Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impaired bradykinin response to ischaemia and exercise in patients with mild congestive heart failure during angiotensin‐converting enzyme treatment. Relationships with endothelial function, coagulation and inflammation

Inflammation and endothelial dysfunction play important roles in the pathophysiology of congestive heart failure (CHF), and the peptide bradykinin, generated during inflammation, may act as a defence mechanism by inducing vasodilation. Plasma bradykinin levels are increased in experimental heart failure but low in patients with advanced chronic CHF despite treatment with angiotensin‐converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors. It is not currently known how bradykinin behaves in less severe phases of CHF controlled by long‐term ACE inhibitor treatment. We studied 10 male patients with clinically stable chronic CHF [New York Heart Association (NYHA) class II] on long‐term ACE inhibitor treatment and 10 normal sex‐ and age‐matched control subjects. High performance liquid chromatography/radioimmunoassay methods were used to evaluate plasma levels of bradykinin in relation to an array of parameters of endothelial function, coagulation and inflammation before and after stimuli of forearm arterial occlusion and physical exercise. CHF patients had higher levels of bradykinin (P = 0·008), activated factor XII (P = 0·049), interleukin‐6 (P = 0·050) and tumour necrosis factor receptor II (sTNFRII) (P = 0·026) than controls. Arterial occlusion and exercise significantly increased bradykinin and von Willebrand factor levels in controls but not in CHF patients. The increase in brachial artery diameter after arterial occlusion was less in CHF patients (P = 0·036) and inversely related to baseline plasma levels of bradykinin (r = −0·855, P = 0·002) and sTNFRII (r = −0·780, P = 0·008). NYHA class II CHF patients during long‐term treatment with ACE inhibitors have increased bradykinin levels and signs of inflammation. They are unable to respond adequately to stimuli of ischaemia and physical exercise which both require vasodilation.
Exploring sociotechnical interaction with Rob Kling: five "big" ideas

Purpose – To provide a view of Rob Kling's contribution to socio‐technical studies of work.Design/methodology/approach – The five “big ideas” discussed are signature themes in Kling's own work in the informatics domain, and of his intellectual legacy.Findings – This paper conveys something of Kling's presence in social informatics (SI) thinking by focusing on a number of “big” ideas – “multiple points of view”, “social choices”, “the production lattice” (and its corollary, the problematization of the user), “socio‐technical interaction networks”, and “institutional truth regimes”. Research limitations/implications – A growing research community has demonstrated the power of SI techniques. It is essential that this body of work is sustained and developed, demonstrating how to undertake investigation and observation, that is not driven by instrumentalism but is informed by and leads to “technological realism”. Practical implications – The SI corpus, exposing the dangers of naive instrumentalism as an approach.
Further Development of Flexible Parametric Models for Survival Analysis

Royston and Parmar (2002, Statistics in Medicine 21: 2175–2197) developed a class of flexible parametric survival models that were programmed in Stata with the stpm command (Royston, 2001, Stata Journal 1: 1–28). In this article, we introduce a new command, stpm2, that extends the methodology. New features for stpm2 include improvement in the way time-dependent covariates are modeled, with these effects far less likely to be over parameterized; the ability to incorporate expected mortality and thus fit relative survival models; and a superior predict command that enables simple quantification of differences between any two covariate patterns through calculation of time-dependent hazard ratios, hazard differences, and survival differences. The ideas are illustrated through a study of breast cancer survival and incidence of hip fracture in prostate cancer patients.
RhoA Is Involved in LFA-1 Extension Triggered by CXCL12 but Not in a Novel Outside-In LFA-1 Activation Facilitated by CXCL91

Chemokines presented on endothelial tissues instantaneously trigger LFA-1-mediated arrest on ICAM-1 via rapid inside-out and outside-in (ligand-driven) LFA-1 activation. The GTPase RhoA was previously implicated in CCL21-triggered LFA-1 affinity triggering in murine T lymphocytes and in LFA-1-dependent adhesion strengthening to ICAM-1 on Peyer’s patch high endothelial venules stabilized over periods of at least 10 s. In this study, we show that a specific RhoA 23/40 effector region is vital for the initial LFA-1-dependent adhesions of lymphocytes on high endothelial venules lasting 1–3 s. Blocking the RhoA 23/40 region in human T lymphocytes in vitro also impaired the subsecond CXCL12-triggered LFA-1-mediated T cell arrest on ICAM-1 by eliminating the rapid induction of an extended LFA-1 conformational state. However, the inflammatory chemokine CXCL9 triggered robust LFA-1-mediated T lymphocyte adhesion to ICAM-1 at subsecond contacts independently of the RhoA 23/40 region. CXCL9 did not induce conformational changes in the LFA-1 ectodomain, suggesting that particular chemokines can activate LFA-1 through outside-in post ligand binding stabilization changes. Like CXCL9, the potent diacylglycerol-dependent protein kinase C agonist PMA was found to trigger LFA-1 adhesiveness to ICAM-1 also without inducing integrin extension or an a priori clustering and independently of the RhoA 23/40 region. Our results collectively suggest that the 23/40 region of RhoA regulates chemokine-induced inside-out LFA-1 extension before ligand binding, but is not required for a variety of chemokine and non-chemokine signals that rapidly strengthen LFA-1-ICAM-1 bonds without an a priori induction of high-affinity extended LFA-1 conformations.
Soft Error Hardening for Asynchronous Circuits

As the devices are scaling down, the combinational logic will become susceptible to soft errors. The conventional soft error tolerant methods for soft errors on combinational logic do not provide enough high soft error tolerant capability with reasonably small performance penalty. This paper investigates the feasibility of designing quasi-delay insensitive (QDI) asynchronous circuits for high soft error tolerance. We analyze the behavior of Null Convention Logic circuits in the presence of particle strikes, and propose a novel technique to improve the robustness of threshold gates, which are basic components in NCL, against particle strikes by using Schmitt trigger circuit and resizing the feedback transistor. Experimental results show that the proposed threshold gates do not generate soft errors under the strike of a particle within a normal energy range if a proper transistor size is applied. The penalties, such as delay and power consumption, are also presented.
Optimal estimation of low rank density matrices

The density matrices are positively semi-definite Hermitian matrices of unit trace that describe the state of a quantum system. The goal of the paper is to develop minimax lower bounds on error rates of estimation of low rank density matrices in trace regression models used in quantum state tomography (in particular, in the case of Pauli measurements) with explicit dependence of the bounds on the rank and other complexity parameters. Such bounds are established for several statistically relevant distances, including quantum versions of Kullback-Leibler divergence (relative entropy distance) and of Hellinger distance (so called Bures distance), and Schatten $p$-norm distances. Sharp upper bounds and oracle inequalities for least squares estimator with von Neumann entropy penalization are obtained showing that minimax lower bounds are attained (up to logarithmic factors) for these distances.
High Quality Interactive Rendering of Massive Point Models Using Multi-way kd-Trees

We present a simple and efficient technique for out-of-core multi resolution construction and high quality visualization of large point datasets. The method introduces a novel hierarchical LOD data organization based on multi-way kd-trees that simplifies memory management and allows controlling the LOD tree's height. The technique is incorporated in a full end-to-end system, which is evaluated on complex models made of hundreds of millions of points.
Development of Synthetic and Natural Materials for Tissue Engineering Applications Using Adipose Stem Cells

Adipose stem cells have prominent implications in tissue regeneration due to their abundance and relative ease of harvest from adipose tissue and their abilities to differentiate into mature cells of various tissue lineages and secrete various growth cytokines. Development of tissue engineering techniques in combination with various carrier scaffolds and adipose stem cells offers great potential in overcoming the existing limitations constraining classical approaches used in plastic and reconstructive surgery. However, as most tissue engineering techniques are new and highly experimental, there are still many practical challenges that must be overcome before laboratory research can lead to large-scale clinical applications. Tissue engineering is currently a growing field of medical research; in this review, we will discuss the progress in research on biomaterials and scaffolds for tissue engineering applications using adipose stem cells.
Local Phrase Reordering Models for Statistical Machine Translation

We describe stochastic models of local phrase movement that can be incorporated into a Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) system. These models provide properly formulated, non-deficient, probability distributions over reordered phrase sequences. They are implemented by Weighted Finite State Transducers. We describe EM-style parameter re-estimation procedures based on phrase alignment under the complete translation model incorporating reordering. Our experiments show that the reordering model yields substantial improvements in translation performance on Arabic-to-English and Chinese-to-English MT tasks. We also show that the procedure scales as the bitext size is increased.
The Combined Approach to Ontology-Based Data Access

The use of ontologies for accessing data is one of the most exciting new applications of description logics in databases and other information systems. A realistic way of realising sufficiently scalable ontology-based data access in practice is by reduction to querying relational databases. In this paper, we describe the combined approach, which incorporates the information given by the ontology into the data and employs query rewriting to eliminate spurious answers. We illustrate this approach for ontologies given in the DL-Lite family of description logics and briefly discuss the results obtained for the EL family.
UV laser micromachining of silicon, indium phosphide and lithium niobate for telecommunications applications

The laser micromachining characteristics of indium phosphide, lithium niobate and silicon have been characterised using a 355nm neodymium vanadate laser and 193nm and 248nm excimer lasers. Etch rates for these materials are presented at the different laser wavelengths. High quality cutting of the three materials is demonstrated with the 355nm laser and an excimer laser mask projection method is subsequently used to micromachine precision V-grooves as fibre placement structures. Silicon microbenches, used for the integration of multiple-function devices, are also produced using the 355nm laser.
Phase of Firing as a Local Window for Efficient Neuronal Computation: Tonic and Phasic Mechanisms in the Control of Theta Spike Phase

The nature of the neural code remains a central issue of contention in neuroscience. Firing rate based schemes have dominated thinking for most of the past century, but there is a growing acceptance that temporal patterns of neuronal activity have an important role to play, at least in some systems and circumstances. Neuronal oscillations provide a central pillar in the evidence supporting temporal coding, perhaps because temporal codes can ultimately be understood only in the context of population activity and oscillations are at once experimentally accessible and analytically tractable. In the many roles proposed for oscillatory activity, a uniting theme is the control of spike timing, which can broadly be considered on two timescales. On the one hand, fast oscillations may be important in promoting precise synchronization of activity across cells, by providing millisecond windows of enhanced spike probability. Slow oscillations, on the other hand, can provide a broader temporal scaffold, against which other inputs, both tonic and phasic, can determine spike timing on the order of milliseconds to tens of milliseconds. Again, this could be important for synchronization of activity, but equally, could be used to control spike order, for coding, or plasticity purposes, or could be used to desynchronize discrete assemblies, enabling parallel processing. Here, we describe the cellular mechanisms underlying this broader timescale process in the hippocampus, specifically focusing on the effect of tonic and phasic inputs on the control of spike timing in single hippocampal neurons during theta oscillations and the implications for information coding and storage.
Real-time classification of ECGs on a PDA

The new advances in sensor technology, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and wireless communications favor the development of a new type of monitoring system that can provide patients with assistance anywhere and at any time. Of particular interest are the monitoring systems designed for people that suffer from heart arrhythmias, due to the increasing number of people with cardiovascular diseases. PDAs can play a very important role in these kinds of systems because they are portable devices that can execute more and more complex tasks. The main questions answered in this paper are whether PDAs can perform a complete electrocardiogram beat and rhythm classifier, if the classifier has a good accuracy, and if they can do it in real time. In order to answer these questions, in this paper, we show the steps that we have followed to build the algorithm that classifies beats and rhythms, and the obtained results, which show a competitive accuracy. Moreover, we also show the feasibility of incorporating the built algorithm into the PDA.
Routability of Network Topologies in FPGAs

A fundamental difference between application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) is that the wires in ASICs are designed to match the requirements of a particular design. Conversely, in an FPGA, the area is fixed and the routing resources exist whether or not they are used. In this paper, we investigate how well several common network topologies map onto a modern FPGA routing fabric. Different multiprocessor network topologies with between 8 and 64 nodes are mapped to a single large FPGA. Except for the fully-connected networks, it is observed that the difference in logic resources used and routing overhead among these topologies is insignificant for the systems tested. Fully-connected networks up to about 22 nodes are also feasible on the same FPGA although the logic and routing utilization clearly grows much faster. The conclusion is that a modern FPGA fabric is very rich in resources and capable of supporting highly interconnected topologies. For systems with a modest number of nodes implemented on current large FPGAs, it is not necessary to use the connectivity-limited topologies typically used for networks-on-chip. Rather, direct point-to-point connections between all communicating nodes can be considered.
Naturally Occurring Mutations in the Nonstructural Region 5B of Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) from Treatment-Naïve Korean Patients Chronically Infected with HCV Genotype 1b

The nonstructural 5B (NS5B) protein of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) with RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) activity plays a pivotal role in viral replication. Therefore, monitoring of its naturally occurring mutations is very important for the development of antiviral therapies and vaccines. In the present study, mutations in the partial NS5B gene (492 bp) from 166 quasispecies of 15 genotype-1b (GT) treatment-naïve Korean chronic patients were determined and mutation patterns and frequencies mainly focusing on the T cell epitope regions were evaluated. The mutation frequency within the CD8+ T cell epitopes was significantly higher than those outside the CD8+ T cell epitopes. Of note, the mutation frequency within predicted CD4+ T cell epitopes, a particular mutational hotspot in Korean patients was significantly higher than it was in patients from other areas, suggesting distinctive CD4+ T cell-mediated immune pressure against HCV infection in the Korean population. The mutation frequency in the NS5B region was positively correlated with patients with carrier-stage rather than progressive liver disease (chronic hepatitis, liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma). Furthermore, the mutation frequency in four codons (Q309, A333, V338 and Q355) known to be related to the sustained virological response (SVR) and end-of treatment response (ETR) was also significantly higher in Korean patients than in patients from other areas. In conclusion, a high degree of mutation frequency in the HCV GT-1b NS5B region, particularly in the predicted CD4+ T cell epitopes, was found in Korean patients, suggesting the presence of distinctive CD4+ T cell pressure in the Korean population. This provides a likely explanation of why relatively high levels of SVR after a combined therapy of pegylated interferon (PEG-IFN) and ribavirin (RBV) in Korean chronic patients with GT-1b infections are observed.
An Econometric Model of Credit Spreads with Rebalancing, Arch and Jump Effects

In this paper, we examine the dynamic behavior of credit spreads on corporate bond portfolios. We propose an econometric model of credit spreads that incorporates portfolio rebalancing, the near unit root property of spreads, the autocorrelation in spread changes, the ARCH conditional heteroscedasticity, jumps, and lagged market factors. In particular, our model is the first that takes into account explicitly the impact of rebalancing and yields estimates of the absorbing bounds on credit spreads induced by such rebalancing. We apply our model to nine Merrill Lynch daily series of option-adjusted spreads with ratings from AAA to C for the period January, 1997 through August, 2002. We find no evidence of mean reversion in these credit spread series over our sample period. However, we find ample evidence of both the ARCH effect and jumps in the data especially in the investment-grade credit spread indices. Incorporating jumps into the ARCH type conditional variance results in significant improvements in model diagnostic tests. We also find that while log spread variations depend on both the lagged Russell 2000 index return and lagged changes in the slope of the yield curve, the time-varying jump intensity of log credit spreads is correlated with the lagged stock market volatility. Finally, our results indicate the ARCH-jump specification outperforms the ARCH specification in the out-of-sample, one-step-ahead forecast of credit spreads.
Subdural electrode analysis in focal cortical dysplasia

Objective: Patients undergoing epilepsy surgery for focal cortical dysplasia (FCD) guided by subdural EEG generally have a poor surgical outcome. Our objective was to identify predictors of postoperative seizure recurrence in this patient cohort. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed 48 consecutive surgeries guided by subdural electrode recordings between 1990 and 2004 in patients with a pathologic diagnosis of isolated FCD. Using survival analysis, we analyzed results of the noninvasive evaluation, MRI, subdural interictal and ictal EEG patterns, extent of resection, proximity to eloquent cortex, and postoperative EEG. Results: After a median follow-up of 2.7 years, 45% of patients were completely seizure-free. Most seizures recurred in the first 6 months or between years 2 and 3 after surgery. On univariate analysis, seizure recurrence was associated with bilateral EEG abnormalities, multiple semiologic seizure types, and incomplete resection of the ictal onset zone. The absence of an MRI lesion did not affect outcome, nor did proximity to eloquent cortex. Interictal paroxysmal fast and runs of repetitive spikes correlated with the ictal onset zone, whereas isolated spikes did not. The 6-month EEG predicted ultimate surgical failure in patients seizure-free at that stage. An ictal spread pattern from the edge of the subdural grids was an independent predictor of seizure recurrence on multivariate analysis. Conclusions: We have identified specific predictive factors that may guide the surgical evaluation of patients with focal cortical dysplasia and intractable epilepsy requiring subdural EEG monitoring. Successful surgical results can be obtained utilizing subdural EEG in carefully selected patients.
Online Signature Generation for Windows Systems

In this paper, we present a new, light-weight approach for generating filters for blocking buffer overflow attacks on Microsoft Windows systems. It is designed to be deployable as an "always on'' component on production systems. To achieve this goal, it avoids expensive and intrusive techniques such as taint-tracking. The online nature of our system enables it to provide protection from a range of memory corruption exploits, including those involving unknown vulnerabilities, or known vulnerabilities but unknown exploits. In contrast, most previous signature generation techniques need to be run in sandboxed environments, and need working exploits to generate signatures. Moreover, our technique overcomes the "gap'' problem faced by previous signature generation mechanisms, i.e., when the vulnerable memory region is corrupted between the overflow and the time an attack is detected. Another novel feature of our approach is that it is able to reason about likely lengths of vulnerable buffers, which can lead to more accurate signatures. Our experimental results are very promising, and demonstrate that the approach can generate effective signatures for many synthetic and real-world vulnerabilities.
Validation of pressure gradient and peripheral fractional flow reserve measured by a pressure wire for diagnosis of iliofemoral artery disease with intermediate stenosis

Objective To examine the pressure gradient and peripheral fractional flow reserve (pFFR) measured by a pressure wire as indicators of hemodynamic significance in iliofemoral angiographic intermediate stenosis. Background The utility of pressure measurements using a pressure wire with vasodilators is unclear in cases with intermediate iliofemoral stenosis. Methods The mean pressure gradient (MPG) and mean pressure ratio (MPR) were measured at baseline and after injection of isosorbide dinitrate in 23 lesions with angiographically intermediate iliofemoral stenosis. Patients with complex lesions, infrapopliteal artery lesions, chronic total occlusion, and surgical bypass grafts were excluded. Hyperemic MPR was considered equivalent to pFFR. Changes in parameters in response to vasodilators were assessed and correlations of peak systolic velocity ratio (PSVR) with hyperemic MPG and pFFR were examined using duplex ultrasound. Results After injection of isosorbide dinitrate, hyperemic MPG increased significantly (from 9.0±5.7 to 16.3±6.2 mmHg; P<0.05) and hyperemic MPR (pFFR) decreased significantly (from 0.92±0.06 to 0.81±0.07; P<0.05). PSVR was significantly correlated with hyperemic MPG (R=0.52; P<0.05) and pFFR (R=−0.50; P<0.05). The optimal cut-off value of pFFR as an indicator of significant hemodynamic stenosis (PSVR >2.5) was 0.85 (area under the curve 0.72; sensitivity 94%; specificity 50%, P<0.05). Conclusion pFFR measured using a pressure wire is reliable for prediction of hemodynamic significance in iliofemoral intermediate stenosis.