Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Automatic organ validation of b-mode ultrasound images for transmission to cloud

Miniaturization in size of Medical ultrasound scanning machine made it to use in point of care applications. Lack of sonographers and their unwillingness to work in rural areas limit the benefits of ultrasound system in rural healthcare. Diagnosis of patients through ultrasound is done by visualizing the ultrasound scanned images of organs. Diagnosis through telemedicine involves transmitting of ultrasound images from rural locations to cloud, where sonographer can remotely access the ultrasound data from cloud and generate the report, thus reducing the geographical separation between patients and doctors. Due to lack of adequate sonographers, ultrasound scanning in remote areas is operated by semi-skilled clinicians. Most of the images generated by semi-skilled clinicians are not useful for diagnosis. Transmitting all these images increases the data in cloud, drains the battery of portable ultrasound machine and increases latency in medication. This paper provides automatic B-mode ultrasound image validation based on organ information present in the image for diagnosis, thus avoiding transmission of invalid images to cloud. Linear kernel SVM classifier trained with first order statistic features of image with/without organs is used to classify the images into valid and invalid for diagnosis. The algorithm resulted with a recognition efficiency of 94.2% in classifying the ultrasound images.
Inspiratory work of breathing during spontaneous ventilation using demand valves and continuous flow systems.

To diminish the work of breathing, some demand valve systems are equipped with inspiratory pressure support (IPS). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the work performed during spontaneous breathing using the Siemens Servo 900C ventilator (SVC) at the minimal IPS level available, and comparing it with a demand valve ventilator without IPS, the Ohmeda CPU1 (CPU1), and with a home-built continuous flow system (CFS). We found a larger minute ventilation and inspiratory peak flow with the SVC and the CFS than with the CPU1 (p less than 0.05). When the work of breathing was measured at the airway opening, we found that the CFS led to the least amount of work (0.17 +/- 0.05 J.L-1, p less than 0.05). Additionally, this work was strikingly less for SVC than for CPU1 (0.22 +/- 0.06 versus 0.42 +/- 0.10 J.L-1, p less than 0.001) as a result of a higher flow supplied by the SVC. By contrast, the work measured using the esophageal pressure, i.e., including the work dissipated on the lung and airways, was significantly reduced with the CFS (1.34 +/- 0.45 J.L-1, p less than 0.05), but surprisingly not different between SVC and CPU1 (1.49 +/- 0.57 versus 1.54 +/- 0.51 J.L-1). We conclude that the absence of a demand valve in CFS involves the lowest work of breathing. Likewise, the high flow capability in SVC reduces the work necessary to overcome the circuit and demand valve resistances. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Exact SER and Diversity Gain Analysis of SDM-STBC MIMO Systems over Flat Fading Channels

We study the symbol error rate (SER) analysis for the zero-forcing detection with successive intererence cancellation (ZF-SIC) in the spatial division multiplexing space time block coded (SDM-STBC) MIMO system. Independent identically Rayleigh fading MIMO channel is considered. Relying on the results obtained from matrix variate distribution, we evaluate the SER for the ZF and ZF-SIC detection in the SDM-STBC system. These analytical SER curves are shown to agree with the SER curves from Monte Carlo simulations. We also evaluate numerically the finite-SNR diversity gain for the ZF and ZF-SIC detection in the SDM-STBC MIMO system. The finite-SNR diversity gain for either ZF or ZF-SIC detection grows as SNR increases, and, is upper-limited by 2nr-nt+2, where nr and nt denote the numbers of antennas at the receiver and transmitter sides, respectively.
Tropical Kraus maps for optimal control of switched systems

Kraus maps (completely positive trace preserving maps) arise classically in quantum information, as they describe the evolution of non-commutative probability measures. We introduce tropical analogues of Kraus maps, obtained by replacing the addition of positive semidefinite matrices by a multivalued supremum with respect to the Lowner order. We show that non-linear eigenvectors of tropical Kraus maps determine piece-wise quadratic approximations of the value functions of switched optimal control problems. This leads to a new approximation method, which we illustrate by two applications: 1) approximating the joint spectral radius, 2) computing approximate solutions of Hamilton-Jacobi PDE arising from a class of switched linear quadratic problems studied previously by McEneaney. We report numerical experiments, indicating a major improvement in terms of scalability by comparison with earlier numerical schemes, owing to the “LMI-free” nature of our method.
CD40 Induces Apoptosis in Carcinoma Cells through Activation of Cytotoxic Ligands of the Tumor Necrosis Factor Superfamily

ABSTRACT CD40, a tumor necrosis factor (TNF) receptor (TNFR) family member, conveys signals regulating diverse cellular responses, ranging from proliferation and differentiation to growth suppression and cell death. The ability of CD40 to mediate apoptosis in carcinoma cells is intriguing given the fact that the CD40 cytoplasmic C terminus lacks a death domain homology with the cytotoxic members of the TNFR superfamily, such as Fas, TNFR1, and TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) receptors. In this study, we have probed the mechanism by which CD40 transduces death signals. Using a trimeric recombinant soluble CD40 ligand to activate CD40, we have found that this phenomenon critically depends on the membrane proximal domain (amino acids 216 to 239) but not the TNFR-associated factor-interacting PXQXT motif in the CD40 cytoplasmic tail. CD40-mediated cytotoxicity is blocked by caspase inhibitors, such as zVAD-fmk and crmA, and involves activation of caspase 8 and caspase 3. Interestingly, CD40 ligation was found to induce functional Fas ligand, TRAIL (Apo-2L) and TNF in apoptosis-susceptible carcinoma cells and to up-regulate expression of Fas. These findings identify a novel proapoptotic mechanism which is induced by CD40 in carcinoma cells and depends on the endogenous production of cytotoxic cytokines and autocrine or paracrine induction of cell death.
Myocardial stiffness is attributed to alterations in cross-linked collagen rather than total collagen or phenotypes in spontaneously hypertensive rats.

BACKGROUND The relative contributions of increases in myocardial collagen, collagen cross-linking, and the ratio of type I to type III collagen to the stiff myocardium in hypertension were determined. METHODS AND RESULTS We compared the action of hydralazine (0.07 mmol x kg(-1) x d(-1)) with that of captopril (0.22 mmol x kg(-1) x d(-1)) on the left ventricular end-diastolic (LVED) myocardial stiffness constant, k (g x cm(-2)) and LV myocardial interstitial characteristics in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs) and Wistar Kyoto (WKY) control rats. LVED k (SHR, 27.9+/-1; WKY, 19.5+/-1.2; P<.01), myocardial hydroxyproline concentrations (HPRO; microg/mg dry wt) (SHR, 4.19+/-0.16; WKY, 3.17+/-0.09; P<.001), and collagen type I/III ratios (SHR, 7.1+/-0.7; WKY, 2.1+/-0.2; P<.001) were increased, whereas the percentage of myocardial collagen extracted after cyanogen bromide digestion (an index of cross-linked collagen) was decreased (SHR, 17+/-3; WKY, 41+/-4; P<.001) in SHRs compared with WKY controls. Captopril therapy reduced LVED k, myocardial HPRO, collagen type I/III, and augmented collagen solubility (43+/-4) in SHRs to values similar to those measured in WKY controls. Hydralazine therapy, despite a favorable effect on LVED k in SHRs (20.+/-1.6, P<.01 compared with untreated SHRs), failed to influence either myocardial HPRO (4.18+/-0.18) or collagen type I/III (8+/-1) but did improve collagen solubility (31+/-2). CONCLUSIONS An association between alterations in LVED k and collagen solubility but not between changes in LVED k and total collagen or phenotype ratios after antihypertensive therapy in SHRs suggests that myocardial stiffness in hypertension is the consequence of an enhanced myocardial collagen cross-linking rather than of an increase in total collagen or type I phenotype concentrations.
Platooning of autonomous vehicles with intervehicle communications in SUMO traffic simulator

An approach to increase road capacity consists in making vehicles move much closer to each other, i.e. using platoons, and to avoid the constant stop-and-go in urban traffic. This paper addresses the studies of new models to allow the research of cooperative and autonomous communication-enabled vehicles, with platooning capabilities, and the addition of new features in SUMO (Simulation for Urban MObility) to allow the simulation of those models. Simulations results of vehicle platoons using constant spacing instead of the more common constant time headway, with intervehicle communications, are reported in the paper. The platoon leaders are controlled by an external application and the simulation platform works at the subsecond level.
Impact of genomic profiling on the treatment and outcomes of patients with advanced gastrointestinal malignancies

The impact of genomic profiling on the outcomes of patients with advanced gastrointestinal (GI) malignancies remains unknown. The primary objectives of the study were to investigate the clinical benefit of genomic‐guided therapy, defined as complete response (CR), partial response (PR), or stable disease (SD) at 3 months, and its impact on progression‐free survival (PFS) in patients with advanced GI malignancies. Clinical and genomic data of all consecutive GI tumor samples from April, 2013 to April, 2016 sequenced by FoundationOne were obtained and analyzed. A total of 101 samples from 97 patients were analyzed. Ninety‐eight samples from 95 patients could be amplified making this approach feasible in 97% of the samples. After removing duplicates, 95 samples from 95 patients were included in the further analysis. Median time from specimen collection to reporting was 11 days. Genomic alteration‐guided treatment recommendations were considered new and clinically relevant in 38% (36/95) of the patients. Rapid decline in functional status was noted in 25% (9/36) of these patients who could therefore not receive genomic‐guided therapy. Genomic‐guided therapy was utilized in 13 patients (13.7%) and 7 patients (7.4%) experienced clinical benefit (6 PR and 1 SD). Among these seven patients, median PFS was 10 months with some ongoing durable responses. Genomic profiling‐guided therapy can lead to clinical benefit in a subset of patients with advanced GI malignancies. Attempting genomic profiling earlier in the course of treatment prior to functional decline may allow more patients to benefit from these therapies.
On the Design of Sliding-Mode Static-Output-Feedback Controllers for Systems With State Delay

This paper considers the development of sliding-mode-based output-feedback controllers for uncertain systems which are subject to time-varying state delays. A novel method is proposed for design of the switching surface. This method is based on the descriptor approach and leads to a solution in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). When compared to existing methods (even for systems without delays), the proposed method is efficient and less conservative than other results, giving a feasible solution when the Kimura-Davison conditions are not satisfied. No additional constraints are imposed on the dimensions or structure of the reduced order triple associated with design of the switching surface. The magnitude of the linear gain used to construct the controller is also verified as an appropriate solution to the reachability problem using LMIs. A stability analysis for the full-order time-delay system with discontinuous right-hand side is formulated. This paper facilitates the constructive design of sliding-mode static-output-feedback controllers for a rather general class of time-delay systems. A numerical example from the literature illustrates the efficiency of the proposed method.
Type D personality and mortality in peripheral arterial disease: a pilot study.

BACKGROUND Type D personality refers to the tendency to experience negative emotions and to inhibit self-expression in social interaction and has been shown to be an independent predictor of mortality in cardiac disease. Information about the effects of psychological traits on prognosis is lacking in cases of peripheral arterial disease (PAD). OBJECTIVE To examine whether type D personality predicts all-cause mortality in PAD. DESIGN Pilot follow-up study. SETTING Vascular surgery department of a teaching hospital. PATIENTS A total of 184 patients with symptomatic PAD (mean [SD] age, 64.8 [9.8] years) were followed up for 4 years (interquartile range, 3.5-4.5 years). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Patients completed the type D Scale-14 measure of type D personality at baseline. Information about all-cause mortality was obtained from patient medical files. RESULTS During 4-year follow-up, 16 patients (8.7%) died. Adjusting for age and sex, type D personality was predictive of mortality (P = .03). Ankle-brachial index (P = .05), age (P = .009), diabetes mellitus (P = .02), pulmonary disease (P = .09), and renal disease (P = .02) were also predictive of mortality. Multivariable logistic regression revealed that age, diabetes, and renal disease were independent predictors of all-cause mortality (odds ratios, 1.1-2.3). After adjustment for these clinical predictors, patients with type D personality still had a more than 3-fold increased risk of death (odds ratio, 3.5; 95% confidence interval, 1.1-11.1; P = .04). CONCLUSIONS Type D personality predicts an increased risk of all-cause mortality in PAD, above and beyond traditional risk factors. Further research is needed to confirm these findings, but this pilot study suggests that the assessment of type D personality may be useful for detecting high-risk patients with PAD.
Affective Movement Recognition Based on Generative and Discriminative Stochastic Dynamic Models

For an engaging human-machine interaction, machines need to be equipped with affective communication abilities. Such abilities enable interactive machines to recognize the affective expressions of their users, and respond appropriately through different modalities including movement. This paper focuses on bodily expressions of affect, and presents a new computational model for affective movement recognition, robust to kinematic, interpersonal, and stochastic variations in affective movements. The proposed approach derives a stochastic model of the affective movement dynamics using hidden Markov models (HMMs). The resulting HMMs are then used to derive a Fisher score representation of the movements, which is subsequently used to optimize affective movement recognition using support vector machine classification. In addition, this paper presents an approach to obtain a minimal discriminative representation of the movements using supervised principal component analysis (SPCA) that is based on Hilbert-Schmidt independence criterion in the Fisher score space. The dimensions of the resulting SPCA subspace consist of intrinsic movement features salient to affective movement recognition. These salient features enable a low-dimensional encoding of observed movements during a human-machine interaction, which can be used to recognize and analyze human affect that is displayed through movement. The efficacy of the proposed approach in recognizing affective movements and identifying a minimal discriminative movement representation is demonstrated using two challenging affective movement datasets.
Specific Phospholipid Oxidation Products Inhibit Ligand Activation of Toll-Like Receptors 4 and 2

Objective—We have previously shown that phospholipid oxidation products of 1-palmitoyl-2-arachidonoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphorylcholine (ox-PAPC) inhibit lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced E-selectin expression and neutrophil binding in human aortic endothelial cells (HAECs). The current studies identify specific phospholipids that inhibit chemokine induction by Toll-like receptor-4 (TLR4) and -2 (TLR2) ligands inECs and macrophages. Methods and Results—Measurements of interleukin (IL)-8 and monocyte chemotactic protein-1 levels secreted from ox-PAPC- and LPS-cotreated ECs indicate that ox-PAPC inhibits activation of TLR4 by LPS. The effects of IL-1&bgr; and tumor necrosis factor-&agr;, which utilize the same intracellular signaling molecules, were not inhibited. Cell fractionation and immunofluorescence analyses demonstrate that LPS induces membrane translocation of the LPS receptor complex to a lipid raft/caveolar fraction in ECs. Ox-PAPC inhibits this translocation and alters caveolin-1 distribution. Supporting an important role for caveolae in LPS action, overexpression of caveolin-1 enhanced LPS-induced IL-8 synthesis. Ox-PAPC also inhibits the effect of TLR2 and TLR4 ligands in human macrophages. Conclusions—These studies report a novel mechanism that involves alterations to lipid raft/caveolar processing, by which specific phospholipid oxidation products inhibit activation by TLR4 and TLR2 ligands. These studies have broader implications for the role of ox-PAPC as a regulator of specific lipid raft/caveolar function.
Stability of Switched Systems With Partial State Reset

In this note, we consider switched systems and switched systems with state reset. In particular we focus on the case of partial reset, i.e., where only some state components may undergo the action of a reset. First we consider switched systems with pre-specified (partial) reset and investigate under which conditions such systems are stable. In a second stage we consider the problem of stabilization by (partial) reset, which consists in finding a suitable (partial) reset for a given switched system that makes this system stable under arbitrary switching.
The Experience of Film Production in Collaborative Virtual Environments

This paper describes an experience of collaborative project development using Second Life (SL) as the interaction media. SL is a virtual environment in which people can interact with each other through avatars [1]. The group task involved the elaboration, planning and production of 1-minute movies. The task was conducted within a graduate course during two months. Participants were graduate students without previous experience in Second Life and in cinema techniques. Analysis based on the 3C collaboration model [2][7] permitted a better understanding of advantages, limitations and challenges for collaborative work in 3D environments. Our observations included group meetings for definition and elaboration of the screenplay, creation and characterization of the characters, setting and description of the scenes, filming, editing, sound recording and documentation.
Walking trajectory control of a biped robot Technical report B-04-18

A not trivial problem in bipedal robot walking is the instability produced by the violent transition between the different dynamic walk phases. In this work an dynamic algorithm to control a biped robot is proposed. The algorithm is based on cubic polynomial interpolation of the initial conditions for the robot’s position, velocity and acceleration. This guarantee a constant velocity an a smooth transition in the control trajectories. The algorithm was successfully probed in the bipedal robot “Dany walker” designed at the Freie Universität Berlin, finally a briefly mechanical description of the robot structure is presented.
Music-Guided Video Summarization using Quadratic Assignments

This paper aims to automatically generate a summary of an unedited video, guided by an externally provided music-track. The tempo, energy and beats in the music determine the choices and cuts in the video summarization. To solve this challenging task, we model video summarization as a quadratic assignment problem. We assign frames to the summary, using rewards based on frame interestingness, plot coherency, audio-visual match, and cut properties. Experimentally we validate our approach on the SumMe dataset. The results show that our music guided summaries are more appealing, and even outperform the current state-of-the-art summarization methods when evaluated on the F1 measure of precision and recall.
Segmentation of vessels in retinal images based on directional height statistics

In this paper we present a fast and simple, yet accurate method for the segmentation of retinal blood vessels. Many diseases of the eye result in the distortions of the vessels. The precise location of the major optic veins may be used for the localization of other anatomical parts, such as the macula and the optic disc. Also, many microaneurysm detection methods consider an additional vessel segmentation step. The proposed method realizes the recognition of vessels through considering cross-sections of the image at different orientations. Peaks on the profiles are localized and their heights are measured. This way, a set of height values are assigned to every pixel of the image. Simple statistics are calculated for every pixel, and combined to construct a vessel score map. We apply a simple thresholding procedure and postprocessing step to obtain a binary vessel mask. The method has been tested on the publicly available DRIVE database, and it proved to be competitive with the state-of-the-art.
A switching detection method based on projected subspace classification

In this paper an innovative switching detection method for piecewise linear systems is presented. The principle used for switching detection is based on finding projected subspaces from batches of input-output data, which are taken from the full data set. The method runs off-line, incrementally over all the data and, at each time, a different batch is used to compute the projected subspace. In this way, the segmentation and classification of data are entirely based on the information retrieved from the projected subspace, i.e. the subspace dimension and basis. The output of the method is a matrix of weights that assigns each pair of input-output measured data to the respective local system. Simulation experiments show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Influence of crystal material on the performance of the HiRez 3D PET scanner: A Monte-Carlo study

The quest for the ideal inorganic scintillator is still active in PET. The aim of this investigation is to study the imaging performance of a 3D PET system as a function of the crystal when considering the HiRez scanner geometry and its Pico acquisition system. A realistic Monte-Carlo model of the scanner was developed using GATE. The model was tuned to measurements using the NEMA NU2-2001 protocol. Measured energy resolution, time window and energy window were inputs in the simulation, while measured front-end deadtime was introduced externally. Small discrepancies between experiment and simulation were described by relative efficiencies for singles and coincidences. The model was modified by replacing LSO by BGO, GSO, LaBr3 and CeBr3, for two different crystal lengths (20 and 30mm). Energy resolution, energy window, time coincidence window and deadtime parameters were adapted in each case. NEC curves were obtained by scaling the experimental HiRez sensitivity for singles and coincidences to the GATE results. The result shows that only the LSO 30 mm case provides superior NEC performance when the axial scanner length is fixed. Considering the HiRez geometry, LSO appears to yield the best imaging performance as measured by peak NEC, due to the combination of high speed and high stopping power.