Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Integrated automated particle tracking microfluidic enables high‐throughput cell deformability cytometry for red cell disorders

Investigating individual red blood cells (RBCs) is critical to understanding hematologic diseases, as pathology often originates at the single‐cell level. Many RBC disorders manifest in altered biophysical properties, such as deformability of RBCs. Due to limitations in current biophysical assays, there exists a need for high‐throughput analysis of RBC deformability with single‐cell resolution. To that end, we present a method that pairs a simple in vitro artificial microvasculature network system with an innovative MATLAB‐based automated particle tracking program, allowing for high‐throughput, single‐cell deformability index (sDI) measurements of entire RBC populations. We apply our technology to quantify the sDI of RBCs from healthy volunteers, Sickle cell disease (SCD) patients, a transfusion‐dependent beta thalassemia major patient, and in stored packed RBCs (pRBCs) that undergo storage lesion over 4 weeks. Moreover, our system can also measure cell size for each RBC, thereby enabling 2D analysis of cell deformability vs cell size with single cell resolution akin to flow cytometry. Our results demonstrate the clear existence of distinct biophysical RBC subpopulations with high interpatient variability in SCD as indicated by large magnitude skewness and kurtosis values of distribution, the “shifting” of sDI vs RBC size curves over transfusion cycles in beta thalassemia, and the appearance of low sDI RBC subpopulations within 4 days of pRBC storage. Overall, our system offers an inexpensive, convenient, and high‐throughput method to gauge single RBC deformability and size for any RBC population and has the potential to aid in disease monitoring and transfusion guidelines for various RBC disorders.
Spatial organization of single mRNPs at different stages of the gene expression pathway

mRNAs form ribonucleoprotein complexes (mRNPs) by association with proteins that are crucial for mRNA metabolism. While the mRNP proteome has been well characterized, little is known about mRNP organization. Using a single molecule approach, we show that mRNA conformation changes depending on its cellular localization and translational state. Compared to nuclear mRNPs and lncRNPs, association with ribosomes decompacts individual mRNAs, while their sequestration into stress-granules leads to increased compaction. Moreover, translating mRNAs rarely show co-localizing 5’ and 3’ ends, indicating that mRNAs are either not translated in a closed-loop configuration, or that mRNA circularization is transient, suggesting that a stable closed-loop conformation is not a universal state for all translating mRNAs. One Sentence Summary Single mRNA studies in cells show RNA compaction changes depending on translational state, but mRNAs are not translated in closed-loop conformation.
Risk of neuropsychiatric adverse events associated with the use of oseltamivir: a nationwide population-based case-crossover study

Background Although the potential risk of neuropsychiatric adverse events (NPAEs) upon administration of oseltamivir has been raised in case reports, the association between the use of oseltamivir and the risk of NPAEs is unclear. Objectives We aimed to evaluate whether the use of oseltamivir triggers NPAEs. Patients and methods We conducted a population-based case-crossover study using the National Sample Cohort data from the National Health Insurance Service in South Korea. From a total of 236 348 incident patients with NPAEs as either a primary or secondary diagnosis, our final case series included 5322 patients with a prior prescription for oseltamivir between 2009 and 2013. Exposure to oseltamivir was assessed during 2, 7, 14, 28 and 56 day hazard periods prior to each patient's NPAE. Three pre-consecutive control periods were matched using the same time windows. Conditional logistic regression analysis was used to estimate adjusted ORs (aORs), adjusting for time-variant diagnosis of influenza and concomitant medications. Results Matched analyses found a consistently increased risk of NPAEs associated with the use of oseltamivir in the 2 day (aOR 1.90, 95% CI 1.29-2.81), 7 day (aOR 1.32, 95% CI 1.00-1.74), 14 day (aOR 1.28, 95% CI 1.03-1.60), 28 day (aOR 1.25, 95% CI 1.06-1.47) and 56 day (aOR 1.13, 95% CI 0.99-1.29) hazard periods compared with use in the three control periods. Conclusions This study found that the short-term use of oseltamivir triggers the incidence of NPAEs. Early monitoring of NPAEs may be required when prescribing oseltamivir with careful consideration of the risk-benefit balance of oseltamivir.
Master Data Management Planning: (Case Study of Personnel Information System at XYZ Institute)

In the management of its information system, XYZ Institute has launched several applications related to personnel affairs. Use of these various applications is necessary because of the specific features in each of these applications. However, problems such as redundancy and inconsistancy of employee data arose due to the absence of master data management as a single source of truth. Related to that, the research was conducted to plan the master data management in accordance with the needs of XYZ Institute in managing personnel data. Master data management planning is done by using data management body of knowledge guidance (DMBOK) which is published by Dama International in 2009 as a method. The research succeeded in formulating the need for master data management and master data source of employement at XYZ Institute. Such personnel data can be integrated using collaborative usage methods and transaction hub architecture patterns. Master data management is expected to help XYZ Institute in managing personnel data to improve data quality.
Generating Accurate and Compact Edit Scripts Using Tree Differencing

For analyzing changes in source code, edit scriptsare used to describe the differences between two versions of afile. These scripts consist of a list of actions that, applied to thesource file, result in the new version of the file. In contrast toline-based source code differencing, tree-based approaches suchas GumTree, MTDIFF, or ChangeDistiller extract changes bycomparing the abstract syntax trees (AST) of two versions of asource file. One benefit of tree-based approaches is their abilityto capture moved (sub) trees in the AST. Our approach, theIterative Java Matcher (IJM), builds upon GumTree and aims atgenerating more accurate and compact edit scripts that capturethe developer's intent. This is achieved by improving the qualityof the generated move and update actions, which are the mainsource of inaccurate actions generated by previous approaches. To evaluate our approach, we conducted a study with 11 external experts and manually analyzed the accuracy of 2400 randomly selected editactions. Comparing IJM to GumTree and MTDIFF, the resultsshow that IJM provides better accuracy for move and updateactions and is more beneficial to understanding the changes.
Inverse Liner Z-Pinch: An Experimental Pulsed Power Platform for Studying Radiative Shocks

We present a new experimental platform for studying radiative shocks using an “inverse liner z-pinch” configuration. This platform was tested on the MAGPIE pulsed power facility (~1 MA with a rise time of ~240 ns) at Imperial College London, U.K. Current is discharged through a thin-walled metal tube (a liner) embedded in a low-density gas-fill and returned through a central post. The resulting magnetic pressure inside the liner launched a cylindrically symmetric, expanding radiative shock into the gas-fill at ~10 km/s. This experimental platform provides good diagnostic access, allowing multiframe optical self-emission imaging, laser interferometry, and optical emission spectrography to be fielded. Results from experiments with an Argon gas-fill initially at 0.04 mg/cm3 are presented, demonstrating the successful production of cylindrically symmetric, expanding shocks that exhibit radiative effects such as the formation of a radiative precursor.
Design of Robust Ultra-Low Power CMOS Voltage Controlled Ring Oscillator with Enhanced Performance

Sub threshold circuits have proven their ability to satisfy the demand of ultra low power consumption of today's battery operated applications. However, the elevated variability and degraded performance issues of sub threshold circuits need to be addressed. This paper focuses on dual knobs of variability and performance of sub threshold CMOS VCO and proposes an ultra low power CMOS voltage controlled ring oscillator with enhanced performance and reduced variability. The proposed DTCSVCO configuration exhibits better performance and slew as compared to conventional CSVCO by almost 37% and 10.87% respectively. Width optimization further improves the performance of proposed DTCSVCO by almost 49% at the cost of increase in PDP of 32%. Process and temperature variability is also investigated and the results illustrates that the proposed DTCSVCO exhibits better robustness compared to conventional CSVCO. The simulation results at different process corner over a wide range of temperature are consistent.
Source Counting and Separation Based on Simplex Analysis

Blind source separation is addressed, using a novel data-driven approach, based on a well-established probabilistic model. The proposed method is specifically designed for separation of multichannel audio mixtures. The algorithm relies on spectral decomposition of the correlation matrix between different time frames. The probabilistic model implies that the column space of the correlation matrix is spanned by the probabilities of the various speakers across time. The number of speakers is recovered by the eigenvalue decay, and the eigenvectors form a simplex of the speakers’ probabilities. Time frames dominated by each of the speakers are identified exploiting convex geometry tools on the recovered simplex. The mixing acoustic channels are estimated utilizing the identified sets of frames, and a linear umixing is performed to extract the individual speakers. The derived simplexes are visually demonstrated for mixtures of two, three, and four speakers. We also conduct a comprehensive experimental study, showing high separation capabilities in various reverberation conditions.
Crowdsourced Continuous Improvement of Medical Speech Recognition

We describe a method for continuously improving the accuracy of a large-scale medical automatic speech recognizer (ASR) using a multi-step cycle involving several groups of workers. The paper will address the unique challenges of the medical domain, and discuss how automatically created and crowdsourced input data is combined to reﬁne the ASR language models. The improvement cycle helped to decrease the original system’s word error rate from 34.1% to 10.4%, which approaches the accuracy of human transcribers trained in medical transcription.
Fuzzy ecoDSS Development for Road Traffic Engineering

A road traffic engineering (RTE) is realistically required to reduce the road traffic congestion (RTC) degree. The congestion negatively affects not only to economy and physiology factors, but also for human environment and health. This paper methodologically represents the development of ecological decision support system based on the concept of fuzzy logic (Fuzzy ecoDSS) for RTE. Three types of core method operated here; fuzzy logic, water flow algorithm (WFA), and object oriented. The method fuzzy logic used to avoid the fuzziness in parameterizing and prioritize the parameters. The WFA approach functioned to replicate the flow of road traffic and optimize it thru RTE. Finally, the method object oriented benefited to analyze and design the constructed system. Thus, the simulation result exhibits the best decision alternative taken gives better air condition (more 200% than normal condition) and better road traffic velocity (more 2,200% than normal situation).
Minimum Cost Hypothesis Testing for Utility-Based Sleep-Mode

This letter considers designing a utility-based sleep-mode for the system with a traffic source of Markov-modulated Poisson process. Our design framework makes use of the minimum cost hypothesis testing to detect the state of the traffic source. More specifically, observing a packet arrival for a finite time interval, the system decides to enter sleep-mode with the hypothesis that the traffic source should be in the state with the lowest packet arrival rate. In designing the hypothesis testing, we consider two sleep-modes, such as <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$V$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-policy and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$N$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-policy, and show how long the system should observe an incoming packet and when to wake up under two sleep-modes in conjunction with discontinuous reception mechanism.
Epistemic Specifications and Conformant Planning

Epistemic Speciﬁcations allow for the correct representation of incomplete information in the presence of multiple belief sets by expanding Answer Set Programming with modal operators K and M . The meaning of M in the existing work does not correspond well to the principle of justiﬁedness accepted by the community. It is, however, challenging to characterize the justﬁedness of each belief, due to the complexity introduced by M . We address this issue by identifying a belief set with a program which uniquely decides the belief set. This idea leads to a novel deﬁnition of the semantics of Epistemic Speciﬁcations which assures that each belief in any belief set is well justiﬁed. We also show that conformant planning problems can be naturally represented by Epistemic Speciﬁcation under our semantics.
Experimental and computational study of array effects on LED thermal management on molded interconnect devices MID

Due to the functional integration potential and the excellent design freedom, molded interconnect devices (MID) are becoming more and more attractive for several fields, such as consumer electronics, automotive and lighting technologies. In this context, the need for better reliability, especially for the solid state lighting, has significantly increased recently. Thermal management impacts not only the efficiency but also the reliability and the color stability of LED arrays, where LEDs are subjected to mutual interferences. Thus, the use of highly filled and thermally conductive thermoplastics appears very appealing.In light of this fact, an experimental and computational study, with focus on the influence of the substrate material and heat dissipation concepts on the thermal management of low- and high-power LEDs on MID, is presented in this paper. The accuracy of the implemented Finite Elements Analysis (FEA) is also examined in this work and used to forecast the reliability of a 3D-MID lighting module.
Patterns of Management of Patients With Dual Disorder (Psychosis) in Italy: A Survey of Psychiatrists and Other Physicians Focusing on Clinical Practice

Patients with severe psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia, schizoaffective, and bipolar disorders frequently suffer from concomitant substance use disorders (SUDs)–Dual Disorder (DD) patients. In order to better understand current practices for management of patients with psychotic episodes and concomitant SUD in Italy, we carried out a survey of psychiatrists on current routine practice among prescribers. These aspects can help to identify at-risk patients, improve current prescribing practices, and favor early intervention. An ad hoc survey of 17 questions was administered to psychiatrists via electronic polling and on-line distribution; 448 completed questionnaires were collected. Comorbid substance abuse was most frequently diagnosed within the context of anxiety disorder (46%), followed by bipolar disorder (25%), and schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder (12%). The vast majority of respondents felt that patient management was becoming more complex due to substance abuse. The areas reported to be most affected in patients with SUD were functioning, interpersonal relations, and impulsivity, while sensory perception disorders, ideation, agitation, and impulsivity were the most frequently reported symptoms. In the acute setting, haloperidol was used as the first-line agent of choice followed by aripiprazole and olanzapine. In the maintenance phase, aripiprazole was the dominantly used first-line agent, followed by olanzapine. Almost half of respondents used long-acting agents, while about one-third did not. Among those prescribing long-acting agents, efficacy, control of impulsivity, and control of specific symptoms were cited as motivators, while in the maintenance phase, better adherence, and tolerability were mainly cited. From the responses to the present survey, it is clear that the respondents are aware of the problem of SUD in psychotic patients. While treatment be optimized in terms of the choice and formulation of antipsychotics, greater emphasis should be placed on efficacy, tolerability, and the negative metabolic consequences of some antipsychotics. When considering the ideal antipsychotic, long-acting agents were considered to be superior in reducing relapse, even if current treatment guidelines often give preference to oral formulations.
Scale Inside-Out: Rapid Mitigation of Cloud DDoS Attacks

The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in cloud computing requires quick absorption of attack data. DDoS attack mitigation is usually achieved by dynamically scaling the cloud resources so as to quickly identify the onslaught features to combat the attack. The resource scaling comes with an additional cost which may prove to be a huge disruptive cost in the cases of longer, sophisticated, and repetitive attacks. In this work, we address an important problem, whether the resource scaling during attack, always result in rapid DDoS mitigation? For this purpose, we conduct real-time DDoS attack experiments to study the attack absorption and attack mitigation for various target services in the presence of dynamic cloud resource scaling. We found that the activities such as attack absorption which provide timely attack data input to attack analytics, are adversely compromised by the heavy resource usage generated by the attack. We show that the operating system level local resource contention, if reduced during attacks, can expedite the overall attack mitigation. The attack mitigation would otherwise not be completed by the dynamic scaling of resources alone. We conceived a novel relation which terms “Resource Utilization Factor” for each incoming request as the major component in forming the resource contention. To overcome these issues, we propose a new “Scale Inside-out” approach which during attacks, reduces the “Resource Utilization Factor” to a minimal value for quick absorption of the attack. The proposed approach sacrifices victim service resources and provides those resources to mitigation service in addition to other co-located services to ensure resource availability during the attack. Experimental evaluation shows up to 95 percent reduction in total attack downtime of the victim service in addition to considerable improvement in attack detection time, service reporting time, and downtime of co-located services.
Heat Shock Protein 70 (HSP70) Reduces Hepatic Inflammatory and Oxidative Damage in a Rat Model of Liver Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury with Hyperbaric Oxygen Preconditioning

Background Several clinical conditions can cause hepatic ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury. This study aimed to determine the mechanism of the protective effect of hyperbaric oxygen preconditioning (HBO2P) on hepatic ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury in a rat model, and to investigate the effects on HBO2P and I/R injury of blocking HSP70 using antibody (Ab) pretreatment. Material/Methods Male Sprague-Dawley rats underwent HBO2P for 60 min at 2.0 atmosphere absolute (ATA) pressure for five consecutive days before surgical hepatic I/R injury, performed by clamping the portal vein and hepatic lobe. Four groups studied included: the non-HBO2P+ non-I/R group, which underwent sham surgery (N=10); the non-HBO2P + I/R group (N=10); the HBO2P + I/R group (N=10); and the HBO2P + HSP70-Ab + I/R group (N=10) received one dose of HSP70 antibody one day before hepatic I/R injury. Serum lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), and pro-inflammatory cytokines, tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interleukin-6 (IL-6), and hepatic malondialdehyde (MDA) and myeloperoxidase (MPO) were measured biochemically. Rat liver tissues were examined histologically. Results In rats with hepatic I/R injury without HSP70 antibody pre-treatment, HBO2P significantly reduced hepatic injury and levels of LDH, AST, ALT, TNF-α, IL-6, MDA, and MPO levels; in comparison, the group pre-treated with an antibody to inhibit HSP70 (the HBO2P + HSP70-Ab + I/R group) showed significant reversal of the beneficial effects of HBO2P on hepatic I/R injury (p<0.05). Conclusions In a rat model of hepatic I/R injury with HBO2P, HSP70 reduced hepatic inflammatory and oxidative damage.
Transplantation of Olfactory Stem Cells with Biodegradable Hydrogel Accelerates Facial Nerve Regeneration After Crush Injury

Olfactory mucosa contains neural stem cells, called olfactory stem cells (OSCs), which produce trophic support required for promoting axonal regeneration after nerve injury. However, the local tissue environment can reduce the viability/function of transplanted cells when placed directly on the injury. Although gelatin hydrogels have been shown to aid cell survival during transplantation, such OSC‐hydrogel combinations have not been extensively tested, particularly during recovery from facial nerve palsy. In this study, OSCs were isolated from the olfactory mucosae of newborn mice and were shown to express neural stem cell markers before differentiation, as well as cell‐type specific markers after differentiation, confirming their multipotency. The OSCs also secrete growth factors and various cytokines that promote nerve regeneration. To test the effects of OSC transplantation in vivo, Medgel, a biodegradable hydrogel sponge, was applied to retain OSCs around the injury site and to lessen the detrimental effects of the local environment in an established facial nerve palsy mouse model. When OSCs were transplanted into the injury site, accelerated recovery was observed for 1 week. When OSCs were transplanted with Medgel, a higher level and duration of accelerated recovery was observed. OSCs in Medgel also increased peripheral nerve function and increased the number of regenerated nerve fibers. These results suggest that OSCs implanted with Medgel accelerate and enhance recovery from facial palsy in mice. Because human OSCs can be easily obtained from olfactory mucosa biopsies with limited risk, this OSC‐Medgel combination is a candidate treatment option for accelerating recovery after facial nerve injury. Stem Cells Translational Medicine 2019;8:169&10
Understanding and Predicting Multiple Risky Behaviors from Social Media

According to the World Bank, risky behaviors are increasingly widespread globally and pose a growing threat to individual health and society. Recently, a number of studies have been done to study risky behaviors, such as understanding illicit drug use behaviors using social media data, and predicting drinking behavior and alcohol-related problems among fraternity and sorority members. However, the majority of the related work only focuses on one risky behavior. Research in clinical psychology and public health domains tell us that there may exist some correlations among risk behaviors. In this paper, in order to support and utilize this correlation, we investigate five risky behaviors: drug consumption, drinking, sleep disorder, depression, and eating disorder. We utilize In-stagram data to discover the correlation between those five risk behaviors and employ multi-task machine learning techniques to predict the potential risk behaviors in the near future for the Instagram users.