Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Phase II randomized trial of carboplatin, paclitaxel, bevacizumab with or without cixutumumab (IMC-A12) in patients with advanced non-squamous, non-small-cell lung cancer: a trial of the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group (E3508)

Background Cixutumumab is a fully human IgG1 monoclonal antibody to the insulin-like growth factor type I receptor that can potentially reverse resistance and enhance the efficacy of chemotherapy. Methods Bevacizumab-eligible patients with stage IV or recurrent non-squamous, non-small-cell lung cancer and good performance status were randomized to receive standard doses of paclitaxel, carboplatin, and bevacizumab to a maximum of six cycles followed by bevacizumab maintenance (CPB) until progression (arm A) or CPB plus cixutumumab 6 mg/kg i.v. weekly (arm B). Results Of 175 patients randomized, 153 were eligible and treated (78 in arm A; 75 in arm B). The median progression-free survival was 5.8 months (95% CI 5.4-7.1) in arm A versus 7 months (95% CI 5.7-7.6) in arm B (P = 0.33); hazard ratio 0.92 (95% CI 0.65-1.31). Objective response was 46.2% versus 58.7% in arm A versus arm B (P = 0.15). The median overall survival was 16.2 months in arm A versus 16.1 months in arm B (P = 0.95). Grade 3/4 neutropenia and febrile neutropenia, thrombocytopenia, fatigue, and hyperglycemia were increased with cixutumumab. Conclusions The addition of cixutumumab to CPB increased toxicity without improving efficacy and is not recommended for further development in non-small-cell lung cancer. Both treatment groups had longer OS than historical controls which may be attributed to several factors, and emphasizes the value of a comparator arm in phase II trials. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier NCT00955305.
Quality of life following coronary artery bypass graft surgery vs. percutaneous coronary intervention in diabetics with multivessel disease: a five-year registry study

Aims The aim of this study is to investigate the long-term relationship between revascularization technique and health status in diabetics with multivessel disease. Methods and results Using the Alberta Provincial Project for Outcomes Assessment in Coronary Heart Disease (APPROACH) registry, we captured 1319 diabetics with multivessel disease requiring revascularization for an acute coronary syndrome (January 2009-December 2012) and reported health status using the Seattle Angina Questionnaire (SAQ) at baseline, 1, 3 and 5-years [599 underwent coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG); 720 underwent percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI)]. Adjusted analyses were performed using a propensity score-matching technique. After adjustment (including baseline SAQ domain scores), 1-year mean (95% CI) SAQ scores (range 0-100 with higher scores reflecting improved health status) were significantly greater in selected domains for CABG compared to PCI (exertional capacity: 81.7 [79.5-84.0] vs. 78.8 [76.5-81.0], P = 0.07; angina stability: 83.1 [80.4-85.9] vs. 75.0 [72.3-77.8], P < 0.001]; angina frequency 93.2 [91.6-95.0] vs. 90.0 [87.8-91.3], P = 0.003; treatment satisfaction: 93.6 [92.2-94.9] vs. 90.8 [89.2-92.0], P = 0.003; quality of life [QOL]: 83.8 [81.7-85.8] vs. 77.2 [75.2-79.2] P < 0.001). At 3-years, these benefits were attenuated (exertional capacity: 79.3 [76.9-81.7] vs. 78.7 [76.3-81.1], P = 0.734; angina stability 79.3 [76.3-82.3] vs. 75.5 [72.5-78.5], P = 0.080; angina frequency: 93.2 [91.3-95.1] vs. 90.9 [89.0-92.8], P = 0.095; treatment satisfaction: 92.5 [91.0-94.0] vs. 91.5 [90.0-93.0] P = 0.382; QOL: 83.2 [81.1-85.2] vs. 80.3 [78.2-82.4], P = 0.057). At 5-years, majority of domains were similar (exertional capacity: 77.8 [75.0-80.6] vs. 76.3 [73.2-79.3], P = 0.482; angina stability: 78.0 [74.8-81.2] vs. 74.8 [71.4-78.2], P = 0.175; angina frequency: 94.2 [92.3-96.0] vs. 90.9 [89.0-92.9], P = 0.018; treatment satisfaction: 93.7 [92.2-95.1] vs. 92.2 [90.6-93.7], P = 0.167; QOL: 84.1 [82.0-86.3] vs. 81.1 [78.8-83.4], P = 0.058). Majority in both groups remained angina-free at 5-years (75.0% vs. 70.3%, P = 0.15). Conclusion Improvements in health status with CABG compared with PCI were not sustained long-term. This temporal sequence should be considered when contemplating a revascularization strategy in diabetics with multivessel disease.
Interference-Aware Flexible TDD Design for Massive MIMO 5G Systems

Both the use of very large arrays of antennas and flexible time division duplexing (TDD) designs have become prominent features of next generation 5G cellular systems. However, both enabling technologies suffer from severe interference effects, respectively known as pilot contamination and base-station-to- base-station (B2B) interference. In this paper, a practical novel TDD design principle is proposed for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) heterogeneous networks (HetNets) that leverages the inherent features of a flexible TDD design to mitigate both the beamformed interference caused by the pilot contamination effect and B2B interference. The design is based on the key observation that the transmission path chosen for training by the non-massive MIMO base stations plays an important role in the interference behavior of the network, and the data slots need to be configured accordingly. We propose TDFLEX, a low-complexity heuristic solution that follows these design guidelines. Performance evaluation results show significant gains when our design is compared to the standard TD-LTE.
An unsupervised method for summarizing egocentric sport videos

People are getting more interested to record their sport activities using head-worn or hand-held cameras. This type of videos which is called egocentric sport videos has different motion and appearance patterns compared with life-logging videos. While a life-logging video can be defined in terms of well-defined human-object interactions, notwithstanding, it is not trivial to describe egocentric sport videos using well-defined activities. For this reason, summarizing egocentric sport videos based on human-object interaction might fail to produce meaningful results. In this paper, we propose an unsupervised method for summarizing egocentric videos by identifying the key-frames of the video. Our method utilizes both appearance and motion information and it automatically finds the number of the key-frames. Our blind user study on the new dataset collected from YouTube shows that in 93:5% cases, the users choose the proposed method as their first video summary choice. In addition, our method is within the top 2 choices of the users in 99% of studies.
A Noninvasive Method for Quantifying Cerebral Blood Flow by Hybrid PET/MRI

Although PET with 15O-water is the gold standard for imaging cerebral blood flow (CBF), quantification requires measuring the arterial input function (AIF), which is an invasive and noisy procedure. To circumvent this problem, we propose a noninvasive PET/MRI approach that eliminates the need to measure AIF by using global CBF determined by phase-contrast (PC) MRI as a reference region. This approach not only is noninvasive but also involves no additional imaging time, because PC MRI and 15O-water PET are acquired simultaneously. The purpose of this study was to test the accuracy of this hybrid method in an animal model in which AIF was measured directly and CBF was varied by changing the arterial CO2 tension. Methods: PET and MRI data were simultaneously acquired in juvenile pigs at hypocapnia (n = 5), normocapnia (n = 5), and hypercapnia (n = 4). CBF was measured by the MRI reference method and by PET alone using an MRI-compatible blood sampling system to measure AIF. Results: Global CBF estimates from PC MRI and 15O-water PET agreed well, with a correlation coefficient of 0.9 and a slope of 0.88. Strong positive correlations (R2 > 0.96) were also found between regional CBF generated by the PET-only and the MRI-reference methods. Conclusion: These findings demonstrate the accuracy of this hybrid PET/MRI approach, which might prove useful in patients for whom obtaining accurate CBF measurements is challenging.
Tree Death Not Resulting in Gap Creation: An Investigation of Canopy Dynamics of Northern Temperate Deciduous Forests

Several decades of research have shown that canopy gaps drive tree renewal processes in the temperate deciduous forest biome. In the literature, canopy gaps are usually defined as canopy openings that are created by partial or total tree death of one or more canopy trees. In this study, we investigate linkages between tree damage mechanisms and the formation or not of new canopy gaps in northern temperate deciduous forests. We studied height loss processes in unmanaged and managed forests recovering from partial cutting with multi-temporal airborne Lidar data. The Lidar dataset was used to detect areas where canopy height reduction occurred, which were then field-studied to identify the tree damage mechanisms implicated. We also sampled the density of leaf material along transects to characterize canopy structure. We used the dataset of the canopy height reduction areas in a multi-model inference analysis to determine whether canopy structures or tree damage mechanisms most influenced the creation of new canopy gaps within canopy height reduction areas. According to our model, new canopy gaps are created mainly when canopy damage enlarges existing gaps or when height is reduced over areas without an already established dense sub-canopy tree layer.
Mechanism of bidirectional thermotaxis in Escherichia coli

In bacteria various tactic responses are mediated by the same cellular pathway, but sensing of physical stimuli remains poorly understood. Here, we combine an in-vivo analysis of the pathway activity with a microfluidic taxis assay and mathematical modeling to investigate the thermotactic response of Escherichia coli. We show that in the absence of chemical attractants E. coli exhibits a steady thermophilic response, the magnitude of which decreases at higher temperatures. Adaptation of wild-type cells to high levels of chemoattractants sensed by only one of the major chemoreceptors leads to inversion of the thermotactic response at intermediate temperatures and bidirectional cell accumulation in a thermal gradient. A mathematical model can explain this behavior based on the saturation-dependent kinetics of adaptive receptor methylation. Lastly, we find that the preferred accumulation temperature corresponds to optimal growth in the presence of the chemoattractant serine, pointing to a physiological relevance of the observed thermotactic behavior.
Patient-Centered Decision Support: Formative Usability Evaluation of Integrated Clinical Decision Support With a Patient Decision Aid for Minor Head Injury in the Emergency Department

Background The Canadian Computed Tomography (CT) Head Rule, a clinical decision rule designed to safely reduce imaging in minor head injury, has been rigorously validated and implemented, and yet expected decreases in CT were unsuccessful. Recent work has identified empathic care as a key component in decreasing CT overuse. Health information technology can hinder the clinician-patient relationship. Patient-centered decision tools to support the clinician-patient relationship are needed to promote evidence-based decisions. Objective Our objective is to formatively evaluate an electronic tool that not only helps clinicians at the bedside to determine the need for CT use based on the Canadian CT Head Rule but also promotes evidence-based conversations between patients and clinicians regarding patient-specific risk and patients’ specific concerns. Methods User-centered design with practice-based and participatory decision aid development was used to design, develop, and evaluate patient-centered decision support regarding CT use in minor head injury in the emergency department. User experience and user interface (UX/UI) development involved successive iterations with incremental refinement in 4 phases: (1) initial prototype development, (2) usability assessment, (3) field testing, and (4) beta testing. This qualitative approach involved input from patients, emergency care clinicians, health services researchers, designers, and clinical informaticists at every stage. Results The Concussion or Brain Bleed app is the product of 16 successive iterative revisions in accordance with UX/UI industry design standards. This useful and usable final product integrates clinical decision support with a patient decision aid. It promotes shared use by emergency clinicians and patients at the point of care within the emergency department context. This tablet computer app facilitates evidence-based conversations regarding CT in minor head injury. It is adaptable to individual clinician practice styles. The resultant tool includes a patient injury evaluator based on the Canadian CT Head Rule and provides patient specific risks using pictographs with natural frequencies and cues for discussion about patient concerns. Conclusions This tool was designed to align evidence-based practices about CT in minor head injury patients. It establishes trust, empowers active participation, and addresses patient concerns and uncertainty about their condition. We hypothesize that, when implemented, the Concussion or Brain Bleed app will support—not hinder—the clinician-patient relationship, safely reduce CT use, and improve the patient experience of care.
Interpreting Intelligibility under Uncertain Data Imputation

Many methods have been proposed to make machine learning more interpretable, but these have mainly been evaluated with simple use cases and well-curated datasets. In contrast, real-world data presents issues that can compromise the proper interpretation of explanations by end users. In this work, we investigate the impact of missing data and imputation on how users would understand, and use explanation features and propose two approaches to provide explanation interfaces for explaining feature attribution with uncertainty due to missing data imputation. This work aims to improve the understanding and trust of intelligible healthcare analytics in clinical end users to help drive the adoption of AI.
Validation of the Korean Version of the Spatial Hearing Questionnaire for Assessing the Severity and Symmetry of Hearing Impairment

Purpose Spatial hearing refers to the ability to understand speech and identify sounds in various environments. We assessed the validity of the Korean version of the Spatial Hearing Questionnaire (K-SHQ). Materials and Methods We performed forward translation of the original English SHQ to Korean and backward translation from the Korean to English. Forty-eight patients who were able to read and understand Korean and received a score of 24 or higher on the Mini-Mental Status Examination were included in the study. Patients underwent pure tone audiometry (PTA) using a standard protocol and completed the K-SHQ. Internal consistency was evaluated using Cronbach's alpha, and factor analysis was performed to prove reliability. Construct validity was tested by comparing K-SHQ scores from patients with normal hearing to those with hearing impairment. Scores were compared between subjects with unilateral or bilateral hearing loss and between symmetrical and asymmetrical hearing impairment. Results Cronbach's alpha showed good internal consistency (0.982). Two factors were identified by factor analysis: There was a significant difference in K-SHQ scores for patients with normal hearing compared to those with hearing impairment. Patients with asymmetric hearing impairment had higher K-SHQ scores than those with symmetric hearing impairment. This is related to a lower threshold of PTA in the better ear of subjects. The hearing ability of the better ear is correlated with K-SHQ score. Conclusion The K-SHQ is a reliable and valid tool with which to assess spatial hearing in patients who speak and read Korean. K-SHQ score reflects the severity and symmetry of hearing impairment.
Categorizing and mining concept drifting data streams

Mining concept drifting data streams is a defining challenge for data mining research. Recent years have seen a large body of work on detecting changes and building prediction models from stream data, with a vague understanding on the types of the concept drifting and the impact of different types of concept drifting on the mining algorithms. In this paper, we first categorize concept drifting into two scenarios: Loose Concept Drifting (LCD) and Rigorous Concept Drifting (RCD), and then propose solutions to handle each of them separately. For LCD data streams, because concepts in adjacent data chunks are sufficiently close to each other, we apply kernel mean matching (KMM) method to minimize the discrepancy of the data chunks in the kernel space. Such a minimization process will produce weighted instances to build classifier ensemble and handle concept drifting data streams. For RCD data streams, because genuine concepts in adjacent data chunks may randomly and rapidly change, we propose a new Optimal Weights Adjustment (OWA) method to determine the optimum weight values for classifiers trained from the most recent (up-to-date) data chunk, such that those classifiers can form an accurate classifier ensemble to predict instances in the yet-to-come data chunk. Experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets will show that weighted instance approach is preferable when the concept drifting is mainly caused by the changing of the class prior probability; whereas the weighted classifier approach is preferable when the concept drifting is mainly triggered by the changing of the conditional probability.
Cardiopoietic cell therapy for advanced ischaemic heart failure: results at 39 weeks of the prospective, randomized, double blind, sham-controlled CHART-1 clinical trial

Aims Cardiopoietic cells, produced through cardiogenic conditioning of patients’ mesenchymal stem cells, have shown preliminary efficacy. The Congestive Heart Failure Cardiopoietic Regenerative Therapy (CHART-1) trial aimed to validate cardiopoiesis-based biotherapy in a larger heart failure cohort. Methods and results This multinational, randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled study was conducted in 39 hospitals. Patients with symptomatic ischaemic heart failure on guideline-directed therapy (n = 484) were screened; n = 348 underwent bone marrow harvest and mesenchymal stem cell expansion. Those achieving > 24 million mesenchymal stem cells (n = 315) were randomized to cardiopoietic cells delivered endomyocardially with a retention-enhanced catheter (n = 157) or sham procedure (n = 158). Procedures were performed as randomized in 271 patients (n = 120 cardiopoietic cells, n = 151 sham). The primary efficacy endpoint was a Finkelstein–Schoenfeld hierarchical composite (all-cause mortality, worsening heart failure, Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire score, 6-min walk distance, left ventricular end-systolic volume, and ejection fraction) at 39 weeks. The primary outcome was neutral (Mann–Whitney estimator 0.54, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.47–0.61 [value > 0.5 favours cell treatment], P = 0.27). Exploratory analyses suggested a benefit of cell treatment on the primary composite in patients with baseline left ventricular end-diastolic volume 200–370 mL (60% of patients) (Mann–Whitney estimator 0.61, 95% CI 0.52–0.70, P = 0.015). No difference was observed in serious adverse events. One (0.9%) cardiopoietic cell patient and 9 (5.4%) sham patients experienced aborted or sudden cardiac death. Conclusion The primary endpoint was neutral, with safety demonstrated across the cohort. Further evaluation of cardiopoietic cell therapy in patients with elevated end-diastolic volume is warranted.
Involvement of Bruton's Tyrosine Kinase in FcεRI-dependent Mast Cell Degranulation and Cytokine Production

We investigated the role of Bruton's tyrosine kinase (Btk) in FcεRI-dependent activation of mouse mast cells, using xid and btk null mutant mice. Unlike B cell development, mast cell development is apparently normal in these btk mutant mice. However, mast cells derived from these mice exhibited significant abnormalities in FcεRI-dependent function. xid mice primed with anti-dinitrophenyl monoclonal IgE antibody exhibited mildly diminished early-phase and severely blunted late-phase anaphylactic reactions in response to antigen challenge in vivo. Consistent with this finding, cultured mast cells derived from the bone marrow cells of xid or btk null mice exhibited mild impairments in degranulation, and more profound defects in the production of several cytokines, upon FcεRI cross-linking. Moreover, the transcriptional activities of these cytokine genes were severely reduced in FcεRI-stimulated btk mutant mast cells. The specificity of these effects of btk mutations was confirmed by the improvement in the ability of btk mutant mast cells to degranulate and to secrete cytokines after the retroviral transfer of wild-type btk cDNA, but not of vector or kinase-dead btk cDNA. Retroviral transfer of Emt (= Itk/Tsk), Btk's closest relative, also partially improved the ability of btk mutant mast cells to secrete mediators. Taken together, these results demonstrate an important role for Btk in the full expression of FcεRI signal transduction in mast cells.
Ultrasound affects distribution of plasminogen and tissuetype plasminogen activator in whole blood clots in vitro

Summary Ultrasound of 2 MHz frequency and 1.2 W/cm2 acoustic intensity was applied to examine the effect of sonication on recombinant tissue-type plasminogen activator (rt-PA)-induced thrombolysis as well as on the distribution of plasminogen and t-PA within whole blood clots in vitro. Thrombolysis was evaluated quantitatively by measuring clot weight reduction and the level of fibrin degradation product D-dimer (FDP-DD) in the supernatant. Weight reduction in the group of clots treated both with ultrasound and rt-PA was 35.2% ± 6.9% which is significantly higher (p<0.0001) than in the group of clots treated with rt-PA only (19.9% ± 4.3%). FDP-DD level in the supernatants of the group treated with ultrasound and rt-PA increased sevenfold compared to the group treated with rt-PA alone, (14895 ± 2513 ng/ml vs. 2364 ± 725 ng/ml). Localization of fibrinolytic components within the clots was accomplished by using gel-entrapping technique and immunohistochemistry. Spatial distributions of t-PA and plasminogen showed clearly that ultrasound promoted the penetration of rt-PA into thrombi significantly (p<0.0001), and broadened the zone of lysis from 8.9 ± 2.6 µm to 21.2 ± 7.2 µm. We speculate that ultrasound enhances thrombolysis by affecting the distribution of rt-PA within the clot.
Orientation in Cartesian space dynamic movement primitives

Dynamic movement primitives (DMPs) were proposed as an efficient way for learning and control of complex robot behaviors. They can be used to represent point-to-point and periodic movements and can be applied in Cartesian or in joint space. One problem that arises when DMPs are used to define control policies in Cartesian space is that there exists no minimal, singularity-free representation of orientation. In this paper we show how dynamic movement primitives can be defined for non minimal, singularity free representations of orientation, such as rotation matrices and quaternions. All of the advantages of DMPs, including ease of learning, the ability to include coupling terms, and scale and temporal invariance, can be adopted in our formulation. We have also proposed a new phase stopping mechanism to ensure full movement reproduction in case of perturbations.