Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Systematic review: symptom assessment using patient-reported outcomes in gastroesophageal reflux disease and dyspepsia

Abstract Objective. The importance of symptom assessment using patient-reported outcomes (PROs) is becoming increasingly recognized in the management of upper gastrointestinal (GI) disease. The authors aimed to review systematically the methodological aspects of PRO instrument development and use in the GERD or dyspepsia literature, and to assess these instruments' properties in light of the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) guidance. Material and methods. Systematic PubMed and Embase searches (using terms based on the FDA guidance) identified studies that reported methodological aspects in developing or using PRO instruments for GERD or dyspepsia symptom measurement. Results. Ten studies were identified (six systematically and four from citation lists). Studies reported the development or use of a relevant PRO instrument, with a focus on methodological aspects that the FDA guidance describes as important for patient understanding. Studies demonstrated heterogeneity of recall periods, symptoms and response options. Two studies demonstrated that a lack of consistent vocabulary may contribute to discrepancy in symptom reporting between investigators and patients. Two studies indicated that symptoms must be described in a manner that is relevant to patients. One study described the development of a PRO instrument separately in two languages, acknowledging linguistic and cultural differences between populations. One study demonstrated changes in symptom severity based on the recall period. Conclusions. There is considerable heterogeneity in the methodology used to develop PRO instruments for upper GI disease. Adherence to best practices in PRO development and validation may improve the quality and utility of these measures, leading to improved communication in clinical practice.
An Introduction to Conditional Random Fields for Relational Learning

1.1 Introduction Relational data has two characteristics: first, statistical dependencies exist between the entities we wish to model, and second, each entity often has a rich set of features that can aid classification. For example, when classifying Web documents, the page's text provides much information about the class label, but hyperlinks define a relationship between pages that can improve classification [Taskar et al., 2002]. Graphical models are a natural formalism for exploiting the dependence structure among entities. Traditionally, graphical models have been used to represent the joint probability distribution p(y, x), where the variables y represent the attributes of the entities that we wish to predict, and the input variables x represent our observed knowledge about the entities. But modeling the joint distribution can lead to difficulties when using the rich local features that can occur in relational data, because it requires modeling the distribution p(x), which can include complex dependencies. Modeling these dependencies among inputs can lead to intractable models, but ignoring them can lead to reduced performance. A solution to this problem is to directly model the conditional distribution p(y|x), which is sufficient for classification. This is the approach taken by conditional random fields [Lafferty et al., 2001]. A conditional random field is simply a conditional distribution p(y|x) with an associated graphical structure. Because the model is
The Features of Genetic Prion Diseases Based on Chinese Surveillance Program

Objective To identify the features of Chinese genetic prion diseases. Methods Suspected Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) cases that were reported under CJD surveillance were diagnosed and subtyped using the diagnostic criteria issued by the WHO. The general information concerning the patient, their clinical, MRI and EEG data, and the results of CSF 14-3-3 and PRNP sequencing were carefully collected from the database of the national CJD surveillance program and analyzed using the SPSS 11.5 statistical software program. Results Since 2006, 69 patients were diagnosed with genetic prion diseases and as having 15 different mutations. The median age of the 69 patients at disease onset was 53.5 years, varying from 19 to 80 years. The majority of patients displaying clinical symptoms were in the 50–59 years of age. FFI, T188K gCJD and E200K were the three most common subtypes. The disease appeared in the family histories of 43.48% of the patients. The clinical manifestations varied considerably among the various diseases. Patients who carried mutations in the N-terminus displayed a younger age of onset, were CSF 14-3-3 negative, had a family history of the condition, and experienced a longer duration of the condition. The clinical courses of T188K were significantly shorter than those of FFI and E200K gCJD, while the symptoms in the FFI group appeared at a younger age and for a longer duration. Moreover, the time intervals between the initial neurologist visit to the final diagnosis were similar among patients with FFI, T188K gCJD, E200K gCJD and other diseases. Conclusion The features of Chinese genetic prion diseases are different from those seen in Europe and other Asian countries.
Holistic operations in large-scale sensor network systems: A probabilistic peer-to-peer approach

Large-scale Sensor Networks Smart sensor nodes [14, 15] integrate multiple sensors (e.g., temperature, humidity, accelerometers), processing capability (microprocessor connected to the sensors using I2C technology), wireless communications, and a battery power source. Sensor nodes range around a few millimeters or smaller in size [11, 12]. Sensor nodes have low processing, memory and wireless communication capabilities. Processor and bus clock speeds of a few Mhzs, RAM sizes of a few KB, flash memory sizes of a few MB, and wireless bandwidths of a few hundred Kbps are typical [14, 15]. These ranges are often determined by application domain constraints such as cost, power consumption, and deployment space. Thus, they are likely to stay in spite of improvements in fabrication techniques. For example, retinal sensor sizes depend on ganglial nerve separation [11]. Space limits on the wireless antenna restricts maximum frequency and range of transmission. Availability of power is limited due to the difficulty or impossibility of recharging nodes in inhospitable terrains, e.g., military applications [12]. On the other hand, sensor nodes are becoming easier to produce in large numbers [14, 15]. An autonomous system consisting of a large number of sensor nodes deployed over an area and integrated to collaborate through a network (wireless or wired) network, would encourage several novel as well as existing applications. Examples include high fidelity image processing in retinal prosthesis chips [11], battlefield applications such as vehicle tracking, environmental observation and forecasting systems (EOFS) [13], etc.
Styles and Defense Mechanisms in People With Depression, Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Eating Disorder, Social Phobia Disorder, and Substance Abuse *

We need a way to compromise with the unpleasant inherent in the human condition and that creates conflict, as we do not be affected in this way. The ways we use to compromise, called defense. This study has been done with the aim of examining and comparison of defense mechanisms and styles, anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), eating disorder, social phobia disorder, and substance abuse. This study consisted of 180 patients (30 patients per group) that were selected by convenience sampling. The instrument used to measure defense mechanisms was Defensive Style Questionnaire with 40 questions, by Andrews, Singh, and Bond (1993). Data were compared with statistical methods of mean comparison, statistical and one way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and post hoc tests. Statistical analysis showed that immature defense mechanisms in patients with substance abuse with mean of 26.87 is the most mechanism used and in patients with anxiety, with the mean of 19.23, is the least mechanism. In developed mechanism, patients with eating disorder with the mean of 12.13 are the most and in patients with substance use is the usage with the mean of 6.45. In neurotic mechanisms, patients with social phobia took the most mean of 13.96 and patients with eating disorders took the least mean of 9.24. The present study investigated the importance of defense mechanisms in patients with psychiatric disorders that effected how people’s lives and interpersonal relationships, domains, and problem solving method of people in life. For this reason, defense mechanisms require more attention.
Accelerating the Introduction of Spectrum Sharing Using Market-Based Mechanisms

Spectrum management needs to be effective, in that spectrum must be allocated to the right uses, and efficient, in that spectrum must be assigned to those that value it the most. Technological advances and demands for further spectrum availability from mobile broadband operators (among others) require spectrum management to promptly and firmly incorporate schemes to increase the technical efficiency of spectrum utilization. One such scheme is spectrum sharing, which has the potential to result in higher spectrum utilization and greater spectrum value. In such context allocation and assignment, two critical functions to manage the spectrum are also discussed. By means of tutorial-styled presentation of spectrum sharing techniques and policy decisions, this article argues that in the course of deciding about allocation and assignment of spectrum, a spectrum authority can and should include market-based mechanisms that incentivize incumbents to share spectrum needed by entrants.
Investigation of passive control devices for potential application to a launch vehicle structure to reduce the interior noise levels during launch: Report for Stage 4, Tasks 1 and 2

Abstract : The work discussed in the report is an extension of work undertaken by Dr. Steve Griffin of the Air Force Research Lab at Kirtland AFB, NM, during his participation in an AFOSR Windows on Science program at the University of Adelaide, South Australia in 1998. The previous work involved an investigation of the application of active feedback control of the launch vehicle structural vibration using radiation mode vibration levels as the cost function to minimize interior noise levels and led to the publication of three papers. The small benefit of action control, compared to the passive effect of the un-excited actuators attached to the structure has been the impetus behind the work conducted in the paper which is directed at optimizing the passive effect of vibration reducing devices. The objectives of the study were achieved. A numerical framework for the study of the response of an irregular shaped vibro-acoustic system excited by an external pressure field has been developed. The method used the modal coupling technique which coupled the in- vacuo modal model of the structure to the rigid -walled modal model of the cavity. The solution times of the (modal coupling) method were found to be extremely fast, solving two to three orders of magnitude faster than a fully coupled FEA. The modal coupling technique was validated against a fully coupled FEA. The FE model of the structure was adjusted so as to accurately emulate the physical structure. The effect of the VAD was analyzed and optimized for two bandwidths, namely 50-200Hz ands 50-400Hz. It was found that the optimal VAD design used the TMD as a highly reactive device to reduce the structural modal density within the frequency band of interest and the optimal diaphragm configuration was highly lossy to reduce the modal amplitude of the single acoustic mode. Local flexure of the panel reduced the effectiveness of the VAD's and alternative attachment techniques were investigated to reduce such flexure.
Bacteriological aspects implicated in abdominal surgical emergencies.

UNLABELLED The purpose of the present study was to establish the microbial etiology of abdominal surgical emergencies as well as the relationship between the bacterial etiology and the virulence factors produced by the respective isolated strains. 110 bacterial strains were isolated from 100 randomized clinical cases, operated during 2009-2010 in the First Surgical Clinic of the University Hospital of Bucharest. The clinical cases (sex ratio 52 M/48F aged between 22-85 years old) were classified into three risk groups, as related to their severity. The isolated strains were characterized by cultural, microscopic and biochemical methods. After identification, the bacterial strains were investigated for their virulence potential (adherence to abiotic surface and production of soluble virulence factors). RESULTS The specimens were collected from different clinical pathologies: diffuse acute peritonitis, biliary duct infections, severe acute pancreatitis followed by septic processes etc. The 110 bacterial (72 aerobic and 38 anaerobic) strains were isolated only in 70 out of 100 cases. Out of these 70 cases, in 45 already submitted to pre-operatory empiric broad spectrum antibiotic therapy, there were isolated 74 strains, whereas in 25 cases without any treatment, there were isolated 36 strains. The etiology was either mono-specific or multi-specific (aerobic-anaerobic associations, especially in old persons). Out of the 30 negative culture cases, 16 were already submitted to pre-operatory parenteral empiric antibiotic therapy at the moment of specimen collection. The aerobic etiology was dominated by Enterobacteriaceae. The most frequent anaerobic species belonged to Clostridium, Peptococcus and Bacteroides genera. It is to be mentioned that the isolation of Bifidobacterium and Veillonella spp. in 11 (10%) severe cases of the studied abdominal surgical emergencies is pleading for the fact that in certain conditions, bacteria belonging usually to commensal gut flora can turn to pathogenic becoming responsive for life-threatening cases. All aerobic and anaerobic strains exhibited some of the following virulence factors: mucinase, esculinase, pore-forming toxins (lecithinase), proteolytic enzymes, adherence ability (slime factor). The presence of these virulence factors (VF) could explain the severity of the clinical aspects. CONCLUSIONS The bacterial etiology of the abdominal surgical emergencies exhibited a very large spectrum, the highest number of strains being of endogenous origin (Enterobacteriaceae and anaerobic strains). It was demonstrated that the isolated strains produced (cell associated and soluble) VF proving in this way their role as important virulence sources in the hospital environment and explaining the large diversity and severity of the clinical abdominal pathology. The results of the present study are also pleading for periodical readjustments of the pre-operatory empiric antibiotic therapy.
A /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ fractional-N frequency synthesizer with a multi-band PMOS VCOs for 2.4 and 5GHz WLAN applications

This paper presents a fully integrated multi-band frequency synthesizer architecture. The synthesizer is a /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ based fractional-N frequency synthesizer with three on-chip LC tuned VCOs to cover the entire frequency bands specified in IEEE802.11b, and 802.11a WLAN standards. The synthesizer includes a /spl Delta//spl Sigma/ shaper, a dead-zone-free phase frequency detector and a fully differential charge pump. The measured in-band phase noise is lower than -93dBc/Hz and the VCO out of band phase noise is -120dBc/Hz at 1MHz offset.
Distributed calibration for sensor networks under communication errors and measurement noise

In this paper a new distributed calibration algorithm based on consensus is proposed for sensor networks. The algorithm is basically formulated as a set of stochastic gradient type recursions for estimating parameters of local sensor calibration functions, starting from local criteria defined as weighted sums of mean square errors between the outputs of neighboring sensors. It is proved that the proposed algorithm provides asymptotic consensus in the space of the sensor gains and offsets. In the case of communication dropouts and additive communication and measurement noise, a modification of the instrumental variable type of the original calibration scheme is proposed. It is proved using stochastic approximation arguments that in this case the proposed algorithm achieves asymptotic consensus in the mean square sense and with probability one. Some illustrative simulation examples are provided.
Adapting cache partitioning algorithms to pseudo-LRU replacement policies

Recent studies have shown that cache partitioning is an efficient technique to improve throughput, fairness and Quality of Service (QoS) in CMP processors. The cache partitioning algorithms proposed so far assume Least Recently Used (LRU) as the underlying replacement policy. However, it has been shown that the true LRU imposes extraordinary complexity and area overheads when implemented on high associativity caches, such as last level caches. As a consequence, current processors available on the market use pseudo-LRU replacement policies, which provide similar behavior as LRU, while reducing the hardware complexity. Thus, the presented so far LRU-based cache partitioning solutions cannot be applied to real CMP architectures. This paper proposes a complete partitioning system for caches using the pseudo-LRU replacement policy. In particular, the paper focuses on the pseudo-LRU implementations proposed by Sun Microsystems and IBM, called Not Recently Used (NRU) and Binary Tree (BT), respectively. We propose a high accuracy profiling logic and a cache partitioning hardware for both schemes. We evaluate our proposals' hardware costs in terms of area and power, and compare them against the LRU partitioning algorithm. Overall, this paper presents two hardware techniques to adapt the existing cache partitioning algorithms to real replacement policies. The results show that our solutions impose negligible performance degradation with respect to the LRU.
Sequential exocytosis of insulin granules is associated with redistribution of SNAP25

We have investigated sequential exocytosis in β cells of intact pancreatic islets with the use of two-photon excitation imaging of a polar fluorescent tracer, sulforhodamine B, and a fusion protein comprising enhanced cyan fluorescent protein (ECFP) and the SNARE protein SNAP25 (synaptosome-associated protein of 25 kD) transfected with an adenoviral vector. Sequential exocytosis was found to account for <10% of exocytic events in β cells stimulated either with glucose under various conditions or by photolysis of a caged-Ca2+ compound. Multigranular exocytosis, in which granule-to-granule fusion occurs before exocytosis, was rarely found. We detected redistribution of ECFP-SNAP25 from the plasma membrane into the membrane of the fused granule occurred in a large proportion (54%) of sequential exocytic events but in only a small fraction (5%) of solitary fusion events. Removal of cholesterol in the plasma membrane by methyl-β-cyclodextrin facilitated both redistribution of ECFP-SNAP25 and sequential exocytosis by threefold. These observations support the hypothesis that SNAP25 is a plasma membrane factor that is responsible for sequential exocytosis.
An Effective Inter-Cell Interference Coordination Scheme for Downlink CoMP in LTE-A Systems

Coordinated multi-point (CoMP) has been adopted in 3GPP LTE-Advanced to improve the coverage of high data rates. Downlink CoMP is mainly categorized into joint transmission (JT) and coordinated beamforming (CB). Previous research shows that JT does not benefit cell average throughput. Moreover, traditional CB algorithms are based on iterative evaluation, resulting in very high computational complexity. To address these issues, in this paper, we propose an effective inter-cell interference coordination scheme for downlink CoMP, which includes two phases. Firstly, in order to improve the performance of all user equipments (UEs), cell edge UEs employ JT, while CB is adopted by both cell edge and cell center UEs. Secondly, we design linear CB precoders by maximizing a signal to leakage and noise ratio (SLNR) metric, so as to reduce processing complexity. System-level simulations validate that, in contrast to non-CoMP, the proposed scheme brings a cell average spectral efficiency (SE) gain up to 21.50% and a cell edge SE gain up to 119.2%.
Impact of Crosstalk Estimation on the Dynamic Spectrum Management Performance

The development and assessment of spectrum management methods for the copper access network are usually conducted under the assumption of accurate channel information. Acquiring such information implies, in practice, estimation of the crosstalk coupling functions between the twisted-pair lines in the access network. However, this estimation is not supported or required by current digital subscriber line (DSL) standards. In this work, we investigate the impact of non-ideal crosstalk estimation on the dynamic spectrum management (DSM) performance. Two different crosstalk estimators are considered: a conventional model-based estimator and a novel estimation procedure. The DSM performance is evaluated based on the obtained crosstalk estimates for two different network scenarios consisting of real twisted-pair cables. For a reference comparison, the crosstalk channels are measured with a network analyzer. The simulation results indicate that the novel estimation procedure achieves DSM performance results close to the ones obtained with the network analyzer and that the model-based estimator can lead to an inaccurate rate estimation.
Degraded partial palmprint recognition for forensic investigations

Palmprint trait is emerging as a new and practical biometric solution and a few systems using full palmprints have been proposed. However, partial palmprints left at scenes of crime have not yet been exploited to recognize and find crime suspects. In this paper, a modified well known algorithm, referred to as Modified Phase Only Correlation (MPOC) is proposed to match poor quality (degraded) partial palmprints left by suspects at crime scenes against a full palmprint registered in a template database. Instead of using the conventional peak as the matching score between two palmprint images, the ratio of the conventional peak to the highest peak in the outside-lobe correlation plane is employed. Experiments were conducted on a generated database of 800 partial palmprints having an area less than 25% of that of the full palmprint images from which blurred and degraded images were created by adding an intense synthetic Gaussian noise. The results show that the proposed method yields high recognition performance thus demonstrating its ability to tackle the problem of identifying low quality partial palmprint images giving an Equal Error Rate (EER) less than 0.4%.
Energy harvesting communications under temperature constraints

We consider throughput maximization in a singleuser energy harvesting communication system under energy and temperature constraints. We model three main temperature related physical defects in wireless sensors mathematically, and investigate their impact on throughput maximization. Specifically, we consider temperature dependent energy leakage, effects of processing circuit power on temperature, and temperature increases due to the energy harvesting process itself. In each case, we determine the optimum power schedule.