Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Differing Climatic Mass Balance Evolution Across Svalbard Glacier Regions Over 1900–2010

Relatively little is known about the glacier mass balance of Svalbard in the first half of the 20th century. Here, we present the first century-long climatic mass balance time series for the Svalbard archipelago. We use a parameterized mass balance model forced by statistically downscaled ERA-20C data to model climatic mass balance for all glacierized areas on Svalbard with a 250 m resolution for the period 1900–2010. Results are presented for the archipelago as a whole and separately for nine different subregions. We analyze the extent to which climatic mass balance in the different subregions mirror the temporal evolution of the climate warming signal, especially during the early 20th century Arctic warming episode. The spatially averaged mean annual climatic mass balance for all Svalbard is balanced at –0.002 m w.e. with an associated mean equilibrium line altitude of 425 m a.s. l. When also taking calving fluxes into account, this status leads to an archipelago-wide cumulative mass balance of 16.9 m w.e. over the study period, equaling a sea level equivalent of ~ 1.6 mm. The long-term evolution of climatic mass balance is largely governed by ablation variability. Refreezing contributes 34% to the archipelago-wide mass gain on average. Considerable variability is evident across Svalbard, with predominantly positive climatic mass balances in the northeastern parts of the archipelago and mostly negative ones in the western and southern parts. The archipelago-wide climatic mass balance shows a statistically significant trend of 0.021 m w.e. per decade and the associated equilibrium line altitude rises with a likewise significant trend of +3.0 m a.s. l. per decade. Spatial variability of the equilibrium line is such that the lowest altitudes are reached across the eastern islands of the archipelago and the highest ones in the central parts of Spitsbergen.
Circulating microRNAs expression profile in newly diagnosed and imatinib treated chronic phase – chronic myeloid leukemia

Abstract Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is a stem cell derived malignant disorder result of translocation t(9;22)(q34;q11) called Philadelphia chromosome (Ph+). microRNAS (miRNAs) are involved in several biological processes, altering the progression of various pathologies, including CML. This study evaluated whether circulating miRNAs display differential expression profiles in peripheral blood of CML-Chronic Phase (CML-CP) patients newly diagnosed in comparison with CML-CP treated with imatinib. We obtained peripheral blood samples from CML-CP Ph+ patients divided among group 1 (untreated newly diagnosed) and group 2 (treated with imatinib). A pool of total leukocytes from healthy donors was considered as control group. Expression analyses were performed for 768 miRNAs by RT-qPCR array. Bioinformatic tools were used to identify significant pathways and interaction networks. We found 80 deregulated miRNAs between the groups and, according to bioinformatic analysis, they are involved in different pathways, including molecular mechanisms of cancer. The study allows better understanding of disease molecular behavior, and it is useful for possible monitoring CML treatment and prognostic biomarkers identification.
Clinically Relevant Doses of Sclerostin Antibody Do Not Induce Osteonecrosis of the Jaw (ONJ) in Rats with Experimental Periodontitis

Antiresorptive agents, such as bisphosphonates and denosumab, are frequently used for the management of osteoporosis. Indeed, both medications decrease the risk of osteoporotic fractures; however, these medications are associated with rare but potentially severe side effects, such as osteonecrosis of the jaw (ONJ). ONJ, defined as an area of exposed bone in the maxillofacial region that lasts for 8 weeks, often presents with significant pain and infection and can lead to serious complications. Interestingly, other treatments for osteoporosis have been developed, such as antibodies against the osteocyte‐secreted protein, sclerostin. Sclerostin functions to inhibit the Wnt signaling cascade, leading to inhibition of bone formation. In clinical trials, a sclerostin antibody (romosozumab, Amgen Inc., UCB Brussels) increases bone formation and lowers the risk of osteoporotic fractures. However, in conjunction with increased osteoblastic activity, a reduction in bone resorption markers is observed. This antiresorptive effect raises the concern of possible ONJ development in patients treated with sclerostin antibodies. Here, utilizing ligature‐induced experimental periodontitis (EP), we evaluated the effects of sclerostin inhibition on the development of ONJ‐like lesions in ovariectomized rats. Beginning 8 weeks post‐ovariectomy, rats were treated for 22 weeks with weekly injections of vehicle (Veh), 200 μg/kg zoledronic acid (ZA), a potent bisphosphonate at 100‐fold the osteoporosis dose, or 5 mg/kg sclerostin antibody (Scl‐Ab) at the osteoporotic dose. EP was initiated at week 12 and maintained for the remainder of the study. Scl‐Ab treatment transiently increased serum P1NP, a bone formation marker, increased BV/TV, and decreased eroded surfaces in lumbar vertebrae. ZA‐treated rats developed histologic features of ONJ, whereas Veh‐treated controls did not. Scl‐Ab animals lost less periodontal bone in sites with EP. However, these animals presented with no histologic signs of ONJ. In conclusion, sclerostin inhibition enhanced structural bone parameters, without inducing ONJ‐like lesions, in ovariectomized rats with EP. © 2018 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.
Expanding the spectrum of pediatric NTRK‐rearranged fibroblastic tumors to the central nervous system: A case report with RBPMS‐NTRK3 fusion

We report a case of a 20‐month‐old male presenting with seizures who was found to have a hyperintense lesion on T2‐weighted images of magnetic resonance imaging in the left medial temporal lobe that was initially clinically and radiologically thought to be either low‐grade glioma or focal cortical dysplasia. Histologic, immunohistochemical and molecular evaluation (array comparative genomic hybridization, Archer fusion panel) of the resection specimen demonstrated a highly infiltrative fibroblastic spindle cell neoplasm with mild nuclear atypia and an RBPMS‐NTRK3 fusion. NTRK‐fused mesenchymal tumors are known to involve extracranial sites but, to our knowledge, have not been described within the central nervous system. Accurate and timely diagnosis of this entity has important prognostic and therapeutic implications, as NTRK‐fused tumors may recur locally and may respond to selective kinase inhibitor therapies.
[Evaluation of the implementation process of family nursing in oncology].

Evaluation of the implementation process of family nursing in oncology Abstract. BACKGROUND The confrontation with a life-threatening cancer disease and the resulting consequences are a great burden for patients as well as for their family members. Family nursing based on the Calgary Model was implemented on a German oncological inpatient unit in order to strengthen the family's ability to self-help. AIM The objectives were a) to systematically record, evaluate and if necessary to modify the implementation process, b) to highlight promoting and inhibiting factors and c) to derive recommendations for transferability to other oncological units. METHODS The implementation process was examined by means of two group interviews with nurses, five interviews with other members of the treatment team, and observations of, in each case four, family assessments, family interviews and family-related team meetings. RESULTS Family nursing could be implemented in a modified form. Genograms and ecomaps have become part of the admission interview. In family interviews, needs of the entire family were determined with the help of circular communication. Family-related team meetings were carried out according to an adapted method of the reflecting team. The complete implementation of family nursing was impeded by the lack of professional consulting competences of the nursing staff, the system of nursing care delivery and lack of time. CONCLUSION An implementation of family nursing in other oncological units is recommended under modified preconditions.
Physical fitness, hormonal, and immunological responses during prolonged military field training

Physical fitness is crucial to warfighters’ performance in the battlefield. Previous studies have shown negative changes in their hormonal and neuromuscular responses induced by military field training (MFT). The purpose of this study was to investigate the changes in hormonal and immunological values and body composition during a prolonged MFT and to find out how warfighters’ physical condition influences these changes. Conscripts (n = 49, age 20 ± 1 years, height 179 ± 9 cm, body mass 73.8 ± 7.8 kg, fat 12.6 ± 3.7% and BMI 23 kg/m²) were measured before, during, after MFT, and after a 4‐day recovery period. Serum insulin‐like growth factor‐1 (IGF‐1), tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF‐α), interleukin‐6 (IL‐6) concentrations, creatine kinase (CK) activity and leptin concentration were analyzed as well as body composition throughout MFT. Neuromuscular performance was assessed via lower and upper body muscle endurance at the beginning of the study. During MFT, there was a significant decrease (P < 0.05) in body mass (2.3%), fat mass (7.7%) and in muscle mass (2.2%), but all of these values recovered to PRE‐levels after the recovery period. Serum IGF‐1 (22%) and leptin decreased (66%) while CK increased (88%) significantly (P < 0.05) during MFT but recovered at the end of MFT. Upper body dynamic and trunk isometric muscular endurance had a positive correlation (r = 0.37. P < 0.05) with the change in IGF‐1 during MFT and a negative correlation with the changes in CK (−0.34, P < 0.05). The results show that there were negative changes in conscript's body composition and hormonal and immunological values during the prolonged MFT. These changes suggest that the physiological stress was high during MFT. High levels of upper body and trunk muscular strength were negatively correlated with warfighters’ physiological effects and should therefore be developed prior to actual deployment to reduce the physical decline experienced during prolonged MFTs.
Deep Priority Hashing

Deep hashing enables image retrieval by end-to-end learning of deep representations and hash codes from training data with pairwise similarity information. Subject to the distribution skewness underlying the similarity information, most existing deep hashing methods may underperform for imbalanced data due to misspecified loss functions. This paper presents Deep Priority Hashing (DPH), an end-to-end architecture that generates compact and balanced hash codes in a Bayesian learning framework. The main idea is to reshape the standard cross-entropy loss for similarity-preserving learning such that it down-weighs the loss associated to highly-confident pairs. This idea leads to a novel priority cross-entropy loss, which prioritizes the training on uncertain pairs over confident pairs. Also, we propose another priority quantization loss, which prioritizes hard-to-quantize examples for generation of nearly lossless hash codes. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DPH can generate high-quality hash codes and yield state-of-the-art image retrieval results on three datasets, ImageNet, NUS-WIDE, and MS-COCO.
Using Deep Learning for Classifying Ship Trajectories

In this paper we demonstrate how deep learning can be applied to the field of sea surveillance by classifying ship types from their trajectories. Commercial ships using AIS continually report information such as their ship type, e.g. fishing or cargo ship. A problem with AIS information however is that it can easily be modified and therefore deliberately or accidentally incorrect. In an attempt to address this we use a 1100 hours long AIS data set to teach 16 different neural networks to classify ships using only motion trajectories and without relying on the reported ship type. We also test three baseline methods using a more conventional1-nearest neighbor approach. The evaluation showed that the best performing classifier was the one based on deep learning.
Refining the Confidence Level for Optimistic Bandit Strategies

This paper introduces the first strategy for stochastic bandits with unit variance Gaussian noise that is simultaneously minimax optimal up to constant factors, asymptotically optimal, and never worse than the classical upper confidence bound strategy up to universal constant factors. Preliminary empirical evidence is also promising. Besides this, a conjecture on the optimal form of the regret is shown to be false and a finite-time lower bound on the regret of any strategy is presented that very nearly matches the finite-time upper bound of the newly proposed strategy.
The Equivalence Between Distributed and Centralized Best Linear Unbiased Estimation Fusion

This paper discusses the equivalence of the performance between the optimal distributed and centralized fusion based on best linear unbiased estimation (BLUE). A necessary and sufficient condition for the optimal distributed BLUE fusion to have identical performance as their centralized counterparts is obtained by setting the difference of two optimal estimates based on the two fusion rules be zero. Furthermore, under some very mild conditions on estimatee and observation error, we provide two theorems when the observations are linear in the estimatee. Specifically, the optimal distributed BLUE fusion is identical to the centralized BLUE fusion if observation errors are uncorrelated across sensors or the observation matrix of each sensor is full row rank. Numerical examples corroborate our analysis.
Learning Switching Models for Abnormality Detection for Autonomous Driving

We present an approach to learn a model to estimate the dynamical states at continuous and discrete inference levels when trajectory information is available. We learn from sparse data a probabilistic switching model that generates trajectories associated with a stationary plan of an agent. The learned generative model is used within a Markov Jump Linear System (MJLSs) to switch among set of space dependent linear filters that analyze new trajectories and detect deviations from the learned model based on internal innovation measurements. We show examples of application of the proposed approach to learn filters for evaluating deviations from a reference human driving task execution that includes static and dynamic obstacle avoidance.
Enhancing the efficacy of glycolytic blockade in cancer cells via RAD51 inhibition

ABSTRACT Targeting the early steps of the glycolysis pathway in cancers is a well-established therapeutic strategy; however, the doses required to elicit a therapeutic effect on the cancer can be toxic to the patient. Consequently, numerous preclinical and clinical studies have combined glycolytic blockade with other therapies. However, most of these other therapies do not specifically target cancer cells, and thus adversely affect normal tissue. Here we first show that a diverse number of cancer models – spontaneous, patient-derived xenografted tumor samples, and xenografted human cancer cells – can be efficiently targeted by 2-deoxy-D-Glucose (2DG), a well-known glycolytic inhibitor. Next, we tested the cancer-cell specificity of a therapeutic compound using the MEC1 cell line, a chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) cell line that expresses activation induced cytidine deaminase (AID). We show that MEC1 cells, are susceptible to 4,4ʹ-Diisothiocyano-2,2ʹ-stilbenedisulfonic acid (DIDS), a specific RAD51 inhibitor. We then combine 2DG and DIDS, each at a lower dose and demonstrate that this combination is more efficacious than fludarabine, the current standard- of- care treatment for CLL. This suggests that the therapeutic blockade of glycolysis together with the therapeutic inhibition of RAD51-dependent homologous recombination can be a potentially beneficial combination for targeting AID positive cancer cells with minimal adverse effects on normal tissue. Implications: Combination therapy targeting glycolysis and specific RAD51 function shows increased efficacy as compared to standard of care treatments in leukemias.
The modes of music information in a compositional process: a case study

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate an actual compositional process that entails a diversity of music information modes and describe the way these modes contribute to the creative aspirations of a composer. ,The music information typology proposed by Rousi, Savolainen and Vakkari is used as a point of departure for defining the different modes of music-related information. First, relevant music information modes are identified from the composer-informant’s verbal description of a compositional process. Then, their proportions and dynamics are examined. ,The findings suggest that the music information typology may be applied within the context of musical composition, that is, all of its five modes of music information could be identified from the composer’s verbal description of the compositional process. However, two additional significant information modes were identified: shaping music as the third mode of enactive representations and genuine iconic representations. ,The purpose of this case study is not to claim that the results regarding the significance of individual music information modes apply to all compositional processes within diverse genres of music. ,This study introduces a new mode of music information indicative of the artistic capacity of expressiveness: shaping musical structures as the third mode of enactive representations was the means whereby the composer made musical structures work for himself and hence created performative power in his music.
How social context impacts on the development, identification and treatment of mental and substance use disorders among young people – a qualitative study of health care workers

Introduction Social context has a major influence on the detection and treatment of youth mental and substance use disorders in socioeconomically disadvantaged urban areas, particularly where gang culture, community violence, normalisation of drug use and repetitive maladaptive family structures prevail. This paper aims to examine how social context influences the development, identification and treatment of youth mental and substance use disorders in socioeconomically disadvantaged urban areas from the perspectives of health care workers. Method Semi-structured interviews were conducted with health care workers (n=37) from clinical settings including: primary care, secondary care and community agencies and analysed thematically using Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory to guide analysis. Results Health care workers’ engagement with young people was influenced by the multilevel ecological systems within the individual’s social context which included: the young person’s immediate environment/‘microsystem’ (e.g., family relationships), personal relationships in the ‘mesosystem’ (e.g., peer and school relationships), external factors in the young person’s local area context/‘exosystem’ (e.g., drug culture and criminality) and wider societal aspects in the ‘macrosystem’ (e.g., mental health policy, health care inequalities and stigma). Conclusions In socioeconomically disadvantaged urban areas, social context, specifically the micro-, meso-, exo-, and macro-system impact both on the young person’s experience of mental health or substance use problems and services, which endeavour to address these problems. Interventions that effectively identify and treat these problems should reflect the additional challenges posed by such settings.
Quality of psychiatric discharge summaries: a service evaluation following the introduction of an electronic discharge summary system

Background There has been a recent move in psychiatry towards the use of electronic discharge (e-discharge) summaries in an effort to improve the efficiency of communication between primary and secondary care, but there are little data on how this affects the quality of information exchanged. Objective To evaluate the quality of psychiatric discharge summaries before and after the introduction of the e-discharge summary system. Methods A retrospective analysis of 50 dictated discharge summaries from 1 January to 1 July 2010 and of 50 e-discharge summaries from 1 January to 1 July 2012, evaluating for the inclusion of 15 key items of clinical information. Results The average total score of the dictated summaries (mean=9.5, s.d.=2.0) was significantly higher (p<0.001) than the e-discharge summaries (mean=6.7, s.d.=1.8). There were statistically significant differences in five of the standards: findings of physical examination (p<0.001), ICD-10 code (p<0.001), forensic history (p<0.001), alcohol history (p<0.001) and drug history (p<0.001). Conclusion Our results revealed a decline in the quality of discharge summaries following the introduction of an electronic system. The reasons for this are unclear and require further analysis. Specific suggestions will depend on the local need, but include improvements in software design and layout as well as better education and training.
Deep vs. moderate neuromuscular blockade during laparoscopic surgery: A systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND Previous studies have reported that deep neuromuscular block (posttetanic-count 1 to 2 twitches) improves surgical conditions during laparoscopy compared with moderate block (train-of-four count: 1 to 2 twitches). However, comparisons of surgical conditions were made using different scales and assessment intervals with variable results. OBJECTIVE To explore the heterogeneity of previous comparisons between deep and moderate neuromuscular block. DESIGN Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials (RCTs). DATA SOURCES Medline, EMBASE and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials were searched from inception to October 2017. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA Our meta-analysis included RCTs comparing the effects of deep with moderate neuromuscular block on surgical field conditions during laparoscopic surgery. The frequency of excellent or good operating conditions on a surgical rating scale was compared. Heterogeneity was assessed by subgroup analyses. RESULTS Eleven RCTs involving 844 patients were included. On the surgical rating scale, the frequency of excellent or good operating conditions was higher with deep block compared with a moderate block (odds ratio 2.83, 95% confidence interval 1.34 to 5.99, P = 0.007, I2 = 59%). We analysed surgical rating according to the number of assessments made. There was a significant difference in surgical rating with multiple assessments, but no difference when the assessment was made on only one occasion. A significant difference in rating was noted with variable abdominal pressures; there was no significant difference with the same fixed abdominal pressure. Trial sequential analysis demonstrated that the cumulative z-curve crossed the O′Brien–Fleming significance boundary. However, required information size was not achieved. CONCLUSION Deep block was associated with excellent or good surgical rating more frequently than moderate block. However, this finding was not consistent on subgroup analyses based on frequencies of assessment of surgical conditions and abdominal pressure. Further studies are required to address the heterogeneity and power shortage demonstrated by the trial sequential analysis.