Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prevalence of clinical rejection after surveillance biopsies in pediatric renal transplants: Does early subclinical rejection predispose to subsequent rejection episodes?

Abstract: We analyzed rates of both SCR and CR in children receiving SB at three months post‐transplant to determine if SCR predisposed patients to acute CR. Acute rejection was defined according to Banff criteria to include borderline classification or higher. All cases of SCR and CR were treated with anti‐rejection protocols. Between October 2004 and July 2008, 89 SB were performed at three months post‐transplant. Twenty‐six cases of SCR were detected (29%). Sixteen patients experienced 22 episodes of biopsy‐proven CR occurring after SB, including seven episodes following SCR and 15 after normal SB. The onset of CR varied from one to 27 months after SB and occurred at similar intervals for cases with SCR and normal SB. The percentage of patients remaining free of CR at 30 months post‐transplant was similar in patients with SCR and normal SB. Renal function and graft survival at 30 months also were no different between patients with SCR and those with normal SB. Early‐SCR, when treated with rejection protocols, is not a prognostic indicator for subsequent CR episodes.
Indoor Positioning of a Robotic Walking Assistant for Large Public Environments

Indoor localization and position tracking are essential to support applications and services for ambient-assisted living. While the problem of indoor localization is still open and already quite complex per se, in large public places, additional issues of cost, accuracy, and scalability arise. In this paper, the position estimation and tracking technique developed within the project devices for assisted living (DALi) is described, analyzed through simulations, and finally validated by means of a variety of experiments on the field. The goal of the DALi project is to design a robotic wheeled walker guiding people with psychomotor problems. Indeed, people with motor or cognitive impairments are often afraid of moving in large and crowded environments (e.g., because they could lose the sense of direction). In order to mitigate this problem, the position tracking approach described in this paper is based on multisensor data fusion and it is conceived to assure a good tradeoff between target accuracy, level of confidence, and deployment costs. Quite interestingly, the same approach could be used for indoor automated guided vehicles and robotics.
Application of Iterative Calculation of Matrix for Solving Ill-posed Problems

The parameter estimations are unstable when the determinant of the coefficient matrix of the normal equation is closed to 0 in least-squares estimation. The deviation of estimator is too great because of rounding error of calculator and it is hard to get the precise inverse of the coefficient matrix. A matrix function which is matrix power series was introduced in proposed method based on ridge estimation. The matrix function is convergent to the normal equation coefficient matrix inverse and can be calculated through iterative calculation of matrix. Then the accuracy of the matrix inverse is improved and the estimations are robust. Three methods which are least-squares estimation, ridge estimation and iterative calculation were investigated. The second one is a biased estimation and it is difficult to get the appropriate ridge parameter, the third one is infinite times of calculation. The Theoretical analysis and computer simulation results show that the iterative calculation is precise and effective.
Breastfeeding in the context of domestic violence—a cross‐sectional study

AIMS To determine the differences in breastfeeding among women who did and did not experience domestic violence during pregnancy and postpartum in a Swedish context. In addition, to identify possible differences regarding breastfeeding between groups with or without a history of violence. Further, determine the relationship between exclusive breastfeeding and symptoms of depression. BACKGROUND History of violence may increase the risk of depression and a decrease in, or cessation of, breastfeeding. DESIGN The study has a cross-sectional design. METHODS Data were collected prospectively from March 2012 - May 2015. A cohort of 731 mothers answered a questionnaire from a larger project (1.5 years postpartum). RESULTS Breastfeeding was reported by 93.7% of participants. Women exposed to domestic violence during pregnancy and/or postpartum (4.5%) were just as likely to breastfeed as women who had not reported exposure to domestic violence. There were no statistically significant differences between the groups with or without a history of violence regarding exclusive breastfeeding. Women reporting several symptoms of depression breastfed exclusively to a lesser extent compared with women who had a few symptoms of depression. CONCLUSION Domestic violence did not influence breastfeeding prevalence or duration. Breastfeeding did not differ in women with or without a history of violence. Symptoms of depression influenced duration of exclusive breastfeeding. Beyond recognizing women who are exposed to violence, it is important to identify and to support pregnant women and new mothers with symptoms of depression as their health and the health of their infants depends on the mothers' mental well-being.
Experimental study on spontaneous imbibition chatacteristics of tight rocks

In the exploitation of tight oil and gas reservoirs, multi-stage hydraulic fracturing technology is mainly used and a complex system of fractures and matrix is formed after fracturing. In the process of field production, it is reported that longer shut-in time results in good oil and gas production rate. The reason of this phenomenon is considered as the spontaneous imbibition of oil and gas driven by capillary force in reservoirs. Spontaneous imbibition is an important recovery mechanism in low permeability and tight reservoirs. The pore structure of tight rocks is very complex and the pore connectivity is poor. It is of great significance to study the imbibition mechanism of tight porous rocks. Through the combination of spontaneous imbibition experiments, this work studies the influencing factors and reveals the mechanism of the gas/oil recovery from tight reservoirs. The spontaneous imbibition experiments were carried on the gas/water system and the oil/water system. The swelling clay minerals in shales will enhance the imbibition. Cores with high permeability have small recovery, which may be due to the low capillary force in tight cores. Fractures can promote the imbibition volume of tight cores. Cited as : Gao, L. , Yang, Z. , Shi, Y. Experimental study on spontaneous imbibition chatacteristics of tight rocks. Advances in Geo-Energy Research, 2018, 2(3): 292-304, doi: 10.26804/ager.2018. 03.07.
Negative Auto-Regulation of Myostatin Expression is Mediated by Smad3 and MicroRNA-27

Growth factors, such as myostatin (Mstn), play an important role in regulating post-natal myogenesis. In fact, loss of Mstn has been shown to result in increased post-natal muscle growth through enhanced satellite cell functionality; while elevated levels of Mstn result in dramatic skeletal muscle wasting through a mechanism involving reduced protein synthesis and increased ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation. Here we show that miR-27a/b plays an important role in feed back auto-regulation of Mstn and thus regulation of post-natal myogenesis. Sequence analysis of Mstn 3′ UTR showed a single highly conserved miR-27a/b binding site and increased expression of miR-27a/b was correlated with decreased expression of Mstn and vice versa both in vitro and in mice in vivo. Moreover, we also show that Mstn gene expression was regulated by miR-27a/b. Treatment with miR-27a/b-specific AntagomiRs resulted in increased Mstn expression, reduced myoblast proliferation, impaired satellite cell activation and induction of skeletal muscle atrophy that was rescued upon either blockade of, or complete absence of, Mstn. Consistent with this, miR-27a over expression resulted in reduced Mstn expression, skeletal muscle hypertrophy and an increase in the number of activated satellite cells, all features consistent with impaired Mstn function. Loss of Smad3 was associated with increased levels of Mstn, concomitant with decreased miR-27a/b expression, which is consistent with impaired satellite cell function and muscular atrophy previously reported in Smad3-null mice. Interestingly, treatment with Mstn resulted in increased miR-27a/b expression, which was shown to be dependent on the activity of Smad3. These data highlight a novel auto-regulatory mechanism in which Mstn, via Smad3 signaling, regulates miR-27a/b and in turn its own expression. In support, Mstn-mediated inhibition of Mstn 3′ UTR reporter activity was reversed upon miR-27a/b-specific AntagomiR transfection. Therefore, miR-27a/b, through negatively regulating Mstn, plays a role in promoting satellite cell activation, myoblast proliferation and preventing muscle wasting.
Faster Mass Spectrometry-Based Protein Inference: Junction Trees Are More Efficient than Sampling and Marginalization by Enumeration

The problem of identifying the proteins in a complex mixture using tandem mass spectrometry can be framed as an inference problem on a graph that connects peptides to proteins. Several existing protein identification methods make use of statistical inference methods for graphical models, including expectation maximization, Markov chain Monte Carlo, and full marginalization coupled with approximation heuristics. We show that, for this problem, the majority of the cost of inference usually comes from a few highly connected subgraphs. Furthermore, we evaluate three different statistical inference methods using a common graphical model, and we demonstrate that junction tree inference substantially improves rates of convergence compared to existing methods. The python code used for this paper is available at http://noble.gs. washington.edu/proj/fido.
The perception of shading and reflectance

The luminance of a surface results from the combined effect of its reflectance (albedo) and its conditions of illumination. Luminance can be directly observed, but reflectance and illumination can only be derived by perceptual processes. Human observers are good at judging an object's reflectance in spite of large changes in illumination; this skill is known as "lightness constancy. " Most research on lightness constancy has used stimuli consisting of grey patches on a single flat plane. The models are typically based on the assumption that slow variations in luminance are due to illumination gradients, while sharp changes in luminance are due to reflectance edges. The retinex models for use with "Mondrian" stimuli are good examples (Land and McCann, 1971; Horn, 1974). But in three-dimensional scenes, sharp luminance changes can arise from either reflectance or from illumination, as illustrated in Figure 11.1(a). The edge marked (1) is due to a reflectance change, such as might result from a different shade of paint. The edge marked (2) results from a change in surface normal which leads to a change in the angle of incidence of the light -an effect that we may simply refer to as "shading. " As Gilchrist and his colleagues have emphasized (Gilchrist et al., 1983), three-dimensional scenes introduce large and important effects that are completely missed in the traditional approach to lightness perception.
An efficient fault-tolerant multicast routing protocol with core-based tree techniques

In this paper, we study an efficient fault-tolerant CBT multicast routing protocol. With our strategy, when a faulty component is detected, some pre-defined backup path(s) is (are) used to bypass the faulty component and enable the multicast communication to continue. Our protocol only requires that routers near the faulty component be reconfigured, thus reducing the runtime overhead without compromising much of the performance. Our performance evaluation shows that our new protocol performs nearly as well as the best possible global method while utilizing much less runtime overhead and implementation cost.
A spatial analysis of multivariate output from regional climate models

Climate models have become an important tool in the study of climate and climate change, and ensemble experiments consisting of multiple climate-model runs are used in studying and quantifying the uncertainty in climate-model output. However, there are often only a limited number of model runs available for a particular experiment, and one of the statistical challenges is to characterize the distribution of the model output. To that end, we have developed a multivariate hierarchical approach, at the heart of which is a new representation of a multivariate Markov random field. This approach allows for flexible modeling of the multivariate spatial dependencies, including the cross-dependencies between variables. We demonstrate this statistical model on an ensemble arising from a regional-climate-model experiment over the western United States, and we focus on the projected change in seasonal temperature and precipitation over the next 50 years.
Effects of Physician-Nurse Substitution on Clinical Parameters: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background Physicians’ shortage in many countries and demands of high-quality and affordable care make physician-nurse substitution an appealing workforce strategy. The objective of this study is to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) assessing the impact of physician-nurse substitution in primary care on clinical parameters. Methods We systematically searched OVID Medline and Embase, The Cochrane Library and CINAHL, up to August 2012; selected peer-reviewed RCTs comparing physician-led care with nurse-led care on changes in clinical parameters. Study selection and data extraction were performed in duplicate by independent reviewers. We assessed the individual study risk of bias; calculated the study-specific and pooled relative risks (RR) or weighted mean differences (WMD); and performed fixed-effects meta-analyses. Results 11 RCTs (N = 30,247) were included; most were from Europe, generally small with higher risk of bias. In all studies, nurses provided care for complex conditions including HIV, hypertension, heart failure, cerebrovascular diseases, diabetes, asthma, Parkinson’s disease and incontinence. Meta-analyses showed greater reductions in systolic blood pressure (SBP) in favour of nurse-led care (WMD −4.27 mmHg, 95% CI −6.31 to −2.23) but no statistically significant differences between groups in the reduction of diastolic blood pressure (DBP) (WMD −1.48 mmHg, 95%CI −3.05 to −0.09), total cholesterol (TC) (WMD -0.08 mmol/l, 95%CI -0.22 to 0.07) or glycosylated haemoglobin (WMD 0.12%HbAc1, 95%CI -0.13 to 0.37). Of other 32 clinical parameters identified, less than a fifth favoured nurse-led care while 25 showed no significant differences between groups. Limitations disease-specific interventions from a small selection of healthcare systems, insufficient quantity and quality of studies, many different parameters. Conclusions trained nurses appeared to be better than physicians at lowering SBP but similar at lowering DBP, TC or HbA1c. There is insufficient evidence that nurse-led care leads to better outcomes of other clinical parameters than physician-led care.
A DNA/HDAC dual-targeting drug CY190602 with significantly enhanced anticancer potency

Genotoxic drugs constitute a major treatment modality for human cancers; however, cancer cells' intrinsic DNA repair capability often increases the threshold of lethality and renders these drugs ineffective. The emerging roles of HDACs in DNA repair provide new opportunities for improving traditional genotoxic drugs. Here, we report the development and characterization of CY190602, a novel bendamustine‐derived drug with significantly enhanced anticancer potency. We show that CY190602's enhanced potency can be attributed to its newly gained ability to inhibit HDACs. Using this novel DNA/HDAC dual‐targeting drug as a tool, we further explored HDAC's role in DNA repair. We found that HDAC activities are essential for the expression of several genes involved in DNA synthesis and repair, including TYMS, Tip60, CBP, EP300, and MSL1. Importantly, CY190602, the first‐in‐class example of such DNA/HDAC dual‐targeting drugs, exhibited significantly enhanced anticancer activity in vitro and in vivo. These findings provide rationales for incorporating HDAC inhibitory moieties into genotoxic drugs, so as to overcome the repair capacity of cancer cells. Systematic development of similar DNA/HDAC dual‐targeting drugs may represent a novel opportunity for improving cancer therapy.
Isolation and Functional Analysis of ZmLTP3, a Homologue to Arabidopsis LTP3

Plant lipid transfer proteins (LTPs) are encoded by multigene families and play important roles in plant physiology. One full-length cDNA encoding an Arabidopsis LTP3 homologue was isolated from maize by RT-PCR and named as ZmLTP3. RT-PCR analysis indicated that the ZmLTP3 expression is induced by salicylic acid (SA), mannitol and salt. Furthermore, in different tissues the ZmLTP3 displayed different expression patterns, indicating that ZmLTP3 may play multiple roles in stress resistance. Over-expression of ZmLTP3 in wild-type Arabidopsis resulted in the increased salt tolerance. Under salt stress condition, compared to wild-type (WT) plants, transgenic Arabidopsis grew better, had higher seedling fresh (FW), dry weight (DW), seed yields, proline content and lower MDA content and relative electric conductivity level. Our results suggest that maize ZmLTP3 might encode a member of LTPs family and play roles in salt resistance.
The principles and application of qualitative research

The present paper provides an overview of the methodological principles that underpinqualitative research and how these principles differ from those of quantitative research. It is intended to set the scene for the following papers that outline two specific approaches to the analysis of qualitative data. Within the tradition of qualitative research there are many different theoretical perspectives, of which these approaches are only two examples, but they need to be set within this broader tradition in order to highlight their specific features. Qualitative and quantitative research differ from each other in far more than their methods and data. They are each based on very different premises about both the nature of the world and the nature of our knowledge of it and how this information is generated. These approaches have implications for all aspects of research strategy, including the assessment of the quality of research findings and their wider utility or application. In relation to the latter, lack of detail in the reporting of qualitative research and small sample sizes has tended to create the impression that the findings of qualitative research have little application outside the particular research setting. While there is need for more rigor in reporting, it needs to be recognized that qualitative research can offer insights and understandings with wider relevance, althoughthese outcomes are of a different type from those provided by quantitative research.
CoV-Based Metrics for Quantifying the Regularity of Hard-Core Point Processes for Modeling Base Station Locations

Base station locations in wireless networks can be modeled via repulsive random point processes with an amount of regularity that is tunable between that of a triangular lattice and that of a homogeneous Poisson point process. However, it is currently difficult to quantify this regularity, or compare different repulsive point processes. In this letter, we examine three regularity metrics based on the coefficient of variation (CoV) of geometric properties of point processes and identify the CoV of the nearest neighbour distance as the most sensitive metric. We also compare three hard-core point processes in terms of their regularity range and the density of the generated points.
Stability criterion and pattern planning for humanoid running

Although some researchers have studied the humanoid running based on simplified models, the issue of humanoid running based on the whole dynamics has not been sufficiently discussed before. The objective of this paper is to study the stability criterion and the dynamic pattern generation for humanoid running based on the whole dynamics. First, the cycle and the dynamics of running are analyzed. Next, the stability criterion of humanoid running is presented. Then, the method to plan a running pattern consisting of a foot trajectory and a hip trajectory is proposed. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated by the dynamic simulation examples in DADS (Dynamic Analysis and Design System).
Seizure Detection Using the Phase-Slope Index and Multichannel ECoG

Detection and analysis of epileptic seizures is of clinical and research interest. We propose a novel seizure detection and analysis scheme based on the phase-slope index (PSI) of directed influence applied to multichannel electrocorticogram data. The PSI metric identifies increases in the spatio-temporal interactions between channels that clearly distinguish seizure from interictal activity. We form a global metric of interaction between channels and compare this metric to a threshold to detect the presence of seizures. The threshold is chosen based on a moving average of recent activity to accommodate differences between patients and slow changes within each patient over time. We evaluate detection performance over a challenging population of five patients with different types of epilepsy using a total of 47 seizures in nearly 258 h of recorded data. Using a common threshold procedure, we show that our approach detects all of the seizures in four of the five patients with a false detection rate less than two per hour. A variation on the global metric is proposed to identify which channels are strong drivers of activity in each patient. These metrics are computationally efficient and suitable for real-time application.