Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Content-sensitive collection snapping

Interactive segmentation methods have greatly simplified the task of object cutout from an image. However, segmenting a large number of images in a collection is still a tedious task. In this paper, we present a content-sensitive group segmentation method that iteratively segments the images in a collection and incrementally refines the results. With our method, a user only provides a small number of strokes to segment and refine a few sample images. For each of the rest of images, our method finds relevant sample images and applies the corresponding appearance models to guide the segmentation. To improve the segmentation results using the user strokes on a few images with unsatisfactory segmentation results, our method calculates the relevance map that measures the probability that a stroke can be appropriately applied at each pixel/region of an image, and applies it accordingly. Our experiments show that our method can effectively segment an image collection with a wide variety of image content and significantly reduce user input.
Top–down‐directed synchrony from medial frontal cortex to nucleus accumbens during reward anticipation

The nucleus accumbens and medial frontal cortex (MFC) are part of a loop involved in modulating behavior according to anticipated rewards. However, the precise temporal landscape of their electrophysiological interactions in humans remains unknown because it is not possible to record neural activity from the nucleus accumbens using noninvasive techniques. We recorded electrophysiological activity simultaneously from the nucleus accumbens and cortex (via surface EEG) in humans who had electrodes implanted as part of deep‐brain‐stimulation treatment for obsessive–compulsive disorder. Patients performed a simple reward motivation task previously shown to activate the ventral striatum. Spectral Granger causality analyses were applied to dissociate “top–down” (cortex → nucleus accumbens)‐ from “bottom–up” (nucleus accumbens → cortex)‐directed synchronization (functional connectivity). “Top–down”‐directed synchrony from cortex to nucleus accumbens was maximal over medial frontal sites and was significantly stronger when rewards were anticipated. These findings provide direct electrophysiological evidence for a role of the MFC in modulating nucleus accumbens reward‐related processing and may be relevant to understanding the mechanisms of deep‐brain stimulation and its beneficial effects on psychiatric conditions. Hum Brain Mapp, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Increased Retinal Blood Flow in Patients with Active Graves' Ophthalmopathy

Purpose: To investigate retinal blood flow by Heidelberg retina flowmeter in patients with active Graves' ophthalmopathy. Materials and Methods: Thirty patients with active Graves' ophthalmopathy in euthyroid state and thirty normal controls were enrolled in this study. All subjects underwent heart rate, systolic and diastolic blood pressure detection, complete ophthalmological examination, Hertel's exophthalmometry, and retinal blood flow analysis by Heidelberg retina flowmeter. Patients additionally underwent automated threshold perimetry and extraocular muscle thickness measurement by A-scan ecography. Results: A significant statistical difference was found in exophthalmometry (P < 0.001), intraocular pressure (P < 0.001) and retinal blood flow (P < 0.05) between patients and controls. In patients, muscle enlargement was significantly correlated with retinal blood flow (r = 0.49, P = 0.005) and proptosis (r = 0.37, P = 0.04). A significant positive correlation (r = 0.52, P = 0.002) was also found between intraocular pressure and proptosis. Conclusions: Active Graves' ophthalmopathy patients present an increased retinal blood flow.
The Reputational Penalty for Aggressive Accounting: Earnings Restatements and Management Turnover

In this paper we investigate the reputational penalties to managers of firms announcing earnings restatements. More specifically, we examine management turnover and the subsequent employment of displaced managers at firms announcing earnings restatements during 1997 or 1998. In contrast to prior research (Beneish 1999; Agrawal et al. 1999), which does not find increased turnover following GAAP violations or revelation of corporate fraud, we find that 60 percent of restating firms experience a turnover of at least one top manager within 24 months of the restatement compared to 35 percent among age‐, size‐, and industry‐matched firms. Moreover, the subsequent employment prospects of the displaced managers of restatement firms are poorer than those of the displaced managers of control firms. Our results hold after controlling for firm performance, bankruptcy, and other determinants of management turnover, and suggest that both corporate boards and the external labor market impose significant penalties on man.
Disruption of actin cytoskeleton induces chondrogenesis of mesenchymal cells by activating protein kinase C-alpha signaling.

Disruption of actin cytoskeleton with cytochalasin D has been known to induce chondrogenic differentiation of chick embryo limb bud mesenchymal cells. However, the mechanism(s) for the induction of chondrogenesis by cytochalasin D is not yet clearly known. In the present study, we examined possible involvement of protein kinase C (PKC) and extracellular signal-regulated protein kinase (Erk-1) in chondrogenesis of mesenchymal cells induced by disruption of actin cytoskeleton. Disruption of actin cytoskeleton with cytochalasin D or latrunculin B induced chondrogenesis of mesenchymal cells cultured at subconfluent cell density, as determined by type II collagen expression. Among the expressed PKC isoforms, cytochalasin D dramatically increased expression and activation of PKCalpha in a dose-dependent manner, and inhibition or downregulation of PKCalpha blocked cytochalasin D-induced chondrogenesis. Cytochalasin D also downregulated Erk-1 phosphorylation that is associated with chondrogenesis. Our results, therefore, suggest that disruption of actin cytoskeleton induces chondrogenesis of mesenchymal cells by activating PKCalpha and by inhibiting Erk-1 signaling.
An Analysis of Referrals to Chaplains in a Community Hospital in New York over a Seven Year Period

The study analyzed the pattern of referrals to chaplains in a suburban hospital over a 7-year period. Nurses made more than half of all the referrals to chaplains, with nursing accounting for 81.74% of referrals from staff members other than pastoral care workers and volunteers. Social workers and physicians made 11.74% and 4.08% of referrals, respectively. The number of referrals from social workers (r= .86, p<.05), nurses (r= .68, p<.10) and other staff (r= .69, p<.10) increased across years, with the exception of physicians. Three quarters of referrals were requests for chaplains to visit patients and one quarter were requests to visit with family or friends. A significant difference was found in the percentage of referrals made for patients and family/friends by staff members (p<.05), with social workers making a higher percentage of referrals for relatives and friends (34.1%), compared to nurses (26.74%) and physicians (27.27%). The most common presenting problems for which patients were referred to chaplains were anxiety, depression, and pregnancy loss. The rate of referrals for patients over the entire study period was 39.04 per 1000 patient stays.
Vertical mammaplasty: early complications after 250 personal consecutive cases.

No surgeon likes to face complications. It takes effort to treat them personally and more effort to note, count, analyze, and demonstrate them. The author carefully followed 250 personal consecutive patients (476 breasts) who underwent vertical mammaplasties between 1990 and 1998; studying the complications and their relationship with the types of breasts and patients was very instructive. The main observations from this study follow. The most frequent benign complication was seroma (5 percent of breasts), which usually required one or two aspirations after surgery. Hematomas occurred in six patients (1.2 percent of breasts), who had all had mastopexies. Hematomas required immediate surgical evacuation. The major complication of breast reduction, i.e., areola necrosis, was rare (only two partial necroses occurred), but it left deformities that were difficult to correct. Infection without tissue necrosis was rare (two cases), and healing complications happened in only 5.4 percent of all cases. Healing complications were directly related to the size and fat content of the breasts. None occurred in mastopexy cases. For reductions, delayed skin healing was observed in 5 percent of cases and delayed breast tissue healing in 3 percent of cases. More healing complications occurred after liposuction of the breast, which was performed in the more fatty breasts. Delayed healing of skin and breast tissue was bothersome because healing was slow, but it left only a moderate deformity. In cases of delayed healing, frequent dressings, rinsing the wound with antiseptic solutions, giving antibiotics if needed, and refraining from early surgical intervention are the keys to success. Good personal contact with the patient, especially if healing is slow, is the best way of helping her and avoiding aggressive attitudes. In conclusion, this survey revealed few complications; however, it does show that the risk of delayed and slow healing is greater in larger breasts. In obese patients, a simpler operation may be indicated, such as liposuction with skin reduction alone or a free nipple graft, as long as the patient is not motivated to obtain the best possible result.
Galaxy Morphology Classification

We apply machine learning techniques to the problem of galaxy morphology classification. We use both supervised and unsupervised methods to study the Galaxy Zoo dataset of 61,578 pre-classified galaxies. After image pre-processing, we perform multi-class classification using the following algorithms: one-vs-all SVM with an RBF kernel, decision tree, random forest, AdaBoost classifier, and KNN. We classify galaxies as either spiral, elliptical, round, disk, or other and find the best performing algorithm to be random forest with 67% classification accuracy. We also use regression to predict the probabilities of galaxies being associated with each class with 94% accuracy. We visualize the dataset using K-means clustering and agglomerative clustering unsupervised learning algorithms. The principal sources of variation between galaxy images are revealed to be correlated with brightness and eccentricity.
Impact of perceived technical protection on security behaviors

Purpose – The purpose of this paper based on compensation theory, is to incorporate perceived technical security protection into the theory of planned behavior and examined factors affecting end‐user security behaviors, specifically, compliance with security policies.Design/methodology/approach – An online survey is conducted to validate the proposed research model. The survey is sent out to an industrial panel. A total of 176 usable responses are received and used in the data analysis.Findings – The results show that both perceived behavioral control (PBC) and attitude have significant impact on intention to comply with security policy. Perceived technical protection affects behavioral intentions both indirectly, through PBC, and directly. The negative direct effect (i.e. perceived high technical protection leads to low intention to comply with security policy) suggests possible risk compensation effects in the information security context.Practical implications – This result should be of interest to pra.
Cation exchange in cell walls of gram-positive bacteria.

The relative affinities of various cations for anionic sites in isolated, bacterial cell walls were assessed by means of a technique involving displacement of one cation by another. The affinity series determined was H+ greater than La3+ greater than Cd2+ greater than Sr2+ greater than Ca2+ greater than Mg2+ greater than K+ greater than Na+ greater than Li+. High affinity was correlated with low mobility of the bound ions in an electric field. The net cation-exchange capacities of walls isolated from a variety of bacteria were estimated by preparing the magnesium forms of the walls, washing them well with deionized water to remove supernumerary ions, and then completely displacing the magnesium with Na+ or H+. Total amounts of magnesium displaced varied from 73 mumol per gram dry weight, for walls of the teichoic acid-deficient 52A5 strain of Staphylococcus aureus to about 520 mumol per gram for Bacillus megaterium KM walls.
Partial eigenvalue decomposition of large images using spatial temporal adaptive method

Finding eigenvectors of a sequence of real images has usually been considered to require too much computation to be practical. Our spatial temporal adaptive (STA) method reduces the computational complexity of the approximate partial eigenvalue decomposition based on image encoding. Spatial temporal encoding is used to reduce storage and computation, and then, singular value decomposition (SVD) is applied. After the adaptive discrete cosine transform (DCT) encoding, blocks that are similar in consecutive images are consolidated. The computational economy of our method was verified by tests on different large sets of images. The results show that this method is 6 to 10 times faster than the traditional SVD method for several kinds of real images. The economy of this algorithm increases with increasing correlation within the image and with increasing correlation between consecutive images within a set. This algorithm is useful for pattern recognition using eigenvectors, which is a research field that has been active recently.
High-frequency integrated gate drivers for half-bridge GaN power stage

This paper describes three driver options for integrated half-bridge power stage using depletion-mode GaN-on-SiC 0. 15μm RF process: an active pull-up driver, a bootstrapped driver, and a modified active pull-up driver. The approaches are evaluated and compared in 5 W, 20 V synchronous Buck converter prototypes operating at 100 MHz switching frequency over a wide range of operating points. Measured efficiency peaks above 91% for the designs using the bootstrap and the modified active pull-up integrated drivers.
Single muscle fiber properties in aging and disuse

Since the middle of the 1980s, it was understood that myosin, the motor of contraction, can be expressed in several isoforms. The isoforms of the myosin heavy‐chain (MHC) portion of the molecule were found to be mostly responsible for the diversity in the contractile and energetic properties of muscle fibers. In humans, three MHC isoforms are expressed in limb muscles (MHC‐1, MHC‐2A and MHC‐2X) and they generate three pure fiber types (types 1, 2A and 2X) and two hybrid types (types 1‐2A and ‐2AX). Type 1, 2A and 2X fibers widely differ with respect to most of their contractile and energetic properties, and a change in their relative distribution within muscles is known to modulate their functional properties in vivo through a “qualitative” mechanism. On the basis of the MHC regulation of muscle fibers properties, it is expected that a given fiber type develops the same force and shortens at the same speed regardless of the physiologic and pathologic conditions under which the muscle works. Surprisingly, several evidences have been accumulating to show that in aging and disuse, the properties of a muscle fiber type can change with no change in its myosin isoform content. This short review considers the latter phenomenon and the possible underlying mechanisms.
Robotic lung segmentectomy for malignant and benign lesions.

OBJECTIVE Surgical use of robots has evolved over the last 10 years. However, the academic experience with robotic lung segmentectomy remains limited. We aimed to analyze our lung segmentectomy experience with robot-assisted thoracoscopic surgery. METHODS Prospectively recorded clinical data of 21 patients who underwent robotic lung anatomic segmentectomy with robot-assisted thoracoscopic surgery were retrospectively reviewed. All cases were done using the da Vinci System. A three incision portal technique with a 3 cm utility incision in the posterior 10(th) to 11(th) intercostal space was performed. Individual dissection, ligation and division of the hilar structures were performed. Systematic mediastinal lymph node dissection or sampling was performed in 15 patients either with primary or secondary metastatic cancers. RESULTS Fifteen patients (75%) were operated on for malignant lung diseases. Conversion to open surgery was not necessary. Postoperative complications occurred in four patients. Mean console robotic operating time was 84±26 (range, 40-150) minutes. Mean duration of chest tube drainage and mean postoperative hospital stay were 3±2.1 (range, 1-10) and 4±1.4 (range, 2-7) days respectively. The mean number of mediastinal stations and number of dissected lymph nodes were 4.2 and 14.3 (range, 2-21) from mediastinal and 8.1 (range, 2-19) nodes from hilar and interlobar stations respectively. CONCLUSIONS Robot-assisted thoracoscopic segmentectomy for malignant and benign lesions appears to be practical, safe, and associated with few complications and short postoperative hospitalization. Lymph node removal also appears oncologically acceptable for early lung cancer patients. Benefits in terms of postoperative pain, respiratory function, and quality of life needs a comparative, prospective series particularly with video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery.
The Korean Society of Electrolyte Metabolism Fluid and Electrolyte Disturbances in Critically Ill Patients

Disturbances in fluid and electrolytes are among the most common clinical problems encountered in the intensive care unit (ICU). Recent studies have reported that fluid and electrolyte imbalances are associated with increased morbidity and mortality among critically ill patients. To provide optimal care, health care providers should be familiar with the principles and practice of fluid and electrolyte physiology and pathophysiology. Fluid resuscitation should be aimed at restoration of normal hemodynamics and tissue perfusion. Early goaldirected therapy has been shown to be effective in patients with severe sepsis or septic shock. On the other hand, liberal fluid administration is associated with adverse outcomes such as prolonged stay in the ICU, higher cost of care, and increased mortality. Development of hyponatremia in critically ill patients is associated with disturbances in the renal mechanism of urinary dilution. Removal of nonosmotic stimuli for vasopressin secretion, judicious use of hypertonic saline, and close monitoring of plasma and urine electrolytes are essential components of therapy. Hypernatremia is associated with cellular dehydration and central nervous system damage. Water deficit should be corrected with hypotonic fluid, and ongoing water loss should be taken into account. Cardiac manifestations should be identified and treated before initiating stepwise diagnostic evaluation of dyskalemias. Divalent ion deficiencies such as hypocalcemia, hypomagnesemia and hypophosphatemia should be identified and corrected, since they are associated with increased adverse events among critically ill patients.
Methylphenidate mediated change in prosody is specific to the performance of a cognitive task in female adult ADHD patients

Objectives. Prosody production is highly personalized, related to both the emotional and cognitive state of the speaker and to the task being performed. Fundamental frequency (F main) is a central measurable feature of prosody, associated with having an attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD). Since methylphenidate is an effective therapy for ADHD, we hypothesized that it will affect the fundamental frequency of ADHD patients. Methods. The answers of 32 adult ADHD patients were recorded while performing two computerized tasks (cognitive and emotional). Evaluations were performed at baseline and an hour after patients received methylphenidate. Results. A significant effect of methylphenidate was observed on the fundamental frequency, as opposed to other parameters, of prosody. This change was evident while patients performed a cognitive, as opposed to an emotional, task. This change was seen in the 14 female ADHD patients but not in the 18 male ADHD patients. The fundamental frequency while performing a cognitive task without methylphenidate was not different in the female ADHD group, from 22 female controls. Conclusions. This pilot study supports prosodic changes as possible objective and accessible dynamic biological marker of treatment responses specifically in female ADHD.
Automatization of Radiological Records

A methodology is presented for processing medical records in radiology. The system is original in that it uses the methods of automatic documentation, setting up thesauri for symptoms, localizations and diagnoses. Each radiological picture is described by a module of three elements: symptom + describer + locator. The relations between these three elements are regulated by a relatively simple syntax. The system is sufficiently flexible to allow the input of data in semi-natural language. It is assumed that the system is general enough to be applied to a great variety of medical problems. The fact that it can easily be handled by medical personnel should also be emphasized.
Relevance of platelet factor four (PF4) plasma levels in multiple sclerosis

Abstract In order to study the role of platelets in Multiple Sclerosis (MS) we assessed, in a group of patients during a quiescent phase of the disease, the plasma levels of ß‐thromboglobulin (ß‐TG) and platelet factor four (PF4) both in absence of treatment and during administration of aspirin (ASA) at the dose of 50 mg/daily. In the MS patients studied, the basal plasma levels of ß‐TG and PF4 were significantly higher than in control subjects. The increase in the ß‐TG plasma levels occurred independently of the age, sex and severity of the disease, whereas the modification in the PF4 plasma levels was significantly correlated with the severity of the disease. Administration to the patients of ASA, at the dose that does not affect prostacyclin production, determined a decrease of ß‐TG in 77% of the patients. Mean PF4 plasma levels remained unchanged. These results suggest that PF4 in the plasma of MS patients may originate not only from the platelets but also from the mast cells following platelet aggregating factor (PAF) stimulation and immunocomplex formation.