Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The management of recurrent croup in children.

OBJECTIVE To review the aetiology, investigation, diagnosis, treatment and clinical outcome of children with recurrent croup. METHOD Retrospective case note review of all children with recurrent croup referred to the otolaryngology service at our hospital from November 2002 to March 2011. RESULTS Ninety children with recurrent croup were identified. Twenty-five children (28 per cent) had anatomical airway abnormalities, of which 16 (18 per cent) demonstrated degrees of subglottic stenosis. Twenty-three children (26 per cent) had positive microlaryngobronchoscopy findings suggestive of reflux. Eleven children were treated for gastroesophageal reflux disease, 10 (91 per cent) of whom responded well to anti-reflux medication (p = 0.006). No cause was identified for 41 (45 per cent) of the children; this was the group most likely to continue having episodes of croup at follow up. One death occurred in this group. CONCLUSION Airway anomalies are common in children that present with recurrent croup. Laryngobronchoscopy allows identification of the cause of croup and enables a more accurate prognosis. In the current study, laryngobronchoscopy findings that indicated reflux were predictive of benefit from anti-reflux medications, whereas the clinical presentation of reflux was not. Routine measurement of immunoglobulin E and complement proteins did not appear to be helpful.
Two-dimensional time-of-flight MR angiography of the lower extremities: artifacts and pitfalls.

method for noninvasive imaging of peripheral vascular disease. Two dimensional (2D) time-of-flight (TOF) MR an giography is the most common technique used for evaluation of the pelvic and infrainguinal arteries [11. This pictorial essay presents pit falls and artifacts that may be encountered dur ing clinical MR angiography of the lower extremities. Knowledge of these imaging find ings is essential for accurate interpretation of peripheral 2D TOF MR angiography. MR imaging was performed in a l.5-T Signa scanner (General Electric Medical Systems, Milwaukee, WI). The 2D TOF MR angiograms were acquired in the axial plane in standard body, head, or extremity coils with a spoiled gradient-recalledpulse se quence and flip angles of 45Â°for the pelvis and 600 for the extremities. The slice thick ness was 2.9 mm and field of view was 32 cm in the body coil; 2.0 mm and 22 cm, re spectively, in the head coil; and 2.0 mm and 16cm, respectively, in the extremity coil. Im aging parameters were TR range/TE range, 29â€”32/6. 7â€”7.1; first-order gradient moment nulling (flow compensation); tracking infe nor saturation (usually 20 mm below the slice); 256 x 128 matrix; one excitation; and phase encoding from anterior to posterior. Three-dimensional sequences were acquired in the body coil using a fast spoiled gradient recalled or spoiled gradient-recalled pulse se quence; 45_600 flip angle; TR rangeiTE range, 10. 6â€”32/2. 1â€”6.9; 28â€”60partitions, 2â€”2.5mm thick; 36-cm field of view; 256 x 128-256 ma trix; one excitation; and dynamic gadolinium enhancement in all cases [2J. Signal loss in a patent vessel from satura tion of in-plane flow is one of the most com mon pitfalls in 2D TOF MR angiography. When the path of a vesselcausesblood to re
Terminal Cognitive Decline: Accelerated Loss of Cognition in the Last Years of Life

Objective: To test the hypothesis that rate of cognitive decline accelerates in the last years of life. Methods: Participants are 853 older persons without dementia at study onset. For up to 8 years, they underwent annual clinical evaluations that included a battery of 19 cognitive tests from which previously established composite measures of global cognition and specific cognitive domains were derived. In analyses, we used linear mixed-effects models that allowed rate of cognitive decline to change at a given point before death to estimate the onset of a terminal decline period and rate of cognitive decline before and after that point. In subsequent analyses, we tested potential modifiers of terminal decline. Results: There were 115 deaths. Those who died did not differ from survivors in their level of global cognitive function at study onset, but beginning a mean of 42 months before death, their rate of global cognitive decline sharply increased. The duration and rapidity of terminal decline in global cognition differed from person to person. Terminal cognitive decline was not modified by age, sex, education, or the presence of mild cognitive impairment, but it was not present in those with vascular disease (e.g., stroke and heart attack) or in those without at least one copy of the apolipoprotein E ϵ4 allele, suggesting that Alzheimer’s disease pathology may contribute to the phenomenon. Conclusions: In old age, cognitive decline markedly accelerates during the last 3 to 4 years of life, consistent with the terminal decline hypothesis. SD = standard deviation; SE = standard error.
A super class-AB OTA with high output current and no open loop gain degradation

A scheme to achieve simultaneously extremely high slew rate improvement and avoiding open loop gain degradation in one stage super class-AB op-amps is introduced. It overcomes the serious shortcoming of super class-AB OTAs that show very high output current enhancement factors at the expense of degrading the open loop gain. The proposed scheme uses dynamically biased cascode transistors to avoid gain and slew rate degradation. Experimental results of a fabricated super class-AB OTA in 180 nm CMOS technology with open loop gain of 67 dB, a factor two improvement in GBW and a current enhancement factor of 270 verify the proposed scheme.
Nomogram to predict the benefit from salvage systemic therapy for advanced urothelial carcinoma

systemic therapy for advanced urothelial carcinoma Guru Sonpavde*, Gregory R. Pond*, Ronan Fougeray and Joaquim Bellmunt UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center, Birmingham, AL, USA, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA, *McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, Institut de Recherche Pierre Fabre, Boulogne, France, and University Hospital del Mar-IMIM, Barcelona, Spain
A novel compact triple-mode resonator for microstrip bandpass filter design

A novel compact triple-mode resonator is presented in this paper. The triple-mode resonator consists of a square open-loop half-wavelength resonators and a stepped impedance resonator structured in the middle which is connected to the mid-point of the half-wavelength line where a grounding via is located. The grounded via effectively splits the half-wavelength line into two quarter-wavelength resonators. The dimension of the resonator is 15 mm × 16.15 mm. The three resonant modes are analyzed and explained using odd and even modes analysis. To demonstrate the design principle, a threepole Chebyshev bandpass filter is designed and measured. The measured filter has center frequency of 1.0 GHz and passband insertion loss of 1.0 dB. The new resonator has a good stopband response and its first spurious response occurs at approximately three times the passband frequency. The simulated and measured results show good agreement.
Lasing wavelength and spacing switchable multiwavelength fiber laser from 1510 to 1620 nm

We experimentally demonstrate a flexibly switchable multiwavelength fiber laser with multiple functionalities like a wide tuning range of lasing wavelength, wavelength spacing, and the number of channels simultaneously. The lasing wavelength is controlled in the range from 1510 to 1620 nm based on the effect of nonlinear gain compression of a semiconductor optical amplifier incorporated with an erbium-doped fiber amplifier. The wavelength spacing and the number of channels in the multiwavelength fiber laser are readily controlled by the effective length of polarization-maintaining fiber (PMF) segments in the intracavity PMF Lyot-Sagnac filter.
A real-time IPC service over ATM networks for the Chorus distributed system

Describes a real-time interprocess communication (RT-IPC) service that is suitable for distributed systems built over ATM networks. This location-transparent communication service offers end-to-end quality of service (QoS) guarantees and end-to-end priority propagation. It relies on a specific real-time ATM adaptation layer (AAL-RT) that allows the transmission of a low-priority message to be pre-empted by a higher-priority one, and on a transport service which is in charge of QoS negotiation, the setting up of the ATM virtual channel and priority inheritance. The RT-IPC service is implemented in the Chorus distributed operating system as servers running in the micro-kernel address space. It is used for real-time communication within ANTARA real-time clusters, and allows communication at a user rate of up to 130 Mbps over 155-Mbps ATM links. The end-to-end transfer delay between participants is less than 400 /spl mu/s.
Mixed reality for supporting office devices troubleshooting

In this paper we describe the Mixed Reality system that we are developing to facilitate a real-world application, that of collaborative remote troubleshooting of broken office devices. The architecture of the system is centered on a 3D virtual representation of the device augmented with status data of the actual device coming from its internal sensors. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how this approach supports the interactions required by the remote collaborative troubleshooting activity whilst taking into account technical constraints that come from a real world application. We believe it constitutes an interesting opportunity for using Mixed Reality in this domain.
2 A 2 . 5 Gb / s Multi-Rate 0 . 25 μ m CMOS CDR Utilizing a Hybrid Analog / Digital Loop Filter

A CDR architecture is presented in 0. 25μm CMOS that leverages a fully integrated hybrid analog/digital loop-filter structure to achieve the desired jitter performance with low area and power consumption while also allowing multi-rate operation at 155, 622, 1250, and 2500Mb/s data rates. The overall CDR performance exceeds SONET requirements. The small package size of the CDR chip and the elimination of sensitive noise-entry points at package pins due to full integration of the loop filter simplifies the board design. In this paper, key techniques for the implementation of the hybrid loop filter, including a phase-to-digital converter and digital decimator, are described.
A MEMS-based VOA with very low PDL

In this letter, we study the optical performance of a microelectromechanical system reflection-type variable optical attenuator (VOA). Experimental results of packaged VOA devices show that the proposed architecture exhibits very low polarization dependence within the entire attenuation range (polarization-dependent loss (PDL)<0.1 dB at 30-dB attenuation level).
On Associating SVC and DVB-T2 for Mobile Television Broadcast

DVB-T2 is offering a new way for broadcasting value-added services, like HDTV and 3D TV, to either fix or mobile end users. Thanks to the advances made in digital signal processing, and specifically in channel coding, DVB-T2 brings a new flexibility in services' broadcasting with an increased transfer capacity of 50%, in contrast with the first generation of the DVB-T standard. On the other hand, SVC video coding is an emerging technique that uses scalability to encode video content in a hierarchical video streams (i.e. layers). Indeed, the SVC supports three types of video scalability: spatial, temporal and quality; which allow to handle users' heterogeneity in term of capacity and bandwidth. In this paper, we first propose to support SVC over DVB-T2 networks, by associating the layering architecture of both technology, in order to tackle users' mobility. This association allows mobile receivers with good physical channel to decode all the SVC layers and benefit from high video quality. Meanwhile, users with worst channel condition can at least decode the base layer and benefit from acceptable video quality. Secondly, we introduce a novel QoE-based adaptive mechanism for SVC layers decoding. The proposed approach selects dynamically the number of layers to decode, at the receiver side, so as to maximize the users' perceived quality. Simulation results show clearly the enhancement achieved by the proposed solution in term of user Quality of Experience (QoE).
Severe micrognathia with rib dysplasia: cerebro-costo-mandibular syndrome

A full-term female infant was born with features of Pierre Robin sequence. A nasopharyngeal airway (NPA) was inserted at birth due to difficulties with breathing. However, the NPA blocked due to profuse secretions and led to respiratory arrest at 3 weeks of life, requiring cardiopulmonary resuscitation. She subsequently underwent an elective tracheostomy (figure 1). Figure 1 Baby with severe micrognathia and tracheostomy. Her …
Thermodynamic and structural consequences of changing a sulfur atom to a methylene group in the M13Nle mutation in ribonuclease-S.

Two fragments of pancreatic ribonuclease A, a truncated version of S-peptide (residues 1-15) and S-protein (residues 21-124), combine to give a catalytically active complex. We have substituted the wild-type residue at position 13, methionine (Met), with norleucine (Nle), where the only covalent change is the replacement of the sulfur atom with a methylene group. The thermodynamic parameters associated with the binding of this variant to S-protein, determined by titration calorimetry in the temperature range 10-40 degrees C, are reported and compared to values previously reported [Varadarajan, R. , Connelly, P. R. , Sturtevant, J. M. , & Richards, F. M. (1992) Biochemistry 31, 1421-1426] for other position 13 analogs. The differences in the free energy and enthalpy of binding between the Met and Nle peptides are 0.6 and 7.9 kcal/mol at 25 degrees C, respectively. These differences are slightly larger than, but comparable to, the differences in the values for the Met/Ile and Met/Leu pairs. The structure of the mutant complex was determined to 1.85 A resolution and refined to an R-factor of 17.4%. The structures of mutant and wild-type complexes are practically identical although the Nle side chain has a significantly higher average B-factor than the corresponding Met side chain. In contrast, the B-factors of the atoms of the cage of residues surrounding position 13 are all somewhat lower in the Nle variant than the Met wild-type. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Quantitative in vivo cell-surface receptor imaging in oncology: kinetic modeling and paired-agent principles from nuclear medicine and optical imaging

The development of methods to accurately quantify cell-surface receptors in living tissues would have a seminal impact in oncology. For example, accurate measures of receptor density in vivo could enhance early detection or surgical resection of tumors via protein-based contrast, allowing removal of cancer with high phenotype specificity. Alternatively, accurate receptor expression estimation could be used as a biomarker to guide patient-specific clinical oncology targeting of the same molecular pathway. Unfortunately, conventional molecular contrast-based imaging approaches are not well adapted to accurately estimating the nanomolar-level cell-surface receptor concentrations in tumors, as most images are dominated by nonspecific sources of contrast such as high vascular permeability and lymphatic inhibition. This article reviews approaches for overcoming these limitations based upon tracer kinetic modeling and the use of emerging protocols to estimate binding potential and the related receptor concentration. Methods such as using single time point imaging or a reference-tissue approach tend to have low accuracy in tumors, whereas paired-agent methods or advanced kinetic analyses are more promising to eliminate the dominance of interstitial space in the signals. Nuclear medicine and optical molecular imaging are the primary modalities used, as they have the nanomolar level sensitivity needed to quantify cell-surface receptor concentrations present in tissue, although each likely has a different clinical niche.
Particle size distributions and concentrations of airborne endotoxin using novel collection methods in homes during the winter and summer seasons.

UNLABELLED A comparison study of novel collection methods for airborne bacteria and endotoxin was performed in an environmentally controlled chamber and in pilot-field studies. Airborne particulate matter was collected in swirling liquid impingers, air-monitoring filter cassettes, and with a micro-orifice uniform deposit impactor (MOUDI) to evaluate aerodynamic particle size distributions. Environmentally controlled chamber studies showed that impingers and MOUDI recovered significantly more airborne bacteria than filter cassettes, whereas collection methods for airborne endotoxin were not significantly different. In addition, total airborne bacteria and endotoxin concentrations were measured indoors and outdoors at three homes in Boulder, CO during winter and summer seasons. Indoor concentrations collected with the three different samplers were significantly different for airborne endotoxin, but not for airborne bacteria. Total airborne bacteria indoors and outdoors significantly varied with seasons. Outdoor airborne endotoxin significantly varied with season; no seasonal variation was seen for indoor airborne endotoxin. Indoor and outdoor levels were not significantly different for both airborne bacteria and endotoxin. The largest proportion of endotoxin was associated with airborne particulate matter <1 microm. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS This study compared sampling methods for airborne endotoxin, a potent and nonspecific immune system stimulant which can induce negative health responses. The data from this study showed that swirling liquid impingers and the micro-orifice uniform deposit impactor (MOUDI) recovered significantly more airborne endotoxin than the more widely adapted method of collecting airborne endotoxin on membrane filters, when collection methods were applied in realistic settings (homes). The MOUDI measured the particle size distribution of airborne endotoxin, which can be useful for determining endotoxin respiratory toxicity and its health effects.
Interim 18F-FDG PET in Hodgkin Lymphoma: Would PET-Adapted Clinical Trials Lead to a Paradigm Shift?

Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) is a curable disease with currently available chemotherapy regimens. Major late morbidities can potentially be avoided in most limited-stage HL patients if the treatment can be adapted to the patient’s early response profile. The therapy efficacy can also be increased early during therapy in nonresponding HL patients with the addition of involved-field radiation therapy or a switch to an escalated therapy protocol, particularly in advanced-stage or unfavorable-risk patients. 18F-FDG PET is a well-established surrogate for tumor chemosensitivity early during therapy. The ongoing PET-adaptive clinical trials are testing the hypothesis that a decision can reliably be made on escalating or deescalating therapy based on interim PET results. Discussed in this review is the integral role of interim 18F-FDG PET in HL, challenges, critical issues to improve its accuracy, and the observations from completed interim PET studies and ongoing PET-adaptive clinical trials.
Efficiency Requirements in PIM to PSM Transformations

In the paper, we provide extensions for MDA (Model Driven Architecture), taking into consideration efficiency requirements. The scope of the proposition is limited to the PIM (Platform-Independent Model) and the PSM (Platform Specific Model) extension. Efficiency requirements are maximal rates of users requests under which the system has to perform. We extend the PIM to the model containing efficiency requirements. We introduce a PSMSpec (PSM Specification) containing a system architecture, platform, efficiency requirements, and a PSMInst (PSM Instance) defining a deployment of the system. The PIM’s functional specification and efficiency requirements are transformed to the PSMSpec’s system architecture and efficiency requirements. Finally, efficiency characteristics are estimated and verified against the efficiency requirements, the PSMInst is suggested.
Student Achievement and University Classes: Effects of Attendance, Size, Peers, and Teachers

We examine the empirical determinants of student achievement in higher education, focusing our attention on its small-group teaching component (classes or seminars) and on the role of attendance, number of students per class, peers, and tutors. The empirical analysis is based on longitudinal administrative data from a major undergraduate program where students are allocated to class groups in a systematic way, but one which is plausibly uncorrelated with ability. Although, in simple specifications, we find positive returns to attendance and sizeable differences in the effectiveness of teaching assistants, most effects are not significant in specifications that include student fixed effects. We conclude that unobserved heterogeneity amongst students, even in an institution that imposes rigorous admission criteria and so has little observable heterogeneity, is apparently much more important than observable variation in inputs in explaining student outcomes.
Cohesin-Dockerin Interactions of Cellulosomal Subunits of Clostridium cellulovorans

ABSTRACT The cellulosome of Clostridium cellulovorans consists of three major subunits: CbpA, EngE, and ExgS. The C. cellulovorans scaffolding protein (CbpA) contains nine hydrophobic repeated domains (cohesins) for the binding of enzymatic subunits. Cohesin domains are quite homologous, but there are some questions regarding their binding specificity because some of the domains have regions of low-level sequence similarity. Two cohesins which exhibit 60% sequence similarity were investigated for their ability to bind cellulosomal enzymes. Cohesin 1 (Coh1) was found to contain amino acid residues corresponding to amino acids 312 to 453 of CbpA, which contains a total of 1,848 amino acid residues. Coh6 was determined to contain amino acid residues corresponding to residues 1113 to 1254 of CbpA. By genetic construction, these two cohesins were each fused to MalE, producing MalE-Coh1 and MalE-Coh6. The abilities of two fusion proteins to bind to EngE, ExgS, and CbpA were compared. Although MalE-Coh6 could bind EngE and ExgS, little or no binding of the enzymatic subunits was observed with MalE-Coh1. Significantly, the abilities of the two fusion proteins to bind CbpA were similar. The binding of dockerin-containing enzymes to cohesin-containing proteins was suggested as a model for assembly of cellulosomes. In our examination of the role of dockerins, it was also shown that the binding of endoglucanase B (EngB) to CbpA was dependent on the presence of EngB's dockerin. These results suggest that different cohesins may function with differing efficiency and specificity, that cohesins may play some role in the formation of polycellulosomes through Coh-CbpA interactions, and that dockerins play an important role during the interaction of cellulosomal enzymes and cohesins present in CbpA.
Behavior based Dependability Estimation - Estimating the Dependability of Autonomous Mobile Systems using Predictive Filter

Dependability is getting a more important non-functional p roperty of a system. Measuring and predicting the dependability is especially important for autonomous or se mi-autonomous and safety-critical systems. Since, at least for (semi-) autonomous systems, those systems are u ually described by their behavior, a definition for dependability based on the behavior of the system is evident . In this paper the behavioral based definition of dependability was used together with a particle filter to est imate the dependability of an autonomous mobile system.