Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Routine genetic testing of lung cancer specimens derived from surgery, bronchoscopy and fluid aspiration by next generation sequencing

After the development of EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs), genetic testing of EGFR became required for effective treatment of lung cancer. Initially, the testing was conducted separately for each mutated region. However, many EGFR mutations have since been identified that determine the efficacy of EGFR-TKIs. Therefore, genetic testing of EGFR by next generation sequencing (NGS) may be a suitable strategy for lung cancer. Here we examined the applicability of the NGS method in regard to sensitivity, time and cost. A total of 939 specimens were obtained from 686 lung cancer patients at our hospital. DNA and RNA were simultaneously extracted from specimens derived from surgery, bronchoscopy, and fluid aspiration. Specimens included cerebrospinal fluid, pleural effusion, abdominal fluid, and pericardial effusion. From RNA, target regions (EGFR, KRAS, ALK fusion and RET fusion) were enriched by RT-PCR and sequenced with MiSeq. From DNA, PCR or PCR-RFLP conventional methods were performed. NGS and conventional methods were carried out routinely per week. Among the total 939 specimens, 38 specimens could not be examined with NGS. Among these, 34 specimens were analyzed by conventional testing with simultaneously extracted DNA. The remaining four specimens could not be tested with either method. Compared with the conventional method, the concordance rate of mutations was 99% (892/901), excluding specimens with NGS failure. The time period required from processing of specimens to results was 4 days, and the cost per sample was sufficiently low. In conclusion, the genetic testing with NGS method was useful for lung cancer treatment. The cost, sensitivity and time were able to tolerate routine examinations.
Gonorrhea in the obstetric and gynecologic clinic. Incidence in a voluntary hospital in an urban community.

Eight hundred and seventy-five patients admitted to the obstetric and gynecologic clinics of a large voluntary hospital in an urban community were examined routinely for gonorrhea with smears and cultures of specimens from the urethra, cervix vagina, and, in 153 instances, from the anal canal. Seventy-two cases of gonorrhea were proved, for a rate of infection of 8.2%. The rate of infection in the obstetric group was 5.5%, and in the gynecologic group, 11.1%. An additional eight patients with positive smears but negative cultures make a total of 80 cases of diagnosed or presumptive gonorrhea, for a rate of 9.1%. The most frequently positive site was the cervix. In this series there was no increased yield by the additional use of the Novak curettage method as compared with obtaining specimens with the platinum loop.
The Open University ’ s repository of research publications and other research outputs Divine Narratives in Xenophon ’ s Anabasis

This paper builds on recent work that has focused on the interplay between Xenophon the narrator and Xenophon the character in the Anabasis. It illustrates how crucial the divine is in the construction of Xenophon’s character and the overall shape of the narrative. By referring to oracles, dreams and sacrifices, as well as his divine estate at Scillus, Xenophon the narrator contributes substantively towards wider thematic concerns in the narrative: the meaningful rôle of the divine in warfare; Xenophon’s stellar record during this opaque foreign campaign, and the signal connection between piety and good leadership.
Diffuse reflectance imaging with astronomical applications

Diffuse objects generally tell us little about the surrounding lighting, since the radiance they reflect blurs together incident lighting from many directions. In this paper we discuss how occlusion geometry can help invert diffuse reflectance to recover lighting or surface albedo. Self-occlusion in the scene can be regarded as a form of coding, creating high frequencies that improve the conditioning of diffuse light transport. Our analysis builds on a basic observation that diffuse reflectors with sufficiently detailed geometry can fully resolve the incident lighting. Using a Bayesian framework, we propose a novel reconstruction method based on high-resolution photography, taking advantage of visibility changes near occlusion boundaries. We also explore the limits of single-pixel observations as the diffuse reflector (and potentially the lighting) vary over time. Diffuse reflectance imaging is particularly relevant for astronomy applications, where diffuse reflectors arise naturally but the incident lighting and camera position cannot be controlled. To test our approaches, we first study the feasibility of using the moon as a diffuse reflector to observe the earth as seen from space. Next we present a reconstruction of Mars using historical photometry measurements not previously used for this purpose. As our results suggest, diffuse reflectance imaging expands our notion of what can qualify as a camera.
Rendering Almost Perspective Views from a Sparse Set of Omnidirectional Images

Non-central (X-slits) images can be used in image based rendering (IBR) for new view synthesis for a viewer moving in a restricted region. Novel, i.e. previously unseen, views are rendered from virtual camera positions from a set of images captured at some predefined camera positions. The novel views correspond to camera positions not contained in the input image set. For instance, the input sequence consists of images captured on a circular path, but the viewer can move in a disk defined by that path. We investigate a class of non-central images, the omnidirectional X-slits images, which capture environment around the viewer completely. The virtual viewer can rotate his head freely in each position without the need of creating another image for different viewing direction. New images have to be generated only in case of a change in position of the viewer. This approach allows efficient representation of high resolution (and thus space demanding) images for IBR in memory.
A staggered discontinuous Galerkin method for the simulation of Rayleigh waves

Accurate simulation of Rayleigh waves is of critical importance in a variety of geophysical applications, such as exploration geophysics, geotechnical characterization, and earthquake-related damage assessment. Based on recent works on staggered discontinuous Galerkin methods, we propose for the simulation of Rayleigh waves a new method which enjoys energy conservation and extremely low grid dispersion, so that it naturally provides accurate long-time/long-range wave propagation. Moreover, it can handle with ease irregular surface topography and discontinuities in the subsurface models as it is a Galerkin-type method. Since it combines the advantages of both the staggeredgrid finite difference method and the discontinuous Galerkin method, the proposed method offers a powerful tool for modeling Rayleigh waves and seismic waves in general.
A divide and conquer approach to shortest paths in planar layered digraphs

The authors give efficient parallel algorithms to compute shortest-paths in planar layered digraphs. They show that these digraphs admit special kinds of separators, called one-way separators, which allow paths in the graph to cross them only once. They use these separators to give divide-and-conquer solutions to the problem of finding the shortest paths. They first give a simple algorithm that works on the CREW (concurrent-read exclusive-write) PRAM (parallel random-across machine) model and computes the shortest path between any two vertices of an n-node planar layered diagraph in time O(log/sup 3/ n) using n/log n processors. A CRCW (concurrent-read concurrent-write) version of this algorithm runs in O(log/sup 2/ n log log n) time and uses O(n/log log n) processors. The authors then improve the time bound to O(log/sup 2/ n) on the CREW model and O(log n log log n) on the CRCW model. The processor bounds still remain n log n for the CREW model and n/log log n for the CRCW model. <<ETX>>
3D Objects Retrieval using Geodesic Distance Based on Eikonal equation

Recently, shape-based matching and retrieval of 3D polygonal models has become one of the most fundamental problems in computer vision. Dealing with families of objects instead of a single one may impose further challenges on regular geometric algorithms. In this paper we focus on the classification of 3D objects based on their geodesic distance & path calculated on a mesh using an iterative algorithm for solving the Eikonal equation. For the classification process, we use both Multiclass Support Vector Machine (M-SVM) classifier,K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Decision Tree (DT) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) to better evaluate our descriptors. We illustrate the potential of extracted characteristics by two 3D benchmarks. The recognition rates achieved in all experiments show that a small number of curve between 9 and 12 can correctly categorize a family of 3D objects.
Absolute Depth Sensitivity in Cat Primary Visual Cortex under Natural Viewing Conditions

Mechanisms of 3D perception, investigated in many laboratories, have defined depth either relative to the fixation plane or to other objects in the visual scene. It is obvious that for efficient perception of the 3D world, additional mechanisms of depth constancy could operate in the visual system to provide information about absolute distance. Neurons with properties reflecting some features of depth constancy have been described in the parietal and extrastriate occipital cortical areas. It has also been shown that, for some neurons in the visual area V1, responses to stimuli of constant angular size differ at close and remote distances. The present study was designed to investigate whether, in natural free gaze viewing conditions, neurons tuned to absolute depths can be found in the primary visual cortex (area V1). Single-unit extracellular activity was recorded from the visual cortex of waking cats sitting on a trolley in front of a large screen. The trolley was slowly approaching the visual scene, which consisted of stationary sinusoidal gratings of optimal orientation rear-projected over the whole surface of the screen. Each neuron was tested with two gratings, with spatial frequency of one grating being twice as high as that of the other. Assuming that a cell is tuned to a spatial frequency, its maximum response to the grating with a spatial frequency twice as high should be shifted to a distance half way closer to the screen in order to attain the same size of retinal projection. For hypothetical neurons selective to absolute depth, location of the maximum response should remain at the same distance irrespective of the type of stimulus. It was found that about 20% of neurons in our experimental paradigm demonstrated sensitivity to particular distances independently of the spatial frequencies of the gratings. We interpret these findings as an indication of the use of absolute depth information in the primary visual cortex.
Modélisation multi-échelle et analyse expérimentale du comportement de composites à matrice thermoplastique renforcés fibres de verre sous sollicitations dynamiques modérées

Le present travail de these a pour objectif de developper un outil de modelisation par transition d’echelles sous forme de machine d’essais virtuels. Celle-ci, utilisee conjointement aux codes de calculs de structures, permet de determiner le comportement anisotrope complexe de composites a matrice polypropylene charges en fibres de verre courtes sous sollicitations dynamiques. La microstructure en cœur-peau induite par le procede d’injection du materiau est investiguee experimentalement par μCT. Le comportement dynamique est caracterise pour des vitesses de deformation allant jusqu’a 200s-1 au moyen d’une une methodologie experimentale basee sur l’utilisation d’un joint d’amortissement et d’une optimisation des eprouvettes. Les mecanismes d’endommagement sont analyses experimentalement par essai in situ. Ils mettent en evidence le phenomene d’endommagent preponderant qui est la decohesion de l’interface fibre matrice. Base sur ces resultats experimentaux, l’approche multi echelles developpee consiste en une methode de Mori Tanaka incrementale appliquee a une matrice elastoviscoplastique et des renforts enrobes integrant l’evolution de l’endommagement a l’echelle mesoscopique. L’endommagement introduit dans les enrobages perturbe le transfert de charge entre la matrice et les renforts. De plus, la dependance a la vitesse de deformation, aux orientations et aux taux de fibre du modele sont correles par des essais. La machine d’essais virtuels est validee par modelisation de structures. L’outil predictif ainsi developpe prend en compte le minimum necessaire a la description de la microstructure tout en etant fiable et pertinent dans la modelisation de composites sous sollicitations dynamiques moderees.
Role of Emotion icons in Sentiment classification of Arabic Tweets

In recent years, there is enormous increase of data content due to emergence of social media platforms in digital word of internet. The text mining is very important technique to discover the knowledge from unstructured data. Automatic sentiment analysis is one of the important applications of text mining. The sentiment analysis is used to predict the text polarity (positive, negative, and neutral). Furthermore, the most of users using social media such as Twitter use informal language to express their opinions. In this paper, we propose an automatic approach to predict sentiments for informal Arabic language. We chose Arabic tweets as input for our study. We observed through our experiment results that although emotion icons presence in the tweets helps in development of comparatively more accurate classifier, however they play ambiguous role in defining the sentiments of tweets.
Smets and Wouters ( 2007 ) Smets and Wouters ( 2007 ) BVAR without instrument with SPF forecast error instrument

DSGE models are used for analyzing policy and the sources of business cycles. A competing approach uses VARs that are partially identified using, for example, narrative shock measures and are often viewed as imposing fewer restrictions on the data. Narrative shocks are identified non-structurally through information external to particular models. This uses non-structural narrative shock measures to inform the structural estimation of DSGE models. Since fiscal policy has received much recent attention but the foundations of the fiscal side of DSGE models are less well studied than their monetary building block, fiscal DSGE models are a particularly promising application. Preliminary results from a standard medium-scale DSGE model support this argument: Structurally identified monetary shocks line up well with narrative measures, whereas government spending shocks do not. Extending the model to include distortionary taxes and more general fiscal policy processes, I find that model implied labor tax shocks line up well with narrative tax shocks. Including different narrative shock measures affects parameter identification and implied measures such as fiscal multipliers.
miR-149 in Human Cancer: A Systemic Review

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs that regulate post-transcriptional gene expression via binding to the 3'-untranslated region (3'-UTR) of targeted mRNAs. They are reported to play important roles in tumorigenesis and progression of various cancers. Among them, miR-149 was confirmed to be aberrantly regulated in various tumors. In this review, we provide a complex overview of miR-149, particularly summarize the critical roles of it in cancers and expect to lay the foundation for future works on this important microRNA.
How to Compete: The Impact of Workplace Practices and Information Technology on Productivity

Using data from a unique nationally representative sample of businesses, we examine the impact of workplace practices, information technology, and human capital investments on productivity. We estimate an augmented Cobb-Douglas production function with both cross section and panel data covering the period of 19871993, using both within and GMM estimators. We find that it is not whether an employer adopts a particular work practice but rather how that work practice is actually implemented within the establishment that is associated with higher productivity. Unionized establishments that have adopted human resource practices that promote joint decision making coupled with incentive-based compensation have higher productivity than other similar nonunion plants, whereas unionized businesses that maintain more traditional labor management relations have lower productivity. Finally, plant productivity is higher in businesses with more-educated workers or greater computer usage by nonmanagerial employees.
Utilization of microgravity bioreactors for differentiation of mammalian skeletal tissue

Bioreactor cell and tissue culture vessels can be used to study bone development in a simulated microgravity environment. These vessels will also provide an advantageous, low maintenance culture system on space station Freedom. Although many types of cells and tissues can potentially utilize this system, our particular interest is in developing bone tissue. We have characterized an organ culture system utilizing embryonic mouse pre‐metatarsal mesenchyme, documenting morphogenesis and differentiation as cartilage rods are formed, with subsequent terminal chondrocyte differentiation to hypertrophied cells. Further development to form bone tissue is achieved by supplementation of the culture medium. Research using pre‐metatarsal tissue, combined with the bioreactor culture hardware, could give insight into the advantages and/or disadvantages of conditions experienced in microgravity. Studies such as these have the potential to enhance understanding of bone development and adult bone physiology, and may help define the processes of bone demineralization experienced in space and in pathological conditions here on earth. © 1993 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Geochronology of early Mesozoic diabase units in southwestern China: metallogenic and tectonic implications

Abstract Two phases of diabase-sill-forming magmatism are recorded within the Badu anticline where magmas were emplaced into upper Palaeozoic carbonates and clastic rocks of the Youjiang fold-and-thrust belt in the SW South China Block, China. Zircons from these diabase units yield weighted mean U–Pb ages of 249.2±2.0 Ma and 187.1±3.3 Ma, and magmatic oxygen fugacity values from ‒20 to ‒6 (average of ‒12, equating to FMQ +5) and ‒20 to ‒10 (average of ‒15, equating to FMQ +2), respectively. These data indicate that the sills were emplaced during Early Triassic and Early Jurassic times. The discovery of c. 250 Ma mafic magmatism in this area was probably related to post-flood-basalt extension associated with the Emeishan mantle plume or rollback of the subducting Palaeo-Tethys slab. The c. 190 Ma diabase sills indicate that the southwestern South China Block records Early Jurassic mafic magmatism and lithospheric extension that was likely associated with a transition from post-collisional to within-plate tectonic regimes. The emplacement of diabase intrusions at depth may have driven hydrothermal systems, enabling the mobilization of elements from sedimentary rocks and causing the formation of a giant epigenetic metallogenic domain. The results indicate that high-oxygen-fugacity materials within basement rocks caused crustal contamination of the magmas, contributing to the wide range of oxygen fugacity conditions recorded by the Au-bearing Badu diabase. In addition, data from inherited xenocrystic zircons within the Badu diabase and detrital zircons from basement rocks suggest that the Neoproterozoic Jiangshao suture extends to the south of the Badu anticline.
A Cross-Layer Optimization Framework for Multihop Multicast in Wireless Mesh Networks

The optimal and distributed provisioning of high throughput in mesh networks is known as a fundamental but hard problem. The situation is exacerbated in a wireless setting due to the interference among local wireless transmissions. In this paper, we propose a cross-layer optimization framework for throughput maximization in wireless mesh networks, in which the data routing problem and the wireless medium contention problem are jointly optimized for multihop multicast. We show that the throughput maximization problem can be decomposed into two subproblems: a data routing subproblem at the network layer, and a power control subproblem at the physical layer with a set of Lagrangian dual variables coordinating interlayer coupling. Various effective solutions are discussed for each subproblem. We emphasize the network coding technique for multicast routing and a game theoretic method for interference management, for which efficient and distributed solutions are derived and illustrated. Finally, we show that the proposed framework can be extended to take into account physical-layer wireless multicast in mesh networks
Composite lighting simulations with lighting networks

Lighting networks combine different global illumination algorithms in a composite lighting simulation and allow for restricting costly lighting effects to important parts of the scene. In the lighting networks approach, each lighting algorithm is considered a lighting operator or LightOp. Each LightOp takes illumination information as input and generates new illumination information as output after having simulated part of the global lighting effects in the scene. We motivate the use of LightOps from the formal solution of the radiance equation. We then demonstrate how these LightOps can easily combine into a lighting network, representing a composite lighting simulation.
Association between polymorphisms in renin-angiotensin system genes and primary ovarian insufficiency in Korean women

ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE; insertion/deletion), angiotensinogen (AGT M235T), and angiotensin II type 1 receptor (AT1R 1166A>C) and the prevalence of primary ovarian insufficiency (POI) in Korean women. MethodsA total of 133 women with POI and 238 controls were genotyped for polymorphic sites in each gene using polymerase chain reaction–restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis. ResultsACE ID and ID + II variants occurred more frequently in women with POI than in controls (odds ratio [OR], 1.830; 95% CI, 1.040-3.221; P = 0.040; and OR, 1.797; 95% CI, 1.055-3.060; P = 0.031, respectively). The AT1R 1166AC genotype occurred more frequently in participants with POI than in controls (OR, 3.171; 95% CI, 1.562-6.436; P = 0.002). Comparing the combined genotype frequencies of ACE/AT1R revealed that the frequencies of ID/AA, ID/AC, and II/AC were higher in participants than in controls (OR, 1.916; 95% CI, 1.053-3.485; P = 0.043; OR, 3.544; 95% CI, 1.207-10.407; P = 0.036; and OR, 7.875; 95% CI, 2.224-27.881; P = 0.001, respectively). The TT/AC genotype for combined genotyping of AGT/AT1R was more frequently observed in the POI group than in the control group (OR, 3.472; 95% CI, 1.450-8.313; P = 0.006). In multifactor dimensionality reduction–based haplotype analysis, the I-T-C genotype of ACE/AGT/AT1R was a possible predisposing factor for POI (OR, 4.678; 95% CI, 1.721-12.717; P = 0.002). ConclusionsThis study demonstrates that polymorphisms in the renin-angiotensin system are related to the prevalence of POI. Thus, these renin-angiotensin system genes may serve as a novel marker for predicting the development of POI.