Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A brief evaluation for pre-estimating the severity of gallstone pancreatitis.

CONTEXT An uncomplicated and easy-to-use method of pre-estimating the severity of gallstone pancreatitis shortly after admission was required in order to direct clinicians for monitoring and/or transferring to a specialized center. OBJECTIVE To determine the role of brief assessment in pre-estimating the severity of gallstone pancreatitis at admission. PATIENTS Fifty-eight patients with gallstone pancreatitis were consecutively followed regarding the course of complications. MAIN OUTCOME VARIABLES Sensitivity analysis of the Biliary Ranson score (>3), the modified Imrie score (>3), the acute physiology and chronic health evaluation II (APACHE-II) score (>5), white blood cell count (>14.5 x10(3)/dL), blood urea nitrogen (>12 mg/dL), random blood sugar (>150 mg/dL), pulse rate (>100 beats/min) and combinations of the four brief assessments were compared using the z-test. Two-tailed P values less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant. RESULTS Both the Biliary Ranson score >3 and the modified Imrie score >3 had a sensitivity of 96.4% and a specificity of 96.7%. Both the APACHE-II score >5 and random blood sugar >150 mg/dL had a sensitivity of 89.3% which is comparable to a Biliary Ranson score >3 and a modified Imrie score >3. CONCLUSION As compared to a Biliary Ranson score >3, a modified Imrie score >3 and an APACHE-II score >5, random blood sugar >150 mg/dL can be considered as an oversimplified and effective prognostic indicator at admission in patients with gallstone pancreatitis.
PPI-IRO: a two-stage method for protein-protein interaction extraction based on interaction relation ontology

Mining Protein-Protein Interactions (PPIs) from the fast-growing biomedical literature resources has been proven as an effective approach for the identification of biological regulatory networks. This paper presents a novel method based on the idea of Interaction Relation Ontology (IRO), which specifies and organises words of various proteins interaction relationships. Our method is a two-stage PPI extraction method. At first, IRO is applied in a binary classifier to determine whether sentences contain a relation or not. Then, IRO is taken to guide PPI extraction by building sentence dependency parse tree. Comprehensive and quantitative evaluations and detailed analyses are used to demonstrate the significant performance of IRO on relation sentences classification and PPI extraction. Our PPI extraction method yielded a recall of around 80% and 90% and an F1 of around 54% and 66% on corpora of AIMed and BioInfer, respectively, which are superior to most existing extraction methods.
In Division is Strength: Unionism among Sydney Labourers, 1890-1910

This paper addresses two areas which Australian labour historians have neglected. First, they have shown little interest in unionism among labourers working on building and construction. There has also been a general neglect of the patterns of union development in the 20 years after 1890. Historians have been content, on the whole, to concentrate on the establishment and growth of labor parties and state industrial regulation after the major strikes of 1890-4. LInions enter the picture first, as constituent bodies of these parties and then, as one corner of a triangular relationship with parliamentary politics and employers over the introduction and development of the new arbitration systems. Unions only re-emerge in their own right with an upsurge of direct action from about 1907. The traditional interpretation has it that the benefits gained under compulsory arbitration allowed unions to overcome the losses suffered during the nineties and largely accounted for the growth of union organisation after 1901.1
Rethinking basically Economic Assumption on Individual Behavior from Empirical Viewpoints of Evolution and Behavior

Building on the predecessors' thoughts and modern researches from empirical disciplines, and with thinking over the behavior assumption usually held and used by mainstream economics, the paper generalizes three basic assumptions and one explanatory framework on human individual behavior and its process, and stresses hierarchical characteristics in preferences, heterogeneity between learning capacity and learning and, human dealing with and reducing uncertainty from environments in the process of natural evolution, and rethinks the questions of individual rationality, acquirement of behavior mode, intellectual history on "knowledge" in the level of experientialism. The purpose is that along the path of "falsifying a theory" and with the help of empirical results, the paper trys to propose behavioral presuppositions and thinking framework, so that enhancing the effectiveness of economic theory on explaining individual behavior in real situations, and in the end advancing transdisciplinary researches between the empirical and social sciences.
A Phenome-Wide Association Study Through Secondary Uses of Clinical and Research Data

In contrast to genome-wide association studies, we propose a new method to study genetic factors underlying diseases, which we call Phenome-Wide Association Studies. The idea is to use clinically relevant gene variants to simultaneously investigate phenotypes associated with the selected genes. If we use an M by N matrix to represent M phenotypes and N genes, a GWAS study preselects a phenotype (a row) and scan the N genes (columns) in the matrix for genes associated with the phenotype, while a phenome-wide association study preselects a gene (a column) and scan the M phenotypes (rows) associated with the gene. A similar idea (“clinical phenome scanning”) has been suggested 1 , but no actual study has been reported. Electronic Health Records (EHR) are a useful data source for genetic association studies 2 . In this poster, we outline the design of an initial phenome-wide association study on phenotypes associated with the human β2 adrenergic receptor (β2AR) through secondary uses of clinical and research data. In this study, the phenotypes were diseases and problems extracted from both structured and unstructured EHR data.
Evaluation of Processing Technology for Triarrhena sacchariflora (Maxim.) Nakai for Ethanol Production

The effects of dilute H2SO4 concentration, forage:sulfuric acid ratio, digestion time, and digestion temperature were evaluated to determine effects on ethanol yield of Triarrhena sacchariflora (Maxim.) Nakai. Twenty single factor experiments were conducted to evaluate H2SO4 concentration (0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, and 2.5%, w/w), forage:sulfuric acid ratio (1∶6, 1∶8, 1∶10, 1∶12, and 1∶14, g/ml), digestion time (15, 30, 45, 60, and 90, min), digestion temperature (80, 100, 110, 120, and 125 °C) for 3 replicates of the 5 levels of each factor. Based on results of the single factor experiments, an incomplete factorial was designed to evaluate ethanol yield from the best combinations of single factors. Finally, the best combination was tested by enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation experiment in selected combinations according to pretreatment results. Percentage cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin contents of forage residue after pretreatment, and glucose and xylose concentrations of the filtrate were analyzed prior to enzymatic hydrolysis, and percentage crystallinity was observed in untreated grass and pretreated residue. In addition, the solid residues were then hydrolysed and fermented by cellulase and yeast, the concentrations of glucose and ethanol being monitored for 96 h. Results showed that the order of the effect of main effect factors was as follows: digestion temperature > dilute H2SO4 concentration > digestion time > forage:sulfuric acid ratio. The best process parameters evaluated were sulfuric acid concentration of 1.5%, forage:sulfuric acid ratio of 1∶6, digestion time of 15 min, and digestion temperature of 120°C. With this combination of factors, 80% of the cellulose was hydrolysed in 96 h, and 78% converted to ethanol. The findings identified that hemicelluloses were the key deconstruction barrier for pretreatment of Triarrhena sacchariflora (Maxim.) Nakai for ethanol production. The results of this research provide evidence of appropriate combinations of processing factors for production of ethanol from Triarrhena sacchariflora (Maxim.) Nakai.
Innervation of tissue-engineered corneal implants in a porcine model: a 1-year in vivo confocal microscopy study.

PURPOSE To examine the pattern of nerve regeneration within tissue-engineered corneal substitutes grafted into host porcine corneas over a 1-year postoperative period. METHODS Biodegradable corneal substitutes from cross-linked collagen were implanted into the left eyes of 12 pigs by deep lamellar keratoplasty. Regeneration of severed nerves into the central implant region was investigated with in vivo confocal microscopy. Both implant-recipient and control (right) eyes were examined before surgery and 2, 6, 10, and 12 months after surgery, to quantify the number, density, diameter, and branching of nerve fiber bundles at various corneal depths. Transmission electron microscopy was used to confirm the presence of nerve bundles. RESULTS Two months after surgery, corneal nerve ingrowth was observed within the deep anterior stroma, with a number and density of regenerated nerves significantly higher than in nonsurgical control eyes (P < 0.01). Nerves within the superficial anterior stroma regenerated by 6 to 10 months after surgery, and the first subbasal epithelial nerves were seen 10 months after surgery. After 1 year, subbasal nerve density recovered to preoperative levels. Nerve fibers in the deep anterior stroma remained significantly thinner relative to control eyes after 1 year (P < 0.001), where both superficial anterior and subbasal nerve diameter did not change relative to control eyes. CONCLUSIONS The pattern of reinnervation within tissue-engineered corneal substitutes has been quantified in vivo. Innervation proceeded rapidly in the deep anterior stroma, followed by repopulation of more superficial regions. One year after surgery, nerve density within the tissue-engineered cornea increased or remained unchanged relative to controls in all corneal regions examined.
Symmetric Mapping: An architectural pattern for resource supply in grids and clouds

This paper presents the Symmetric Mapping pattern, an architectural pattern for the design of resource supply systems. The focus of Symmetric Mapping is on separation of concerns for cost-effective resource allocation. It divides resource supply in three functions: (1) Users and providers match and engage in resource supply agreements, (2) users place tasks on subscribed resource containers, and (3) providers place supplied resource containers on physical resources. The pattern relies on stakeholders to act for their own interest. The efficiency of the whole system is determined by the degree of freedom left to the three functions and the efficiency of the associated decision systems. We propose a formalism of the Symmetric Mapping pattern, we observe to what extend existing grid and cloud systems follow it, and we propose elements of an original implementation.
Rapidly Deployable Multiprojector Immersive Displays

Immersive, multiprojector systems are a compelling alternative to traditional head-mounted displays and have been growing steadily in popularity. However, the vast majority of these systems have been confined to laboratories or other special purpose facilities and have had little impact on general humancomputer and humanhuman communication models. Cost, infrastructure requirements, and maintenance are all obstacles to the widespread deployment of immersive displays. We address these issues in the design and implementation of the Metaverse. The Metaverse system focuses on a multiprojector scalable display framework that supports automatic detection of devices as they are added/removed from the display environment. Multiple cameras support calibration over wide fields of view for immersive applications with little or no input from the user. The approach is demonstrated on a 24-projector display environment that can be scaled on the fly, reconfigured, and redeployed according to user needs. Using our method, subpixel calibration is possible with little or no user input. Because little effort is required by the user to either install or reconfigure the projectors, rapid deployment of large, immersive displays in somewhat unconstrained environments is feasible.
Molecular Identification of Broomrape Species from a Single Seed by High Resolution Melting Analysis

Broomrapes are holoparasitic plants spreading through seeds. Each plant produces hundreds of thousands of seeds which remain viable in the soils for decades. To limit their spread, drastic measures are being taken and the contamination of a commercial seed lot by a single broomrape seed can lead to its rejection. Considering that broomrapes species identification from a single seed is extremely difficult even for trained botanists and that among all the described species, only a few are really noxious for the crops, numerous seed lots are rejected because of the contamination by seeds of non-noxious broomrape species. The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate a High Resolution Melting assay identifying the eight most noxious and common broomrape species (Phelipanche aegyptiaca, Orobanche cernua, O. crenata, O. cumana, O. foetida, O. hederae, O. minor, and P. ramosa) from a single seed. Based on trnL and rbcL plastidial genes amplification, the designed assay successfully identifies O. cumana, O. cernua, O. crenata, O. minor, O. hederae, and O. foetida; P. ramosa, and P. aegyptiaca can be differentiated from other species but not from each other. Tested on 50 seed lots, obtained results perfectly matched identifications performed by sequencing. Through the analysis of common seed lots by different analysts, the reproducibility of the assay was evaluated at 90%. Despite an original sample preparation process it was not possible to extract enough DNA from some seeds (10% of the samples). The described assay fulfills its objectives and allows an accurate identification of the targeted broomrape species. It can be used to identify contaminants in commercial seed lots or for any other purpose. The assay might be extended to vegetative material.
Evidence for an association between the aetiology of cirrhosis and pattern of hepatocellular carcinoma development

BACKGROUND Patients with liver cirrhosis are at significant risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) that may develop as well defined nodular lesions or as more aggressive infiltrating tumours. AIM To compare prospectively risk factors associated with nodular or infiltrating HCC in cirrhotic patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS We studied 370 patients with cirrhosis, followed prospectively by periodic ultrasound (US) of the liver, for a mean period of 74.6 (SD 32.4) months to define the incidence and patterns of HCC development. Patients who developed HCC were compared according to tumour pattern using univariate and multivariate analysis. RESULTS Sixty one (16.5%) patients developed HCC: HCC was classified as nodular in 49 (80.3%) and infiltrating in 12 (19.7%) according to US and computerised tomography (CT) imaging. The five and 10 year cumulative probabilities were 8.1% (95% confidence interval (CI) 5.2%-11%) and 25.2% (15.0–35.4%) for nodular HCC and 2.1% (0.5–3.7%) and 6.9% (2.1–11.7%) for infiltrating HCC. Patients with infiltrating HCC were younger than those with nodular HCC (59.5 v66.2 years, 95% CI 55.2–63.8 and 64.1–68.3 years; p=0.014). Using multivariate analysis, development of nodular HCC was associated with older age (p=0.0002; relative risk (RR) 3.1; 95% CI 1.6–5.2), longer duration (p=0.09; RR 2.6; 95% CI 1.8–3.4), and more advanced stage (p=0.002; RR 2.5; 95% CI 1.3–4.5) of cirrhosis but not with the aetiology of liver disease. In contrast, development of infiltrating HCC appeared to be unrelated to age or disease duration or stage, while it was associated with hepatitis B virus infection (p=0.07; RR 3.96; 95% CI 1.1–5.2) and with hepatitis B/hepatitis C virus coinfection (p=0.0007; RR 16.9; 95% CI 3.8–36.7). CONCLUSIONS In liver cirrhosis, we identified two patterns of HCC developing with distinct risk factors. Nodular HCC was related to the cirrhotic process per se independent of aetiological factors and may depend on the proliferative activity within regenerative nodules, while the infiltrating form of HCC was linked to hepatitis B virus infection and may reflect more direct virus induced carcinogenesis.
Ion uptake and acid secretion in zebrafish (Danio rerio)

SUMMARY Transepithelial transport is one of the major processes involved in the mechanism of homeostasis of body fluids in vertebrates including fish. The current models of ion regulation in fish gill ionocytes have been proposed mainly based on studies in traditional model species like salmon, trout, tilapia, eel and killifish, but the mechanisms are still being debated due to the lack of convincing molecular physiological evidence. Taking advantage of plentiful genetic databases for zebrafish, we studied the molecular/cellular mechanisms of ion regulation in fish skin/gills. In our recently proposed model, there are at least three subtypes of ionocytes in zebrafish skin/gills: Na+–K+-ATPase-rich (NaR), Na+–Cl– cotransporter (NCC) and H+-ATPase-rich (HR) cells. Specific isoforms of transporters and enzymes have been identified as being expressed by these ionocytes: zECaC, zPMCA2 and zNCX1b by NaR cells; zNCC gill form by NCC cells; and zH+-ATPase, zNHE3b, zCA2-like a and zCA15a by HR cells. Serial molecular physiological experiments demonstrated the distinct roles of these ionocytes in the transport of various ions: HR, NaR and NCC cells are respectively responsible for acid secretion/Na+ uptake, Ca2+ uptake and Cl– uptake. The expression, regulation and function of transporters in HR and NaR cells are much better understood than those in NCC cells. The basolateral transport pathways in HR and NCC cells are still unclear, and the driving forces for the operations of apical NHE and NCC are another unresolved issue. Studies on zebrafish skin/gill ionocytes are providing new insights into fish ion-regulatory mechanisms, but the zebrafish model cannot simply be applied to other species because of species differences and a lack of sufficient molecular physiological evidence in other species.
Binary Encoded Attribute-Pairing Technique for Database Compression

Data Compression makes for more efficient use of disk space, especially if space is expensive or is limited. It also allows better utilization of bandwidth for transfer of data. For relational databases, however, using standard compression techniques like Gzip or Zip does not take advantage of the relational properties , since these techniques do not look at the nature of the data. A large number of databases exist that do not require frequent updates and need to focus more on storage costs and transfer costs. OLAP is an excellent example of the same. In this paper we focus on compression of relational databases, for optimizing storage space. We use bitwise encoding based on distinct attribute values to represent the data in the columns(attributes) of our database. We then further encode the resulting columns pairwise at each stage of our compression. We discuss various observations we have made to pair columns exploiting the properties that exist for the relation, and provide experimental results to support the same. However, one could also choose to compress the database without any prior knowledge of the data. In this case, the pairing of columns for encoding would be in the order in which they occur in the database. For evaluation purposes, we compare our scheme to both Gzip and Zip at every stage, and find that our scheme reduces the database size by a greater extent in most cases.
Character Identification in TV-series via Non-local Cost Aggregation

We propose a non-local cost aggregation algorithm to recognize the identity of face and person tracks in a TV-series. In our approach, the fundamental element for identification is a track node, which is built on top of face and person tracks. Track nodes with temporal dependency are grouped into a knot. These knots then serve as the basic units in the construction of a k-knot graph for exploring the video structure. We build the minimum-distance spanning tree (MST) from the k-knot graph such that track nodes of similar appearance are adjacent to each other in MST. Non-local cost aggregation is performed on MST, which ensures information from face and person tracks is utilized as a whole to improve the identification performance. The identification task is performed by minimizing the cost of each knot, which takes into account the unique presence of a subject in a venue. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.
Optimization of the Efficiency and Linearity in RF Power Amplifiers under Load Variations Using a Reconfigurable Matching Network

This paper presents the application of a reconfigurable matching network (RMN) to improve the efficiency and linearity of an RF power amplifier under load impedance variations. Unlike dynamic load modulation technique, in this paper we consider the state of the RMN remains the same with the input power, but changes depending on the load impedance, a changing parameter in mobile environments. Simulations show relevant improvements in adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR) and efficiency for arbitrary load impedances.
Hepatitis A virus detection in food: current and future prospects

Hepatitis A virus (HAV) is responsible for around half of the total number of hepatitis infections diagnosed worldwide. HAV infection is mainly propagated via the faecal‐oral route and as a consequence of globalisation, transnational outbreaks of foodborne infections are reported with increasing frequency. Molecular procedures are now available and should be employed for the direct surveillance of HAV in food and environmental samples.
A Comparison of a Cave and a Fish Tank VR System for Counting Biological Features in a Volume

Many scientists analyze 3D biological data by counting cells and other structures when automatic algorithms cannot reliably do it. Due to the complicated nature of this data, our hypothesis is that users can count faster and more easily in a CAVE-like environment than in a Fish Tank. Our objective in this work was to determine if there was a difference between these environments in their entirety, with respect to user performance for a counting task. Both environments are standard visualization devices, and for our task we used identical wand-controlled user interfaces. To help test our hypothesis we conducted a user study in which seven subjects performed the counting task in both environments. In general, our results showed that subjects marked cells at a higher rate in the Cave and preferred working in it.