Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Central Nervous System Cryptococcosis in Solid Organ Transplant Recipients: Clinical Relevance of Abnormal Neuroimaging Findings

Background. Prognostic implications of cryptococcal antigen and outcomes associated with central nervous system (CNS) cryptococcal lesions in solid organ transplant recipients have not been fully defined. Methods. Patients were derived form a cohort of 122 solid organ transplant recipients with cryptococcosis in a multicenter study from 1999 to 2006. Results. Central nervous system cryptococcosis was documented in 61 patients. Serum or cerebral spinal fluid antigen titers did not correlate with mortality at 90 days or cerebral spinal fluid sterilization at 2 weeks. Central nervous system lesions were identified in 16 patients and included leptomeningeal lesions in eight, parenchymal lesions in six, and hydrocephalus in two. Overall, 13/16 CNS lesions were present at the time of diagnosis. One parenchymal and two hydrocephalus lesions, however, developed after diagnosis and fulfilled the criteria for immune reconstitution syndrome. Cerebral spinal fluid antigen titers were higher with meningeal versus parenchymal lesions, and hydrocephalus (P=0.015). Mortality was 50% (3/6) for patients with parenchymal, 12.5% (1/8) for those with leptomeningeal, and 0/3 for patients with hydrocephalus. Mortality was 31% (4/13) for patients with CNS lesions at baseline and 0/3 in those with new onset lesions. Conclusions. Despite a higher antigen titer with meningeal lesions, outcomes tended to be worse with parenchymal compared with meningeal lesions or hydrocephalus. New onset CNS lesions may represent immune reconstitution syndrome and seemed to be associated with better outcome.
Measures of cardiorespiratory fitness in relation to measures of body size and composition among children

In the exercise testing measures of cardiorespiratory fitness need to be scaled by body size or composition to enable comparison between individuals. Traditionally used weight‐proportional measures are potentially confounded by body adiposity that hampers their interpretation and applicability in the clinical assessment of cardiorespiratory fitness.
Micropatterning Alginate Substrates for In Vitro Cardiovascular Muscle on a Chip

Soft hydrogels such as alginate are ideal substrates for building muscle in vitro because they have structural and mechanical properties close to the in vivo extracellular matrix (ECM) network. However, hydrogels are generally not amenable to protein adhesion and patterning. Moreover, muscle structures and their underlying ECM are highly anisotropic, and it is imperative that in vitro models recapitulate the structural anisotropy in reconstructed tissues for in vivo relevance due to the tight coupling between sturcture and function in these systems. Two techniques to create chemical and structural heterogeneities within soft alginate substrates are presented and employed to engineer anisotropic muscle monolayers: i) microcontact printing lines of extracellular matrix proteins on flat alginate substrates to guide cellular processes with chemical cues and ii) micromolding of alginate surface into grooves and ridges to guide cellular processes with topographical cues. Neonatal rat ventricular myocytes as well as human umbilical artery vascular smooth muscle cells successfully attach to both these micropatterned substrates leading to subsequent formation of anisotropic striated and smooth muscle tissues. Muscular thin film cantilevers cut from these constructs are then employed for functional characterization of engineered muscular tissues. Thus, micropatterned alginate is an ideal substrate for in vitro models of muscle tissue because it facilitates recapitulation of the anisotropic architecture of muscle, mimics the mechanical properties of the ECM microenvironment, and is amenable to evaluation of functional contractile properties.
Optimal design and critical analysis of a high resolution video plenoptic demonstrator

A plenoptic camera is a natural multi-view acquisition device also capable of measuring distances by correlating a set of images acquired under different parallaxes. Its single lens and single sensor architecture have two downsides: limited resolution and depth sensitivity. In a very first step and in order to circumvent those shortcomings, we have investigated how the basic design parameters of a plenoptic camera optimize both the resolution of each view and also its depth measuring capability. In a second step, we built a prototype based on a very high resolution Red One® movie camera with an external plenoptic adapter and a relay lens. The prototype delivered 5 video views of 820x410. The main limitation in our prototype is view cross talk due to optical aberrations which reduce the depth accuracy performance. We have simulated some limiting optical aberrations and predicted its impact on the performances of the camera. In addition, we developed adjustment protocols based on a simple pattern and analyzing programs which investigate the view mapping and amount of parallax crosstalk on the sensor on a pixel basis. The results of these developments enabled us to adjust the lenslet array with a sub micrometer precision and to mark the pixels of the sensor where the views do not register properly.
Runtime Selection among Different API Implementations

Applications are no longer monolithic programs written for a specific purpose. Instead, most software today makes extensive use of libraries and re-usable components. This approach generally results in software that is faster to build and more modular. However, one problem with this approach is that the various libraries used by an application are not tuned to the specific application's need. In addition, applications are frequently used in very different ways. For example, different users may employ a single commercial simulation application for radically different types of simulations. As a result of this reuse of software, applications may not run well in all configurations. The transient, rarely repeatable behavior of Grid [3] computing environment indicates the need to replace standard models of post-mortem performance optimization with a real-time model, one that optimizes application and runtime behavior during program execution. Automatic program library selection provides a framework to help with this goal; it helps to tune the application during runtime execution by monitoring the underlying library performance and switching underlying program libraries as needed. This is an important step toward automated performance tuning in Grid computing. To meet the needs of this type of computing environment, we have been developing the Active Harmony system that allows runtime switching of algorithms and application parameters. We have also developed a set of runtime tuning algorithms that help to intelligently set these parameters at runtime to tune the overall performance of an application. Active Harmony is an infrastructure that allows applications to become tunable by applying very minimal changes to the application and library source code. This adaptability provides applications with a way to improve performance during a single execution based on the observed performance. The types of things that can be tuned at runtime range from parameters such as the size of a read-ahead parameter to what algorithm is being used (e.g., heap sort vs. quick-sort).
DETECTION OF FOOD BORNE PATHOGENS

Food safety is a global health issue and the foodborne diseases create a major threat to human health. Therefore, detection of microbial pathogens in food is the key to the problems related to health risks. Conventional molecular methods of detection such as colony counting methods, immunology-based methods and polymerase chain reaction may take up several hours to days to confirm the presence of the pathogen. New modified molecular methods like DNA microarray, antibody array and rapid analytical technique like biosensors show potential approaches for the detection and quantification of pathogens. Biosensor technology offers several benefits over conventional methods such as simplicity of use, specificity for the target analyte, less time consumption, capability for continuous monitoring, potentiality of coupling to low-cost, portable instrumentation. This review offers an overview in the dynamic progress in foodborne pathogen detection, identification and quantifi cation.
Automatic Generation of Macro-Operators from Static Domain Analysis

The attempt of dealing with the complexity of planning tasks by resorting to abstraction techniques is a central issue in the field of automated planning. Although the generality of the approach has not been proved always useful on domains selected for benchmarking purposes, in our opinion it will play a central role as soon as the focus will move from artificial to real problems. This paper addresses the problem of how to identify macro-operators starting from a ground-level description of a domain, to be used for generating useful abstract-level descriptions. In particular, a preliminary release of a system devised to automatically generate abstraction hierachies has been implemented. The system is able to take into account also state invariants, to resolve ambiguities that may arise while performing abstraction. Experimental results highlight the ability of the system to identify suitable macro-operators, used as a starting point for populating the abstract level. Such macro-operators usually represent good alternatives to those extracted by a knowledge engineer after a thorough (and sometimes painful! ) domain analysis.
Effects of resistance and stretching training programmes on the viscoelastic properties of human tendon structures in vivo

The present study examined whether resistance and stretching training programmes altered the viscoelastic properties of human tendon structures in vivo. Eight subjects completed 8 weeks (4 days per week) of resistance training which consisted of unilateral plantar flexion at 70 % of one repetition maximum with 10 repetitions per set (5 sets per day). They performed resistance training (RT) on one side and resistance training and static stretching training (RST; 10 min per day, 7 days per week) on the other side. Before and after training, the elongation of the tendon structures in the medial gastrocnemius muscle was directly measured using ultrasonography, while the subjects performed ramp isometric plantar flexion up to the voluntary maximum, followed by a ramp relaxation. The relationship between estimated muscle force (Fm) and tendon elongation (L) was fitted to a linear regression, the slope of which was defined as stiffness. The hysteresis was calculated as the ratio of the area within the Fm‐L loop to the area beneath the load portion of the curve. The stiffness increased significantly by 18.8 ± 10.4 % for RT and 15.3 ± 9.3 % for RST. There was no significant difference in the relative increase of stiffness between RT and RST. The hysteresis, on the other hand, decreased 17 ± 20 % for RST, but was unchanged for RT. These results suggested that the resistance training increased the stiffness of tendon structures as well as muscle strength and size, and the stretching training affected the viscosity of tendon structures but not the elasticity.
A Formal Semantics for Use Case Diagram Via Event-B

: UML has become the "de facto" standard for modeling object-oriented software. However, the UML notation suffers from an imprecise and incomplete semantics definition, which makes difficult to automated analysis and is errors-prone. Formal methods have been used largely in order to deal with this problem. This paper proposes an approach to formally describe Use Case Diagram using the Event-B language. More specifically, it is presented a set of transformation rules that maps the elements of this diagram to elements of Event-B, both expressed via meta-models. The approach is illustrated by showing an example about how to make automatic verification in this diagram.
Use in Therapy in Rodent Models of Encoding Rat Complement Regulators for Development of Adenovirus Vectors

and B. Paul MorganYvonne McGrath, Gavin W. G. Wilkinson, O. Brad Spillerhttp://www.jimmunol.org/content/163/12/6834J Immunol€1999; 163:6834-6840; ;Referenceshttp://www.jimmunol.org/content/163/12/6834.full#ref-list-1This article cites 46 articles, 16 of which you can access for free at: Subscriptionshttp://jimmunol.org/subscriptionsInformation about subscribing to The Journal of Immunology is online at: Permissionshttp://www.aai. org/ji/copyright.htmlSubmit copyright permission requests at: Email Alertshttp://jimmunol.org/cgi/alerts/etocReceive free email-alerts when new articles cite this article. Sign up at:
A knowledge-based product recommendation system for e-commerce

This paper presents a knowledge-based product recommendation system for Business-to-Customer (B2C) e-commerce purposes. The system is based on the observation that the purchase patterns of previous users play a vital role in recommending the products to new users if the new users already followed parts of the existing patterns. The system is based on Case-Based Reasoning Plan Recognition (CBRPR) approaches and Automated Collaborative Filtering (ACF) approaches. The system also addresses the issue of organising and utilising the information related to the products that are purchased repetitively by a user. The system is named RecommendEx and is tested in a simulated environment to test its operational performance. The evaluation results are included.
Predictive torque control of permanent magnet synchronous motor drive with reduced switching frequency

A novel model based predictive torque control (MPTC) method is proposed in this paper for permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) drives. By choosing the voltage vector best satisfying the demands of torque and flux, important reduction in torque and flux ripples can be observed compared to conventional DTC. Furthermore, the losses of system can be reduced effectively by incorporating the switching frequency calculation in the cost function, whereas the torque and flux performance only varies slightly. The influences of one-step delay for both DTC and MPTC are investigated. Simulation results are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed schemes in this paper.
The role of native grammars in correcting errors in second language learning

This paper describes VP2, a system that has been implemented to tutor nonnative speakers in English. This system differs from many tutoring systems by employing an explicit grammar of its user's native language. This grammar enables VP2 to customize its responses by addressing problems due to interference of the native language. The system focuses on the acquisition of English verb‐particle and verb‐prepositional phrase constructions. Its correction strategy is based upon comparison of the native language grammar with an English grammar. VP2 is a modular system: its grammar of a user's native language can easily be replaced by a grammar of another language. The problems and solutions presented in this paper are related to the more general question of how modelling previous knowledge facilitates instruction in a new skill.
Penile lesion from gunshot wound: a 43-case experience.

OBJECTIVE To demonstrate the main aspects of diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of 43 patients with gunshot wounds to the penis. MATERIALS AND METHODS The location of the lesion, the presence of associated lesions, the performance of complementary exams, surgical treatment, postoperative complications and long term follow-up of 43 patients with penile lesions from gunshot wounds were retrospectively analyzed. RESULTS Of 43 cases assessed, 41 were submitted to surgical exploration (95.3%) and 2 were submitted to conservative treatment (4.7%). We found penile lesions involving the corpus cavernosum in 37 cases; the remaining 4 patients presented no lesions involving the corpus cavernosum, urethra or testicles but did in the superficial structures. Ten cases presented an association with testicular lesions and 14 cases association with anterior urethral lesions. CONCLUSION Penile lesions from gunshot wounds should be treated with immediate surgical intervention. In exceptional situations featuring superficial lesions only conservative treatment may be applied.
Prevalence and distribution of developmental enamel defects in the primary dentition of pre-school children.

Developmental defects of the enamel (D.D.E.) are changes in the deciduous dentition that have been little studied in Brazil, although they lead to aesthetic problems, dental sensitivity and may be predictors of dental caries. The objective of this study was to estimate the prevalence and distribution of D.D. E. in the deciduous dentition of pre-school children in the municipality of Itajaí, Santa Catarina, in 2003. A cross-sectional study was carried out with a sample of 431 children aged 3 to 5 enrolled in public day care centres. All of the teeth were examined and the enamel defects were assessed according to the Modified DDE Index (FDI, 1992). The prevalence of D.D. E. was 24.4% (CI 95% 20.3-28.5). Diffuse opacities were the most common defects found (17.9%), followed by hypoplasia (11.1%) and demarcated opacities (6.1%). The most affected teeth were the second molars (44.4%), followed by the first molars (23.5%). Defects were observed more frequently in the upper arch (58.2%). Assessing enamel hypoplasia separately, a prevalence of 15.1% (CI 95% 11.7-18.5) was observed, with the most affected teeth being the canines (33.6%) and second molars (33.6%). One quarter of the pre-school children presented enamel defects, with diffuse opacities being the most prevalent ones.
Postactivation Potentation Effects From Accommodating Resistance Combined With Heavy Back Squats on Short Sprint Performance

Abstract Wyland, TP, Van Dorin, JD, and Reyes, GFC. Postactivation potentation effects from accommodating resistance combined with heavy back squats on short sprint performance. J Strength Cond Res 29(11): 3115–3123, 2015—Applying accommodating resistance combined with isoinertial resistance has been demonstrated to be effective in improving neuromuscular attributes important for sport performance. The main purpose of this study was to determine whether short sprints can be acutely enhanced after several sets of back squats with or without accommodating resistance. Twenty recreationally resistance-trained males (age: 23.3 ± 4.4 years; height: 178.9 ± 6.5 cm; weight: 88.3 ± 10.8 kg) performed pre-post testing on 9.1-m sprint time. Three different interventions were implemented in randomized order between pre-post 9.1-m sprints. On 3 separate days, subjects either sat for 5 minutes (CTRL), performed 5 sets of 3 repetitions at 85% of their 1 repetition maximum (1RM) with isoinertial load (STND), or performed 5 sets of 3 repetitions at 85% of their 1RM, with 30% of the total resistance coming from elastic band tension (BAND) between pre-post 9.1-m sprint testing. Posttesting for 9.1-m sprint time occurred immediately after the last set of squats (Post-Immediate) and on every minute for 4 minutes after the last set of squats (Post-1min, Post-2min, Post-3min, and Post-4min). Repeated-measures analysis of variance statistical analyses revealed no significant changes in sprint time across posttesting times during the CTRL and STND condition. During the BAND condition, sprint time significantly decreased from Post-Immediate to Post-4min (p = 0.002). The uniqueness of accommodating resistance could create an optimal postactivation potentiation effect to increase neuromuscular performance. Coaches and athletes can implement heavy accommodating resistance exercises to their warm-up when improving acute sprint time is desired.
Beyond the EDGE with EDAM: Prioritising British Plant Species According to Evolutionary Distinctiveness, and Accuracy and Magnitude of Decline

Conservation biologists have only finite resources, and so must prioritise some species over others. The EDGE-listing approach ranks species according to their combined evolutionary distinctiveness and degree of threat, but ignores the uncertainty surrounding both threat and evolutionary distinctiveness. We develop a new family of measures for species, which we name EDAM, that incorporates evolutionary distinctiveness, the magnitude of decline, and the accuracy with which decline can be predicted. Further, we show how the method can be extended to explore phyogenetic uncertainty. Using the vascular plants of Britain as a case study, we find that the various EDAM measures emphasise different species and parts of Britain, and that phylogenetic uncertainty can strongly affect the prioritisation scores of some species.
Analysis of SIP Transfer Delay in Multi-Rate Wireless Networks

In this letter, we analyze the SIP transfer delay over multi-rate wireless networks where different transmission modes based on adaptive modulation code are supported. We consider a Nakagami m fading channel at the physical layer and automatic repeat request at the data link layer. Extensive simulation results are given to validate the analytical results and to demonstrate the effects of message sizes and channel conditions.
Individual social strategy with non-linear manner

Dispersed particle swarm optimisation (DPSO) is a new variant of particle swarm optimisation by introducing a distributed social parameter setting. However, this individual strategy for each particle is setting to a linear manner. Due to the complex nature of engineering optimisation tasks, a predefined linear manner cannot always meet the optimisation requirements. Therefore, in this paper, four non-linear selection strategies are introduced to DPSO to further improve the performance. Four famous numerical benchmarks are used to assess the new algorithm. Simulation results show the exponential curve strategy can achieve best performance than three other non-linear strategies though the improvements relied on the test functions significantly. Furthermore, when compared with three other variants of particle swarm optimisation, the exponential curve strategy also provides the best performance.
BI Systems Managers' Perception of Critical Contextual Success Factors: A Delphi Study

The present article investigates critical contextual success factors (CCSFs) that influence business intelligence (BI) system success in terms of their relevance and controllability. The initial set of CCSFs is based on an analysis of existing literature and serves as the basis for further exploration of these factors. Advances to previous studies are the validation of possible CCSFs influencing BI system design by domain experts in a Delphi Study and the multi-dimensional view of these factors. A carefully selected expert panel investigated CCSFs not only with regard to the dimensions of relevance – which is typical for ranking-type Delphi studies – they also assessed each factor in the dimension of controllability. This two-dimensional approach allowed us to identify five distinct clusters of CCSFs that influence BI system success. This paper contributes to information systems (IS) research on critical success factors in general and provides the BI domain with specific insights. The results contribute to the BI success factor literature and can potentially be generalized to other IS. BI managers may use the results to assess their daily challenges in BI system development and maintenance projects.