Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Phase I Study of Cetuximab, Irinotecan, and Vandetanib (ZD6474) as Therapy for Patients with Previously Treated Metastastic Colorectal Cancer

Background To determine the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) and safety, and explore efficacy and biomarkers of vandetanib with cetuximab and irinotecan in second-line metastatic colorectal cancer. Methods Vandetanib (an orally bioavailable VEGFR-2 and EGFR tyrosine kinases inhibitor) was combined at 100 mg, 200 mg, or 300 mg daily with standard dosed cetuximab and irinotecan (3+3 dose-escalation design). Ten patients were treated at the MTD and plasma angiogenesis biomarkers (VEGF, PlGF, bFGF, sVEGFR1, sVEGFR2, IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8, TNF-α, SDF1α) were measured before and after treatment. Results Twenty-seven patients were enrolled at 4 dose levels and the MTD. Two dose-limiting toxicities (grade 3 QTc prolongation and diarrhea) were detected at 300 mg of vandetanib with cetuximab and irinotecan resulting in 200 mg being the MTD. Seven percent of patients had a partial response, 59% stable disease and 34% progressed. Median progression-free survival was 3.6 months (95% CI, 3.2–5.6) and median overall survival was 10.5 months (95% CI, 5.1–20.7). Toxicities were fairly manageable with grade 3 or 4 diarrhea being most prominent (30%). Vandetanib and cetuximab treatment induced a sustained increase in plasma PlGF and a transient decrease in plasma sVEGFR1, but no changes in plasma VEGF and sVEGFR2. Conclusions Vandetanib can be safely combined with cetuximab and irinotecan for metastatic colorectal cancer. Exploratory biomarker analyses suggest differential effects on certain plasma biomarkers for VEGFR inhibition when combined with EGFR blockade and a potential correlation between baseline sVEGFR1 and response. However, while the primary endpoint was safety, the observed efficacy raises concern for moving forward with this combination. Trial Registration Clinicaltrials.gov NCT00436072.
Frankenwords: a cognitive perspective on the interpretation of NOUN-NOUN compounds in English

EMOTIONS Love, Rage, Phobia Abstract CULTURE Christian, Nazi, CultureCULTURE Christian, Nazi, Culture Abstract NARRATIVE ENTITIES Frankenstein, Godzilla, ZombieNARRATIVE ENTITIES Frankenstein, Godzilla, Zombie Abstract INTERNET Spam, Troll, InternetINTERNET Spam, Troll, Internet The table above presents the classification we made of the components that will serve to this study. Firstly, we started with the semantic class divided between concrete and abstract. Consequently, and according to Rosch’s classification we continued with the superordinate category in which we decided to work with seven semantic categories three of them corresponding to the concrete semantic class (animals, fruits, body parts) and four of
Drowsiness detection in dorsolateral-prefrontal cortex using fNIRS for a passive-BCI

In this paper, we have investigated the feasibility of detecting drowsiness using hemodynamic brain signals for a passive brain-computer interface (BCI). Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is used to measure the right dorsolateral-prefrontal brain region in order to investigate the hemodynamic changes corresponding to drowsy and alert states. The data is recorded using five drowsy subjects during a simulated car driving task. The recoded data are converted into oxy- and deoxy-hemoglobin (HBO and HbR) using the modified Beer-Lambert law (MBLL) for feature extraction and classification. Signal mean and signal slope are extracted using the spatio-temporal time windows as features. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and support vector machines (SVM) are used for the training and testing of the brain data. The classification accuracy obtained using offline analyses is 74% and 77% respectively. The results show that drowsy and alert states are distinguishable from the right dorsolateral prefrontal brain region. Also, fNIRS modality can be used for drowsiness detection for a passive BCI.
Can rigidly rotating polytropes be sources of the Kerr metric?

We use a recent result by Cabezas et al (2007 Gen. Rel. Grav. 39 707) to build up an approximate solution to the gravitational field created by a rigidly rotating polytrope. We solve the linearized Einstein equations inside and outside the surface of zero pressure including second-order corrections due to rotational motion to get an asymptotically flat metric in a global harmonic coordinate system. We prove that if the metric and their first derivatives are continuous on the matching surface up to this order of approximation, the multipole moments of this metric cannot be fitted to those of the Kerr metric.
A method for 3 D reconstruction of tree crown volume from photographs : assessment with 3 D-digitized plants

SE and SW. This photographic method of reconstruction includes three steps. First, canopy height and diameter are estimated from each image from the location of the topmost, rightmost and leftmost vegetated pixel; second, a rectangular bounding box around the tree is constructed from canopy dimensions derived in Step 1, and the bounding box is divided into an array of voxels; and third, each tree image is divided into a set of picture zones. The gap fraction of each picture zone is calculated from image processing. A vegetated picture zone corresponds to a gap fraction of less than 1. Each picture zone corresponds to a beam direction from the camera to the target tree, the equation of which is computed from the zone location on the picture and the camera parameters. For each vegetated picture zone, the ray-box intersection algorithm (Glassner 1989) is used to compute the sequence of voxels intersected by the beam. After processing all vegetated zones, voxels that have not been intersected by any beam are presumed to be empty and are removed from the bounding box. The estimation of crown volume can be refined by combining several photographs from different view angles. The method has been implemented in a software package called Tree Analyzer written in C++. The photographic method was tested with three-dimensional (3D) digitized plants of walnut, peach, mango and olive. The 3D-digitized plants were used to estimate crown volume directly and generate virtual perspective photographs with POV-Ray Version 3.5 (Persistence of Vision Development Team). The locations and view angles of the camera were manually controlled by input parameters. Good agreement between measured data and values inferred from the photographic method were found for canopy height, diameter and volume. The effects of voxel size, size of picture zoning, location of camera and number of pictures were also examined.
Domain identification for intention posts on online social media

Today, more and more Internet users are willing to share their feeling, activities, and even their intention about what they plan to do on online social media. We can easily see posts like "I plan to buy an apartment this year", or "We are looking for a tour for 3 people to Nha Trang" on online forums or social networks. Recognizing those user intents on online social media is really useful for targeted advertising. However fully understanding user intents is a complicated and challenging process which includes three major stages: user intent filtering, intent domain identification, and intent parsing and extraction. In this paper, we propose the use of machine learning to classify intent-holding posts into one of several categories/domains. The proposed method has been evaluated on a medium-sized collections of posts in Vietnamese, and the empirical evaluation has shown promising results with an average accuracy of 88%.
The role of attractiveness in web image search

Existing web image search engines are mainly designed to optimize topical relevance. However, according to our user study, attractiveness is becoming a more and more important factor for web image search engines to satisfy users' search intentions. Important as it can be, web image attractiveness from the search users' perspective has not been sufficiently recognized in both the industry and the academia. In this paper, we present a definition of web image attractiveness with three levels according to the end users' feedback, including perceptual quality, aesthetic sensitivity and affective tune. Corresponding to each level of the definition, various visual features are investigated on their applicability to attractiveness estimation of web images. To further deal with the unreliability of visual features induced by the large variations of web images, we propose a contextual approach to integrate the visual features with contextual cues mined from image EXIF information and the associated web pages. We explore the role of attractiveness by applying it to various stages of a web image search engine, including the online ranking and the interactive reranking, as well as the offline index selection. Experimental results on three large-scale web image search datasets demonstrate that the incorporation of attractiveness can bring more satisfaction to 80% of the users for ranking/reranking search results and 30.5% index coverage improvement for index selection, compared to the conventional relevance based approaches.
A conflict-free access method for parallel turbo decoder

Parallel Turbo decoding encounters conflicts during parallel data accesses because of the sequential data interleaving, and the conflicts lead to a serious decrease of throughput. Traditional conflict-free memory mapping schemes often require a huge cost of hardware, such as the area of memory, which is also a bottleneck in practical implementations. In this work, DSATUR (Degree of Saturation) coloring algorithm is presented to solve the memory mapping problem and a memory subsystem with multiple memory banks is designed to achieve conflict-free data accesses during parallel Turbo decoding. To reduce the area of memory, an optimization for DSATUR coloring algorithm and an optimization for data addresses are proposed. The results of multiple experiments show that the conflicts of data access never occurs for using our memory mapping scheme. The two optimizations reduce 42% of the total area of memory compared with the original DSATUR algorithm without optimizations.
Collecting multiple data linkage consents in a mixed mode survey: evidence and lessons learnt from next steps

Linking survey responses with administrative data is a promising practice to increase the range of research questions to be explored, at a limited interview burden, both for respondents and interviewers. This paper describes the protocol for asking consent to data linkage on nine different sources in a large-scale nationally representative survey of young adults in England: the Next Steps Age 25 Survey. Evidence from preparatory qualitative research, piloting and from the main stage of the study is presented. This research constitutes a novel contribution to the literature, discussing the practicalities of implementing a data linkage protocol asking consent both retrospectively and prospectively, on multiple domains, and in the context of a mixed-mode survey.
Detection of faces under shadows and lighting variations

Successful face detection and facial feature extraction is crucial for for a variety of applications, including speech recognition and fatigue monitoring. Detecting and tracking faces in a moving automobile is challenging for a variety of reasons. Among these reasons are changing poses, extreme lighting changes and shadowing. We investigate two approaches for shadow compensation in such images. Together, these techniques offer a good improvement in the face detection accuracy on a data set captured in a moving automobile.
Explicit reading strategies instruction for the improvement of reading skills of 11 grade learners

This study seeks to instruct a group of learners on reading and vocabulary skills through different tasks. The purpose was to implement a course in order to explicitly instruct the students in the application of specific reading and vocabulary strategies to facilitate their reading practice in English. The research was carried out with a group of 26 eleventh grade students from Camilo Torres School in Santa Marta (Magdalena). Based on the context analysis and the problem definition, it was made the decision to carry out a qualitative action research based upon a Strategy Based Instruction (SBI) intervention to see its influence on the learnersi reading skills, to foster their motivation to read in English and to help them become more autonomous and efficient readers. The data collection was applied in different stages along the process, and according to the instruments which were applied during the inquiry. Preliminary instruments such as an interview, a questionnaire, and a class observation were applied and analyzed at the beginning of the research with the purpose of identifying the problem related to low performance in reading comprehension skills.
FLEXIBLE TOPOLOGY DESCRIPTION LANGUAGE FOR SIMULATION PROGRAMS

The article proposes a language for the description of model topologies in discrete event simulators. The language contains an efficient way to create parametrized, flexible topologies. The language has been implemented as part of the OMNeT++ simulator. In most simulators, the support for defining the topology of the model can be improved upon. For this task, simulators either (1) do not provide explicit support, or (2) only fixed topologies are supported, or (3) flexible topologies require programming. The solution proposed and implemented in OMNeT++ uses a description language with a powerful combination of simple constructs (multiple connections, conditional connections etc.) to allow parametrized description of regular structures. Parametrized structures that have been previously defined in the description language can also be created dynamically, during a simulation run. This feature eliminates the need for several independent runs if one is asking questions like how changes in model topology affect some performance measure.
T OPOLOGIES IN 0 . 18 μ m CMOS T ECHNOLOGY U SING MATLAB

This paper presents a novel methodology of simulation and realization of a various Op-amp topologies, such as two-stage, telescopic and folded cascade are discussed in this paper. The aim of the present work is the development of a tool box which contains the Matlab code to allow automated synthesis of Analog circuits. This tool box is used to find the transistor dimensions (i.e., width and length) in order to obtain the performance specifications of a two stage op-amp, telescopic op-amp and folded cascode op-amp. In This paper five parameters are considered such as Gain (G), Unity gain frequency (UGF), Phase margin (PM), Slew rate (SR) and Power consumption(P). The designs have been simulated by using 0. 18µm CMOS technology with a supply voltage of ±1.8v. Finally, a good agreement is observed between the Matlab based tool box and electrical simulation. KEYWORDS CMOS amplifier, two-stage amplifier, telescopic amplifier, folded cascode amplifier, Matlab based Tool box
Neurocognition in 1-month-abstinent treatment-seeking alcohol-dependent individuals: interactive effects of age and chronic cigarette smoking.

BACKGROUND Increasing age and chronic cigarette smoking are independently associated with adverse effects on multiple aspects of neurocognition in those seeking treatment for alcohol use disorders. However, the potential interactive effects of age and cigarette smoking on neurocognition in early abstinent alcohol-dependent individuals (ALC) have not investigated. METHODS Cross-sectional performances of never-smoking healthy comparison participants (nvsCOM; n = 39) and 1-month-abstinent, treatment-seeking, never-smoking (nvsALC; n = 30), former-smoking (fsALC; n = 21), and actively smoking (asALC; n = 68) ALC were compared on a comprehensive neurocognitive battery. Domains of functioning evaluated were cognitive efficiency, executive functions, fine motor skills, general intelligence, learning and memory, processing speed, visuospatial functions and working memory. Participants were between 26 and 71 years of age at the time of assessment. RESULTS asALC showed steeper age-related effects than nvsCOM on the domains of visuospatial learning, auditory-verbal memory, cognitive efficiency, executive functions, processing speed, and fine motor skills. In pairwise comparisons, fsALC and asALC performed more poorly than both nvsCOM and nvsALC on multiple domains; nvsCOM and nvsALC showed no significant differences. Domain scores for the ALC groups generally fell in the low-to-high-average range of functioning. A clinically significant level of impairment was apparent in only 25% of ALC participants on visuospatial learning, visuospatial memory, and fine motor skills domains. Measures of alcohol use or consumption were not significantly related to neurocognition in the ALC cohorts. CONCLUSIONS The age-related findings suggest that the combination of active chronic smoking and alcohol dependence in this 1-month-abstinent ALC cohort was associated with greater than normal age-related effects in multiple domains. In general, a low level of clinically significant impairment was observed in the alcohol-dependent participants. The findings from this study, in conjunction with previous research, strongly support smoking cessation interventions for those seeking treatment for alcohol and substance use disorders.
Advances in diagnosis and treatment of hilar cholangiocarcinoma – a review

Hilar cholangiocarcinoma (HC) is a rare tumor that causes devastating disease. In the late stages, this carcinoma primarily invades the portal vein and metastasizes to the hepatic lobes; it is associated with a poor prognosis. HC is diagnosed by its clinical manifestation and results of imaging techniques such as ultrasound, computed tomography, magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography, endoscopic retrograde cholangiography, and percutaneous transhepatic cholangiography. Preoperative hepatic bile drainage can improve symptoms associated with insufficient liver and kidney function, coagulopathy, and jaundice. Surgical margin-negative (R0) resection, including major liver resection, is the most effective and potentially curative treatment for HC. If the tumor is not resected, then liver transplantation with adjuvant management can improve survival. We conducted a systematic review of developments in imaging studies and major surgical hepatectomy for HC with positive outcomes regarding quality of life.
Reforming Taxes and Improving Health: A Revenue-Neutral Tax Reform to Eliminate Medical and Pharmaceutical VAT

The aim of this paper is to analyse a tax reform consisting of an increment of the indirect taxes on alcohol and tobacco to finance the elimination of VAT on health and pharmaceutical services. We first estimate an Almost Ideal Demand System for the purpose of evaluating expenditure and price elasticities. We then micro-simulate the abolition of VAT on health services combined with a increment on alcohol and tobacco excise duties, so that total revenue remains unchanged. This reform would generate small private and social welfare gains complemented with externalities derived from the tobacco and alcohol demand cut.
Robust Dynamic Provable Data Possession

Remote Data Checking (RDC) allows clients to efficiently check the integrity of data stored at untrusted servers. This allows data owners to assess the risk of outsourcing data in the cloud, making RDC a valuable tool for data auditing. A robust RDC scheme incorporates mechanisms to mitigate arbitrary amounts of data corruption. In particular, protection against small corruptions (i.e., bytes or even bits) ensures that attacks that modify a few bits do not destroy an encrypted file or invalidate authentication information. Early RDC schemes have focused on static data, whereas later schemes such as DPDP support the full range of dynamic operations on the outsourced data, including insertions, modifications, and deletions. Robustness is required for both static and dynamic RDC schemes that rely on spot checking for efficiency. However, under an adversarial setting there is a fundamental tension between efficient dynamic updates and the encoding required to achieve robustness, because updating even a small portion of the file may require retrieving the entire file. We identify the challenges that need to be overcome when trying to add robustness to a DPDP scheme. We propose the first RDC schemes that provide robustness and, at the same time, support dynamic updates, while requiring small, constant, client storage. Our first construction is efficient in encoding, but has a high communication cost for updates. Our second construction overcomes this drawback through a combination of techniques that includes RS codes based on Cauchy matrices, decoupling the encoding for robustness from the position of symbols in the file, and reducing insert/delete operations to append/modify operations when updating the RS-encoded parity data.
Vision-based distance and position estimation of nearby objects for mobile spatial interaction

New mobile phone technologies are enablers for the emerging field of mobile spatial interaction, which refers to the direct access and manipulation of spatially-related information and services. Typical applications include the visualization of information about historical buildings or the discovery and selection of surrounding devices, by simply pointing to the real-world objects of interest. However, a major drawback is the required augmentation of the objects or knowledge about the environment, in order to be able to distinguish at which object the user is actually aiming at. We address this issue by estimating the distance and position of arbitrary objects within a mobile phone's line of sight, solely based on the information provided by its on-board sensors. This new approach uses stereo vision to estimate the distance to nearby objects, inertial sensors to measure the displacement of the camera between successive images, as well as GPS and a digital compass to get its absolute position and orientation. In this paper, we focus on the vision-based estimation of distances, and present the results of an experiment which demonstrates its accuracy and performance.
Do sports matter to people? A cross-national multilevel study

Abstract Do people consider sports as important? In this article, I investigate how people (N ≈ 44,000) in 33 countries (ISSP 2007) assess three aspects of sports: sports as socialization, integration and internationalization. I study opinions on sports in light of individual and national characteristics, and find that close to 90% of the inhabitants of the nations participating in this study supports the idea that sports matters for socialization, whereas 76% of the respondents think that sports also have a positive integrative effect. People agree less with the idea that sports help for the relations between nations. The multivariate analyses show that high education and high income go together with positive opinions on most aspects of sports. There is an interaction showing that the effect of education depends on the GNP of nations. Women tend to be more skeptical towards the benign effects of sports, whereas older people are more positive.