Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Short- and long-term outcomes of laparoscopic hepatectomy in elderly patients with hepatocellular carcinoma.

PURPOSE To compare short- and long-term outcomes of laparoscopic hepatectomy (LH) in elderly and non-elderly patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). METHODS Clinical and follow-up data of patients with HCC who underwent LH in our Institute from January 2011 to December 2016 were retrospectively analyzed. The patients were divided into elderly (48 cases, 70 years old or older) or non-elderly group (97 cases, <70 years) according to their age at the time of operation. The short- and long-term outcomes of both groups were compared. RESULTS The Charlson comorbidity index and American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) score of patients in the elderly group were higher than those of patients in the nonelderly group, and the rates of hepatitis virus infection and cirrhosis in the elderly group were lower than those in the non-elderly group. The rest of the preoperative data showed no statistical significance. Short-term outcomes, including operation time, intraoperative blood loss, transfer rate, length of hospital stay, incidence of complications and their severity within 30 days after surgery, and pathological findings, showed no significant difference between the elderly and non-elderly groups. Recurrence rates, treatment of the recurrence, overall survival (OS) rates, and disease-free survival (DFS) rates were similar in both groups. Multivariate analysis showed that age was not an independent predictor of OS and DFS. CONCLUSIONS LH in elderly patients can achieve short- and long-term outcomes similar to those in non-elderly patients with liver cancer. Old age is not a contraindication for LH in patients with HCC.
Thrombocytopenia in a psoriatic patient sequentially treated with adalimumab, secukinumab and ustekinumab

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Immunoproteasome Inhibition Impairs T and B Cell Activation by Restraining ERK Signaling and Proteostasis

Immunoproteasome (IP) inhibition holds potential as a novel treatment option for various immune-mediated pathologies. The IP inhibitor ONX 0914 reduced T cell cytokine secretion and Th17 polarization and showed pre-clinical efficacy in a range of autoimmune disorders, transplant-allograft rejection, virus-mediated tissue damage, and colon cancer progression. However, the molecular basis of these effects has remained largely elusive. Here, we have analyzed the effects of ONX 0914 in primary human and mouse lymphocytes. ONX 0914-treatment impaired primary T cell activation in vitro and in vivo. IP inhibition reduced ERK-phosphorylation sustainment, while leaving NF-κB and other signaling pathways unaffected. Naïve T and B cells expressed nearly exclusively immuno- or mixed proteasomes but no standard proteasomes and IP inhibition but not IP-deficiency induced mild proteostasis stress, reduced DUSP5 expression and enhanced DUSP6 protein levels due to impaired degradation. However, accumulation of DUSP6 did not cause the reduced ERK-phosphorylation in a non-redundant manner. We show that broad-spectrum proteasome inhibition and immunoproteasome inhibition have distinct effects on T cell activation at the molecular level. Notably, ONX 0914-treated T cells recovered from proteostasis stress without apoptosis induction, apparently via Nrf1-mediated up-regulation of standard proteasomes. In contrast, B cells were more susceptible to apoptosis after ONX 0914-treatment. Our data thus provide mechanistic insights how IP inhibition functionally impedes T and B cells likely accounting for its therapeutic benefits.
Adoptive parents’ experiences of dyadic developmental psychotherapy

Dyadic developmental psychotherapy (DDP) is an attachment-focused therapy frequently used with adoptive and foster families. While the evidence base for DDP is building, national guidance has called for further trials and qualitative evidence. This study aimed to understand the experience of adoptive parents who have completed DDP therapy. Semi-structured interviews with 12 adoptive parents were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Four superordinate themes were identified: (1) increased understanding, (2) ‘It’s a different method of parenting generally’, (3) the DDP journey and (4) ‘It’s a shared kind of experience you go through and come out together’. Parents felt they had increased insight into their child’s mind and how to better support their child. They felt DDP was a good fit to their unique situations and it appeared to promote acceptance. The DDP journey started with parents feeling uncertainty and questioning the effectiveness of DDP. However, generally parents became committed to the therapy once they saw change and expressed fear and sadness at ending. Parents acknowledged the dyadic nature of DDP, feeling it helped build trust and security and supported co-regulation. Parents also acknowledged the therapist’s role in conveying the core DDP principles. Further implications for practice and research are highlighted.
The effect of an extra piece of fruit or vegetables at school on weight status in two generations - 14 years follow-up of the Fruit and Vegetables Makes the Marks study

Background The obesity epidemic presents a major public health challenge, and a poor diet quality has been identified as one of the most important contributing factors. Whereas a sufficient fruit and vegetable consumption has been associated with several positive health outcomes, the long-term effect on overweight and obesity is unclear. Thus, the aims of this study were to investigate if one year with free school fruit had any effect on weight status 14 years later, and if it affected the birth weight of the participants’ children. Methods In 2001, 10 -12-year old Norwegian children, received one year of free school fruit in the intervention study “Fruits and Vegetables Make the Marks” (FVMM) and in 2016, a total of 1081 participants of 2049 eligible responded to a follow-up survey. Multilevel logistic regression was used to investigate if one year of free school fruit was associated with weight status and with birthweight status of the offspring. The analyses were adjusted for gender, educational level, and the offspring analysis also for parents’ weight status, and the nested design (child/parent). Results The odds ratios of being overweight (OR: 0.93, 95% CI: 0.70, 1.24) or having a child with high or low birth weight (OR: 0.52, 95% CI: 0.21, 1.30) in the intervention group compared to the control group were not statistically significant, 14 years after the intervention period. Conclusions One year of free school fruit did not have an effect on weight status on the participants or birth weight of their offspring, 14 years after the intervention period. Although, results from the present study contribute to fill the knowledge gaps concerning long-term effects of public health efforts on weight status, more follow-up studies with larger samples are warranted.
On the analysis of scheduling algorithms for structured parallel computations

Algorithms for scheduling structured parallel computations have been widely studied in the literature. For some time now, Work Stealing is one of the most popular for scheduling such computations, and its performance has been studied in both theory and practice. Although it delivers provably good performances, the effectiveness of its underlying load balancing strategy is known to be limited for certain classes of computations, particularly the ones exhibiting irregular parallelism (e.g. depth first searches). Many studies have addressed this limitation from a purely load balancing perspective, viewing computations as sets of independent tasks, and then analyzing the expected amount of work attached to each processor as the execution progresses. However, these studies make strong assumptions regarding work generation which, despite being standard from a queuing theory perspective --- where work generation can be assumed to follow some random distribution --- do not match the reality of structured parallel computations --- where the work generation is not random, only depending on the structure of a computation. In this paper, we introduce a formal framework for studying the performance of structured computation schedulers, define a criterion that is appropriate for measuring their performance, and present a methodology for analyzing the performance of randomized schedulers. We demonstrate the convenience of this methodology by using it to prove that the performance of Work Stealing is limited, and to analyze the performance of a Work Stealing and Spreading algorithm, which overcomes Work Stealing's limitation.
Validating the Watch-PAT for Diagnosing Obstructive Sleep Apnea in Adolescents.

STUDY OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of the Watch-PAT 200 (WP200) for diagnosing obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in adolescents compared with polysomnography (PSG) according to the respiratory rules for children (RRC) and adults (RRA). METHODS A total of 38 adolescents (mean age 15.1 ± 1.4 years; male 28 [73.7%]; body mass index [BMI] 23.1 ± 5.5 kg/m2) with suspected OSA were assessed with the WP200 and standard PSG simultaneously between July 2014 and September 2015 at a tertiary university hospital. All WP200 data were assessed according to the automatic algorithm, and PSG data were scored according to the RRC and RRA. We examined the correlation, agreement, and concordance in the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) and minimum arterial oxygen saturation (mSaO2) between the WP200 and PSG-RRC or PSG-RRA. RESULTS There were high correlations (r = .945, P < .001 [AHI-WP200 versus AHI-PSG-RRC]; r = .945, P < .001 [AHI-WP200 versus AHI-PSG-RRA]; r = .921, P < .001 [mSaO2-WP versus mSaO2-PSG]) and good agreements in AHI and mSaO2 between the WP200 and PSG. In addition, there were high concordances in AHI severity (Kendall tau-b = .848, P < .001 [AHI-WP200 versus AHI-PSG-RRC]; Kendall tau-b = .944, P < .001 [AHI-WP200 versus AHI-PSG-RRA]) between the WP200 and PSG. CONCLUSIONS The WP200 may be a clinically reliable tool for diagnosing OSA in adolescents.
Effect of glucose and palmitate environment on proliferation and migration of PC3‐prostate cancer cells

Recent studies have been trying to find out how diet and metabolic changes such as dyslipidaemia, hyperglycaemia, and hyperinsulinaemia can stimulate cancer progression. This investigation aimed to evaluate the effect of high concentrations of fatty acids and/or glucose in tumour prostate cells, focusing on the proliferation/migration profile and oxidative stress. PC3 cells were treated with high concentration of saturated fatty acid (palmitate, 100 µM), glucose (220 mg/dL), or both for 24 or 48 h. Results demonstrated that PC3 cells showed a significant increase in proliferation after 48 h of treatment with glucose and palmitate+glucose. Cell proliferation was associated with reduced levels of AMPK phosphorylation in glucose group at 24 and 48 h of treatment, while palmitate group presented this result only after 48 h of treatment. Also, there was a significant increase in cell migration between time 0 and 48 h after all treatments, except in the control. Catalase activity was increased by palmitate in the beginning of treatment, while glucose presented a later effect. Also, nitrite production was increased by glucose only after 48 h, and the total antioxidant activity was enhanced by palmitate in the initial hours. Thus, we conclude that the high concentration of the saturated fatty acid palmitate and glucose in vitro influences PC3 cells and stimulates cellular activities related to carcinogenesis such as cell proliferation, migration, and oxidative stress in different ways. Palmitate presents a rapid and initial effect, while a glucose environment stimulates cells later on, maintaining high levels of cell proliferation.
Object Detection Using a Single Extended Feature Map

Fully convolutional neural network-based object detectors have achieved considerable detection accuracy in recent years. It is a recent trend to establish complex and deep network architectures for improvement of the detection accuracy. However, object detectors for intelligent vehicle applications require fast inference speed, Iightweight network architecture, and less memory usage as well as high detection accuracy to implement the algorithm in an embedded hardware. In this paper, we propose a fast object detection method based on a single stage and a single extended feature map. A Iightweight network based on an extended paththrough layer is proposed to improve both the accuracy and speed. The extended paththrough layer enlarges the resolution of the last feature map by concatenating later feature maps with lower resolution to earlier feature map maps with higher resolution. The layer helps to search and detect smaller objects more densely on the extended last feature map. Our experimental results show that the proposed detection model outperforms the previous state-of-the-art methods in both detection accuracy and inference speed.
Vehicle Trajectory Prediction with Gaussian Process Regression in Connected Vehicle Environment$\star$

This paper addresses the problem of long term location prediction for collision avoidance in Connected Vehicle (CV) environment where more information about the road and traffic data is available through vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications. Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) is used to learn motion patterns from historical trajectory data collected with static sensors on the road. Trained models are then shared among the vehicles through connected vehicle cloud. A vehicle receives information, such as Global Positioning System coordinates, about nearby vehicles on the road using inter-vehicular communication. The collected data from vehicles together with GPR models received from infrastructure are then used to predict the future trajectories of vehicles in the scene. The contributions of this work are twofold. First, we propose the use of GPR in CV environment as a framework for long term location prediction. Second, we evaluate the effect of pre-analysis of training data via clustering in improving the trajectory pattern learning performance. Experiments using real-world traffic data collected in Los Angeles, California, US show that our proposed method improves prediction accuracy compared to the baseline kinematic models.
What is an archaeon and are the Archaea really unique?

The recognition of the group Archaea as a major branch of the Tree of Life (ToL) prompted a new view of the evolution of biodiversity. The genomic representation of archaeal biodiversity has since significantly increased. In addition, advances in phylogenetic modeling of multi-locus datasets have resolved many recalcitrant branches of the ToL. Despite the technical advances and an expanded taxonomic representation, two important aspects of the origins and evolution of the Archaea remain controversial, even as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the monumental discovery. These issues concern (i) the uniqueness (monophyly) of the Archaea, and (ii) the evolutionary relationships of the Archaea to the Bacteria and the Eukarya; both of these are relevant to the deep structure of the ToL. Here, to explore the causes for this persistent ambiguity, I examine multiple datasets that support contradicting conclusions. Results indicate that the uncertainty is primarily due to a scarcity of information in standard datasets — the core genes datasets — to reliably resolve the conflicts. These conflicts can be resolved efficiently by comparing patterns of variation in the distribution of functional genomic signatures, which are less diffused unlike patterns of primary sequence variation. Relatively lower heterogeneity in distribution patterns minimizes uncertainties, which supports statistically robust phylogenetic inferences, especially of the earliest divergences of life. This case study further highlights the limits of primary sequence data in resolving difficult phylogenetic problems and casts doubt on evolutionary inferences drawn solely from the analyses of a small set of core genes.
Elevated expression of POLD1 is associated with poor prognosis in breast cancer

Polymerase δ catalytic subunit gene 1 (POLD1) may serve an important function in the development of tumors. However, its role in breast cancer remains unclear. The aim of the present study was to observe the expression and the function of POLD1 in breast cancer. A total of 84 patients with invasive breast carcinoma were recruited between 2011 and 2013. The expression of POLD1 was detected in paired tumor and adjacent normal tissues. Gene expression level of POLD1 was assessed using reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction. The protein expression of POLD1 was assessed using western blot analysis. The association between the clinicopathological features of patients with breast cancer and POLD1 expression was analyzed using a χ2 test. Disease-free survival (DFS) was analyzed using Kaplan-Meier method, and Cox regression analysis was performed to investigate clinicopathological significance of POLD1 expression. Additionally, the effects of POLD1 in regulating cell cycle and proliferation of MCF-7 cells were evaluated in vitro. The results demonstrated that gene and protein expression levels of POLD1 were significantly elevated in breast cancer tissues compared with those in adjacent normal tissues. Increased expression of POLD1 was significantly associated with positive lymph node status (P=0.028), histological grade (P=0.025), p53 status (P<0.001) and ki-67 index (P=0.020). Survival analysis demonstrated that increased expression of POLD1 was associated with poor DFS (P=0.033). Additionally, increased expression of POLD1 was associated with shorter DFS at early-stage (P=0.037), late-stage cases (P=0.023) and with the presence of triple-negative tumors (TNBC; P=0.049). Multivariate analysis revealed that POLD1 may be used as an independent prognostic factor in patients with breast cancer. In vitro studies revealed that downregulation of POLD1 suppressed cell cycle progression and proliferation in MCF-7 cells. In conclusion, POLD1 may be considered as a potential prognostic marker for invasive breast carcinoma.
The Relationship between Different Safety Indicators in Car-following Situations

Studying different aspects of car-following behavior is still of strong interests for many researchers, due to its usefulness in many applications, such as for further development of traffic simulators and active safety systems (e.g., Adaptive Cruise Control and Autonomous Emergency Braking). This paper investigates the relationships between several safety indicators (e.g., time gap, gap distance, time to collision) in car-following situations, and analyzes which of these indicators affect driver’s behavior in car-following situations and how. All analyses are done using real driving data collected in China. The paper also suggests parameters that can be used for defining, identifying, and extracting car-following events from real driving data. Results indicate that time gap is less sensitive to the variations in speed and road condition compared with gap distance in this test. TTC in the low speed range of subject-vehicle is found to be steady compared with other speed ranges, so is the time gap in the high speed range. Therefore, time gap is more suitable to be the safety indicator compared with gap distance in the future car-following research. Time gap is found to be more appropriate for the analysis of car following behavior in the high speed ranges, but both TTC and time gap should be used as part of the safety indicator for the low speed ranges.
Dynamic cerebral autoregulation estimates derived from near infrared spectroscopy and transcranial Doppler are similar after correction for transit time and blood flow and blood volume oscillations

We analysed mean arterial blood pressure, cerebral blood flow velocity, oxygenated haemoglobin and deoxygenated haemoglobin signals to estimate dynamic cerebral autoregulation. We compared macrovascular (mean arterial blood pressure-cerebral blood flow velocity) and microvascular (oxygenated haemoglobin-deoxygenated haemoglobin) dynamic cerebral autoregulation estimates during three different conditions: rest, mild hypocapnia and hypercapnia. Microvascular dynamic cerebral autoregulation estimates were created by introducing the constant time lag plus constant phase shift model, which enables correction for transit time, blood flow and blood volume oscillations (TT-BF/BV correction). After TT-BF/BV correction, a significant agreement between mean arterial blood pressure-cerebral blood flow velocity and oxygenated haemoglobin-deoxygenated haemoglobin phase differences in the low frequency band was found during rest (left: intraclass correlation=0.6, median phase difference 29.5° vs. 30.7°, right: intraclass correlation=0.56, median phase difference 32.6° vs. 39.8°) and mild hypocapnia (left: intraclass correlation=0.73, median phase difference 48.6° vs. 43.3°, right: intraclass correlation=0.70, median phase difference 52.1° vs. 61.8°). During hypercapnia, the mean transit time decreased and blood volume oscillations became much more prominent, except for very low frequencies. The transit time related to blood flow oscillations was remarkably stable during all conditions. We conclude that non-invasive microvascular dynamic cerebral autoregulation estimates are similar to macrovascular dynamic cerebral autoregulation estimates, after TT-BF/BV correction is applied. These findings may increase the feasibility of non-invasive continuous autoregulation monitoring and guided therapy in clinical situations.
Interactive Interpolation of Metallic Effect Car Paints

Metallic car paints are visually complex materials that, among others effects, exhibit a view-dependent metallic sparkling, which is particularly difﬁcult to recreate in computer graphics. While capturing real-world metallic paints is possible with specialized devices, creating these materials computationally poses a difﬁcult problem. We present a method that allows for interactive interpolation between measured metallic automotive paints, which can be used to generate new realistic-looking metallic paint materials. By clustering the color information present in the measured bidirectional texture function (BTF) responsible for the metallic sparkling effect, we set up an optimal transport problem between metallic paints’ appearances. The design of the problem facilitates efﬁciently ﬁnding a solution, based on which we generate a representation that allows for real-time generation of interpolated realistic materials. Interpolation happens smoothly, no ﬂickering or other visual artifacts can be observed. The developed approach also enables to separately interpolate the larger-scale reﬂective properties, including the basic color hue, the local color hue, and the sparkling intensity of the metallic paint. Our method can be used intuitively in order to generate automotive paints with a novel appearance and explore the space of possible metallic paints spanned by given real-world measurements. The resulting materials are also well suited for real-time rendering in standard engines.