Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Phase II Study of Sorafenib in Patients with Platinum-Pretreated, Advanced (Stage IIIb or IV) Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer with a KRAS Mutation

Purpose: Sorafenib inhibits the Ras/Raf pathway, which is overactive in cancer patients with a KRAS mutation. We hypothesized that patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with KRAS mutation will benefit from treatment with sorafenib. Experimental Design: In this phase II study, patients with KRAS-mutated, stage IIIb or IV NSCLC that progressed after at least one platinum-containing regimen were treated with sorafenib. Treatment consisted of sorafenib 400 mg twice daily until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. Pretreatment serum from each patient was obtained to predict outcome using a proteomic assay (VeriStrat). Primary endpoint was disease control rate (DCR) at 6 weeks. Results: Fifty-nine patients were entered between May 2010 and February 2011. Fifty-seven patients started sorafenib. Mean age was 58.5 (SD = ±8.1) years, 16 male/41 female, Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) performance status (PS) 0/1/2 24/30/3. At 6 weeks, 5 partial response, 25 stable disease, and 27 progressive disease were observed; DCR was 52.6%. Median duration of treatment was 9 weeks. The median progression-free survival (PFS) was 2.3 months and median overall survival (OS) was 5.3 months. Patients with a prediction of good prognosis according to VeriStrat serum proteomics assay showed a significantly superior PFS [HR, 1.4; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.0–1.9] but not OS (HR, 1.3; 95% CI, 0.9–1.7). Sorafenib-related grade III/IV toxicity was reported in 10 patients (17.5%); all but one patient experienced grade III skin toxicity (14.0%) or grade III gastrointestinal toxicity (8.8%). Conclusion: Treatment with sorafenib has relevant clinical activity in patients with NSCLC harboring KRAS mutations. Further randomized study with this agent is warranted as single-agent or combination therapy. Clin Cancer Res; 19(3); 743–51. ©2012 AACR.
Priors for Speaker Counting and Diarization with AHC

Estimating the number of speakers in an audio segment is a necessary step in the process of speaker diarization, but current diarization algorithms do not explicitly define a prior probability on this estimation. This work proposes a process for including priors in speaker diarization with agglomerative hierarchical clustering (AHC). It is also shown that the exclusion of a prior with AHC is itself implicitly a prior, which is found to be geometric growth in the number of speakers. By using more sensible priors, we are able to demonstrate significantly improved robustness to calibration error for speaker counting and speaker diarization.
Visualizing Bicycle Hire Model Distributions

In July 2010, Transport for London launched the Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme [4] allowing members of the public to hire a bicycle from any of around 350 docking stations located in central London. Users are encouraged to take short journeys between docking stations by making hire of a bicycle free (after membership fees) if returned to any docking station within 30 minutes. Docking stations are located such than each is never more than 300m from another station (see Figure 1). A total of about 5000 bicycles are used by the scheme at any moment in time with approximately 8100 docking station places available. The scheme is currently only available to registered users who sign up via the web, although it is planned to open the scheme to casual users on a pay-per-use basis in early 2011. It is anticipated that when fully implemented, 400 docking stations and 6000 bicycles will be available. In common with similar schemes in other cities (e.g. Dublin, Paris, Melbourne), the challenge for implementers of the scheme is to ensure that there are both sufficient bicycles and sufficient spaces for docking available at each station. This can be achieved by supplementing the natural flow of bicycles by users with additional tranportation of bikes from full stations to empty ones. This can be regarded as an example of fleet management [1]. This paper considers how geovisualization
Prevention of ankle sprains

Ankles are sprained when supported on an unstable foundation, while too rididly fixed to the playing surface, or when forced into unnatural positions by extrinsic muscle tightness. The unstable foundation may be the shoe itself, a chuck-hole, or another player's foot. Undue fixation may be by 1-inch mud cleats, baseball spikes, or a modern wrestling mat. When these circumstances occur, heel cord tightness may alter the ankle's response. Thus, prevention of ankle sprains may be by modification of any of these factors. Language: en
Invariant image recognition under projective deformations: An image normalization approach

Robustness in image recognition refers to the ability to perceive an image pattern regardless of factors including camera views and locations. This paper proposes an image normalization algorithm that allows an image with arbitrary projective distortions to be recognized efficiently. The normalization algorithm calculates the required projective transformation matrix using image moments. For an input image, a set of 8 output images that are independent of projective deformations are generated. The proposed algorithm is evaluated on three benchmark data sets. The experimental results show that the proposed normalization is significantly more accurate than the existing rank minimization and affine normalization methods.
Positive Aspects of the Caregiving Experience: Finding Hope in the Midst of the Storm

Throughout the caregiving literature, few researchers have utilized positive aspects of care (e.g., satisfaction) to help understand the caregiving experience. This study utilized a survey approach to better understand how positive aspects of care relate to the caregiving experience of 70 informal female caregivers of older adult care receivers living with a chronic illness or disability. Positive aspects of caregiving were significantly related to burden, depression, identity loss, and role captivity. Regression analyses indicate positive aspects of care moderate the relationship between burden and depression. Results support the importance of: working with women providing informal and unpaid care to make visible the micro, meso, and macro level forces shaping their caregiving experience; helping clients identify and enact strategies for reducing burden as well as find meaning in their caregiving role; helping clients to identify strengths and sources of personal and relational empowerment; and the need for culturally competent practice.
Blood Parasites of Frogs From an Equatorial African Montane Forest in Western Uganda

Abstract In a survey of blood parasites in Ugandan frogs, 30 (17%) of 180 frogs were infected with at least 1 species of Hepatozoon or Trypanosoma, or with microfilariae. There were significant differences in the prevalence of parasitism among species, with parasitemia detected in only 3 of 9 species. The intensity of blood parasite infection ranged from 1 to 1,080 infected cells per 5,000 cells examined. Seasonal changes in the prevalence and intensity of parasitemia were not observed, nor was there any association between parasitemia and infection with the pandemic fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis.
Weber's Last Theory of Capitalism: A Systematization

A systematic formulation is given of Weber's theory of the origins of large-scale capitalism, based upon the lectures given just before his death. This last theory is predominantly institutional, unlike the emphasis upon religious ideas and motivations in his early Protestant Ethic thesis, and unlike his analyses of the world religions. Weber's institutional theory involves a sequence of causal conditions. The outcome of the sequence is capitalism characterized by the entrepreneurial organization of capital, rationalized technology, free labor, and unrestrained markets. Intermediate conditions are a calculable legal system and an economic ethic combining universal commercialization with the moderate pursuit of repetitive gains. These conditions are fostered by the bureaucratic state and by legal citizenship, and more remotely by a complex of administrative, military, and religious factors. The overall pattern is one in which numerous elements must be balanced in continuous conflict if economic development is to take place. Weber derived much of this scheme in explicit confrontation with Marxism. His conflict theory criticizes as well as deepens and extends a number of Marxian themes, including a theory of international capitalism which both criticizes and complements Wallerstein's theory of the world system.
Electro-cortical measures during visual and kinesthetic imagery performance following visual- and auditory-guided instructions

Electroencephalography (EEG) measures can provide extensive and detailed knowledge of how the brain works during imagery. Prior to imagery performance, individuals may acquire information on how to imagine the movement through either visual or auditory instructions. The purpose of this study was to determine differences in cerebral cortical activation during kinesthetic and visual imagery performance while following visual- and audio-guided imagery instructions. EEG recordings were collected from 28 participants and guided imagery instructions were given in two versions: audio and visual. The results revealed that lower alpha values (8–10 Hz) were greater when participants were performing kinesthetic imagery following auditory instructions as opposed to following visual instructions. Furthermore, lower alpha values were greater at the right hemisphere than the left hemisphere and greater at the right temporal site than the left temporal site. In the upper alpha band (11–13 Hz), results showed that values were greater at the temporal site in the right hemisphere than the temporal site in the left hemisphere. In addition, upper alpha values were greater at the right hemisphere than the left hemisphere and greater at the right temporal site than the left temporal site. The findings of this study suggest that electro-cortical measures can detect differences of the processes involved during guided imagery performance while following either audio or video instructions. In the applied setting, practitioners can implement neurofeedback techniques to assess the specific mental effort required by individuals following guided instructions to perform imagery.
On family rigidity theorems, I

Note that Ind(P ) is a virtual G-representation. Let chg(Ind(P )) with g ∈G be the equivariant Chern character of Ind(P ) evaluated at g. In this paper, we first prove a family fixed-point formula that expresses chg(Ind(P )) in terms of the geometric data on the fixed points X of the fiber of π . Then by applying this formula, we generalize the Witten rigidity theorems and several vanishing theorems proved in [Liu3] for elliptic genera to the family case. Let G = S1. A family elliptic operator P is called rigid on the equivariant Chern character level with respect to this S1-action, if chg(Ind(P )) ∈H ∗(B) is independent of g ∈ S1. When the base B is a point, we recover the classical rigidity and vanishing theorems. When B is a manifold, we get many nontrivial higher-order rigidity and vanishing theorems by taking the coefficients of certain expansion of chg . For the history of the Witten rigidity theorems, we refer the reader to [T], [BT], [K], [L2], [H], [Liu1], and [Liu4]. The family vanishing theorems that generalize those vanishing theorems in [Liu3], which in turn give us many higher-order vanishing theorems in the family case. In a forthcoming paper, we extend our results to general loop group representations and prove much more general family vanishing theorems that generalize the results in [Liu3]. We believe there should be some applications of our results to topology and geometry, which we hope to report on a later occasion. This paper is organized as follows. In Section 1, we prove the equivariant family index theorem. In Section 2, we prove the family rigidity theorem. In the last part of Section 2, motivated by the family rigidity theorem, we state a conjecture. In Section 3, we generalize the family rigidity theorem to the nonzero anomaly case. As corollaries, we derive several vanishing theorems.
Active perception

Active perception (active vision specifically) is defined as a study of modeling and control strategies for perception. Local methods are distinguished from global models by their extent of application in space and time. The local models represent procedures and parameters such as optical distortions of the lens, focal lens, spatial resolution, bandpass filter, etc, The global models, on the other hand, characterize the overall performance and make predictions on how the individual modules interact. The control strategies are formulated as a search of such sequences of steps that would minimize a loss function while still seeking the most information. Examples are shown as the existence proof of the proposed theory on obtaining range from focus and stereo/vergence on 2-D segmentation of an image and 3-D shape parameterization. >
Potential utility of various protease inhibitors for improving the intestinal absorption of insulin in rats

The aim of the investigation was to study the effects of protease inhibitors on the absorption of insulin in‐situ from closed small and large intestinal loops in rats and to investigate the mechanism of various protease inhibitors in different intestinal loops. The intestinal absorption of insulin was evaluated by its hypoglycaemic effect and serum insulin level in the presence or absence of luminal contents. No marked hypoglycaemic effect was observed after administration of insulin alone in either region in the presence or absence of luminal contents. A significant hypoglycaemic effect of insulin was obtained in the large intestinal loop in the presence or absence of luminal contents when insulin was co‐administered with bacitracin (20, 30 mM), sodium glycocholate (20, 40 mM), bestatin (29 mM), leupeptin (21 mM) and cystatin (0.8 mM). In contrast, there was no hypoglycaemic effect in the small intestinal loop in the presence of luminal contents following small intestinal co‐administration of insulin with these protease inhibitors. The effectiveness of protease inhibitors was susceptible to their categories, concentrations and activity of proteolytic enzymes in different regions. The degree of improving insulin absorption in intestine was in the order of leupeptin > sodium glycocholate > bacitracin > bestatin > cystatin. At the same time, the percutaneous enhancement effect was observed in the presence of either sodium glycocholate or bacitracin. These results suggest that protease inhibitors could increase the insulin efficacy more effectively in the large intestine than in the small intestine.
Evolving Effective Microbehaviors in Real-Time Strategy Games

We investigate heuristic search algorithms to generate high-quality micromanagement in combat scenarios for real-time strategy (RTS) games. Macro- and micromanagement are two key aspects of RTS games. While good macro helps a player collect more resources and build more units, good micro helps a player win skirmishes and battles against equal numbers and types of opponent units or win even when outnumbered. In this paper, we use influence maps and potential fields as a basis representation to evolve short-term positioning and movement tactics. Unit microbehaviors in combat are compactly encoded into 14 parameters. A genetic algorithm evolves good microbehaviors by manipulating these 14 parameters. We compared the performance of our evolved ECSLBot with two other state-of-the-art bots, UAlbertaBot and Nova, on several skirmish scenarios in a popular RTS game StarCraft. The results show that the ECSLBot tuned by genetic algorithms outperforms UAlbertaBot and Nova in kiting efficiency, target selection, and fleeing. Further experiments show that the parameter values evolved in one scenario work well in other scenarios and that we can switch between preevolved parameter sets to perform well in unseen scenarios containing more than one type of opponent unit. We believe our representation and approach applied to each unit type of interest can result in effective microperformance against melee and ranged opponents and provides a viable approach toward complete RTS bots.
Cognitive Conjunction: A New Approach to Brain Activation Experiments

This paper introduces the concepts and procedures of "cognitive conjunction," a new approach to designing and analyzing cognitive activation experiments. Cognitive conjunction compliments categorical approaches such as cognitive subtraction and requires a specific form of statistical inference that involves the conjunction of several hypotheses. While cognitive subtraction studies are designed such that a pair of tasks differ only by the processing component(s) of interest, cognitive conjunction studies are designed such that two or more distinct task pairs each share a common processing difference. The neural correlates of the process of interest are then associated with the common areas of activation for each task pair. There are two main advantages of cognitive conjunction relative to cognitive subtraction. The first is that it provides a greater latitude for selecting baseline tasks because it is not necessary to control for all but the component of interest. The only constraint on selecting the baseline is that the component of interest is the only process that differs in each task pair. The second advantage is that cognitive conjunction does not depend on "pure insertion"--the assumption that the addition of an extra processing component in the activation task has no effect on the implementation of processes that are also engaged by the baseline task. The differences between the design and the statistical analysis of experiments based on cognitive subtraction, cognitive conjunction, and factorial designs are illustrated with a study of phonological retrieval. Cognitive conjunction analysis indicates that irrespective of whether subjects name words, objects, letters, or colors, there is activation of the left posterior basal temporal lobe, the left frontal operculum, the left thalamus, and the midline cerebellum.
“Does he know I’m his brother?” A Multi-Method Inquiry into Sibling Relationships Involving Children with Disabilities

A mixed method approach was used to investigate the impact of disability and family-size on sibling relationships. The quantitative component used a questionnaire to analyse 191 sibling dyads in terms of companionship, empathy, teaching / caring, rivalry, aggression / conflict, and avoidance. Lower levels of positive behaviours and higher levels of negative behaviours were reported when one of the children was disabled. Non-disabled children displayed more positive and less negative behaviour towards their disabled siblings in three-child-families, compared with those in two-child-families. The qualitative component consisted of interviews with four families and the data was analysed using a grounded theory approach. The disability’s manifestation, the non-disabled child’s development and the familial situation were all identified to influence the relationship quality.
Modular sequence elements associated with origin regions in eukaryotic chromosomal DNA

We have postulated that chromosomal replication origin regions in eukaryotes have in common clusters of certain modular sequence elements (Benbow, Zhao, and Larson, BioEssays 14, 661-670, 1992). In this study, computer analyses of DNA sequences from six origin regions showed that each contained one or more potential initiation regions consisting of a putative DUE (DNA unwinding element) aligned with clusters of SAR (scaffold associated region), and ARS (autonomously replicating sequence) consensus sequences, and pyrimidine tracts. The replication origins analyzed were from the following loci: Tetrahymena thermophila macronuclear rDNA gene, Chinese hamster ovary dihydrofolate reductase amplicon, human c-myc proto-oncogene, chicken histone H5 gene, Drosophila melanogaster chorion gene cluster on the third chromosome, and Chinese hamster ovary rhodopsin gene. The locations of putative initiation regions identified by the computer analyses were compared with published data obtained using diverse methods to map initiation sites. For at least four loci, the potential initiation regions identified by sequence analysis aligned with previously mapped initiation events. A consensus DNA sequence, WAWTTDDWWWDHWGWHMAWTT, was found within the potential initiation regions in every case. An additional 35 kb of combined flanking sequences from the six loci were also analyzed, but no additional copies of this consensus sequence were found.
Balancing acoustic and linguistic probabilities

The length of the word sequence is not taken into account under language modeling of n-gram local probability modeling. Due to this property the optimal values of the language weight and word insertion penalty for balancing acoustic and linguistic probabilities is affected by the length of word sequence. To deal with this problem, a new language model is developed based on the Bernoulli trial model taking the length of the word sequence into account. Not only better recognition accuracy but also more robust balancing with acoustic probability compared with the normal n-gram model of the proposed method is confirmed through recognition experiments.
MEASUREMENT OF COLOUR DEVELOPMENT IN PINUS RADIATA SAPWOOD BOARDS DURING DRYING AT VARIOUS SCHEDULE

Colour changes, such as kiln brown stain, that develop in Pinus radiata boards during kiln drying can reduce the value of the final wood products and result in significant losses due to downgrade or waste of dried wood by removing the darkened surfaces. This study measured how colour developed in Pinus radiata sapwood boards under different drying schedules. The boards used in these experiments were 40x100x800mm, cut from the same log and were endand edge-matched. Boards were dried at eight different schedules using temperatures from 50°C to 120°C and relative humidities from 14% to 67%. Separate boards were dried for 5 equal intervals through each schedule and colour profiles measured through the boards using a surface reflectance spectrophotometer. Lightness, L*, on a greyscale was used as an indication of colour change (darkening). The results show that there is generally a greater decrease in lightness with higher temperature schedules and also with slower, higher relative humidity, schedules. This suggests that both temperature and drying time are significant factors in the formation of colour during drying. The most significant changes in colour occurred near the board surfaces, indicating kiln brown stain.
Psychiatric Comorbidity and Physical Correlates in Alcohol-dependent Patients

Aim: To examine the prevalence and pattern of comorbidity in alcohol dependence and its relationship with physical and laboratory findings. Materials and Methods: Eighty males with alcohol dependence were examined using the Hindi version of Diagnostic Interview for Genetic Studies, the International Classification of Disease-10th Edition Personality Disorder Examination, Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test for alcohol use, global assessment of functioning, blood sampling electrocardiogram, and ultrasonogram. Results: Eighty-seven percent had a comorbid Axis I or an Axis II psychiatric disorder, over 78% had nicotine dependence, and 56% had comorbid Axis II disorder, antisocial personality being the most common. Gamma glutamyl transpeptidase levels were significantly associated with comorbidity. Conclusions: High comorbidity of Axis I psychiatric disorders was found among persons with alcohol dependence. Axis II disorders were also present.