Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Utility of Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Differentiating Cerebrospinal Fluid Leak from Middle Ear Effusion

Objective To demonstrate the clinical utility, sensitivity, and specificity of standard magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sequences in differentiating temporal bone cerebrospinal fluid leaks from all other middle ear effusions. Study Design Retrospective imaging review. Setting Academic medical center. Subjects Patients with cerebrospinal fluid leaks or other middle ear effusions who also underwent MRI. Methods Patients were assigned to cerebrospinal fluid leak and other effusion cohorts based on clinical course, findings at surgery/myringotomy, and beta-2 transferrin fluid analysis. Reviewers blinded to the clinical outcome examined T1-weighted, T2-weighted, diffusion-weighted, fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR), and 3-dimensional (3D) acquired T2-weighted MRI sequences. For each sequence, fluid imaged in the temporal bone was graded as either similar or dissimilar in signal intensity to cerebrospinal fluid in the adjacent subarachnoid space. Signal similarity was interpreted as being diagnostic of a leak. Test characteristics in predicting the presence of a leak were calculated for each series. Results Eighty patients met criteria (41 leaks, 39 other effusions). The 3D T2 series was 76% sensitive and 100% specific in diagnosing a leak, and FLAIR was 44% sensitive and 100% specific. The T1-weighted (73% sensitive, 69% specific), T2-weighted (98% sensitive, 5.1% specific), and diffusion-weighted (63% sensitive, 66% specific) series were less useful. Conclusions MRI, with attention to 3D T2 and FLAIR series, is a noninvasive and highly specific test for diagnosing cerebrospinal fluid leak in the setting of an indeterminate middle ear effusion.
An Adaptive MultiPreconditioned Conjugate Gradient Algorithm

This article introduces and analyzes a new adaptive algorithm for solving symmetric positive definite linear systems in cases where several preconditioners are available or the usual preconditioner is a sum of contributions. A new theoretical result allows us to select, at each iteration, whether a classical preconditioned conjugate gradient (CG) iteration is sufficient (i.e., the error decreases by a factor of at least some chosen ratio) or whether convergence needs to be accelerated by performing an iteration of multipreconditioned CG [4]. This is first presented in an abstract framework with the one strong assumption being that a bound for the smallest eigenvalue of the preconditioned operator is available. Then, the algorithm is applied to the balancing domain decomposition method and its behavior is illustrated numerically. In particular, it is observed to be optimal in terms of local solves, for both well-conditioned and ill-conditioned test cases, which makes it a good candidate to be a default par.
Abrupt Reoxygenation of Microvascular Endothelial Cells After Hypoxia Activates ERK1/2 and JNK1, Leading to NADPH Oxidase‐Dependent Oxidant Production

Objective: Mitogen‐activated protein kinases (MAPK) in microvascular endothelial cells (EC) may participate in organ pathophysiology following hypoxia/reoxygenation (H/R). The authors aimed to determine the role of MAPK in H/R‐induced reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation in mouse microvascular EC.
Open Defecation and Childhood Stunting in India: An Ecological Analysis of New Data from 112 Districts

Poor sanitation remains a major public health concern linked to several important health outcomes; emerging evidence indicates a link to childhood stunting. In India over half of the population defecates in the open; the prevalence of stunting remains very high. Recently published data on levels of stunting in 112 districts of India provide an opportunity to explore the relationship between levels of open defecation and stunting within this population. We conducted an ecological regression analysis to assess the association between the prevalence of open defecation and stunting after adjustment for potential confounding factors. Data from the 2011 HUNGaMA survey was used for the outcome of interest, stunting; data from the 2011 Indian Census for the same districts was used for the exposure of interest, open defecation. After adjustment for various potential confounding factors – including socio-economic status, maternal education and calorie availability – a 10 percent increase in open defecation was associated with a 0.7 percentage point increase in both stunting and severe stunting. Differences in open defecation can statistically account for 35 to 55 percent of the average difference in stunting between districts identified as low-performing and high-performing in the HUNGaMA data. In addition, using a Monte Carlo simulation, we explored the effect on statistical power of the common practice of dichotomizing continuous height data into binary stunting indicators. Our simulation showed that dichotomization of height sacrifices statistical power, suggesting that our estimate of the association between open defecation and stunting may be a lower bound. Whilst our analysis is ecological and therefore vulnerable to residual confounding, these findings use the most recently collected large-scale data from India to add to a growing body of suggestive evidence for an effect of poor sanitation on human growth. New intervention studies, currently underway, may shed more light on this important issue.
Technical Report : Harmonic Subjectivity in Popular Music

Reference annotation datasets containing harmony annotations are at the core of a wide range of studies in music information retrieval (MIR) and related fields. The majority of these datasets contain single reference annotations describing the harmony of each piece or song. Nevertheless, music theoretical insights on harmonic ambiguity and studies showing differences among annotators in many other MIR tasks make the notion of a single “ground-truth” reference annotation a tenuous one. In order to gain a better understanding of differences between annotators, we introduce and analyze the Harmonic Annotator Subjectivity Dataset (HASD) containing chord labels for fifty songs from four annotators. Our analysis of the chord labels in the dataset reveals a low overlap between the annotators. We show that annotators use distinct chord-label vocabularies, with less than 20 percent chord-label overlap across all annotators. A factor analysis reveals the relative importance of triads, sevenths, inversions, and other musical factors for each annotator on their choice of chord labels and reported difficulty of the songs in the dataset. Between annotators, we find only 73 percent overlap on average for the traditional major–minor vocabulary and 54 percent overlap for the most complex chord labels. Our results suggest the existence of a harmonic “subjectivity ceiling” : an upper bound for evaluations in computational harmony research. State-of-the-art chordestimation systems in MIREX 2017 reported overlap scores that lie beyond this subjectivity ceiling by about 10 percent. This suggests that current ACE algorithms are powerful enough to tune themselves to particular annotators’ idiosyncrasies. Overall, our results show that annotator subjectivity is an important factor in harmonic transcriptions that should inform future research on any musical tasks that rely on human annotations.
Data Fusion in Large Arrays of Microsensors 1

In this paper we report on one component of the research being performed under a multiuniversity research program whose aim is to contribute to the fundamental questions in signal processing, fusion, and information science that arise when one considers the fusion of information from very large arrays of microsensors. We begin, however, with a brief description of our overall program, which has at its core dealing with four challenges when one considers large arrays of individually inexpensive sensors. The first of these is scalability. How do we construct sensor fusion algorithms whose complexity scales well with network size? How does the performance of the network scale with its size? The second is dealing with uncertain and complex environments. One part of the vision for sensor networks is that not only will the individual elements be inexpensive but also their deployment will be inexpensive and flexible. For example, deploying large numbers of acoustic, seismic, electromagnetic, IR, and other types of sensors for military sensing in unknown environments requires that the network deal with uncertainties in the locations and calibration of the individual sensors as well as in the environment through which signals sensed by those sensors must propagate. Developing algorithms that are robust and/or adapt to these uncertainties is critical for successful operation of such networks. The third challenge is working with limited and dear resources. In particular, in many cases power (for sensing, computation, and communication) may be severely limited, and developing methodologies that make judicious use of power is critical. The last challenge is that of performance limits and guarantees. For example, it is important to have bounds on how well one can perform under resource constraints in order to determine if algorithms we have developed can be meaningfully improved or if they are already approaching the most one would expect given the available resources. In addition, given the uncertainties and variability of the environments into which sensor networks will be placed, it is important to characterize the robustness of algorithms and their sensitivities to variations in that environment.
Epidemiology of CKD Regression in Patients under Nephrology Care

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) regression is considered as an infrequent renal outcome, limited to early stages, and associated with higher mortality. However, prevalence, prognosis and the clinical correlates of CKD regression remain undefined in the setting of nephrology care. This is a multicenter prospective study in 1418 patients with established CKD (eGFR: 60–15 ml/min/1.73m²) under nephrology care in 47 outpatient clinics in Italy from a least one year. We defined CKD regressors as a ΔGFR ≥0 ml/min/1.73 m2/year. ΔGFR was estimated as the absolute difference between eGFR measured at baseline and at follow up visit after 18–24 months, respectively. Outcomes were End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) and overall-causes Mortality.391 patients (27.6%) were identified as regressors as they showed an eGFR increase between the baseline visit in the renal clinic and the follow up visit. In multivariate regression analyses the regressor status was not associated with CKD stage. Low proteinuria was the main factor associated with CKD regression, accounting per se for 48% of the likelihood of this outcome. Lower systolic blood pressure, higher BMI and absence of autosomal polycystic disease (PKD) were additional predictors of CKD regression. In regressors, ESRD risk was 72% lower (HR: 0.28; 95% CI 0.14–0.57; p<0.0001) while mortality risk did not differ from that in non-regressors (HR: 1.16; 95% CI 0.73–1.83; p = 0.540). Spline models showed that the reduction of ESRD risk associated with positive ΔGFR was attenuated in advanced CKD stage. CKD regression occurs in about one-fourth patients receiving renal care in nephrology units and correlates with low proteinuria, BP and the absence of PKD. This condition portends better renal prognosis, mostly in earlier CKD stages, with no excess risk for mortality.
Wastewater Irrigation Increases the Abundance of Potentially Harmful Gammaproteobacteria in Soils in Mezquital Valley, Mexico

ABSTRACT Wastewater contains large amounts of pharmaceuticals, pathogens, and antimicrobial resistance determinants. Only a little is known about the dissemination of resistance determinants and changes in soil microbial communities affected by wastewater irrigation. Community DNAs from Mezquital Valley soils under irrigation with untreated wastewater for 0 to 100 years were analyzed by quantitative real-time PCR for the presence of sul genes, encoding resistance to sulfonamides. Amplicon sequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA genes from community DNAs from soils irrigated for 0, 8, 10, 85, and 100 years was performed and revealed a 14% increase of the relative abundance of Proteobacteria in rainy season soils and a 26.7% increase in dry season soils for soils irrigated for 100 years with wastewater. In particular, Gammaproteobacteria, including potential pathogens, such as Pseudomonas, Stenotrophomonas, and Acinetobacter spp. , were found in wastewater-irrigated fields. 16S rRNA gene sequencing of 96 isolates from soils irrigated with wastewater for 100 years (48 from dry and 48 from rainy season soils) revealed that 46% were affiliated with the Gammaproteobacteria (mainly potentially pathogenic Stenotrophomonas strains) and 50% with the Bacilli, whereas all 96 isolates from rain-fed soils (48 from dry and 48 from rainy season soils) were affiliated with the Bacilli. Up to six types of antibiotic resistance were found in isolates from wastewater-irrigated soils; sulfamethoxazole resistance was the most abundant (33.3% of the isolates), followed by oxacillin resistance (21.9% of the isolates). In summary, we detected an increase of potentially harmful bacteria and a larger incidence of resistance determinants in wastewater-irrigated soils, which might result in health risks for farm workers and consumers of wastewater-irrigated crops.
Off-line signature verification using HMMs and cross-validation

We propose an HMM-based approach for off-line signature verification. One of the novelty aspects of our method lies in the ability to dynamically and automatically derive the various author-dependent parameters, required to set an optimal decision rule for the verification process. In this context, the cross-validation principle is used to derive not only the best HMM models, but also an optimal acceptation/rejection decision threshold for each author. This leads to a high discrimination between actual authors and impostors in the context of random forgeries. To quantitatively evaluate the generalization capabilities of our approach, we considered two conceptually different experimental tests carried out on two sets of 40 and 60 authors respectively, each author providing 40 signatures. The results obtained on these two sets show the robustness of our approach.
Polarization imaging for breast cancer diagnosis using texture analysis and SVM

The polarization state of the light transmitting through a specimen can provide useful information concerning the optical property of the sample. We present a polarization imaging device that measures the Stokes components of the trans-illuminant light. Particularly, we develop an image analysis algorithm using texture analysis and support vector machine for tissue classification. The experiment has been conducted using rat breast tissue in health and with cancer. It is demonstrated that the Stokes images can improve the classification performance of the algorithm. With the incorporation of the multi-polarization images, it is shown that the diagnosis accuracy can be further improved over that using intensity image only.
Performance Evaluation of LR-WPAN for different Path-Loss Models

WPAN is Low-Rate wireless personal area network standard IEEE 802.15. 4. This paper is to establish path loss models for predicting wireless data transmission performance for IEEE 802.15. 4 protocol standard. We use two different path-loss models to check the performance of network. Applying the channel models in our OMNeT++ simulation Mobility Framework environment for IEEE 802.15. 4 systems, we find that the simulated performance of these models gives different results for both models. We show that these solutions increase the network performance and decreases energy consumption significantly.
The Java syntactic extender (JSE)

The ability to extend a language with new syntactic forms is a powerful tool. A sufficiently flexible macro system allows programmers to build from a common base towards a language designed specifically for their problem domain. However, macro facilities that are integrated, capable, and at the same time simple enough to be widely used have been limited to the Lisp family of languages to date. In this paper we introduce a macro facility, called the Java Syntactic Extender (JSE), with the superior power and ease of use of Lisp macro sytems, but for Java, a language with a more conventional algebraic syntax. The design is based on the Dylan macro system, but exploits Java's compilation model to offer a full procedural macro engine. In other words, syntax expanders may be implemented in, and so use all the facilities of, the full Java language
Systemic evening primrose oil improves the biophysical skin parameters of healthy adults

Biophysical skin parameters are indicators of age‐related structural and functional changes in skin tissues. This randomized, double‐blind, placebo‐controlled study in healthy adults tested the effect of Efamol evening primrose oil [EPO, a gamma‐linolenic acid (GLA) containing vegetable oil] on skin moisture, transepidermal water loss (TEWL), redness, firmness, elasticity, fatigue resistance and roughness. Efamol EPO was administered orally in soft gel capsules, 3 × 500 mg b.i. d. for 12 weeks. Measurements were taken at baseline and at weeks 4 and 12. The two treatment groups did not differ at baseline and at week 4. At week 12, however, all measured variables, with the exception of skin redness, were significantly different in the EPO group compared with placebo. Skin moisture, TEWL, elasticity, firmness, fatigue resistance and roughness had significantly improved by 12.9, 7.7, 4.7, 16.7, 14.2 and 21.7%, respectively. The two‐sided levels of significance in favor of the EPO treatment ranged between 0.034 and 0.001. These findings lend further support to the notion that GLA is a conditionally essential fatty acid for the skin, i.e. it is unable to synthesize GLA, and therefore depends on preformed GLA for optimal structure and function.
PhosphoSite: A bioinformatics resource dedicated to physiological protein phosphorylation

PhosphoSite™ is a curated, web‐based bioinformatics resource dedicated to physiologic sites of protein phosphorylation in human and mouse. PhosphoSite is populated with information derived from published literature as well as high‐throughput discovery programs. PhosphoSite provides information about the phosphorylated residue and its surrounding sequence, orthologous sites in other species, location of the site within known domains and motifs, and relevant literature references. Links are also provided to a number of external resources for protein sequences, structure, post‐translational modifications and signaling pathways, as well as sources of phospho‐specific antibodies and probes. As the amount of information in the underlying knowledgebase expands, users will be able to systematically search for the kinases, phosphatases, ligands, treatments, and receptors that have been shown to regulate the phosphorylation status of the sites, and pathways in which the phosphorylation sites function. As it develops into a comprehensive resource of known in vivo phosphorylation sites, we expect that PhosphoSite will be a valuable tool for researchers seeking to understand the role of intracellular signaling pathways in a wide variety of biological processes.
List Processing in Real Time on a Serial Computer

A real-time list processing system is one in which the time required by the elementary list operations (e.g. ATOM in LISP) is bounded by a (small) constant. Classical implementations of list processing systems lack this property because allocating a list cell from the heap may cause a garbage collection, which process requires time proportional to the heap size to finish. A real-time list processing system is presented which continuously reclaims garbage, including directed cycles, while linearizing and compacting the accessible cells into contiguous locations to avoid fragmenting the free storage pool. The program is small and requires no time-sharing interrupts, making it suitable for microcode. Finally, the system requires the same average time, and not more than twice the space, of a classical implementation, and those space requirements can be reduced to approximately classical proportions by compact list representation. Arrays of different sizes, a program stack, and hash linking are simple extensions to our system, and reference counting is found to be inferior for many applications. General permission to make fair use in teaching or research of all or part of this material is granted to individual readers and to nonprofit libraries acting for them provided that ACM's copyright notice is given and that reference is made to the publication, to its date of issue, and to the fact that reprinting privileges were granted by permission of the Association for Computing Machinery. To otherwise reprint a figure, table, other substantial excerpt, or the entire work requires specific permission as does republication, or systematic or multiple reproduction .
Bosonization of the low energy excitations of Fermi liquids.

We bosonize the low energy excitations of Fermi liquids in any number of dimensions in the limit of long wavelengths. The bosons are a coherent superposition of electron-hole pairs and are related with the displacements of the Fermi surface in some arbitrary direction. A coherent-state path integral for the bosonized theory is derived and it is shown to represent histories of the shape of the Fermi surface. The Landau theory of Fermi liquids can be obtained from the formalism in the absence of nesting of the Fermi surface and singular interactions. We show that the Landau equation for sound waves is exact in the semiclassical approximation for the bosons.
Association Between Serum Cystatin C Levels and Coronary Slow Flow

We assessed the association between serum cystatin C (CysC) levels and coronary slow flow (CSF) phenomenon in patients who underwent coronary angiography. A total of 210 patients (mean age 55.6 ± 10.9 years; 100 females) were included. Patients were divided into 3 groups, (patients with CSF [group 2], with coronary artery disease [CAD; group 3], and without CAD [group 1]). Serum CysC levels in patients with CSF were significantly lower than those with and without CAD (912.5 ± 135.6, 820.4 ± 104.2, and 1343.4 ± 236.6 ng/mL in groups 1, 2, and 3, respectively; P < .001). Serum CysC levels correlated with the number of vessels with CSF and mean corrected thrombolysis in myocardial infarction frame count (Spearman correlation coefficient [r s] = .192, P < .001 and r s = .261, P < .001 respectively). In conclusion, patients with CSF have lower CysC levels; this could be a useful biomarker of CSF involvement in patients who undergo diagnostic coronary angiography.