Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adrenal ganglioneuroma: A diagnostic challenge

Ganglioneuroma is a benign neoplasm derived from the neural crest that is mainly located in the mediastinal and peritoneal sympathetic ganglia and, very occasionally, in the adrenal gland. It usually occurs in children or adolescents, causes no or highly nonspecific symptoms, and is typically a non-secreting tumor. Among the neuroblastic tumors, ganglioneuroma is the most uncommon, the one with the greatest histological differentiation, and the most benign. An atypical case of adrenal ganglioneuroma is reported below. A 60-year-old female patient with high blood pressure attended the gastroenterology department for left abdominal pain irradiating to the back and because of a bitter taste in her mouth. No abnormalities were found in the clinical history, physical examination, and routine laboratory tests. Examination by echoendoscopy revealed a solid mass in the left adrenal gland with ill-defined, irregular contour and hyperechogenic points inside, showing no cystic component and no evident vascularization. No perilesional adenopathies were seen in the celiac trunk, hepatic hilum, or mediastinum. The material collected from two needle passages was not representative of the adrenal gland. A computed tomography (CT) scan of the abdomen showed an apparently solid mass dependent on the left adrenal gland taking up contrast, slightly heterogeneous, and approximately 4.5 cm in diameter. The patient was referred to the department of endocrinology and nutrition, where a full hormone profile and a battery of imaging tests intended to reveal an adrenal incidentaloma were requested. Endocrine work-up was intended to determine whether the adrenal mass was functioning or not. Screening was performed for hypercorticoidism, hyperaldosteronism, and pheochromocytoma. Laboratory measurements included total and 24-hour urinary free cortisol, ACTH, renin, aldosterone, VIP, C-peptide, somatomedin C, LH, FSH, DHEA-s, total and free testosterone, prolactin, catecholamines and their metabolites in plasma and urine, chromogranin A, gastrin, glucagon, and vanillylmandelic acid (VMA). High levels were found of normetanephrine (593; N < 444 mcg/24 h) and dopamine in urine (487; N < 390 mcg/24 h), chromogranin A (279.5; N 19.4--98.1 ng/mL), gastrin (459; N < 100 pg/mL), and VMA (13.9; N 2--9 mg/24 h). These results were confirmed by subsequent tests. The patient therefore had subclinical hormonal hyperproduction of normetanephrine and dopamine in the urine, chromogranin A and VMA, while all other tested parameters were normal. Imaging tests performed to characterize the incidentaloma included the following: magnetic resonance imaging, which showed a 4 cm lesion in the left adrenal gland with partially defined margins and heterogeneous signal, and with fatty foci inside suggesting the benign
Epistemic Context and Structural Explanation of Belief

Social science studies often explain the emergence of collective beliefs by reference to factors that are supposed to be part of the social context. How do these macro-factors shape the beliefs of individuals? How can structural factors provide evidence supporting a given belief? In answering these questions, I propose a link connecting macro-factors and beliefs by introducing the notion of “evidential categorization. ” I expect to show that our structural explanations of beliefs often contain an analysis of the socially diffused systems of reasons—an important part of what we call the “epistemic context of belief-formation”—for they partially determine our evidential categorizations. Finally, I will show by an example, how structural explanations work if they include these components.
Creativity and discourse

: This paper will consider the relationship between discourse analysis and creativity and elucidate the ways in which a discourse analytical approach to creativity might be distinguished from the ‘language and creativity’ approaches which currently dominate applied linguistics and sociolinguistics. In the ‘discourse and creativity’ approach I will be describing, creativity is located not in language per se, but in the strategic ways people use language in concrete situations in order to stimulate social change. I will explore how aspects of this approach are reflected in work carried out within the paradigm of world Englishes.
Road pavement crack automatic detection by MMS images

The research topic was to test different feature extraction methods to localize road pavement cracks useful to construct a spatial database for the pavement distress monitoring. Several images were acquired by means of a line scan camera that assembled in a Mobile Mapping System (MMS) allows tracking directly the position of the images by a GPS-INS system. Following an automatic digital image processing was performed by means of several algorithms based on different approaches (edge detection and fuzzy set theory). The detected cracks were described with some parameters in relation to some shape characteristics (dimension, typology, direction), which are necessary to recognize the gravity of the road pavement conditions. The edge detection techniques tested in this research allowed identifying fatigue cracking or alligator cracking and also thin linear cracks in images with strong radiometric jumps by applying filters, gradient functions and morphological operators. The snake approach was one of them, in particular the type called Gradient Vector Flow (GVF). Another approach was based on the fuzzy theory. The advantage of this method is that the pixels, necessary to identify the cracks in road pavement, are darker than their surroundings in an image. The last stage was the pavement distress spatial database collection. The Mobile Mapping System (MMS) has allowed localizing the raster data and consequently the vector features of the detected cracks, associating into the table their attributes too. The proposed approaches allow to automatically localize and classify the kind of road pavement crack.
Theoretic Basis and Technical Implementations of CT Perfusion in Acute Ischemic Stroke, Part 2: Technical Implementations

SUMMARY: CT perfusion (CTP) is a functional imaging technique that provides important information about capillary-level hemodynamics of the brain parenchyma and is a natural complement to the strengths of unenhanced CT and CT angiography in the evaluation of acute stroke, vasospasm, and other neurovascular disorders. CTP is critical in determining the extent of irreversibly infarcted brain tissue (infarct “core”) and the severely ischemic but potentially salvageable tissue (“penumbra”). This is achieved by generating parametric maps of cerebral blood flow, cerebral blood volume, and mean transit time.
Factors Underlying Enjoyment of Youth Sports: Sport and Age Group Comparisons

A 10-item Thurstonian paired comparison inventory pertaining to factors underlying sport enjoyment was administered to 822 youth sport participants. The sample included participants at four age levels (7-8, 9-10, 11-12, and 13-14 years) from the three sports, soccer (n = 330), baseball (n = 176), and hockey (n = 343). Considerable consistency was found across both sport and age levels in the relative importance of the different enjoyment factors. Factors that were interpreted as being intrinsic to the sport activity (excitement of the sport, personal accomplishment, improving one's skills, testing skills against others, and just doing the skills) were consistently rated as being most important, whereas more extrinsic or outcome-related factors (pleasing others, winning rewards, winning the game) were consistently rated least important of the 10 factors. The social items “being on a team” and “being with friends” were consistently of intermediate importance. The results are interpreted in terms of contempo.
HeatDial: Beyond User Scheduling in Eco-Interaction

There has been an interesting development within sustainable HCI, from passive feedback-displays towards more interactive systems that allow users to schedule their energy usage for optimal times based on eco-feedback and eco-forecasting. In this paper, we extend previous work on user scheduling of energy usage in eco-interaction with a study of heat pump control in domestic households. Aiming at using electricity when it is either cheap or green, our approach is to provide users with an interface where they can set temperature boundaries for the home, and interactively evaluate the impact of different settings on predicted energy cost. Based on this input, the scheduling of energy use is done by an automated system monitoring temperatures and electricity prices. We conducted a qualitative study of the HeatDial prototype with 5 families over 6 months. Key findings were that HeatDial supported users identifying and acting on opportunities for reducing costs, but that automation also had an impact on user engagement and highlighted a need for more feedback on how the system intended to act.
What Makes People Support Public Responsibility for Welfare Provision: Self-interest or Political Ideology?

This article investigates which socio-economic and ideological factors make individuals support the normative principles of the welfare state. Two principal theoretical perspectives, relating to self-interest and the political ideology, respectively, have been proposed in the literature as causal explanations. However, as most studies utilize solely cross-sectional data, causal interpretations of which factors make people express support for the welfare state have so far been hard to sustain. This article, using panel data from the Canadian ‘Equality, Security, and Community’ survey and an extended random-effect model, exploits the longitudinal nature of the data and econometric methods to provide a more accurate analysis of the extent to which self-interest and political ideology actually determine support for welfare state principles. The empirical analysis indicates that both self-interest and political ideology variables to some extent are significant predictors of support for welfare state principles. In addition, the article discusses several avenues for future research.
Automatic selection of the region of interest in ancient scores

In this paper, an automatic system for the extraction of the region of interest in ancient scores is presented. The system is able to separate the image into two pages, when needed, then, using images that contain one page of score, the method performs a correction of the rotation before estimating the region of interest. For the estimation of the region of interest, three different methods have been developed: eroded edges method, wavelet method and eroded image and edge method. The three methods obtain quite good performance, being the wavelet based method the one that achieves best performance regarding execution time and accuracy in the process of selection of the region of interest.
Supporting bug investigation using history analysis

In my research, I propose an automated technique to support bug investigation by using a novel analysis of the history of the source code. During the bug-fixing process, developers spend a high amount of manual effort investigating the bug in order to answer a series of questions about it. My research will support developers in answering the following questions about a bug: Who is the most suitable developer to fix the bug? , Where is the bug located? , When was the bug inserted? and Why was the bug inserted?
Phosphorylation of filamin A regulates chemokine receptor CCR2 recycling

ABSTRACT Proper endosomal trafficking of ligand-activated G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) is essential to spatiotemporally tune their physiological responses. For the monocyte chemoattractant receptor 2 (CCR2B; one of two isoforms encoded by CCR2), endocytic recycling is important to sustain monocyte migration, whereas filamin A (FLNa) is essential for CCL2-induced monocyte migration. Here, we analyze the role of FLNa in the trafficking of CCR2B along the endocytic pathway. In FLNa-knockdown cells, activated CCR2B accumulated in enlarged EEA-1-positive endosomes, which exhibited slow movement and fast fluorescence recovery, suggesting an imbalance between receptor entry and exit rates. Utilizing super-resolution microscopy, we observed that FLNa–GFP, CCR2B and β2-adrenergic receptor (β2AR) were present in actin-enriched endosomal microdomains. Depletion of FLNa decreased CCR2B association with these microdomains and concomitantly delayed CCR2B endosomal traffic, without apparently affecting the number of microdomains. Interestingly, CCR2B and β2AR signaling induced phosphorylation of FLNa at residue S2152, and this phosphorylation event was contributes to sustain receptor recycling. Thus, our data strongly suggest that CCR2B and β2AR signals to FLNa to stimulate its endocytosis and recycling to the plasma membrane. Summary: The chemokine receptor signal modulates the function of filamin A by phosphorylating serine 2152, as a mechanism to regulate its own loading into endosomal tubulations and receptor trafficking.
Thinking about 3D-design Constraints for Effective 3D Interfaces

Understanding the design of 3D graphical user interfaces is not as simple as doing so for their 2D counterparts. While 3D naturally has an extra dimension in which to display graphics, and thus has the potential to increase the accessible area in which information can be presented to the user, 3D also presents entirely new ways to impede user performance and increase disorientation. As a result, 3D interfaces have had mixed success since their introduction. In this paper, we critically discuss the evolution of the 3D interface, in both the academic and commercial fields. This leads us highlight the four most relevant human computer interaction (HCI) design constraints for the effective implementation of 3D interfaces. We then present an example application designed with these constraints in mind, and focused on the specific use case of visualising simple metadata in post-production.
A Syntactically Annotated Corpus of Japanese Spoken Monologue

Recently, monologue data such as lecture and commentary by professionals have been considered as valuable intellectual resources, and have been gathering attention. On the other hand, in order to use these monologue data effectively and efficiently, it is necessary for the monologue data not only just to be accumulated but also to be structured. This paper describes the construction of a Japanese spoken monologue corpus in which dependency structure is given to each utterance. Spontaneous monologue includes a lot of very long sentences composed of two or more clauses. In these sentences, there may exist the subject or the adverb common to multi-clauses, and it may be considered that the subject or adverb depend on multi-predicates. In order to give the dependency information in a real fashion, our research allows that a bunsetsu depends on multiple bunsetsus.
Estimating the Attributable Fraction for Cancer: A Meta-analysis of Nevi and Melanoma

Epidemiologic research has shown convincingly that certain phenotypic attributes are associated with increased relative risks of melanoma. Although such findings have intrinsic utility, there have been few attempts to translate such knowledge into estimates of disease burden suitable for framing public health policy. We aimed to estimate the population attributable fraction (PAF) for melanoma associated with melanocytic nevi using relative risk estimates derived from a systematic review and meta-analysis. We identified eligible studies using citation databases, followed by manual review of retrieved references. Of 49 studies identified, 25 and 23, respectively, were included in meta-analyses of atypical and common nevi. For people with ≥1 atypical nevi, the summary relative risk was 3.63 (95% confidence interval, 2.85-4.62), with a PAF of 0.25. The relative risk increased by 1.017 (95% confidence interval, 1.014-1.020) for each common nevus; however, significant heterogeneity in risk estimates was observed. We estimated that 42% of melanomas were attributable to having ≥25 common nevi (PAF 25-49 nevi = 0.15; PAF ≥50 nevi = 0.27), whereas PAFs for low nevus counts were modest (PAF 0-10 nevi = 0.04; PAF 11-24 nevi = 0.07). We modeled PAF under scenarios of varying nevus prevalence; the highest melanoma burden was always among those with high nevus counts (PAF range of 0.31-0.62 for ≥25 common nevi). Patients with ≥25 common nevi and/or ≥1 atypical nevi are a high-risk group, which might be targeted for identification, screening, and education. This work is the necessary first step in designing targeted preventive strategies for melanoma, which must now be overlaid with information about cost and utility. Cancer Prev Res; 3(2); 233–45
Estimation of Distribution Coefficients from the Partition Coefficient and pK a

The authors discuss the relationship between the partition coefficient and the distribution coefficient and relate the two with the use of equations. To accurately explain this relationship, the authors consider the partitioning of both the ionized and un-ionized species. The presence of both species in the oil phase necessitates a dissociative equilibrium among these species such as that in the water phase. Despite this fact, a survey of octanol-water coefficients for small, monovalent molecules showed that a simple relationship among the distribution coefficient, partition coefficient, and dissociation constant is adequate for most purposes.
Intermolecular disulfide bonds are not required for the expression of the dimeric state and functional activity of the transferrin receptor.

The human transferrin receptor is expressed as a disulfide‐linked dimer at the cell surface. The sites of intermolecular disulfide bonds are Cys‐89 and Cys‐98. We have examined the functional significance of the covalent dimeric structure of the transferrin receptor by substitution of Cys‐89 and Cys‐98 with serine residues. Wild‐type and mutated transferrin receptors were expressed in Chinese hamster ovary cells (clone TF‐) that lack detectable endogenous transferrin receptors. The rates of receptor endocytosis and recycling were measured and the accumulation of iron by cells incubated with [59Fe]diferric transferrin was investigated. No significant differences between these rates were observed when cells expressing wild‐type and mutated receptors were compared. The structure of the mutant receptor lacking intermolecular disulfide bonds was investigated. The presence of a population of mutant receptors with a non‐covalent dimeric structure was indicated by cross‐linking studies using diferric [125I]transferrin and the bifunctional reagent disuccinimidyl suberimidate. However, sucrose density gradient sedimentation analysis of Triton X‐100 solubilized transferrin receptors demonstrated that the mutant receptor existed as a monomer in the absence of diferric transferrin and as an apparent dimer in the presence of this receptor ligand. We conclude that the covalent dimeric structure of the transferrin receptor is not required for the expression of the dimeric state and functional activity of the receptor.
Building partnerships in social work education: Towards achieving collaborative advantage for employers and universities

Summary Better partnership working between employers and academic institutions has recently been identified as one of the key developments needed to improve social work education and practice in the UK (Social Work Reform Board, 2010). However, the praxis of collaborative working in social work education remains under-researched and it is unclear what factors are significant in promoting effective partnership. This article contributes to this debate by reporting research that examined the experience of social work academics working with employers to deliver qualifying level social work education in Northern Ireland. Findings This analysis explores key factors in the dynamics of the collaborative process and identifies both congruence and discord in academic and employer perspectives. The findings highlight the collaborative advantage accruing from partnership working, which include the benefits of a centrally coordinated system for the management and delivery of practice learning. However, the results also indicate that engaging in partnership working is a complex process that can create conflict and tensions, and that it is important to ground collaborations in realistic expectations of what can be achieved. Application This article identifies opportunities for achieving collaborative advantage and the challenges. It identifies lessons learned about the value of partnership working in social work education and ways to increase its efficacy.
A Novel Secure Remote User Authentication Protocol using Three Factors

According to the recent work done in the area of remote user authentication, biometrics based password authentication using smart card is the most interesting and upcoming technology. Many protocols has been designed aiming to combine three authentication factors efficiently in order secure the process of remote user authentication, but failed to do so. One of the many possible reasons is biometrics comparison. Basically, biometric is used to uniquely identify the user. It has been observed that, the biometrics comparison during the verification is done using its hash value, which is infeasible due to it’s avalanch effect property. Moreover, impersonation, server spoofing, man-in-the-middle, denial-of-service etc attacks needs to handle properly to guarantee the security of the protocol. The main objective of this paper is to focus on biometrics comparison and making the protocol immune to above mentioned attacks.
An Introduction to Multitasking and Texting

This exploratory study looks at the phenomena of texting in a marketing education context. It outlines the difficulties of multitasking within two metacognitive models of learning and sets the stage for further research on the effects of texting within class. Students in marketing classes in two different universities were surveyed. They received an average of 37 texts per day and initiated about 16. More than 90% of the respondents reported receiving texts while in class and 86% reported texting someone from class. Even though students believed they could follow a lecture and text at the same time, respondents who did text within marketing classes received lower grades. Contrary to other research, texting frequency was generally unrelated to GPA. Implications for both pedagogical issues and research in marketing education are discussed.
XML, bioinformatics and data integration

MOTIVATION The eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is an emerging standard for structuring documents, notably for the World Wide Web. In this paper, the authors present XML and examine its use as a data language for bioinformatics. In particular, XML is compared to other languages, and some of the potential uses of XML in bioinformatics applications are presented. The authors propose to adopt XML for data interchange between databases and other sources of data. Finally the discussion is illustrated by a test case of a pedigree data model in XML. CONTACT Emmanuel.Barillot@infobiogen.fr