Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
COMPARISON BETWEEN PRIMARY ANGIOPLASTY AND STENT PLACEMENT FOR SYMPTOMATIC INTRACRANIAL ATHEROSCLEROTIC DISEASE: META‐ANALYSIS OF CASE SERIES

OBJECTIVETo compare the short- and long-term rates of stroke-and/or-death associated with primary angioplasty alone and angioplasty with stent placement using a meta-analysis of published studies. Both primary angioplasty alone and angioplasty with stent placement have been proposed as treatment strategies for symptomatic intracranial atherosclerotic disease to reduce the risk of stroke-and/or-death with best medical treatment alone. However, it remains unclear which of these endovascular techniques offers the best risk reduction. METHODSWe identified pertinent studies published between January 1980 and May 2008 using a search on PubMed and Cochrane libraries, supplemented by a review of bibliographies of selected publications. The incidences of stroke-and/or-death were estimated for each report and pooled for both angioplasty alone and angioplasty with stent placement at 1 month and 1 year postintervention and then compared using a random-effects model. The association of year of publication and 1-year incidence of stroke-and/or-death was analyzed with meta-regression. RESULTSAfter applying our selection criteria, we included 69 studies (33 primary angioplasty-alone studies [1027 patients] and 36 studies of angioplasty with stent placement [1291 patients]) in the analysis. There were a total of 91 stroke-and/or-deaths reported in the angioplasty-alone–treated group (8.9%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 7.1%–10.6%), compared with 104 stroke-and/or-deaths in the angioplasty-with-stent–treated group (8.1%; 95% CI, 6.6%–9.5%) during a 1-month period (relative risk [RR], 1.1; P = 0.48). The pooled incidence of 1-year stroke-and/or-death in patients treated with angioplasty alone was 19.7% (95% CI, 16.6%–23.5%), compared with 14.2% (95% CI, 11.9%–16.9%) in the angioplasty-with-stent–treated patients (RR, 1.39; P = 0.009). The incidence of technical success was 79.8% (95% CI, 74.7%–84.8%) in the angioplasty-alone group and 95% (95% CI, 93.4%–96.6%) in the angioplasty-with-stent–treated group (RR, 0.84; P < 0.0001). The pooled restenosis rate was 14.2% (95% CI, 11.8–16.6%) in the angioplasty-alone group, as compared with 11.1% (95% CI, 9.2%–13.0%) in the angioplasty-with-stent–treated group (RR, 1.28; P = 0.04). There was no effect of the publication year of the studies on the risk of stroke-and/or-death. CONCLUSIONRisk of 1-year stroke-and/or-death and rate of angiographic restenosis may be lower in symptomatic intracranial atherosclerosis patients treated by angioplasty with stent placement compared with patients treated by angioplasty alone.
REINA at CLEF 2009 Robust-WSD Task: Partial Use of WSD Information for Retrieval

This paper describes the participation of the REINA research group at CLEF 2009 Robust-WSD Task. We have participated in both monolingual and bilingual subtasks. In past editions of the robust task our research group obtained very good results for non-WSD experiments applying local query expansion using co-occurrence based thesauri constructed using windows of terms. We applied it again. For WSD experiments, our intention was to use the WSD information and WordNet for expansion, but we did not have time to use them. We only used the lemma proposed by the POS tagger of the WSD collection as a stemmer. In bilingual retrieval experiments, two on-line machine translation programs were used to translate topics, and translations were merged before performing a monolingual retrieval. We also applied the same local expansion technique. Our non-WSD runs obtained the top rank considering the GMAP measure (monolingual and bilingual subtasks). However, regarding expansion we viewed that the settings tuned for a system not always produces retrieval improvement when the conditions change: number of query terms, query language, document or query subject, linguistic approach, etc. Our WSD runs also obtained very good positions in the rankings even thought we only used partial WSD information. However, in comparison with non-WSD runs the retrieval performance made worse. We detected some homonym errors in the POS tagger and probably these errors are worse than the errors carried out by the Porter stemmer used in the non-WSD experiments.
Differential activation of the Stat signaling pathway in the liver after burn injury

Wang, Shan, Steven E. Wolf, and B. Mark Evers. Differential activation of the Stat signaling pathway in the liver after burn injury. Am. J. Physiol. 273 (Gastrointest. Liver Physiol. 36): G1153–G1159, 1997. —The liver plays a crucial role in the acute phase response after injury; mechanisms responsible for transducing inflammatory signals to the nucleus to initiate this response are not known. The purpose of this study was to examine the induction of the novel Stat (signal transducer and activator of transcription) pathway in the liver after burn injury. Rats were subjected to either a 60% burn or sham treatment; livers were removed over a time course and extracted for nuclear protein. We found that Stat3, but not Stat5, binding was predominantly increased in the liver after burn injury as assessed by gel mobility and ‘‘supershift’’ analyses. Moreover, Stat3 nuclear protein levels were increased 6to 14-fold in the livers of burned rats compared with those of sham rats. Stat3 phosphorylation was rapidly induced after burn injury; the subsequent increase of Stat3 binding was completely blocked by preincubation with the antiphosphotyrosine antibody (4G10). We conclude that a differential and early induction of Stat3 binding activity occurs in the liver after burn injury; this induction is mediated by an increase in phosphorylation. These findings suggest an important role for Stat3 in transducing inflammatory signals to the nucleus of liver cells after a systemic burn injury.
Object localisation via action recognition

The aim of this paper is to track objects during their use by humans. The task is difficult because these objects are small, fast-moving and often occluded by the user. We present a novel solution based on cascade action recognition, a learned mapping between body-and object-poses, and a hierarchical extension of importance sampling. During tracking, body pose estimates from a Kinect sensor are classified between action classes by a Support Vector Machine and converted to discriminative object pose hypotheses using a {body, object} pose mapping. They are then mixed with generative hypotheses by the importance sampler and evaluated against the image. The approach out-performs a state of the art adaptive tracker for localisation of 14/15 test implements and additionally gives object classifications and 3D object pose estimates.
NoPSM: A Concurrent MAC Protocol over Low-Data-Rate Low-Power Wireless Channel without PRR-SINR Model

Concurrent MAC protocols can improve channel usage of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), and provide a high-performance infrastructure for data intensive applications. Most of the existing concurrent MAC protocols are based on proactively constructed physical interference models, i.e., PRR-SINR models (PSM). However, it incurs relatively high bandwidth and energy overheads to construct PSM for WSNs. In this paper, we propose NoPSM, which does not take PSM as base to determine transmission concurrency. Instead, the base of NoPSM is reactively constructed interference relationships by passively analyzing overlapping relationships among time logs of block data transmissions and corresponding reception status of each packet in blocks. In this way, NoPSM has two salient features. First, NoPSM is able to construct interference relationships among nodes quickly and accurately along with block data transmissions without needs of network downtime. Second, based on the constructed interference relationships, NoPSM can make decisions of transmission concurrency with a comprehensive criterion, which not only estimates quality of any active links after initiating a new link, but also estimates throughput improvement gained from concurrent transmissions. NoPSM has been implemented in Tinyos-2.1 and extensively evaluated in TOSSIM. Experimental results show that NoPSM improves system throughput by up to 60 percent compared with a traditional CSMA protocol, which cannot exploit potential transmission concurrency. Moreover, NoPSM can gain up to 55 percent throughput improvement as compared to an existing reactive concurrent MAC.
Impact of Learning Strategies on the Quality of Bayesian Networks: An Empirical Evaluation

We present results from an empirical evaluation of the impact of Bayesian network structure learning strategies on the learned structures. In particular, we investigate how learning algorithms with different optimality guarantees compare in terms of structural aspects and generalisability of the produced network structures. For example, in terms of generalization to unseen testing data, we show that local search algorithms often benefit from a tight constraint on the number of parents of variables in the networks, while exact approaches tend to benefit from looser parent restrictions. Overall, we find that learning strategies with weak optimality guarantees show good performance on synthetic datasets, but, compared to exact approaches, perform poorly on the more "real-world" datasets. The exact approaches, which guarantee to find globally optimal solutions, consistently generalize well to unseen testing data, motivating further work on increasing the robustness and scalability of such algorithmic approaches to Bayesian network structure learning.
The broad-band XMM-Newton and INTEGRAL spectra of bright type 1 Seyfert galaxies

Aims. The 0.5–150 keV broad-band spectra of a sample of nine bright type 1 Seyfert galaxies are analyzed here. These sources have been discovered/detected by INTEGRAL and subsequently observed with XMM-Newton for the first time with high sensitivity below 10 keV. The sample, although small, is representative of the population of type 1 AGN which are now being observed above 20 keV. Methods. The intrinsic continuum has been modeled using three different parameterizations: a power-law model, an exponential cutoff power-law and an exponential cut-off power-law with a Compton reflection component. In each model the presence of intrinsic absorption, a soft component and emission line reprocessing features has also been tested. Results. A simple power-law model is a statistically good description of most of the spectra presented here; an FeK line, fully and/or partial covering absorption and a soft spectral component are detected in the majority of the sample sources. The average photon index (� Γ� = 1.7 ± 0.2) is consistent, within errors, with the canonical spectral slope often observed in AGN although the photon index distribution peaks in our case at flat Γ (∼1.5) values. For four sources, we find a significantly improved fit when the power-law is exponentially cut-off at an energy which is constrained to be below ∼150 keV. The Compton reflection parameter could be estimated in only two objects of the sample and in both cases is found to be R > 1.
Genetic and epigenetic markers in the evaluation of pancreatic masses

Background Methylation markers have shown promise in the early diagnosis of pancreatic carcinoma. The aim of this study was to assess the diagnostic utility of hypermethylation status of candidate genes in combination with KRAS mutation detection in the evaluation of pancreatic masses. Experimental design Sixty-one fine needle aspirates of pancreatic masses (43 pancreatic adenocarcinomas and 18 chronic pancreatitis) were studied. Methylation status of HRH2, EN1, SPARC, CDH13 and APC were analysed using melting curve analysis after DNA bisulfite treatment. KRAS mutations were also analysed. Results The methylation panel had a sensitivity of 73% (27 of 37, CI 95% 56 to 86%) and a specificity of 100% whenever two or more promoters were found hypermethylated. KRAS mutations showed a sensitivity of 77% (33 of 43, CI 95% 62 to 88%) and a specificity of 100%. Both molecular analyses added useful information to cytology by increasing the number of informative cases. When genetic and epigenetic analyses were combined sensitivity was 84% (36 of 43 CI 95% 69 to 93%) maintaining a 100% specificity. Conclusions Analysis of hypermethylation status of a panel of genes and KRAS mutation detection offer a similar diagnostic yield in the evaluation of pancreatic masses. The combined molecular analysis increases the number of informative cases without diminishing specificity.
A Wideband Hybrid Water Antenna With an F-Shaped Monopole

Anew wideband hybrid antenna is proposed in this paper. It combines an F-shaped conducting monopole antenna and a water dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) to effectively broaden the antenna bandwidth. The F-shaped monopole is also used to excite the water DRA. The unique features of water, such as transparency and liquidity, allow complex feeding structures to be placed, and tuned inside the water DRA. A comprehensive parametric study is conducted to optimize the antenna performance. The final design is made and tested. A good agreement is obtained between the simulation and the measurement results. Compared with the conventional straight probe, the proposed antenna has a wider bandwidth from 410 to 870 MHz (a fractional bandwidth of 71.8%) for S11 <; -6 dB, with a compact size (52 mm × 51.5 mm × 10 mm, roughly 0.071λ × 0.07λ × 0.0136λ at 410 MHz). It is shown that this new antenna is a very good candidate for hand-portable applications such as Digital Video Broadcasting- Handheld.
Surface reconstruction from unorganized points

We describe and demonstrate an algorithm that takes as input an unorganized set of points {xl, . xn} ⊂ R3 on or near an unknown manifold M, and produces as output a simplicial surface that approximates M. Neither the topology, the presence of boundaries, nor the geometry of M are assumed to be known in advance - all are inferred automatically from the data. This problem naturally arises in a variety of practical situations such as range scanning an object from multiple view points, recovery of biological shapes from two-dimensional slices, and interactive surface sketching.
Selecting a Process Modeling Language for Process Based Unification of Multiple Standards and Models

This report summarizes the selection process performed in order to ensure a modelling language of sufficient quality for describing processes based on multiple software quality models and standards. UML activity diagrams, EPCs and BPMNs are compared based on well-defined criteria: intelligibility, ability of expressing process elements and workflow patterns, software support, portability and widespread. Both the criteria and the rationale of the final selection can be used as a basis for selecting a process modeling language for other projects in the industry.
The design and field evaluation of PhotoTalk: a digital image communication application for people

Talk is an application for a mobile device that allows people with aphasia to capture and manage digital photographs to support face-to-face communication. Unlike any other augmentative and alternative communication device for people with aphasia, PhotoTalk focuses solely on image capture and organization and is designed to be used independently. Our project used a streamlined process with 3 phases: (1) a rapid participatory design and development phase with two speech-language pathologists acting as representative users, (2) an informal usability study with 5 aphasic participants, which caught usability problems and provided preliminary feedback on the usefulness of PhotoTalk, and (3) a 1 month field evaluation with 2 aphasic participants, which showed that both used it regularly and fairly independently, although not always for its intended communicative purpose. Our field study demonstrated PhotoTalk's promise in terms of its usability and usefulness in real life situations.
Development of the CU-HTK 2004 broadcast news transcription systems

The paper describes our recent work on improving broadcast news transcription and presents details of the CU-HTK broadcast news English (BN-E) transcription system for the DARPA/NIST rich transcription 2004 speech-to-text (RT04) evaluation. A key focus has been building a system using an order of magnitude more acoustic training data than we have previously attempted. We have also investigated a range of techniques to improve both minimum phone error (MPE) training and the efficient creation of MPE-based narrow-band models. The paper describes two alternative system structures that run in under 10/spl times/RT and a further system that runs in less than 1/spl times/RT. This final system gives lower word error rates than our 2003 system that ran in 10/spl times/RT.
Laser acceleration in vacuum

This paper explores the use of the large electric fields of high-brightness lasers (e.g., up to order TV/cm) to accelerate particles. Unfortunately, as is well known, it is difficult to couple the vacuum field of the laser to particles so as to achieve a net energy gain. In principle, the energy gain near the focus of the laser can be quite high, i.e., on the order of the work done in crossing the focus /spl Delta//spl gamma/=/spl radic//spl pi/eEw /spl sim/30 MeV/spl radic/(P/1 TW), where P is the laser power. In order to retain this energy, the particles must be in the highly nonlinear regime (Vosc/c/spl Gt/1) or must be separated from the laser within a distance on the order of a Rayleigh length from the focus. In this work, we explore the acceleration and output energy distribution of an electron beam injected at various angles and injection energies into a focused laser beam. Insight into the physical mechanism of energy gain is obtained by separating the contributions from the longitudinal and transverse laser field components.
Multi-objective optimization of ORC geothermal conversion system integrated with life cycle assessment

This paper details the development of a systematic methodology to integrated life cycle assessment (LCA) with thermo-economic models and to thereby identify the optimal exploitation schemes of geothermal resources. Overall geothermal systems consist of a superstructure of geothermal exploitable resources, a superstructure of conversion technology and multiple demand profiles for Swiss city. In this paper, an enhanced geothermal system has been chosen as exploitable resources. The energy conversion technology used in modelling is an organic Rankine cycle, which can be used to supply heat and electricity. In the Swiss case four demand profiles periods are considered: summer, interseason, winter and extreme winter, the city Nyon serving for the example case study. The multi-objective optimization system, that uses an evolutionary algorithm, is employed to determine the optimal scheme for some of the prepared models, with exergy efficiency and environmental impact as objectives.
Classification of protein sequences by homology modeling and quantitative analysis of electrostatic similarity

Protein electrostatics plays a key role in ligand binding and protein–protein interactions. Therefore, similarities or dissimilarities in electrostatic potentials can be used as indicators of similarities or dissimilarities in protein function. We here describe a method to compare the electrostatic properties within protein families objectively and quantitatively. Three‐dimensional structures are built from database sequences by comparative modeling. Molecular potentials are then computed for these with a continuum solvation model by finite difference solution of the Poisson‐Boltzmann equation or analytically as a multipole expansion that permits rapid comparison of very large datasets. This approach is applied to 104 members of the Pleckstrin homology (PH) domain family. The deviation of the potentials of the homology models from those of the corresponding experimental structures is comparable to the variation of the potential in an ensemble of structures from nuclear magnetic resonance data or between snapshots from a molecular dynamics simulation. For this dataset, the results for analysis of the full electrostatic potential and the analysis using only monopole and dipole terms are very similar. The electrostatic properties of the PH domains are generally conserved despite the extreme sequence divergence in this family. Notable exceptions from this conservation are seen for PH domains linked to a Dbl homology (DH) domain and in proteins with internal PH domain repeats. Proteins 1999;37:379–387. ©1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Climate impacts of retention forestry in a Swedish boreal pine forest

ABSTRACT The excessive simplification of forest structure associated with clear-cutting can carry risks for biodiversity. Tree retention is an alternative practice that maintains greater structural diversity, but its effects on climate change impacts relative to conventional harvesting are largely unexplored. By integrating field measurements from 12 forest stands with modelling approaches, we investigated the post-harvest effects on radiative forcing of tree retention in a Swedish boreal pine forest. In the near-term, impacts from carbon fluxes and surface albedo were of the same order of magnitude but with opposite sign (warming for carbon and cooling for albedo), with a net warming effect. In the long-term, the net effect turns to cooling, as the forest becomes a strong carbon sink. Retention had a significant effect on climate in the near-term, where differences between the various retention levels are more evident. At increasing tree retention, warming impacts from carbon fluxes tend to decrease, but cooling contributions from surface albedo are less pronounced. Balancing these effects, we find a net climate warming that increases with tree retention.
Springback analysis of free bending based on uniform design

Free bending with no bottoming is commonly applied in various industrial productions because of its versatile forming characteristics. And full application in the large-diameter longitudinal welded pipes production shows the superiority of this forming method. This paper adopts a scientific experimental design method to carry out physical modeling and simulation study on the wide-plate air bending. Good coincidence between the experiment and simulation result illustrates the preciseness of finite element analysis. The results after the regression analysis on simulated data were obtained and regression equation used to predict the target bending angle is presented.
COMMUNITY ASSEMBLY AND ECOLOGY OF MICROALGAE OF PESHAWAR KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA PAKISTAN

The diversity in algal communities of selected spots of Peshawar area was explored in the present study. A total of thirty species belonging to twenty genera were recorded from Urmar Payan District Peshawar. The algae belonging to Bacillariophyceae were Fragillaria (2 spp.), Gomphonema (3 spp.) Gyrosigma (1 sp.), Diatoma (1 sp.) Cymbella (2 spp.) Cymatopleura (1sp.), Denticula (1 sp.), Navicula (1 sp.) and Synedra (1 sp.). Those belonging to Chlorophyceae included Cladophora (1sp.), Edogonium (1 sp.), Spirogyra (1sp.) and Chlamydomonas (1sp.). While, Ulvophyceae included Ulothrix (1 sp.). Xanthophyceae included Ophiiocytium (1 sp.). The group Cyanophyceae included Phormidium (1sp.) and Osilltoria (6 spp.). While Trebouxiophyceae included Oocyspys (1sp.) and Conjugtophyceae included Cosmarium (1 sp.) and Closterium (2 spp.). These are described for the first time from the target site.