Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive local nonparametric regression for fast single image super-resolution

We propose a fast single image super-resolution algorithm based on adaptive local nonparametric regression. Making use of dictionary learning and regression, we learn multiple projection matrices mapping low-resolution features to their corresponding high-resolution ones directly. Different from previous linear regression that needs some constant parameters, our method would not use extra parameters for regression. We use the mutual coherence between dictionary atom and low-resolution feature as a label to reconstruct more sophisticated high-resolution feature. As we use the same form of mutual coherence as labels in both training and testing phases, our method would lead to an adaptive local linear regression model. Moreover, we investigate the statistical property of the dictionary atoms from the training features. Utilizing the learned statistical priors, our method would not only obtain more useful dictionary atoms, but also further decrease the computational time. As shown in our experimental results, the proposed method yields high-quality super-resolution images quantitatively and visually against state-of-the-art methods.
A String-Based Representation and Crossover Operator for Evolutionary Design of Dynamical Mechanisms

Robots would perform better when their mechanical structure is specifically designed for their designated task, for instance by adding spring mechanisms. However, designing such mechanisms, which match the dynamics of the robot with the task, is hard and time consuming. To assist designers, a platform that automatically designs dynamical mechanisms is needed. This letter introduces a novel string-based representation for mechanisms, including evolutionary operators, that allows an evolutionary algorithm to automatically design dynamical mechanisms for a designated task. The mechanism representation allows simultaneous optimization of topology and parameters. Simulation experiments investigate various algorithms to obtain best optimization performance. We show the efficacy of the representation, operators, and evolutionary algorithm by designing mechanisms that track straight lines and ellipses by virtue of both their kinematic and dynamic properties.
Pierre Robin Sequence: An Evidence-Based Treatment Proposal

Background: The Pierre Robin sequence (PRS) has been defined as the presence of micrognathia, glossoptosis, and respiratory obstruction in the neonatal period. Since its original description, different therapeutic approaches have been proposed obtaining different success rates, but there is no consensus about its management. Methods: A literature review was conducted in PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane databases, for the period of January,1985 to November, 2016. A number of 23 articles resulting from clinical studies, discussing diagnostic tests or therapeutic approaches, and directly or indirectly comparing diagnostic or treatment modalities were selected and assessed using the GRADE methodology. Results: After reviewing and analyzing the selected articles, an evidence-based algorithm for diagnosis and integral management of PRS patients was designed. Conclusion: Based on the anatomical principles and natural evolution of PRS, the clinical scenario must be evaluated thoroughly as a dynamic event to develop a management sequence that minimizes morbidity and mortality and accelerates patients’ reinsertion to normal life.
Epidemiology and Outcomes of Older Adults With Burn Injury: An Analysis of the National Burn Repository

Improvements in outcomes for older adults sustaining burn injuries have lagged far behind those of younger patients. As this segment of the population grows, there has been an increasing interest in better understanding the epidemiology and outcomes of injury in older adults. The National Burn Repository (NBR) provides a unique opportunity to examine burn injuries on a national level. We aimed to characterize specific injury and outcome trends in older adult with burns through analysis of the NBR. We examined the records of all patients in the NBR aged 55 and older. To characterize age effects on injury and outcomes, patients were stratified into three age categories: 55 to 64 years, 65 to 74 years, and 75 years and older. Baseline characteristics, details of hospital treatment, mortality, and disposition were compared among these three age groups using &khgr;2 or analysis of variance. Logistic regression analysis was performed to assess the impact of age on burn mortality. A total of 180,401 patient records were available from 1991 to 2005, of which 23,180 (14%) met age inclusion criteria. Mean burn size (9.6% TBSA) and percent with inhalation injury (11.3%) did not markedly differ by age. Men predominated overall (ratio 1.4:1), although women (4290) outnumbered men (3439) in the oldest age category. Length of stay per TBSA and median hospital charges increased with increasing age category, suggesting higher resource consumption with aging. Mean number of operations per patient, however, decreased with age. Mortality rates and discharge to nonindependent status increased with age. By logistic regression, the adjusted odds ratio for mortality was 2.3 (95% CI 2.1–2.7) in the 65 to 74 age group, and 5.4 (95% CI 4.8–6.1) in the oldest group when compared with the 55 to 64 age group. Mortality rates decreased significantly after 2001 across all age groups. This analysis demonstrates age-dependent differences in resource utilization and mortality risk within the older burn population and highlights the need for a national research agenda focused on management practices and outcomes in older adult with burns.
Health-related quality of life and patient reports about care outcomes in a multidisciplinary hospital intervention

Background: Patient perceptions of care and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) are important outcomes for hospitalized patients.Purpose: This study examined patient experiences with hospital care and HRQOL in individuals hospitalized at a west coast teaching hospital.Methods:We assessed patient experiences with care and HRQOL using interviews with 1,207 hospitalized, general medicine patients participating in a multidisciplinary provider team intervention at a large academic medical center. Patient outcome variables included the Picker dimensions of hospital care (Continuity and Transition, Coordination of Care, Emotional Support, Information and Education, Involvement of Family and Friends, Physical Comfort, Respect for Patient Preferences, Overall Impression), the Health Utilities Index Mark 3 (HUI-3), and the SF-12 physical (PCS-12) and mental health (MCS-12) summary scores.Results: Patients randomized to a multidisciplinary intervention reported higher emotional support (b = 3.32), t(903) = 2.01, p =. 044, and physical comfort (b = 3.49), t(863) = 2.25, p = . 025, from health care providers than did the control group, but these effects became nonsignificant after adjusting for multiple comparisons. The HUI-3, PCS-12, and MCS-12 summary scores improved significantly from baseline to the 30-day, ts(943, 919, 860) = 4.94, 2.20, and 5.31, ps < . 0001, = . 03, and < . 0001, respectively, and the 4-month follow-ups, ts(871, 919, 943) = 7.25, 8.68, and 8.08, ps < . 001, < . 001, and < . 0001, respectively, but change on these measures did not differ between intervention and control patients. Baseline health was significantly associated with patient evaluations of hospital care, but patient evaluations did not predict future health.Conclusions: There were no differences in reports and ratings of hospital care or HRQOL between the control and the intervention groups. Hence, the behavioral changes in hospital staff in the intervention group had no effect on patient-reported outcomes. Mental health at baseline was predictive of patient evaluations of the hospitalization, but evaluations of care were not associated with subsequent HRQOL. Thus, it may be important to adjust patient evaluations of hospital care for case-mix differences in health.
Damage to the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Impairs Learning from Observed Outcomes

Individuals learn both from the outcomes of their own internally generated actions (“experiential learning”) and from the observation of the consequences of externally generated actions (“observational learning”). While neuroscience research has focused principally on the neural mechanisms by which brain structures such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) support experiential learning, relatively less is known regarding how learning proceeds through passive observation. We explored the necessity of the vmPFC for observational learning by testing a group of patients with damage to the vmPFC as well as demographically matched normal comparison and brain-damaged comparison groups—and a single patient with bilateral dorsal prefrontal damage—using several value-learning tasks that required learning from direct experience, observational learning, or both. We found a specific impairment in observational learning in patients with vmPFC damage manifest in the reduced influence of previously observed rewards on current choices, despite a relatively intact capacity for experiential learning. The current study provides evidence that the vmPFC plays a critical role in observational learning, suggests that there are dissociable neural circuits for experiential and observational learning, and offers an important new extension of how the vmPFC contributes to learning and memory.
Analysis of the Impact of Negative Sampling on Link Prediction in Knowledge Graphs

Knowledge graphs are large, useful, but incomplete knowledge repositories. They encode knowledge through entities and relations which define each other through the connective structure of the graph. This has inspired methods for the joint embedding of entities and relations in continuous low-dimensional vector spaces, that can be used to induce new edges in the graph, i.e., link prediction in knowledge graphs. Learning these representations relies on contrasting positive instances with negative ones. Knowledge graphs include only positive relation instances, leaving the door open for a variety of methods for selecting negative examples. In this paper we present an empirical study on the impact of negative sampling on the learned embeddings, assessed through the task of link prediction. We use state-of-the-art knowledge graph embeddings -- \rescal , TransE, DistMult and ComplEX -- and evaluate on benchmark datasets -- FB15k and WN18. We compare well known methods for negative sampling and additionally propose embedding based sampling methods. We note a marked difference in the impact of these sampling methods on the two datasets, with the "traditional" corrupting positives method leading to best results on WN18, while embedding based methods benefiting the task on FB15k.
Beliefs about the Minds of Others Influence How We Process Sensory Information

Attending where others gaze is one of the most fundamental mechanisms of social cognition. The present study is the first to examine the impact of the attribution of mind to others on gaze-guided attentional orienting and its ERP correlates. Using a paradigm in which attention was guided to a location by the gaze of a centrally presented face, we manipulated participants' beliefs about the gazer: gaze behavior was believed to result either from operations of a mind or from a machine. In Experiment 1, beliefs were manipulated by cue identity (human or robot), while in Experiment 2, cue identity (robot) remained identical across conditions and beliefs were manipulated solely via instruction, which was irrelevant to the task. ERP results and behavior showed that participants' attention was guided by gaze only when gaze was believed to be controlled by a human. Specifically, the P1 was more enhanced for validly, relative to invalidly, cued targets only when participants believed the gaze behavior was the result of a mind, rather than of a machine. This shows that sensory gain control can be influenced by higher-order (task-irrelevant) beliefs about the observed scene. We propose a new interdisciplinary model of social attention, which integrates ideas from cognitive and social neuroscience, as well as philosophy in order to provide a framework for understanding a crucial aspect of how humans' beliefs about the observed scene influence sensory processing.
Left-truncated data with age as time scale: an alternative for survival analysis in the elderly population.

BACKGROUND The standard approach for survival analysis of the elderly population is to define the survival time as the elapsed time from entry into the study until death, and to adjust by age using stratification and regression procedures. However, the interest is in the study of the aging process and the risk factors related to it, not in the use of time-on-study as the time scale. Here, we present methods to use age as the time scale and compare inferences and interpretations with those obtained using the standard approach. METHODS A total of 1,315 individuals aged 65 years or older from the city of Barcelona, Spain, were interviewed in 1986 (baseline). The vital status of the cohort was assessed in October 1994. To illustrate the usefulness of age as time scale (alternative approach) instead of time-on-study in the survival analysis of the elderly population, both methods were used to assess the relationship between baseline functional capacity and mortality. RESULTS Using the alternative approach, we observed that 50% of the sample died at age 80.6 years; this information could not be estimated with the standard approach. Using age as a covariate in the standard analysis with time-on-study as the time scale and using age as the time scale in the alternative analysis, the association of functional capacity at baseline and mortality was of similar magnitude under both analyses. Nevertheless, using the alternative approach, relative risks were slightly lower, and the adjustment by age was tight and was not subject to the inherent assumptions in regression models of the functional relationship of independent variables with outcome. We illustrated the methods with fixed covariates (i.e., gender) and baseline values of time-dependent covariates (i.e., functional capacity), but we discussed the extension of our methods for the analysis of time-dependent covariates measured at several visits in a cohort study. Methods proposed here are easily implemented with widely available statistical software packages. CONCLUSIONS Although the use of standard survival analysis generally produces correct estimates, the use of age as time scale is deemed more appropriate for survival analysis of the elderly: Inferences are easier to interpret and final models are simpler. We therefore recommend the use of age as time scale for survival analysis of the elderly population.
- JACQUET THEORY FOR THE SPIN

Suppose F is a non-archimedean local field. The classical Godement-Jacquet theory is that one can use Schwartz-Bruhat functions on n× n matrices Mn(F ) to define the local standard L-functions on GLn. The purpose of this partly expository note is to give evidence that there is an analogous and useful “approximate” Godement-Jacquet theory for the standard L-functions on the special orthogonal groups SO(V ): One replaces GLn(F ) with GSpin(V )(F ) and Mn(F ) with Clif(V )(F ), the Clifford algebra of V . More precisely, we explain how a few different local unramified calculations for standard L-functions on SO(V ) can be done easily using Schwartz-Bruhat functions on Clif(V )(F ). We do not attempt any of the ramified or global theory of L-functions on SO(V ) using Schwartz-Bruhat functions on Clif(V ).
Chemotherapeutics-induced Oct4 expression contributes to drug resistance and tumor recurrence in bladder cancer

Cancer cells initially characterized as sensitive to chemotherapy may acquire resistance to chemotherapy and lead to tumor recurrence through the expansion of drug-resistant population. Acquisition of drug resistance to conventional chemotherapy is a major obstacle in the treatment of recurrent cancer. Here we investigated whether anticancer drugs induced Oct4 expression, thereby contributing to acquired drug resistance and tumor recurrence in bladder cancer. We identified a positive correlation of Oct4 expression with tumor recurrence in 122 clinical specimens of superficial high-grade (stages T1-2) bladder transitional cell carcinoma (TCC). Increased Oct4 levels in bladder tumors were associated with short recurrence-free intervals in the patients. Chemotherapy induced Oct4 expression in bladder cancer cells. Notably, treatment with cisplatin increased CD44-positive bladder cancer cells expressing Oct4, representing cancer stem-like cell subpopulation. Forced expression of Oct4 reduced, whereas knockdown of Oct4 enhanced, drug sensitivity in bladder cancer cells. Furthermore, tumor cells overexpressing Oct4 responded poorly to cisplatin in vivo. In regard to clinical relevance, inhibition of Oct4 by all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) synergistically increased sensitivity to cisplatin in bladder cancer cells. Furthermore, the combination of cisplatin and ATRA was superior to cisplatin alone in suppressing tumor growth. Therefore, our results provide evidence that Oct4 increases drug resistance and implicate that inhibition of Oct4 may be a therapeutic strategy to circumvent drug resistance.
Deregulation of XBP1 expression contributes to myocardial vascular endothelial growth factor‐A expression and angiogenesis during cardiac hypertrophy in vivo

Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress has been reported to be involved in many cardiovascular diseases such as atherosclerosis, diabetes, myocardial ischemia, and hypertension that ultimately result in heart failure. XBP1 is a key ER stress signal transducer and an important pro‐survival factor of the unfolded protein response (UPR) in mammalian cells. The aim of this study was to establish a role for XBP1 in the deregulation of pro‐angiogenic factor VEGF expression and potential regulatory mechanisms in hypertrophic and failing heart. Western blots showed that myocardial XBP1s protein was significantly increased in both isoproterenol (ISO)‐induced and pressure‐overload‐induced hypertrophic and failing heart compared to normal control. Furthermore, XBP1 silencing exacerbates ISO‐induced cardiac dysfunction along with a reduction of myocardial capillary density and cardiac expression of pro‐angiogenic factor VEGF‐A in vivo. Consistently, experiments in cultured cardiomyocytes H9c2 (2‐1) cells showed that UPR‐induced VEGF‐A upregulation was determined by XBP1 expression level. Importantly, VEGF‐A expression was increased in failing human heart tissue and blood samples and was correlated with the levels of XBP1. These results suggest that XBP1 regulates VEGF‐mediated cardiac angiogenesis, which contributes to the progression of adaptive hypertrophy, and might provide novel targets for prevention and treatment of heart failure.
Material Exchange in Photoreceptor Transplantation: Updating Our Understanding of Donor/Host Communication and the Future of Cell Engraftment Science

Considerable research effort has been invested into the transplantation of mammalian photoreceptors into healthy and degenerating mouse eyes. Several platforms of rod and cone fluorescent reporting have been central to refining the isolation, purification and transplantation of photoreceptors. The tracking of engrafted cells, including identifying the position, morphology and degree of donor cell integration post-transplant is highly dependent on the use of fluorescent protein reporters. Improvements in imaging and analysis of transplant recipients have revealed that donor cell fluorescent reporters can transfer into host tissue though a process termed material exchange (ME). This recent discovery has chaperoned a new era of interpretation when reviewing the field’s use of dissociated donor cell preparations, and has prompted scientists to re-examine how we use and interpret the information derived from fluorescence-based tracking tools. In this review, we describe the status of our understanding of ME in photoreceptor transplantation. In addition, we discuss the impact of this discovery on several aspects of historical rod and cone transplantation data, and provide insight into future standards and approaches to advance the field of cell engraftment.
Tumor infiltrating T lymphocytes expressing FoxP3, CCR7 or PD-1 predict the outcome of prostate cancer patients subjected to salvage radiotherapy after biochemical relapse

ABSTRACT Tumor immunologic microenvironment is strongly involved in tumor progression and the presence of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) with different phenotypes has been demonstrated to be of prognostic relevance in different malignancies. We investigated whether TIL infiltration of tumor tissues could also predict the outcome of prostate cancer patients. To this end, we carried out a retrospective analysis correlating the outcome of locally advanced prostate cancer patients undergone salvage radiotherapy upon relapse after radical surgery with the infiltration by different TIL populations. Twenty-two patients with resectable prostate cancer, with a mean age of 67 (+/−3.93) years, who received salvage radiotherapy with a mean of 69.66 (+/− 3.178) Gy in 8 weeks, between June 1999 and January 2009 and with a median follow up of 123 (+/− 55.82) months, were enrolled in this study. We evaluated, by immunohistochemistry, the intratumoral (t) and peripheral stroma (p) infiltration by CD45, CD3, CD4, CD8, CCR7, FoxP3 or PD-1-positive cells on tumor samples taken at the diagnosis (d) and relapse times (R). We correlated these variables with patients' biochemical progression free survival (bPFS), post-radiotherapy progression free survival (PFS), and overall survival (OS). Substantial changes in the rate of TIL subsets were found between the first and the second biopsy with progressive increase in CD4, CCR7, FoxP3, PD-1+ cells. Our analysis revealed that higher CD8p,R+ and lower PD-1R+ TIL scores correlated to a longer bPFS. Higher CD8p,R+ and CCR7t,R+ TIL scores and lower CD45p,R+ and FoxP3p,R+ TIL scores correlated to a prolonged PFS and OS. These results suggest that the immunological microenvironment of primary tumor is strictly correlated with patient outcome and provide the rationale for immunological treatment of prostate cancer.
PD-L1 and Emerging Biomarkers in Immune Checkpoint Blockade Therapy

Abstract PD-L1 checkpoint blockade is revolutionizing cancer therapy, and biomarkers capable of predicting which patients are most likely to respond are highly desired. The detection of PD-L1 protein expression by immunohistochemistry can enrich for response to anti–PD-(L)1 blockade in a variety of tumor types, but is not absolute. Limitations of current commercial PD-L1 immunohistochemical (IHC) assays and improvements anticipated in next-generation PD-L1 testing are reviewed. Assessment of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in conjunction with PD-L1 testing could improve specificity by distinguishing adaptive (interferon &ggr; driven and cytotoxic T-lymphocyte associated) from constitutive (non–immune mediated) expression. The presence of a high tumor mutational burden also enriches for response to therapy, and early data indicate that this may provide additive predictive value beyond PD-L1 IHC alone. As candidate biomarkers continue to emerge, the pathologist's assessment of the tumor microenvironment on hematoxylin-eosin stain combined with PD-L1 IHC remains a rapid and robust way to evaluate the tumor-immune dynamic.