Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Risk assessment by monitoring expression levels of partial tandem duplications in the MLL gene in acute myeloid leukemia during therapy.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES A partial tandem duplication within the MLL-gene (MLL-PTD) can be found in 8% of all patients with karyotypically normal acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a group in which polymerase chain reaction-(PCR) based minimal residual disease analysis has not, so far, been possible. DESIGN AND METHODS A sensitive real-time PCR assay to quantify MLL-PTD transcripts was established and expression ratios assessed in diagnostic and follow-up samples. The prognostic significance of MLL-PTD expression levels was evaluated in 145 MLL-PTD positive patients at diagnosis and in 44 patients during and after treatment. RESULTS Paired samples from 16 patients evaluated at diagnosis and relapse for the presence of the MLL-PTD were analyzed in parallel and all samples were positive at both time points. Overall, 173 samples from 44 patients were analyzed during follow-up (median sample number: 4/patient (range 2-17)). Nineteen patients were evaluable for MRD within the first 2 months, 15 patients within 4 months, and 19 patients within 6 months after the start of therapy. A >or= 2 log reduction of MLL-PTD expression in comparison to < 2 log reduction within 2, 4, and 6 months after start of therapy was found to be significantly associated with longer overall survival (p=0.029, p=0.007, and p=0.022, respectively). A molecular relapse was detected in 2 cases, in each case preceeding clinical manifestation by 35 days. INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS These data suggest that MLL-PTD is a stable marker and can be used as a prognostically important marker of MRD in patients with karyotypically normal AML.
Accounting for Behavior in Treatment Effects: New Applications for Blind Trials

The double-blind randomized controlled trial (DBRCT) is the gold standard of medical research. We show that DBRCTs fail to fully account for the efficacy of treatment if there are interactions between treatment and behavior, for example, if a treatment is more effective when patients change their exercise or diet. Since behavioral or placebo effects depend on patients’ beliefs that they are receiving treatment, clinical trials with a single probability of treatment are poorly suited to estimate the additional treatment benefit that arises from such interactions. Here, we propose methods to identify interaction effects, and use those methods in a meta-analysis of data from blinded anti-depressant trials in which participant-level data was available. Out of six eligible studies, which included three for the selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor paroxetine, and three for the tricyclic imipramine, three studies had a high (>65%) probability of treatment. We found strong evidence that treatment probability affected the behavior of trial participants, specifically the decision to drop out of a trial. In the case of paroxetine, but not imipramine, there was an interaction between treatment and behavioral changes that enhanced the effectiveness of the drug. These data show that standard blind trials can fail to account for the full value added when there are interactions between a treatment and behavior. We therefore suggest that a new trial design, two-by-two blind trials, will better account for treatment efficacy when interaction effects may be important.
Influence of the inverter's modulation technique on the audible noise of electric motors

The noise emissions of inverter-driven electric motors are highly influenced by additional electromagnetic noise generated by the current harmonics from inverter operation. The amplitude and the frequency of these harmonics depend on the modulation technique applied in the power electronic converter. Purpose of this paper is to highlight the important role that the modulation techniques play in the noise generation in variable speed drives and analyze the different characteristics of the current harmonics as well as of the generated noise. A good understanding of the available choices and their characteristics, advantages and limitations is necessary in order to optimize the acoustic design of the “motor-converter” system.
Prognostic implications of baseline electrocardiographic features and their serial changes in subjects with left ventricular hypertrophy.

BACKGROUND During the past half-century, the ECG has been used extensively for the diagnosis of left ventricular hypertrophy. Persons with ECG evidence of left ventricular hypertrophy are at increased risk for the development of cardiovascular disease. METHODS AND RESULTS Subjects from the Framingham Heart Study with ECG evidence of left ventricular hypertrophy were eligible for this investigation if they were free of cardiovascular disease and did not have complete bundle-branch block or Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. Logistic regression analyses of pooled biennial examinations were used to determine risk for cardiovascular disease as a function of baseline voltage (sum of R wave in aVL plus S wave in V3) and repolarization and as a function of serial changes in these ECG features of hypertrophy. The eligible sample consisted of 274 men (mean age, 60 years) and 250 women (mean age, 64 years) who contributed 2660 person-examinations. During follow-up, there were 269 new cardiovascular events. Compared with subjects in the first quartile of voltage at baseline, the age-adjusted odds ratio for cardiovascular disease among subjects in the fourth quartile was 3.08 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.87 to 5.07) in men and 3.29 (95% CI, 1.78 to 6.09) in women. Compared with a normal repolarization pattern, the presence of severe repolarization abnormalities was associated with an age-adjusted odds ratio of 5.84 (95% CI, 3.55 to 9.62) in men and 2.47 (95% CI, 1.38 to 4.42) in women. Subjects with a serial decline in voltage were at lower risk for cardiovascular disease than were those with no serial change (men: odds ratio after adjusting for age and baseline voltage, 0.46; 95% CI, 0.26 to 0.84; women: odds ratio, 0.56; 95% CI, 0.30 to 1.04). In contrast, those with a serial increase in voltage were at greater risk for cardiovascular disease (men: odds ratio, 1.86; 95% CI, 1.14 to 3.03; women: odds ratio, 1.61; 95% CI, 0.91 to 2.84). Compared with those with no serial change, an improvement in repolarization was associated with a marginally significant reduction in cardiovascular risk in men (odds ratio after adjusting for age and baseline repolarization, 0.45; 95% CI, 0.20 to 1.01). Worsening of repolarization was associated with increased risk for cardiovascular disease in both sexes (men: odds ratio, 1.89; 95% CI, 1.05 to 3.40; women: odds ratio, 2.02; 95% CI, 1.07 to 3.81). CONCLUSIONS The results of this investigation suggest that regression of ECG features of left ventricular hypertrophy confers an improvement in risk for cardiovascular disease, whereas serial worsening imposes increased risk. The benefits to be derived from regression of left ventricular hypertrophy must be confirmed in other clinical settings.
A novel handover decision policy for reducing power transmissions in the two-tier LTE network

Femtocells are attracting a fast increasing interest nowadays, as a promising solution to improve indoor coverage, enhance system capacity, and lower transmit power. Technical challenges still remain, however, mainly including interference, security and mobility management, intercepting wide deployment and adoption from mobile operators and end users. This paper describes a novel handover decision policy for the two-tier LTE network, towards reducing power transmissions at the mobile terminal side. The proposed policy is LTE backward-compatible, as it can be employed by suitably adapting the handover hysteresis margin with respect to a prescribed SINR target and standard LTE measurements. Simulation results reveal that compared to the widely-adopted strongest cell policy, the proposed policy can greatly reduce the power consumption at the LTE mobile terminals, and lower the interference network-wide.
Recoverability Analysis for Modified Compressive Sensing with Partially Known Support

The recently proposed modified-compressive sensing (modified-CS), which utilizes the partially known support as prior knowledge, significantly improves the performance of recovering sparse signals. However, modified-CS depends heavily on the reliability of the known support. An important problem, which must be studied further, is the recoverability of modified-CS when the known support contains a number of errors. In this letter, we analyze the recoverability of modified-CS in a stochastic framework. A sufficient and necessary condition is established for exact recovery of a sparse signal. Utilizing this condition, the recovery probability that reflects the recoverability of modified-CS can be computed explicitly for a sparse signal with nonzero entries. Simulation experiments have been carried out to validate our theoretical results.
Protection of mouse photoreceptors by survival factors in retinal degenerations.

PURPOSE To examine the protective effect of a number of survival factors on degenerating photoreceptors in mutant mice with naturally occurring inherited retinal degenerations, including retinal degeneration (rd/rd), retinal degeneration slow (rds/rds), nervous (nr/nr), and Purkinje cell degeneration (pcd/pcd), in three different forms of mutant rhodopsin transgenic mice and in light damage in albino mice. METHODS Various survival factors were injected intravitreally into one eye of mice at or soon after the beginning of photoreceptor degeneration, with the opposite eye serving as the control, and the eyes were examined histologically at later ages. The survival factors included brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), neurotrophin-3, neurotrophin-4, ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF), Axokine (a mutein of CNTF), leukemia inhibitory factor, basic fibroblast growth factor, and nerve growth factor and insulin-like growth factor II, either alone or in various combinations. RESULTS Photoreceptor degeneration was slowed in rd/rd and nr/nr mutant mice and in Q344ter mutant rhodopsin mice by certain forms of CNTF; the degeneration in Q344ter mice was slowed by Axokine and by leukemia inhibitory factor; and the degeneration in a few nr/nr mice was slowed by BDNF. The other agents were ineffective in these mice, and none of the agents were effective in the other mutants and other mutant rhodopsin transgenic mice. However, light damage experiments that compared agent effectiveness in albino mice versus rats suggested a significant delivery problem with the very small mouse eye, thereby making the interpretation of negative findings equivocal in mutant mice. Basic fibroblast growth factor failed to protect the mouse retina from the damaging effects of constant light, whereas it showed a strong protective effect in the rat, indicating an important species difference. CONCLUSIONS The slowing of degeneration in the rd/rd and Q344ter mutant mice demonstrated that intraocularly injected survival factors can protect photoreceptors from degenerating in animal models with the same or similar genetic defects as those in human inherited retinal degenerations.
Real-world therapies and the problem of vivax malaria.

Wellems and Miller1 wrote of two worlds of malaria: one, of the residents of rural tropical areas in which the disease is endemic, and the other, of travelers to those areas, who typically have greater resources. The distinction is sharp, valid, and important in considering the development of tools to combat the global burden of malaria. Drugs considered safe and effective in one world may not be so in the other.2 The majority of the hundreds of millions of people in whom malaria will develop over the next year will obtain and consume antimalarial medication without medical supervision. Although the .
Joint operation of voice biometrics and presentation attack detection

Research in the area of automatic speaker verification (ASV) has advanced enough for the industry to start using ASV systems in practical applications. However, as it was also shown for fingerprints, face, and other verification systems, ASV systems are highly vulnerable to spoofing or presentation attacks, limiting their wide practical deployment. Therefore, to protect against such attacks, effective anti-spoofing detection techniques, more formally known as presentation attack detection (PAD) systems, need to be developed. These techniques should be then seamlessly integrated into existing ASV systems for practical all-in-one solutions. In this paper, we focus on the integration of PAD and ASV systems. We consider the state of the art i-vector and ISV-based ASV systems and demonstrate the effect of score-based integration with a PAD system on the verification and attack detection accuracies. In our experiments, we rely on AVspoof database that contains realistic presentation attacks, which are considered by the industry to be the threat to practical ASV systems. Experimental results show a significantly increased resistance of the joint ASV-PAD system to the attacks at the expense of slightly degraded performance for scenarios without spoofing attacks. Also, an important contribution of the paper is an open source and an online-based implementations of the separate and joint ASV-PAD systems.
Creating consistent scene graphs using a probabilistic grammar

Growing numbers of 3D scenes in online repositories provide new opportunities for data-driven scene understanding, editing, and synthesis. Despite the plethora of data now available online, most of it cannot be effectively used for data-driven applications because it lacks consistent segmentations, category labels, and/or functional groupings required for co-analysis. In this paper, we develop algorithms that infer such information via parsing with a probabilistic grammar learned from examples. First, given a collection of scene graphs with consistent hierarchies and labels, we train a probabilistic hierarchical grammar to represent the distributions of shapes, cardinalities, and spatial relationships of semantic objects within the collection. Then, we use the learned grammar to parse new scenes to assign them segmentations, labels, and hierarchies consistent with the collection. During experiments with these algorithms, we find that: they work effectively for scene graphs for indoor scenes commonly found online (bedrooms, classrooms, and libraries); they outperform alternative approaches that consider only shape similarities and/or spatial relationships without hierarchy; they require relatively small sets of training data; they are robust to moderate over-segmentation in the inputs; and, they can robustly transfer labels from one data set to another. As a result, the proposed algorithms can be used to provide consistent hierarchies for large collections of scenes within the same semantic class.
Vegetation parameters retrieval from radar multipolarimetric multifrequency data

This paper proposes an inversion algorithm for extracting soil and vegetation parameters from multi-frequency, multi-polarimetric SAR radar data. The algorithm, based on the determination of probability density functions (pdfs) through a Bayesian methodology, has been initially developed for bare soils and tested on numerous data sets. The pdfs are obtained from the comparison between theoretical backscattering values, derived from the Integral Equation Model (IEM), and the measured ones. The aim of this work is to apply this inversion algorithm to fields that have different levels of vegetation cover. As first approach, the pdfs have been empirically calibrated according to vegetation water content values obtained from a multispectral image (Landsat image). This allows subtracting the contribution of vegetation backscatter from radar signal and hence isolating the contribution from bare soil. In a second approach, instead of using the IEM, a simple vegetation model, the water-cloud model, has been used. This model relates the radar responses to both soil and vegetation characteristics. Thus, the comparison between the theoretical and the measured sensor responses leads to the calculation of new pdfs which contain information about both vegetation and soil parameters. The algorithm has been tested on data sets acquired during the SMEX'02 experiment covering a variety of soil moisture and vegetation conditions. The algorithm exploits the use of L and C band at different polarisations. The results have been also compared with those obtained from the algorithm developed only for bare soils.
A perception system for obstacle detection and tracking in rural, unstructured environment

This paper describes a multi-sensor perception system for detecting and tracking obstacles in a rural, unstructured environment. A 3D lidar is used as the main sensor for obstacle detection and short range vehicle tracking, complemented by automotive radars for long range moving vehicle tracking. A bottom-up inference process based on extended elevation map is used for obstacle detection, while a modified random matrix method is adopted for laser-based vehicle tracking to handle rigid body constraint and partial observability problem. Track-to-track level fusion is performed to improve the accuracy of the individual sensor's tracks. The performance of the system is evaluated and verified through extensive experiments conducted out-field.
One-Step Modulation Predictive Current Control Method for the Asymmetrical Dual Three-Phase Induction Machine

Multiphase (more than three phases) drives exhibit interesting advantages over conventional three-phase drives. Over the last years, topics related to the extension of control schemes to these specific drives have been covered in depth in the literature. Direct torque control and predictive current control are normally used in conventional AC drives when fast electrical dynamic performance is required. In this paper, a one-step modulation predictive current control technique is proposed for asymmetrical dual three-phase AC drives. Based on the use of a predictive model including the motor and the inverter, the control algorithm determines the switching state which minimizes errors between predicted and reference state variables. The period of application of the selected switching state is then obtained, resulting in a submodulation method. The proposed predictive current control algorithm uses a prediction horizon of one sampling period; however, two switching states are applied during the sampling period. The switching states are the selected optimum active vector and a null voltage combination. Simulation and experimental results are provided to examine the features of the control method. Performances, advantages, and limitations are also discussed.
Wireless World Research Forum (wwrf)

—In the current Internet, TCP's congestion control is performed end-to-end, possibly assisted by simple and limited congestion feedback mechanisms in routers such as Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) or Random Early Detection (RED). In order to control network traffic more accurately by reducing or even preventing congestion in (parts of) the network, and to improve the overall performance of TCP flows, a number of more complex and powerful feedback mechanisms for use in routers have been proposed. This paper describes the main ideas behind some of the most important of such router congestion feedback (RCF) approaches based on network-information sharing (NIS). In addition, the properties, functionalities, and expected performance gain of these RCF approaches are compared and their applicability in the current Internet environment is investigated. The aim of this paper is to find potential RCF candidates that can be used to improve congestion control in the current Internet as well as in future IP-based networks where diverse wired and wireless access technologies are used in parallel.
Conducted EMI Mitigation Techniques for Switch-Mode Power Converters: A Survey

Several techniques to mitigate conducted electromagnetic interference (EMI) in switch-mode power supplies (SMPS) have been reported in literature. Of these, this paper reviews those techniques that are primarily meant for ac-dc and dc-dc power converters. The techniques are broadly classified based on two criteria-1) reduction of the noise after generation and 2) reduction of the noise at the generation stage itself. A detailed classification and review of various noise mitigation techniques currently available in literature are presented. It is believed that the classification and review of the conducted EMI mitigation techniques presented in this paper would be useful to SMPS researchers and designers.
MEASUREMENT OF RECURRING VERSUS NON-RECURRING CONGESTION

A research effort was initiated to develop and test a methodology to estimate the extent to which urban congestion is produced by the routine presence of large numbers of vehicles on a facility (so-called recurring congestion) versus unexpected disruptions or other events (non-recurring congestion), particularly lane blocking incidents. An analysis was performed using a preliminary methodology to estimate the magnitude, extent, and relative causes of congestion on urban freeways in the central Puget Sound region of Washington State. This information is designed to assist transportation agencies in 1) selecting the most appropriate strategies to improve freeway operations, and 2) allocating available resources to achieve those improvements. This paper documents the preliminary methodology and results from this ongoing research project.