Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The impact of prebiopsy antibiotics on pathogen recovery in hematogenous vertebral osteomyelitis.

BACKGROUND Biopsy specimens are often obtained in the evaluation of hematogenous vertebral osteomyelitis. The effect of prebiopsy antibiotic exposure on pathogen recovery is unknown. METHODS We conducted a retrospective cohort study of adult inpatients with hematogenous vertebral osteomyelitis at a tertiary care hospital from 1 January 2003 through 31 July 2007. Antibiotic exposure within 14 days before biopsy was evaluated. RESULTS Of 150 patients with hematogenous vertebral osteomyelitis, 92 (61%) underwent a biopsy (60 [65%] needle and 32 [35%] open biopsies). The median time from admission to biopsy was 3 days (range, 0-69 days). Patients who underwent biopsy were more likely to have weakness (53 [58%] biopsy vs 15 [26%] no biopsy; P<.001) and sensory loss (27 [29%] vs 6 [10%]; P=.006), but were less likely to have a positive blood culture result (28 [30%] vs 30 [52%]; P=.01). Pathogens were recovered in 61 patients (66%). Open biopsy had a higher yield than needle biopsy (29 [91%] of 32 vs 32 [53%] of 60; P<.001). Sixty patients (65%) who had biopsies performed received antibiotics ≤14 days before the procedure (median duration, 4 days; range, 1-37 days). Open biopsy predicted positive biopsy culture results (adjusted odds ratio, 8.4; 95% confidence interval, 2.2-31.8), but there was no association of prebiopsy antibiotics with culture results (adjusted odds ratio, 2.3; 95% confidence interval, 0.8-6.2). CONCLUSIONS A pathogen was recovered from 61 (66%) of 92 patients who had biopsies performed in this cohort of hematogenous vertebral osteomyelitis. Open biopsies had a higher microbiological yield than did needle biopsies. Antibiotic exposure before biopsy did not negatively impact pathogen recovery and should not be the sole reason for foregoing biopsies.
Robust road sign recognition using standard deviation

This paper proposes the recognition of road signs under various illumination conditions using standard deviation. The proposed road sign recognition system uses both of shape and color information. The former one is used in template matching with standard deviation and the latter one in modified Mahalanobis distance. This paper focuses on circular road signs and achieves almost perfect performances under various conditions such as daytime, evening-time and nighttime. Moreover, the proposed method may be applicable to recognize of any shape of road signs. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been demonstrated through experiments. According to our experimental results, the recognition rate is 100% for 200 images taken under various illumination conditions.
TUD at MediaEval 2012 genre tagging task: Multi-modality video categorization with one-vs-all classifiers

In this paper, we investigate the internet video categorization problems on genre related labels. The videos are represented by features extracted from different modalities. Then for each category, one-vs-all SVM classifiers are trained based on features from different modalities. The weighted Reciprocal Rank Fusion method is used to combine the classifiers for each modality. The experiments are based on the data from the Genre Tagging Task of MediaEval 2012.
The Narrowing Gap in New York City Teacher Qualifications and its Implications for Student Achievement in High-Poverty Schools

The gap between the qualifications of New York City teachers in high-poverty schools and low-poverty schools has narrowed substantially since 2000. Most of this gap-narrowing resulted from changes in the characteristics of newly hired teachers, and largely has been driven by the virtual elimination of newly hired uncertified teachers coupled with an influx of teachers with strong academic backgrounds in the Teaching Fellows program and Teach for America. The improvements in teacher qualifications, especially among the poorest schools, appear to have resulted in improved student achievement. By estimating the effect of teacher attributes using a value-added model, the analyses in this paper predict that observable qualifications of teachers resulted in average improved achievement for students in the poorest decile of schools of . 03 standard deviations, about half the difference between being taught by a first year teacher and a more experienced teacher. If limited to teachers who are in the first or second year of teaching, where changes in qualifications are greatest, the gain equals two-thirds of the first-year experience effect.
A Single Gene Product, Claudin-1 or -2, Reconstitutes Tight Junction Strands and Recruits Occludin in Fibroblasts

Three integral membrane proteins, clau- din-1, -2, and occludin, are known to be components of tight junction (TJ) strands. To examine their ability to form TJ strands, their cDNAs were introduced into mouse L fibroblasts lacking TJs. Immunofluorescence microscopy revealed that both FLAG-tagged claudin-1 and -2 were highly concentrated at cell contact sites as planes through a homophilic interaction. In freeze-fracture replicas of these contact sites, well-developed networks of strands were identified that were similar to TJ strand networks in situ and were specifically labeled with anti-FLAG mAb. In glutaraldehyde-fixed samples, claudin-1–induced strands were largely associated with the protoplasmic (P) face as mostly continuous structures, whereas claudin-2–induced strands were discontinuous at the P face with complementary grooves at the extracellular (E) face which were occupied by chains of particles. Although occludin was also concentrated at cell contact sites as dots through its homophilic interaction, freeze-fracture replicas identified only a small number of short strands that were labeled with anti-occludin mAb. However, when occludin was cotransfected with claudin-1, it was concentrated at cell contact sites as planes to be incorporated into well- developed claudin-1–based strands. These findings suggested that claudin-1 and -2 are mainly responsible for TJ strand formation, and that occludin is an accessory protein in some function of TJ strands.
On Evaluation of Automatically Generated Clinical Discharge Summaries

Proper evaluation is crucial for developing high-quality computerized text summarization systems. In the clinical domain, the specialized information needs of the clinicians complicates the task of evaluating automatically produced clinical text summaries. In this paper we present and compare the results from both manual and automatic evaluation of computer-generated summaries. These are composed of sentence extracts from the free text in clinical daily notes – corresponding to individual care episodes, written by physicians concerning patient care. The purpose of this study is primarily to find out if there is a correlation between the conducted automatic evaluation and the manual evaluation. We analyze which of the automatic evaluation metrics correlates the most with the scores from the manual evaluation. The manual evaluation is performed by domain experts who follow an evaluation tool that we developed as a part of this study. As a result, we hope to get some insight into the reliability of the selected approach to automatic evaluation. Ultimately this study can help us in assessing the reliability of this evaluation approach, so that we can further develop the underlying summarization system. The evaluation results seem promising in that the ranking order of the various summarization methods, ranked by all the automatic evaluation metrics, correspond well with that of the manual evaluation. These preliminary results also indicate that the utilized automatic evaluation setup can be used as an automated and reliable way to rank clinical summarization methods internally in terms of their performance.
Research on User Access Sequence Mining Based on the Duration Time of Web Page

By analysis of web user access sequence, we can find the factors of user's hobbies, interests, habits etc. and provide the necessary support of information for the upgrade and amendment of web sites. This article proposed a method of data mining MFASMDT (Maximal Frequent Access Sequence Mining of Duration Time). It can reduce the number of web pages of the session sequence and compress the size of frequent traversal sequence by taking the duration time of web page as a parameter. The experiment showed that the new algorithms can reduce the cost of mining and provide a useful reference for mining of web users’s commercial data.
A meta-analytical synthesis and examination of pathological and problem gambling rates among college athletes

ABSTRACT Limited attention has been paid specifically to college athlete gambling in the body of literature. This research article is the first meta-analysis of its type, presenting an up-to-date proportion of those athletes exhibiting gambling pathology as assessed by the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS). A thorough literature review and coding procedure yielded data estimates retrieved from 6 studies conducted between 1987 and the present, surveying 2,130 college athletes in the United States. The estimated proportion of probable pathological gamblers among college-athletes was computed at 6.46%. Overall rates of subclinical problem gambling were computed at 8.97%. Statistical significance was found in the influence of the percentage of non-White students on problem gambling rates. The implications of these results as well as recommendations for future practice in dealing with college athletes and disordered gambling on campus are outlined and described in detail for administrators, faculty, university staff, and coaches.
3-D mapping of natural environments with trees by means of mobile perception

In this paper, a method of generating a three-dimensional (3-D) geometric model for large-scale natural environments with trees is presented. The environment mapping method, which uses range images as measurement data, consists of three main phases. First, geometric feature objects are extracted from each of the range images. Second, the relative coordinate transformations (i.e., registrations) between the sensor viewpoint locations, where the range data are measured, are computed. Third, an integrated map is formed by transforming the submap data into a common frame of reference. Tree trunks visible in the range images are modeled with cylinder segments and utilized as reference features for registration computation. The final integrated 3-D model consists of the cylinder segments representing the visible sections of the tree trunks, as well as of the ground elevation data. The constructed environment map can be utilized as, for example, a virtual task environment for outdoor robotic machines such as new-generation forest working machines or service robots.
Quality Assurance of a Mobile Network Measurement Testbed Through Systematic Software Testing

The popularity of innovative mobile applications that offer services such as Web browsing, video streaming, online gaming, and collaborative communication puts utmost pressure on mobile application developers to ensure a high quality user experience. As such, the research and development communities have developed several networking testbeds that measure the performance of application traffic in production cellular networks. In this paper, we evaluate the quality of the source code of one of the mobile network measurement testbeds (MITATE) using multiple software testing techniques. Our extensive testing experience with MITATE’s source code indicates that network measurement testbeds are complex in their functionality and require multiple software components to interact with each other for any given operation. We demonstrate that using multiple testing techniques results in different types of issues with the code under test. Finally, based on our results, we make changes to MITATE’s source code and argue that MITATE, in production, offers high reliability and accuracy in executing network experiments.
Luminance-Evoked Inhibition in Primary Visual Cortex: A Transient Veto of Simultaneous and Ongoing Response

Large-scale changes in luminance are known to exert a significant suppressive or masking effect on visual perception, but the neural substrate for this effect remains unclear. In this report, we describe the results of experiments using in vivo intracellular recording to explore the impact of luminance transients on the responses of orientation-selective neurons in layer 2/3 of tree shrew primary visual cortex. By measuring changes in excitatory and inhibitory conductances, we find that instantaneous changes in luminance evoke strong cortical inhibition. When combined with visual stimuli that would otherwise yield strong excitatory responses, luminance transients produce significant reductions in excitation as well as increases in inhibition. As a result, luminance transients significantly delay the emergence of orientation tuned cortical responses, and virtually eliminate ongoing responses to effective stimuli. We conclude that cortical inhibition is a critical factor in luminance-evoked cortical suppression and the likely substrate for luminance-induced visual masking phenomenon.
Adolescents' Domain-Specific Self-Concepts of Ability Predict Their Domain-Specific Causal Attributions: A Longitudinal Study

Abstract:This study investigated longitudinal associations between mathematics- and literacy-related causal attributions and self-concepts of ability among Finnish adolescents (N = 237). Questionnaires were administered to adolescents in Grades 7 and 9 to obtain information on their causal attributions and self-concepts of ability. The results showed that adolescents attributed their successes and failures in a self-consistent way. Specifically, self-concepts of ability predicted subsequent causal attributions in both school subjects. In mathematics, a higher self-concept of ability contributed to more self-enhancing and self-protective attributions. However, in both school subjects, a lower self-concept of ability contributed to more maladaptive attributions.
Gender differences in illicit substance use among middle-aged drug users with or at risk for HIV infection.

OBJECTIVE The objective of the present study was to examine gender differences and other factors associated with current heroin and cocaine use among middle-aged drug users. METHODS Baseline data were merged from 2 studies of men and of women with or at risk for HIV infection. Analysis was restricted to study participants who had ever used heroin or cocaine and who were 49-60 years of age at the time that they were interviewed. HIV-antibody status, drug-use history, and psychosocial and sociodemographic data were examined. Logistic regression models were used to assess factors independently associated with current heroin and cocaine use. RESULTS Of 627 persons who ever used heroin and/or cocaine, 250 (39.9%) reported using these drugs within 6 months of the study interview conducted at baseline. Men were more likely to be using drugs currently, compared with women (42.3% vs. 28.2%; P = .007). In multivariate analysis, men, unemployed persons, and HIV-seronegative persons were more likely to be using heroin or cocaine at the time of the interview. In addition, current marijuana users, persons drinking alcohol on a daily basis, and persons who had been homeless in the 6 months before the interview were also more likely to be using these drugs. CONCLUSION A relatively high proportion of middle-aged substance users with or at risk for HIV infection, especially men, may continue to use illicit drugs into the sixth decade of life. The differences noted between men and women who have used heroin and/or cocaine at some point in their lives suggest that special attention be given to aging and gender issues in framing HIV-prevention and drug-treatment programs.
Development and Evaluation of Automatic -Speaker based- Audio Identification and Segmentation for Broadcast News Recordings Indexation

In this paper, we describe an automatic- speaker based- audio segmentation and identification system for broadcasted news indexation purposes. We specifically focus on speaker identification and audio scene detection. Speaker identification (SI) is based on the state of the art Gaussian mixture models, whereas scene change detection process uses the classical Bayesian Information Criteria (BIC) and the recently proposed DISTBIC algorithm. In this work, the effectiveness of Mel Frequency Cepstral coefficients MFCC, Linear Predictive Cepstral Coefficients LPCC, and Log Area Ratio LAR coefficients are compared for the purpose of text-independent speaker identification and speaker based audio segmentation. Both the Fisher Discrimination Ratio-feature analysis and performance evaluation in terms of correct identification rate on the TIMIT database showed that the LPCC outperforms the other features especially for low order coefficients. Our experiments on audio segmentation module showed that the DISTBIC segmentation technique is more accurate than the BIC procedure especially in the presence of short segments.
1 LOGICAL RULES INDUCTION

In neural networks, knowledge resides in the synaptic connections. By examining the connection strengths obtained during learning processes, logical rules that have been acquired may be deduced. When the values of the connections of a network resulting from Hebbian learning on the data are given, we show that we can induce what logical rules are entrenched in the data. Consequently, a new algorithm for inducing logical rules from empirical data is presented. We verify the method using simulated and real life data sets.
Loss of Infectivity of HIV-1 Particles Produced by Mobile Lymphocytes

HIV-1 spreads by cell-free particles and through direct cell contacts. To discriminate between these two modes of dissemination, an assay in which the cells are cultured under shaking conditions impairing cell-to-cell transmission has been described. We addressed the impact of shaking on HIV-1 particle infectivity. Kinetics of HIV-1 infection in static or shaking conditions confirmed that HIV-1 replication is reduced in mobile lymphocyte T cells. Strikingly, the infectivity of viruses produced by mobile lymphocytes was dramatically reduced. In parallel, the amount of envelope protein present on these particles showed a continuous decrease over time. We conclude that inefficient HIV-1 replication in mobile lymphocytes in this experimental system is not only due to avoidance of viral cell-to-cell transfer but also to the loss of infectivity of the viral particles due to the alteration of the composition and functionality of the particles produced by these lymphocytes. It is important to take these observations into account when studying viral transmission under shaking conditions.
An Active Distributed Defense System to Protect Web Applications from DDOS Attacks

Recently a number of highly publicized incidents of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against high-profile government and commercial websites have made people aware of the importance of providing data and services security to users. A DDoS attack is an availability attack, which is characterized by an explicit attempt from an attacker to prevent legitimate users of a service from using the desired resources. This paper introduces the vulnerability of web applications to DDoS attacks, and presents an active distributed defense system that includes a deployment mixture of sub-systems to protect web applications from DDoS attacks. According to the simulation experiments, this system is effective in that it is able to defend web applications against attacks. It can avoid overall network congestion and provide more resources to legitimate web users.
Improving the Efficiency of Network Topology Discovery

As wireless and mobile networks are getting more of a commonplace, the discovery and management of dynamic networks has become a serious issue. Since the topology of wireless and mobile networks always keeps changing, the key issue of topology discovery is how to effectively and efficiently perform the discovery task with minimal impact to normal network traffic. In this paper we analyze the efficiency of some current topology discovery methods used both in wired and wireless networks and show that they are not very efficient. We also analyze the main reason and present a new method called BacktraceTree to improve efficiency of topology discovery. The BacktraceTree first backtraces the topology tree by probing the destination nodes which give response and can find most topology nodes and links, and then it discovers the remainder topology by analyzing the known topology features and probing the unresponding destination nodes. We describe and analyze the BacktraceTree algorithm and compare it with some major current topology discovery methods. Our evaluation shows that BacktraceTree can reduce almost 70% measurement load while maintaining the coverage of router interfaces above 95%. The BacktraceTree algorithm can dramatically improve topology discovery and can thus meet the requirement for fast topology discovery in wireless and mobile networks.
Maker Culture Liminality and Open Source (Science) Hardware: instead of making anything great again, keep experimenting!

A cultura maker, definida como um conjunto de experiencias que agrupam ferramentas de hardware de codigo aberto (Weiss 2008; Mellis & Buechley 2011; Ames et al. 2014), de praticas facavoce-mesmo (Ratto & Boler 2014; Ames et al. 2014; Lindtner et al. 2016), promesas da fabricacao digital, automatica e distribuida (Gershenfeld et al. 2004; Ratto & Ree 2012), e equipamentos para a democratizacao da ciencia (Pearce 2014; Pearce 2012), persiste como um objeto ambiguo de nossas recentes fantasias do design e da politica. De um lado, ha o surgimento de politicas e interesses governamentais nos EUA, China, Cingapura, Taiwam e Europa, sobre o tal “movimento maker”, levando diretamente ao atual chamado nacionalista do tipo “Faca (o pais XYZ) Grande Novamente”. De outro lado, os projetos e atividades maker (experimentacoes com Arduino, construcao de impressoras 3D, montagem de infraestruturas de laboratorios de biologia faca-voce- mesmo), continuam restritos a um nicho exploratorio e privado, mesmo quando sao parte de redes informais e transnacionais (Vertesi et al. 2011; Kaiying & Lindtner 2016) que eu denomino “diplomacia geek” (Kera 2015). Sem afirmar claramente qualquer agenda local ou transnacional, os makers faca-voce- mesmo negociam de maneira produtiva e criativa varias dicotomias entre o individualismo e o coletivismo, entre os interesses locais e globais, nacionalismo e cosmopolitismo. Eles conectam politica e design atraves da liminaridade, em experiencias individuais e exploratorias de prototipagem e tinkering, que diferem muito das formas de aquisicao de conhecimentos, habilidades e prototipagem tipicas dos contextos industriais e academicos. Para explicar a liminaridade na cultura maker, eu expando o trabalho pioneiro de Gabriela Coleman sobre os paradoxos do movimento hacker (e do movimento de software aberto). As redes descentralizadas e transnacionais de makers e hackers sao exemplos (tecnologicos) de comunidades e liminaridades (Turner, 1969), que negociam varios objetivos e agendas conflitantes por tras da fabricacao, tecnologia e globalizacao. A cultura maker pode servir a agendas isolacionistas ou cosmopolitas ao mesmo tempo, e ainda abracar a retorica do codigo aberto enquanto segue parcialmente patenteada, pirateada e hibrida. Ela mobiliza as esperancas do Sul Global de tecnologias de baixo custo, enquanto performatiza cliches do Vale do Silicio e se utiliza do trabalho escravo e migrante na China, ou ainda de algum conflito africano sobre recursos minerais. Ao inves de empoderar alguma nocao idealizada de sujeito, comunidade ou mesmo nacao, ela demarca os limites e as condicoes do nosso entendimento sobre governanca e sua relacao com a producao, a fabricacao e o design. Palavras-chave: Cultura Maker; Hardware de Fonte Aberta; Politica e Design; Sul Global Link: http://revista.ibict. br/liinc/article/view/3875/3202