Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A mm-Sized Wireless Implantable Device for Electrical Stimulation of Peripheral Nerves

A wireless electrical stimulation implant for peripheral nerves, achieving >10× improvement over state of the art in the depth/volume figure of merit, is presented. The fully integrated implant measures just 2 mm × 3 mm × 6.5 mm (39 mm3, 78 mg), and operates at a large depth of 10.5 cm in a tissue phantom. The implant is powered using ultrasound and includes a miniaturized piezoelectric receiver (piezo), an IC designed in 180 nm HV BCD process, an off-chip energy storage capacitor, and platinum stimulation electrodes. The package also includes an optional blue light-emitting diode for potential applications in optogenetic stimulation in the future. A system-level design strategy for complete operation of the implant during the charging transient of the storage capacitor, as well as a unique downlink command/data transfer protocol, is presented. The implant enables externally programmable current-controlled stimulation of peripheral nerves, with a wide range of stimulation parameters, both for electrical (22 to 5000 μA amplitude, ∼14 to 470 μs pulse-width, 0 to 60 Hz repetition rate) and optical (up to 23 mW/mm2 optical intensity) stimulation. Additionally, the implant achieves 15 V compliance voltage for chronic applications. Full integration of the implant components, end-to-end in vitro system characterizations, and results for the electrical stimulation of a sciatic nerve, demonstrate the feasibility and efficacy of the proposed stimulator for peripheral nerves.
Identifying Characteristic Physiological Patterns of Parkinson's Disease Sufferers using Sample Entropy of Pulse Waves

In this study, we identify characteristic physiological patterns of Parkinson’s disease patients, through analysis of the data of their pulse waves. We find that the sample entropy values of pulse waves, with certain parameters fix (In this case, we define the sample entropy value as “border of Parkinson entropy”, or BPE), is statistically different between Parkinson’s disease sufferers and healthy individuals. In addition, values of the largest Lyapunov exponent computed from the same data are also analysed, and significant difference between the two groups are observed. At the end, we describe an Android tablet that we developed for real-time measurement and analysis of BPE.
Contributions of Electric and Acoustic Hearing to Bimodal Speech and Music Perception

Cochlear implant (CI) users have difficulty understanding speech in noisy listening conditions and perceiving music. Aided residual acoustic hearing in the contralateral ear can mitigate these limitations. The present study examined contributions of electric and acoustic hearing to speech understanding in noise and melodic pitch perception. Data was collected with the CI only, the hearing aid (HA) only, and both devices together (CI+HA). Speech reception thresholds (SRTs) were adaptively measured for simple sentences in speech babble. Melodic contour identification (MCI) was measured with and without a masker instrument; the fundamental frequency of the masker was varied to be overlapping or non-overlapping with the target contour. Results showed that the CI contributes primarily to bimodal speech perception and that the HA contributes primarily to bimodal melodic pitch perception. In general, CI+HA performance was slightly improved relative to the better ear alone (CI-only) for SRTs but not for MCI, with some subjects experiencing a decrease in bimodal MCI performance relative to the better ear alone (HA-only). Individual performance was highly variable, and the contribution of either device to bimodal perception was both subject- and task-dependent. The results suggest that individualized mapping of CIs and HAs may further improve bimodal speech and music perception.
Sensing in a noisy world: lessons from auditory specialists, echolocating bats

ABSTRACT All animals face the essential task of extracting biologically meaningful sensory information from the ‘noisy’ backdrop of their environments. Here, we examine mechanisms used by echolocating bats to localize objects, track small prey and communicate in complex and noisy acoustic environments. Bats actively control and coordinate both the emission and reception of sound stimuli through integrated sensory and motor mechanisms that have evolved together over tens of millions of years. We discuss how bats behave in different ecological scenarios, including detecting and discriminating target echoes from background objects, minimizing acoustic interference from competing conspecifics and overcoming insect noise. Bats tackle these problems by deploying a remarkable array of auditory behaviors, sometimes in combination with the use of other senses. Behavioral strategies such as ceasing sonar call production and active jamming of the signals of competitors provide further insight into the capabilities and limitations of echolocation. We relate these findings to the broader topic of how animals extract relevant sensory information in noisy environments. While bats have highly refined abilities for operating under noisy conditions, they face the same challenges encountered by many other species. We propose that the specialized sensory mechanisms identified in bats are likely to occur in analogous systems across the animal kingdom. Summary: Researchers use echolocating bats – with their adaptations for sound production and reception – as models for understanding how animals sense and communicate in noisy environments.
Relationship Between Quality of Comorbid Condition Care and Costs for Cancer Survivors.

PURPOSE To estimate the association between cancer survivors' comorbid condition care quality and costs; to determine whether the association differs between cancer survivors and other patients. METHODS Using the SEER-Medicare-linked database, we identified survivors of breast, prostate, and colorectal cancers who were diagnosed in 2004, enrolled in Medicare fee-for-service for at least 12 months before diagnosis, and survived ≥ 3 years. Quality of care was assessed using nine process indicators for chronic conditions, and a composite indicator representing seven avoidable outcomes. Total costs on the basis of Medicare amount paid were grouped as inpatient and outpatient. We examined the association between care quality and costs for cancer survivors, and compared this association among 2:1 frequency-matched noncancer controls, using comparisons of means and generalized linear regressions. RESULTS Our sample included 8,661 cancer survivors and 17,332 matched noncancer controls. Receipt of recommended care was associated with higher outpatient costs for eight indicators, and higher inpatient and total costs for five indicators. For three measures (visit every 6 months for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or diabetes, and glycosylated hemoglobin or fructosamine every 6 months for patients with diabetes), costs for cancer survivors who received recommended care increased less than for noncancer controls. The absence of avoidable events was associated with lower costs of each type. An annual eye examination for patients with diabetes was associated with lower inpatient costs. CONCLUSION Higher-quality processes of care may not reduce short-term costs, but the prevention of avoidable outcomes reduces costs. The association between quality and cost was similar for cancer survivors and noncancer controls.
LSU Digital Commons LSU Digital Commons Coastal Eutrophication near the Mississippi River Delta Coastal Eutrophication near the Mississippi River Delta

CHANGES in delivery of river-borne nutrients such as dissolved phosphate, nitrate and silicate, owing to land-use changes and anthropogenic emissions, are known to result in eutrophication 1- enhanced phytoplankton blooms-and more severe hypoxic events2-4 in many enclosed bays and seas. Although similar ecolog ical effects might be expected on continental shelves, the occur rence of such eutrophication has remained unresolved 5• Here we present evidence of eutrophication of the continental shelf near the outflow of the Mississippi river, obtained by quantifying biologi cally bound silica (BSi) in diatom remnants within dated sediment cores. BSi accumulation rates are greatest in water depths of 20 to 50 m within 100 km of the river mouth, and have increased by as much as 100% this century. The increases were substantial by 1980, by which time riverine nitrogen loading had doubled relative to the beginning of the century, even though the silica loading had declined by 50% over the same period. Thus changes in river-borne nutrient loadings can modify coastal food webs and affect the amount and distribution of oxygen in bottom waters on the scale of continental shelves. The Mississippi river, the largest river of the North American continent, drains 40% of the conterminous United States, and is third, sixth and eighth largest in the world in terms of length, sediment yield and discharge, respectivell. Land-use changes this century have resulted in a doubling of dissolved nitrate con centration and a halving of dissolved silicate concentration 5. These changes and the resulting decline in the annual average dissolved Si:N (as silicate and nitrate) atomic ratio RocK samples derived from the Earth's upper mantle commonly show indirect evidence for chemical modification. Such modifi cation, or 'metasomatism', can be recognized by the precipitation of exotic minerals such as phlogopite, amphibole or apatite 1, and by the overprinting of the bulk compositions of the mantle rocks by a chemical signature involving the enrichment of potassium and other 'incompatible' elements 2• Here we study the composition of the metasomatic agents more directly by examining melt and fluid inclusions trapped in mantle minerals. These inclusions are second ary, forming trails along healed fracture planes_ A systematic study of the chemical compositions and entrapment temperatures and pressures of inclusions from 14 ultramafic peridotites from both continental and oceanic intraplate regions shows that volatile- and silica-rich metasomatic melts are present throughout the litho sphere. Their compositions,
Protein Turnover in Aging and Longevity

Progressive loss of proteostasis is a hallmark of aging that is marked by declines in various components of proteostasis machinery, including: autophagy, ubiquitin‐mediated degradation, protein synthesis, and others. While declines in proteostasis have historically been observed as changes in these processes, or as bulk changes in the proteome, recent advances in proteomic methodologies have enabled the comprehensive measurement of turnover directly at the level of individual proteins in vivo. These methods, which utilize a combination of stable‐isotope labeling, mass spectrometry, and specialized software analysis, have now been applied to various studies of aging and longevity. Here we review the role of proteostasis in aging and longevity, with a focus on the proteomic methods available to conduct protein turnover in aging models and the insights these studies have provided thus far.
Real-time usage forecasting for bike-sharing systems: A study on random forest and convolutional neural network applicability

In this paper, we present a system that has been developed to facilitate the collection and use of Bike-Sharing Systems data for research, notably to develop and compare bike usage forecasting algorithms. We collected internal and external data for six different European cities and developed a system providing short and long-term predictions of bikes and slots availabilities for bike-sharing stations in real-time. In order to provide the best predictions, we developed and compared the performances of two types of algorithm; the first one is based on the state-of-the-art Random Forest algorithm and the second one is based on Convolutional Neural Networks. Our study demonstrates their applicability, showing better accuracy for short-term predictions with the Random Forest algorithm and better long-term prediction accuracy with the Convolutional Neural Networks algorithm.
Learning to Segment Every Thing

Most methods for object instance segmentation require all training examples to be labeled with segmentation masks. This requirement makes it expensive to annotate new categories and has restricted instance segmentation models to ~100 well-annotated classes. The goal of this paper is to propose a new partially supervised training paradigm, together with a novel weight transfer function, that enables training instance segmentation models on a large set of categories all of which have box annotations, but only a small fraction of which have mask annotations. These contributions allow us to train Mask R-CNN to detect and segment 3000 visual concepts using box annotations from the Visual Genome dataset and mask annotations from the 80 classes in the COCO dataset. We evaluate our approach in a controlled study on the COCO dataset. This work is a first step towards instance segmentation models that have broad comprehension of the visual world.
A New High Sensitivity System to Detect Instabilities During the Extrusion of Polymer Melts

This publication is concerned with the development of a novel high sensitivity instability detection die for a laboratory size extruder. The high sensitivity detection system consists of piezoelectric transducers placed along the die length to monitor local pressure fluctuations, having temporal and pressure resolutions of up to ∆t ~ 10−3 s and ∆p ~ 10−5 bar, at a nominal pressure of 500 bar. The system is tested on short chain branched polyethylenes, namely on the detection and characterization of the sharkskin instability. It is shown that the determined instabilities are related to characteristic peaks in the corresponding in-situ pressure Fourier-transform spectra and that other peaks are caused by different, but defined, sources. The in situ results obtained are validated through optical image analysis of the instabilities. The implementation of high sensitivity detection systems on industrial processing equipment could lead to new methods for online process optimization, specifically maximum processing throughput at minimum energy consumption, and additionally in quality control.
An Initial Application of a Biopsychosocial Framework to Predict Posttraumatic Stress Following Pediatric Injury

Objective: Each year millions of children suffer from unintentional injuries that result in poor emotional and physical health. This study examined selected biopsychosocial factors (i.e., child heart rate, peritrauma appraisals, early coping, trauma history) to elucidate their roles in promoting emotional recovery following injury. The study evaluated specific hypotheses that threat appraisals (global and trauma-specific) and coping would predict subsequent posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), that coping would mediate the association between early and later PTSS, and that heart rate would predict PTSS and appraisals would mediate this association. Method: Participants were 96 children hospitalized for injury and assessed at 3 time points: T1 (within 2 weeks of injury), T2 (6-week follow-up), and T3 (12-week follow-up). Participants completed measures of trauma history and appraisals at T1, coping at T2, and PTSS at T1, T2, and T3. Heart rate was abstracted from medical records. Structural equation modeling was employed to evaluate study hypotheses. Results: Heart rate was not associated with PTSS or appraisals. Models including trauma history, appraisals, coping, and PTSS were constructed to test other study hypotheses and fit the data well. T1 global and trauma-specific threat appraisals were associated with T1 PTSS; T2 avoidant coping was a significant mediator of the relation between T1 and T3 PTSS. Conclusion: Findings confirm a role for appraisals and coping in the development of PTSS over the weeks following pediatric injury. Early appraisals and avoidant coping may be appropriate targets for prevention and early intervention. Future researchers should further explicate the utility of a biopsychosocial framework in predicting PTSS.
Comparative characterization of CD271+ and CD271− subpopulations of CD34+ human adipose‐derived stromal cells

Adipose‐derived stromal/stem cells (ASCs) are promising candidates for cell‐based therapies. However, the lack of markers able to unequivocally identify these cells, the differential expression of cell surface molecules among stromal progenitors from different tissues and cellular alterations caused by culture are phenomena that need to be comprehensively addressed in order to improve ASC purification and consequently refine our knowledge about their function and therapeutic efficiency. In this study, we investigated the potential of CD271, a marker used for purification of bone marrow‐derived mesenchymal stem cells, on enriching ASCs from CD34+ stromal cells of human adipose tissue. Putative ASC populations were sorted based on CD271 expression (CD45−CD31−CD34+CD271+ and CD45−CD31−CD34+CD271− cells) and compared regarding their clonogenic efficiency, proliferation, immunophenotypic profile, and multilineage potential. To shed light on their native identity, we also interrogated the expression of key perivascular cell markers in freshly isolated cells. CD271− cells displayed twofold higher clonogenic efficiency than CD271+ cells. Upon culture, the progeny of both populations displayed similar immunophenotypic profile and in vitro adipogenic and chondrogenic potentials, while CD271+ cells produced more calcified extracellular matrix. Interestingly, uncultured freshly isolated CD271+ cells displayed higher expression of pericyte‐associated markers than CD271− cells and localized in the inner region of the perivascular wall. Our results demonstrate that cells with in vitro ASC traits can be obtained from both CD271+ and CD271− stromal populations of human adipose tissue. In addition, gene expression profiling and in situ localization analyses indicate that the CD271+ population displays a pericytic phenotype.
Load-compression relationships of rubber units

A theory, based on a strain-independent Young's modulus and a previously developed theory for the compression of bonded rubber blocks at small strains, is proposed to account for the load-compression characteristics of rubber units at high strains. Theoretical relationships for rubber blocks, toroidal rings, spheres and rubber-covered rollers are developed and shown to be in satisfactory agreement with experimental measurements.
Effects of polyphenolic extract from Eucommia ulmoides Oliver leaf on growth performance, digestibility, rumen fermentation and antioxidant status of fattening lambs.

To investigate the effects of polyphenolic extract from Eucommia ulmoides Oliver leaf (PEEU) on growth performance, digestibility, rumen fermentation and antioxidant status of fattening lambs, 30 weaned male Huzhou lambs were equally divided into three treatments and fed the basal diet supplemented with 0 (CON), 5 (PEEU5) or 10 (PEEU10) g/kg PEEU. Dietary PEEU supplementation did not affect growth performance and apparent digestibility of nutrients. Compared with the CON group, lambs in the PEEU10 group had lower ammonia nitrogen concentration (p < .01) and acetic acid to propionic acid ratio (p < .05) and higher the molar proportion of propionate (p < .05) in rumen fluid. Ammonia nitrogen concentration (p < .01) and the molar proportion of propionate (p < .05) were affected by an interaction between PEEU and sampling day. Dietary PEEU supplementation at 10 g/kg increased total antioxidant capacity (p < .05), superoxide dismutase (p < .05) and glutathione peroxidase (p < .01) activities in serum and glutathione peroxidase activity (p < .05) in liver and decreased (p < .05) malondialdehyde content in serum and liver compared with the CON group. In conclusion, dietary PEEU supplementation affected rumen fermentation patterns and improved antioxidant status of fattening lambs.
Association between preoperative anaemia with length of hospital stay among patients undergoing primary total knee arthroplasty in Singapore: a single-centre retrospective study

Objectives Studies in western healthcare settings suggest that preoperative anaemia is associated with poor outcomes after elective orthopaedic surgery. We investigated the prevalence of preoperative anaemia among patients with primary unilateral total knee arthroplasty (TKA) in Singapore and its association with length of hospital stay (LOS), perioperative blood transfusion and hospital readmission rates. Methods Retrospective cohort study performed in a tertiary academic medical centre in Singapore, involving patients who underwent primary unilateral TKA between January 2013 and June 2014. Demographics, comorbidities, preoperative haemoglobin (Hb) level, LOS and 30-day readmission data were collected. Anaemia was classified according to WHO definition. Prolonged LOS was defined as more than 6 days, which corresponds to >75th centile LOS of the data. Results We analysed 2394 patients. The prevalence of anaemia was 23.7%. 403 patients (16.8%) had mild anaemia and 164 patients (6.8%) had moderate to severe anaemia. Overall mean LOS was 5.4±4.8 days. Based on multivariate logistic regression, preoperative anaemia significantly increased LOS (mild anaemia, adjusted OR (aOR) 1.71, p<0.001; moderate/severe anaemia, aOR 2.29, p<0.001). Similar effects were seen when preoperative anaemia was defined by Hb level below 13 g/dL, regardless of gender. Transfusion proportionately increased prolonged LOS (1 unit: aOR 2.12, p=0.006; 2 or more units: aOR 6.71, p<0.001). Repeat operation during hospital stay, previous cerebrovascular accidents, general anaesthesia and age >70 years were associated with prolonged LOS. Our 30-day related readmission rate was 1.7% (42) cases. Conclusion Anaemia is common among patients undergoing elective TKA in Singapore and is independently associated with prolonged LOS and increased perioperative blood transfusion. We suggest measures to correct anaemia prior to surgery, including the use of non-gender-based Hb cut-off for establishing diagnosis.
Elevated microRNA-135a is associated with pulmonary arterial hypertension in experimental mouse model

Multiple causes are associated with the complex mechanism of pathogenesis of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), but the molecular pathway in the pathogenesis of PAH is still insufficiently understood. In this study, we investigated epigenetic changes that cause PAH induced by exposure to combined Th2 antigen (Ovalbumin, OVA) and urban particulate matter (PM) in mice. To address that, we focused on the epigenetic mechanism, linked to microRNA (miR)-135a. We found that miR-135a levels were significantly increased, and levels of bone morphogenetic protein receptor type II (BMPR2) which is the target of miR-135a, were significantly decreased in this experimental PAH mouse model. Therefore to evaluate the role of miR-135a, we injected AntagomiR-135a into this mouse model. AntagomiR-135a injected mice showed decreased right ventricular systolic pressures (RVSPs), right ventricular hypertrophy (RVH), and the percentage of severely thickened pulmonary arteries compared to control scrambled miRNA injected mice. Both mRNA and protein expression of BMPR2 were recovered in the AntagomiR-135a injected mice compared to control mice. Our study understands if miR-135a could serve as a biomarker helping to manage PAH. The blocking of miR-135a could lead to new therapeutic modalities to alleviate exacerbation of PAH caused by exposure to Th2 antigen and urban air pollution.