diabetes control. Are we ignoring mechanisms of vasculotoxicity (profibrosis, altered angiogenesis, hypertrophy, hyperplasia, and endothelial injury) inherent in current antihyperglycemic medications? Is the polypharmacy for lowering cholesterol, triglyceride, glucose, and systolic blood pressure producing drug interactions that are too complex to be clinically identified? We review angiotensin–aldosterone mechanisms of tissue injury that magnify microvascular damage caused by hyperglycemia and hypertension. Many studies describe interruption of these mechanisms, without hemodynamic consequence, in the preservation of function in type 1 diabetes. Possible interactions between the renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system and physiologic glycemic control (through pulsatile insulin release) suggest opportunities for further clinical investigation.
Body Size Indicators and Risk of Gallbladder Cancer: Pooled Analysis of Individual-Level Data from 19 Prospective Cohort Studies

Background: There are few established risk factors for gallbladder cancer beyond gallstones. Recent studies suggest a higher risk with high body mass index (BMI), an indicator of general heaviness, but evidence from other body size measures is lacking. Methods: Associations of adult BMI, young adult BMI, height, adult weight gain, waist circumference (WC), waist–height ratio (WHtR), hip circumference (HC), and waist–hip ratio (WHR) with gallbladder cancer risk were evaluated. Individual-level data from 1,878,801 participants in 19 prospective cohort studies (14 studies had circumference measures) were harmonized and included in this analysis. Multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression estimated hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). Results: After enrollment, 567 gallbladder cancer cases were identified during 20.1 million person-years of observation, including 361 cases with WC measures. Higher adult BMI (per 5 kg/m2, HR: 1.24; 95% CI, 1.13–1.35), young adult BMI (per 5 kg/m2, HR: 1.12; 95% CI, 1.00–1.26), adult weight gain (per 5 kg, HR: 1.07; 95% CI, 1.02–1.12), height (per 5 cm, HR: 1.10; 95% CI, 1.03–1.17), WC (per 5 cm, HR: 1.09; 95% CI, 1.02–1.17), WHtR (per 0.1 unit, HR: 1.24; 95% CI, 1.00–1.54), and HC (per 5 cm, HR: 1.13; 95% CI, 1.04–1.22), but not WHR (per 0.1 unit, HR: 1.03; 95% CI, 0.87–1.22), were associated with higher risks of gallbladder cancer, and results did not differ meaningfully by sex or other demographic/lifestyle factors. Conclusions: These findings indicate that measures of overall and central excess body weight are associated with higher gallbladder cancer risks. Impact: Excess body weight is an important, and potentially preventable, gallbladder cancer risk factor. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 26(4); 597–606. ©2017 AACR.
Descriptor : The HAM 10000 dataset , a large collection of multi-source dermatoscopic images of common pigmented skin lesions

Training of neural networks for automated diagnosis of pigmented skin lesions is hampered by the small size and lack of diversity of available datasets of dermatoscopic images. We tackle this problem by releasing the HAM10000 (“Human Against Machine with 10000 training images”) dataset. We collected dermatoscopic images from different populations acquired and stored by different modalities. Given this diversity we had to apply different acquisition and cleaning methods and developed semi-automatic workflows utilizing specifically trained neural networks. The final dataset consists of 10015 dermatoscopic images which are released as a training set for academic machine learning purposes and are publicly available through the ISIC archive. This benchmark dataset can be used for machine learning and for comparisons with human experts. Cases include a representative collection of all important diagnostic categories in the realm of pigmented lesions. More than 50% of lesions have been confirmed by pathology, while the ground truth for the rest of the cases was either follow-up, expert consensus, or confirmation by in-vivo confocal microscopy.