Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Surgical Quality in Rectal Cancer Management: What Can Be Achieved by a Voluntary Observational Study?

Purpose Countries with nationwide quality programmes in colorectal cancer report an improved outcome. In Germany, a self-organized and self-financed observational quality assurance project exists, based on voluntary participation. The object of the present study was to ascertain whether this nationwide project also improves the outcome of colorectal cancer. Methods The German Quality Assurance in Colorectal Cancer Project started in 2000 and by 2012 contained 85,000 patients. Inclusion criteria for the study were participation for the entire period of 13 years and treatment of rectal cancer. The following parameters were analysed: (1) patient related: age, gender, ASA classification, T-stage, and N-stage, (2) system related: frequency of preoperative CT and MRI, and (3) outcome related: CRM status, complications, and hospital mortality. Results Forty-one of the 345 hospitals treating 11,597 patients fulfilled the inclusion criteria. The median age increased from 67 to 69 years (p = 0.002). ASA stages III and IV increased from 32.0% to 37.6% (p = 0.005) and from 2.0% to 3.3% (p = 0.022), respectively. The use of CT rose from 67.2% to 88.8% (p < 0.001) and that of MRI from 5.0% to 35.2% (p < 0.001). The proportion of patients suffering from complications decreased from 7.9% to 5.3% (p < 0.001) for intraoperative and from 28.0% to 18.6% (p < 0.001) for postoperative surgical complications, but general postoperative complications increased from 25.8% to 29.5% (p = 0.006). The distribution of histopathological stage, anastomotic leakage, and in-hospital mortality did not change significantly. Conclusion Participation in a quality assurance project improves compliance with treatment standards, especially for diagnostic procedures. An improvement of surgical results will require further investment in training.
cpSGD: Communication-efficient and differentially-private distributed SGD

Distributed stochastic gradient descent is an important subroutine in distributed learning. A setting of particular interest is when the clients are mobile devices, where two important concerns are communication efficiency and the privacy of the clients. Several recent works have focused on reducing the communication cost or introducing privacy guarantees, but none of the proposed communication efficient methods are known to be privacy preserving and none of the known privacy mechanisms are known to be communication efficient. To this end, we study algorithms that achieve both communication efficiency and differential privacy. For $d$ variables and $n \approx d$ clients, the proposed method uses $O(\log \log(nd))$ bits of communication per client per coordinate and ensures constant privacy. We also extend and improve previous analysis of the \emph{Binomial mechanism} showing that it achieves nearly the same utility as the Gaussian mechanism, while requiring fewer representation bits, which can be of independent interest.
The influence of muscle pennation angle and cross-sectional area on contact forces in the ankle joint

Data about a muscle’s fibre pennation angle and physiological cross-sectional area are used in musculoskeletal modelling to estimate muscle forces, which are used to calculate joint contact forces. For the leg, muscle architecture data are derived from studies that measured pennation angle at the muscle surface, but not deep within it. Musculoskeletal models developed to estimate joint contact loads have usually been based on the mean values of pennation angle and physiological cross-sectional area. Therefore, the first aim of this study was to investigate differences between superficial and deep pennation angles within each muscle acting over the ankle and predict how differences may influence muscle forces calculated in musculoskeletal modelling. The second aim was to investigate how inter-subject variability in physiological cross-sectional area and pennation angle affects calculated ankle contact forces. Eight cadaveric legs were dissected to excise the muscles acting over the ankle. The mean surface and deep pennation angles, fibre length and physiological cross-sectional area were measured. Cluster analysis was applied to group the muscles according to their architectural characteristics. A previously validated OpenSim model was used to estimate ankle muscle forces and contact loads using architecture data from all eight limbs. The mean surface pennation angle for soleus was significantly greater (54%) than the mean deep pennation angle. Cluster analysis revealed three groups of muscles with similar architecture and function: deep plantarflexors and peroneals, superficial plantarflexors and dorsiflexors. Peak ankle contact force was predicted to occur before toe-off, with magnitude greater than five times bodyweight. Inter-specimen variability in contact force was smallest at peak force. These findings will help improve the development of experimental and computational musculoskeletal models by providing data to estimate force based on both surface and deep pennation angles. Inter-subject variability in muscle architecture affected ankle muscle and contact loads only slightly. The link between muscle architecture and function contributes to the understanding of the relationship between muscle structure and function.
Dialog Generation Using Multi-Turn Reasoning Neural Networks

In this paper, we propose a generalizable dialog generation approach that adapts multi-turn reasoning, one recent advancement in the field of document comprehension, to generate responses (“answers”) by taking current conversation session context as a “document” and current query as a “question”. The major idea is to represent a conversation session into memories upon which attention-based memory reading mechanism can be performed multiple times, so that (1) user’s query is properly extended by contextual clues and (2) optimal responses are step-by-step generated. Considering that the speakers of one conversation are not limited to be one, we separate the single memory used for document comprehension into different groups for speaker-specific topic and opinion embedding. Namely, we utilize the queries’ memory, the responses’ memory, and their unified memory, following the time sequence of the conversation session. Experiments on Japanese 10-sentence (5-round) conversation modeling show impressive results on how multi-turn reasoning can produce more diverse and acceptable responses than state-of-the-art single-turn and non-reasoning baselines.
Less than recommended training of aerobic fitness and muscle strength: What to expect?

According to the recommendations by The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), people need to exercise in long sessions, performed at high intensity, to achieve maximum oxygen uptake (VO2max , "Fitness") and muscle strength. This implies more than the 30-minute daily activity generally recommended by health authorities. But if one wants to stay fit, how often, how long and how intense should the training be to give a satisfactory result? This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Video Dynamics Detection Using Deep Neural Networks

In recent years, deep neural networks (DNNs) have achieved a remarkable progression in solving many complex problems. DNNs are suitable for dealing with the problems related to time series, such as speech recognition and natural language processing. Video dynamics detection, for instance, is time dependent. Apparently, video dynamics detection needs to utilize the present, previous, and next frames of a given video. If a frame change occurs, it triggers whether a video event happens or not. In this paper, video dynamics detection based on deep learning is implemented and our contributions are to effectively improve the accuracy of video dynamics detection. The contributions of this paper are as follows: 1) increasing the accuracy rate to 96% compared to an FSM-based video dynamics detection in real time; 2) By combining convolutional neural network and recurrent neural network (RNN) together, the training time is greatly reduced as we expected.
Image Distortion Detection Using Convolutional Neural Network

Image distortion classification and detection is an im-portant task in many applications. For example when com-pressing images, if we know the exact location of the distortion, then it is possible to re-compress images by adjusting the local compression level dynamically. In this paper, we address the problem of detecting the distortion region and classifying the distortion type of a given image. We show that our model significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art distortion classifier, and report accurate detection results for the first time. We expect that such results prove the use-fulness of our approach in many potential applications such as image compression or distortion restoration.
New perspectives on the Late Triassic vertebrates of East Greenland : preliminary results of a Polish−Danish palaeontological expedition

The Fleming Fjord Formation (Jameson Land, East Greenland) documents a diverse assemblage of terrestrial vertebrates of Late Triassic age. Expeditions from the turn of the 21st century have discovered many important fossils that form the basis of our current knowledge of Late Triassic Greenlandic faunas. However, due to the scarcity and incompleteness of the fossils and their insufficient study, our understanding of the taxonomic diversity of the Fleming Fjord Formation is hindered. Here, we report the preliminary findings of a Polish−Danish expedition to the Fleming Fjord Formation that took place in 2014. Three areas were visited – the fairly well known MacKnight Bjerg and Wood Bjerg and the virtually unexplored Liasryggen. MacKnigth Bjerg and Liasryggen yielded fossils which promise to significantly broaden our knowledge of vertebrate evolution in the Late Triassic. Stem−mammal remains were discovered at Liasryggen. Other fossils found at both sites include remains of actinopterygians, sarcopterygians, temnospondyl amphibians and various archosaurs (including early dinosaurs). Numerous vertebrate trace fossils, including coprolites, pseudosuchian footprints, theropod and sauropodomorph dinosaur tracks, were also discovered. Newly discovered skeletal remains as well as abundant trace fossils indicate higher tetrapod diversity in the Late Triassic of Greenland than previously thought. Trace fossils also allow inferences of early theropod and sauropodomorph dinosaur behaviour.
Can interactive parental education impact health care utilization in pediatric asthma: A study in rural Texas

Objective It is well known that parent/patient education helps to reduce the burden of asthma in urban areas, but data are scarce for rural areas. This study explored the impact of asthma education in Ector County, a rural part of Health Services Region 9 in Texas, which has one of the highest prevalence rates of asthma in the state. Methods This prospective study investigated an interactive asthma education intervention in pediatric patients aged 2–18 years and their caregivers. Change in parental/caregiver knowledge about their child’s asthma along with frequency of missed school days, emergency department (ED) visits and hospital admissions was obtained via telephone surveys before and after the educational intervention was delivered. Results The study enrolled 102 pediatric patients and their parents/caregivers. Asthma education was associated with significantly fewer school absences, ED visits and hospitalizations. Parents/caregivers reported feeling better educated, knowing what triggers an asthma exacerbation, identifying the signs of a severe asthma attack in their child, feeling confident about managing asthma and feeling that the asthma was under control. Conclusion Asthma education of caregivers and children was associated with better symptom management and fewer acute exacerbations, pointing to the relevance and importance of asthma education among pediatric patients in rural areas.
Accurate Text-Enhanced Knowledge Graph Representation Learning

Previous representation learning techniques for knowledge graph representation usually represent the same entity or relation in different triples with the same representation, without considering the ambiguity of relations and entities. To appropriately handle the semantic variety of entities/relations in distinct triples, we propose an accurate text-enhanced knowledge graph representation learning method, which can represent a relation/entity with different representations in different triples by exploiting additional textual information. Specifically, our method enhances representations by exploiting the entity descriptions and triple-specific relation mention. And a mutual attention mechanism between relation mention and entity description is proposed to learn more accurate textual representations for further improving knowledge graph representation. Experimental results show that our method achieves the state-of-the-art performance on both link prediction and triple classification tasks, and significantly outperforms previous text-enhanced knowledge representation models.
Norovirus Transmission Dynamics in a Pediatric Hospital Using Full Genome Sequences

Norovirus genome sequencing identified 33% of patients whose sequences were linked phylogenetically to those of another patient in the study. An additional 24% of nosocomially infected patients had unlinked sequences, suggesting infection from unsampled sources. Genome sequencing identifies unsuspected nosocomial norovirus infection.
SPARQL Query Execution in Networks of Web Browsers

Decentralizing the Web means that users gain the ability to store their data wherever they want, users can store their data in their web browsers. Web browsers allow decentralized applications to be deployed in one click and enable interaction with end-users. However , querying data stored in a large network of web browsers remains challenging. A network of web browsers gathers a very large number of browsers hosting small data. The network is highly dynamic, many web browsers are now running on mobile devices with limited resources, this raises issues on energy consumption. In this paper, we propose Snob, a query execution model for SPARQL query over RDF data hosted in a network of browsers. The execution of a query in a browser is similar to the execution of a federated SPARQL query over remote data sources. In Snob, direct neighbours in the network are the data sources and results received from neighbours are stored locally as intermediate results. As data sources are renewed every shuffling, the query continues to progress and could produce new results after each shuffling without congesting the network. To speed up query execution, browsers processing similar queries are connected through a semantic overlay network. Experimentation shows that the number of answers produced by queries grows with the number of executed queries in the network while the number of exchanged messages is always bounded per user.
A new venue of TNF targeting 2

The first FDA-approved drugs were small, chemically-manufactured and highly active 13 molecules with possible off-target effects. After this first successful wave of small drugs, biotechnology 14 allowed the development of protein-based medicines such as antibodies. Conventional antibodies bind 15 a specific protein and are becoming increasingly important in the therapeutic landscape. A very 16 prominent class of biologicals are the anti-TNF drugs that are applied in several inflammatory diseases 17 that are characterized by dysregulated TNF levels. Marketing of TNF inhibitors revolutionized the 18 treatment of diseases such as Crohn’s disease. However, these inhibitors also have undesired effects, 19 some of them directly associated with the inherent nature of this drug class such as immunogenicity, 20 whereas others are linked with their mechanism of action. Recently, researchers tried to design 21 innovative drugs with reduced side effects aiming to make them more effective and safer. Molecules 22 with more specificity e.g. that target one specific TNF format or receptor, or that neutralize the TNF 23 signaling pathway in specific cells, are generated. Alternatively, TNF-directed biologicals without the 24 typical antibody structure are manufactured. Here, we review the complications related to the use of 25 conventional TNF inhibitors, together with the anti-TNF alternatives and the different 26 (neurodegenerative) diseases that might benefit from selective approaches. 27 28
The in fl uence of laser-particle interaction in laser induced breakdown spectroscopy and laser ablation inductively coupled plasma spectrometry 1

a Department of Chemistry Research Group for Plasma, Laser Ablation and Surface Modeling-Antwerp (PLASMANT), University of Antwerp, Universiteitsplein 1, B-2610 Wilrijk, Belgium b Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA c Department of Analytical Chemistry and Reference Materials, Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM), Richard-Willstätter-Strasse 11, 12489 Berlin, Germany
Altered prefrontal correlates of monetary anticipation and outcome in chronic pain

Abstract Chronic pain may alter both affect- and value-related behaviors, which represents a potentially treatable aspect of chronic pain experience. Current understanding of how chronic pain influences the function of brain reward systems, however, is limited. Using a monetary incentive delay task and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we measured neural correlates of reward anticipation and outcomes in female participants with the chronic pain condition of fibromyalgia (N = 17) and age-matched, pain-free, female controls (N = 15). We hypothesized that patients would demonstrate lower positive arousal, as well as altered reward anticipation and outcome activity within corticostriatal circuits implicated in reward processing. Patients demonstrated lower arousal ratings as compared with controls, but no group differences were observed for valence, positive arousal, or negative arousal ratings. Group fMRI analyses were conducted to determine predetermined region of interest, nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), responses to potential gains, potential losses, reward outcomes, and punishment outcomes. Compared with controls, patients demonstrated similar, although slightly reduced, NAcc activity during gain anticipation. Conversely, patients demonstrated dramatically reduced mPFC activity during gain anticipation—possibly related to lower estimated reward probabilities. Further, patients demonstrated normal mPFC activity to reward outcomes, but dramatically heightened mPFC activity to no-loss (nonpunishment) outcomes. In parallel to NAcc and mPFC responses, patients demonstrated slightly reduced activity during reward anticipation in other brain regions, which included the ventral tegmental area, anterior cingulate cortex, and anterior insular cortex. Together, these results implicate altered corticostriatal processing of monetary rewards in chronic pain.
Cancer Vaccines: Bench to Bedside

The immune system has immense potential in cancer therapy as it is individualized, precision driven and robust, however, it is associated with challenges of its own that include immune evasion, development of tolerance and a sustained tumor rejection response. Recent FDA approval of several checkpoint inhibitors, anti-CTLA4, anti-PD-1, has re-invigorated cancer immunology by demonstrating that tolerance to cancer can be broken to induce a sustained immune response in patients. Active immunization with multivalent tumor associated antigens (TAA), however, is still a challenge. We have developed two specific distinct methods to generate multivalent antigens capable of tumor regression in prostate cancer and melanoma. In prostate cancer, we have generated specific multivalent peptide mimetics using phage display synthetic peptide libraries capable of metastatic tumor regression in an animal model. In melanoma, we have used a vaccinia virus based antigen retrieval technology to generate a multivalent antigenic vaccine. The antigenic repertoire is well defined. A protocol for the melanoma vaccine is FDA approved for clinical International Journal of Translational Science, Vol. 2016, 33–60. doi: 10.13052/ijts2246-8765.2016. 003 c © 2016 River Publishers. All rights reserved.
Response Inhibition and Impulsive Decision-Making in Sexual Offenders Against Children

Current theories view impulsivity as an important factor in the explanation of sexual offending. While impulsivity itself is a multidimensional construct, response inhibition and impulsive decision-making are frequently discussed subcomponents. Impulsivity in sexual offenders could be triggered by sexual cues with high emotional significance. The present study compared response inhibition abilities and the degree of impulsive decision-making between 63 child sexual abusers and 63 nonoffending controls. A Go/No-Go task was used to assess response inhibition, while the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and the Game of Dice Task (GDT) were used for the assessment of decision-making. In contrast to previous studies, modified versions of the Go/No-Go task and the IGT were used, including pictures of the Not Real People-Set depicting nude adults and children. Child sexual abusers showed more deficits in response inhibition in the Go/No-Go task. Furthermore, decision-making was especially impaired by the presence of child images in child sexual abusers with more intense pedophilic sexual interests. In contrast, in the nonoffending controls the presence of preferred sexual cues (pictures of women) improved decision-making performance. No differences in overall GDT performance were found between the groups; however, child sexual abusers chose the riskiest option more frequently than nonoffending controls. In line with theoretical assumptions about the processes underlying sexual offending, child sexual abusers show more deficits in neuropsychological functioning, which may be related to more impulsive behaviors. These impairments could be triggered by the presence of sexually relevant cues.
Cerebral Perfusion and Cerebral Autoregulation after Cardiac Arrest

Out of hospital cardiac arrest is the leading cause of death in industrialized countries. Recovery of hemodynamics does not necessarily lead to recovery of cerebral perfusion. The neurological injury induced by a circulatory arrest mainly determines the prognosis of patients after cardiac arrest and rates of survival with a favourable neurological outcome are low. This review focuses on the temporal course of cerebral perfusion and changes in cerebral autoregulation after out of hospital cardiac arrest. In the early phase after cardiac arrest, patients have a low cerebral blood flow that gradually restores towards normal values during the first 72 hours after cardiac arrest. Whether modification of the cerebral blood flow after return of spontaneous circulation impacts patient outcome remains to be determined.