Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dynamic MRI and CAD vs. Choline MRS: Where is the detection level for a lesion characterisation in prostate cancer?

Purpose: To evaluate the role of pre-interventional fused high resolution T2-weighted images with parametrically analysed dynamic contrast enhanced T1-weighted magnetic resonance (MR) images (DCE-MRI) and 1H magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) for a precise biopsy for the detection of prostate cancer and for the delineation of intraprostatic subvolumes for intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). Materials and methods: Inclusion criteria: Pathological prostate-specific antigen values (PSA) and/or previously negative transrectal ultrasound guided biopsy. Standardised biopsy of the prostate divided into 20 regions. Image fusion of coloured parametric maps derived from DCE-MRI and MRS (single voxel spectroscopy, SVS; chemical shift imaging, CSI) with T2 images for morphological localisation using the MR-workstation, a separate CAD-workstation (CAD: computer aided diagnosis) or a radiation treatment planning system. Correlation of these intraprostatic subvolumes with histology and cytokeratin-positive areas in prostatectomy species. Results: DCE-MRI: Sensitivity 82%, specificity 89%, accuracy 88%, positive predictive value 61%, negative predictive value 96%. SVS: Sensitivity 55%, specificity 62%. CSI: Sensitivity 68%, specificity 67%. False positive findings due to prostatitis, adenomatous hyperplasia, false negative findings due to low signal (PIN (prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia), cut-off level for DCE-MRI: lesions smaller 3 mm and less than 30% cancer cells, for SVS: lesions smaller 8 mm and less than 50% cancer cells), for CSI: lesions smaller 4 mm and less than 40% cancer cells. Our MR data are correlated with published choline PET/CT data (PET/CT: hybrid scanner of positron emission tomography and computed tomography). Conclusions: DCE-MRI and MRS are helpful for a precise biopsy of the prostate. The European Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ESTRO) guidelines 2006 for radiation treatment planning of the prostate have to be revised, if the standardised biopsy will be replaced by a lesion-orientated biopsy. Until now it is unclear, if the parametric maps of DCE-MRI and MRS can be used for radiation treatment planning of the prostate.
Polymorphisms within EspA Filaments of Enteropathogenic and Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli

ABSTRACT Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) and enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) possess a filamentous type III secretion system (TTSS) employed to deliver effector proteins into host cells. EspA is a type III secreted protein which forms the filamentous extension to the TTSS and which interacts with host cells during early stages of attaching and effacing (A/E) lesion formation. By immunofluorescence, a polyclonal antibody previously raised to EspA from EPEC strain E2348/69 (O127:H6) stained ∼12-nm-diameter EspA filaments produced by this strain but did not stain similar filaments produced by EHEC serotype O157:H7. Similarly, an antibody that we subsequently raised to EHEC strain 85-170 (O157:H7) EspA stained ∼12-nm-diameter EspA filaments produced by strain 85-170 but did not stain E2348/69 EspA filaments. Given such heterogeneity between EPEC and EHEC EspA filaments, we examined polymorphisms of functional EspA filaments among different EPEC and EHEC serotypes. With use of the EPEC EspA antiserum, EspA filaments were observed only with EPEC serotypes O127:H6 and O55:H6, serotypes which encode an identical EspA protein. When stained with the EHEC EspA antiserum, EspA filaments were detected only on EHEC strains belonging to serotype O157:H7; the EHEC antiserum did, however, stain EspA filaments produced by the closely related EPEC serotype O55:H7 but not filaments of any other EPEC serotype tested. Such polymorphisms among functional EspA filaments of EPEC and EHEC would be expected to have important implications for the development of broad-range EspA-based vaccines.
Optimal electricity pricing in a microgrid network

The evolution of microgrid and its demand-response characteristics not only will change the paradigms of the century-old electric grid but also will shape the electricity market. In this new scenario, once always energy consumers, now may act as sellers due to the excess energy generation from the newly deployed distributed generators (DGs). In this paper, we propose a novel mathematical model and its solution methodology to minimize the overall electricity price. The model is nonlinear and nonconvex due to the nonlinear and nonconvex characteristics of the marginal costs. To solve the minimum electricity price model (MEPM) problem efficiently and optimally, we decompose the problem into two subproblems: overall marginal cost problem (OMCP), and minimum cost allocation problems. A solution of OMCP determines the boundary of the overall marginal costs, and the allocation problem maps the optimal amount of energy from sellers to buyers for minimum price. The MEPM solution uses a divide-and-conquer method that divides the overall marginal cost boundary (solution OMCP) into two and determines the allocations for minimum cost, interactively. We compare MEPM with a first come first serve pricing scheme.
I have taken my umbrella, so of course it does not rain

Spirometry is used worldwide to diagnose respiratory disease, and it is a validated measure to assess airway obstruction. Irreversible airway obstruction is the defining feature of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Thus, an FEV1/FVC ratio <70% is used to diagnose COPD, and the severity is thereafter based on the level of FEV1. This definition is widely used in clinical practice and research, yet may lead to confusion with respect to the diagnosis associated with the presence of airway obstruction. The three main reasons are the following: (1) fixed airflow obstruction may be the result of specific diagnoses such as cystic fibrosis; (2) FEV1/FVC ratio changes with ageing, and it is therefore inappropriate to use the same ratio at 40 and 90 years, leaving aside gender differences; (3) even when specific diagnoses are excluded, fixed airflow obstruction may be the end-stage of many different underlying processes. The authors believe that they have strong arguments that a COPD diagnosis based solely on spirometric values is nonsense. More sophisticated lung function tests, such as plethysmography, forced oscillation and lung clearance index, may help further to delineate the characteristics of low lung function. However, these are not feasible in most clinical contexts and in epidemiologic studies. Therefore, the authors throw down the gauntlet: spirometry is an essential tool in patient evaluation but dangerous for disease diagnosis, and the term COPD should only be used in the appropriate clinical (diagnostic) context.
Matching genetics with oceanography: directional gene flow in a Mediterranean fish species

Genetic connectivity and geographic fragmentation are two opposing mechanisms determining the population structure of species. While the first homogenizes the genetic background across populations the second one allows their differentiation. Therefore, knowledge of processes affecting dispersal of marine organisms is crucial to understand their genetic distribution patterns and for the effective management of their populations. In this study, we use genetic analyses of eleven microsatellites in combination with oceanographic satellite and dispersal simulation data to determine distribution patterns for Serranus cabrilla, a ubiquitous demersal broadcast spawner, in the Mediterranean Sea. Pairwise population FST values ranged between −0.003 and 0.135. Two genetically distinct clusters were identified, with a clear division located between the oceanographic discontinuities at the Ibiza Channel (IC) and the Almeria‐Oran Front (AOF), revealing an admixed population in between. The Balearic Front (BF) also appeared to dictate population structure. Directional gene flow on the Spanish coast was observed as S. cabrilla dispersed from west to east over the AOF, from north to south on the IC and from south of the IC towards the Balearic Islands. Correlations between genetic and oceanographic data were highly significant. Seasonal changes in current patterns and the relationship between ocean circulation patterns and spawning season may also play an important role in population structure around oceanographic fronts.
Forging Ahead and Falling Behind: Changing Regional Inequalities in Post‐reform China

This study analyzes the evolution of China's regional inequalities during the reform period of 1978-1998 based on three geographical scales, both output and livelihood indicators of economic well-being and three measures of inequality. The results indicate that interprovincial and regional inequalities declined between 1978 and 1990, but have widened steadily since 1990. Urban-rural disparity diminished before 1984, then experienced a decade-long surge afterwards to peak in 1994 at a much higher level and since 1994, it has been declining again. The levels of regional inequalities in China appear to be sensitive to changes in government development strategies and regional policies. Differential growth of the provincial economies shaped by the coast-oriented and urban-biased development strategies as well as selective open-door policy implemented by the Chinese government after the reform is the key to understanding the wax and wane in China's regional inequalities. This paper discusses the factors that account for the changing regional inequalities in post-reform China and argues that government policies are likely to continue to influence the future trajectories of inequality change. Copyright 2002 Gatton College of Business and Economics, University of Kentucky.
Company growth and Board attitudes to corporate social responsibility

Companies are beginning to recognise the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as presenting a new business model and an opportunity for building innovative forms of competitive advantage. Boards are instrumental in shaping and overseeing such strategies and active engagement around what it means to be a responsible and responsive enterprise can strengthen the Board's potential as a strategic influence on long-term value creation. Yet many companies align with Friedman's contention that adopting and practising CSR is a distraction from their core obligation, which is to act in their shareholders' best interests. Based on directors' perceptions, the paper examines responses by Boards to socially related aspects of their governance role and reports on their external orientation and receptiveness toward wider social obligations. The findings suggest that these Boards hold a narrow view of their fiduciary duty, which is closer to the shareholder model than the stakeholder approach to corporate governance.
Appraisal of Opportunities and Perspectives for the Systematic Condition Assessment of Heritage Sites with Copernicus Sentinel-2 High-Resolution Multispectral Imagery

Very high-resolution (VHR) optical satellite imagery (≤5 m) is nowadays an established source of information to monitor cultural and archaeological heritage that is exposed to hazards and anthropogenic threats to their conservation, whereas few publications specifically investigate the role that regularly acquired images from high-resolution (HR) satellite sensors (5–30 m) may play in this application domain. This paper aims to appraise the potential of the multispectral constellation Sentinel-2 of the European Commission Earth observation programme Copernicus to detect prominent features and changes in heritage sites, during both ordinary times and crisis. We test the 10 m spatial resolution of the 3 visible spectral bands of Sentinel-2 for substantiation of single local events—that is, wall collapses in the UNESCO World Heritage site of the Old City of Aleppo (Syria)—and for hotspot mapping of recurrent incidents—that is, the archaeological looting in the archaeological site of Apamea (Syria). By screening long Sentinel-2 time series consisting of 114 images for Aleppo and 57 images for Apamea, we demonstrate that changes of textural properties and surface reflectance can be logged accurately in time and space and can be associated to events relevant for conservation. VHR imagery from Google Earth was used for the validation and identification of trends occurring prior to the Sentinel-2 launch. We also demonstrate how to exploit the Sentinel-2 short revisiting time (5 days) and large swath (290 km) for multi-temporal tracking of spatial patterns of urban sprawl across the cultural landscape of the World Heritage Site of Cyrene (Libya), and the three coastal ancient Greek sites of Tocra, Ptolemais, and Apollonia in Cyrenaica. With the future development of tailored machine learning approaches of feature extraction and pattern detection, Sentinel-2 can become extremely useful to screen wider regions with short revisiting times and to undertake comparative condition assessment analyses of different heritage sites.
A new climate dataset for systematic assessments of climate change impacts as a function of global warming

Abstract. In the ongoing political debate on climate change, global mean temperature change (ΔTglob) has become the yardstick by which mitigation costs, impacts from unavoided climate change, and adaptation requirements are discussed. For a scientifically informed discourse along these lines, systematic assessments of climate change impacts as a function of ΔTglob are required. The current availability of climate change scenarios constrains this type of assessment to a narrow range of temperature change and/or a reduced ensemble of climate models. Here, a newly composed dataset of climate change scenarios is presented that addresses the specific requirements for global assessments of climate change impacts as a function of ΔTglob. A pattern-scaling approach is applied to extract generalised patterns of spatially explicit change in temperature, precipitation and cloudiness from 19 Atmosphere–Ocean General Circulation Models (AOGCMs). The patterns are combined with scenarios of global mean temperature increase obtained from the reduced-complexity climate model MAGICC6 to create climate scenarios covering warming levels from 1.5 to 5 degrees above pre-industrial levels around the year 2100. The patterns are shown to sufficiently maintain the original AOGCMs' climate change properties, even though they, necessarily, utilise a simplified relationships between ΔTglob and changes in local climate properties. The dataset (made available online upon final publication of this paper) facilitates systematic analyses of climate change impacts as it covers a wider and finer-spaced range of climate change scenarios than the original AOGCM simulations.
Strategic analysis of the Edinburgh FCTT: a framework for research.

Edinburgh's festivals are world renowned for their eclecticism. As their number grew and reach widened the coordination of the festivals became a complex and demanding organisational task for managers, and venue owners/operators introduced greater professionalism to tackle the challenges. With an increasing number of stakeholders and growing national and international competition, festival venue operators embraced managerialism in organisational processes. Economic realism (rather than social welfare) was upgraded to inform the ethos in any public spending and privatisations in services were introduced in line with galloping commercialisation in leisure consumption. Edinburgh's festival venue organisers have not been immune to rapid structural changes in Britain. The paper seeks to a) present the conceptual underpinnings and methodological framework for evaluating the circumstances faced by a major festival venue operator, the Edinburgh Festival City Theatres' Trust (FCTT), (as perceived by its key internal and external stakeholders) and b) to discuss the use of such a framework for facilitating strategic option decisions. The case study methodology proposed allows the in-depth analysis of the venue organisation's goals and any risks jeopardising their achievement as well as perceived structural and environmental circumstances. Other cultural organisations may also utilise this approach to strategic analysis for organisational development. The paper concludes with a reflection upon the research framework, challenges faced and lessons learnt while utilising it out for the FCTT.
A Very Virulent Genotype of Infectious Bursal Disease Virus Predominantly Associated with Recurrent Infectious Bursal Disease Outbreaks in Tunisian Vaccinated Flocks

Outbreaks of infectious bursal disease (IBD) still continue to afflict the Tunisian poultry industry even in those flocks where the vaccination program is strictly applied. To characterize the viruses that circumvent protection provided by vaccination, field isolates of infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) obtained from vaccinated flocks that have repeatedly experienced IBDV outbreak episodes were analyzed from bursal samples by reverse transcription coupled with polymerase chain reaction and dideoxynucleotide sequencing of the VP2 hypervariable region. Although sequence data were obtained from samples collected from three distinct flocks over a period of 3 years, only limited sequence variation has been observed. The few nucleotide changes were silent and the deduced amino acid sequences were identical. Thus, the virus population that predominates in the field seems to represent a homogeneous antigenic pool. Compared with the VP2 sequences of several IBDV strains, this predominant pool was found to be closely related to the very virulent (vv) IBDV viruses described in Europe and Asia. Sequence and phylogenetic analysis of the precursor polyprotein coding sequence of a representative Tunisian isolate further confirmed its assignment to the vv genotype. The deduced amino acid sequence of the whole polyprotein of the Tunisian isolate was found to be identical to a South Korean IBDV strain. Alignment of the polyprotein amino acid sequence of 35 IBDV strains identified additional mutations outside the VP2 variable domain and which occur frequently in vv strains. Based on this comparative analysis, the set of amino acid residues that should represent a typical vv profile involves Ala222, Ile242, Ile256, Ile294, Leu451, Tyr680, N685, Ser715, Asp751, Val990, and Ala1005. Such a combination of amino acid changes was observed for the majority of vvIBDV strains that define a distinct phylogroup.
Detection of cis -element clusters in higher eukaryotic DNA

MOTIVATION Computational prediction and analysis of transcription regulatory regions in DNA sequences has the potential to accelerate greatly our understanding of how cellular processes are controlled. We present a hidden Markov model based method for detecting regulatory regions in DNA sequences, by searching for clusters of cis-elements. RESULTS When applied to regulatory targets of the transcription factor LSF, this method achieves a sensitivity of 67%, while making one prediction per 33 kb of non-repetitive human genomic sequence. When applied to muscle specific regulatory regions, we obtain a sensitivity and prediction rate that compare favorably with one of the best alternative approaches. Our method, which we call Cister, can be used to predict different varieties of regulatory region by searching for clusters of cis-elements of any type chosen by the user. Cister is simple to use and is available on the web. AVAILABILITY http://sullivan.bu.edu/~mfrith/cister.shtml. CONTACT mfrith@bu.edu; zhiping@bu.edu.
The Role of Vegetables and Legumes in Assuring Food, Nutrition, and Income Security for Vulnerable Groups in Sub-Saharan Africa

Rising food and nutritional insecurity threatens the livelihoods of millions of poor people, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Vegetable and legume production and consumption are a potent mechanism for small-scale, disadvantaged farmers to obtain the required nutrients in their diets and to generate much-needed income through trade. Vegetables and legumes are key sources of nutrients and health-promoting phytochemicals, providing higher micronutrient contents and a wider spectrum of essential compounds to meet nutritional and health needs than other food sources. Diversifying diets with vegetables and legumes is a cheaper, surer, and more sustainable way to supply a range of nutrients to the body and combat malnutrition and associated health problems than other approaches that target only a single or a few nutritional factors. Furthermore, vegetables and legumes often accompany staple crops in meals, and most staple crops are less palatable without vegetable or legume accompaniments. As a growing world population demands more and higher quality foods, and as environmental problems such as soil degradation, water scarcity, biodiversity loss, and climate change become more acute, the need for innovative vegetable and legume research solutions to improve food and nutritional security cannot be overemphasized.
Bacteriocin (klebocin) sensitivity typing of klebsiella

High-titer preparations of Klebsiella bacteriocins (klebocins) were obtained by using mitomycin to induce standard strains of Klebsiella. Of 296 clinical isolates of Klebsiella, 67% could be typed on the basis of their sensitivity to klebocins. The method proposed in this paper affords a standard basis for the further development of klebocin typing as a suitable procedure for hospital laboratories concerned with epidemiological investigations of hospital-associated infections. Evidence is also provided to show that high-titered klebocin typing can be used in conjunction with biochemical typing to provide a sensitive epidemiological marker for Klebsiella.
Imagine it for me: Generative Adversarial Approach for Zero-Shot Learning from Noisy Texts

Most existing zero-shot learning methods consider the problem as a visual semantic embedding one. Given the demonstrated capability of Generative Adversarial Networks(GANs) to generate images, we instead leverage GANs to imagine unseen categories from text descriptions and hence recognize novel classes with no examples being seen. Specifically, we propose a simple yet effective generative model that takes as input noisy text descriptions about an unseen class (e.g.Wikipedia articles) and generates synthesized visual features for this class. With added pseudo data, zero-shot learning is naturally converted to a traditional classification problem. Additionally, to preserve the inter-class discrimination of the generated features, a visual pivot regularization is proposed as an explicit supervision. Unlike previous methods using complex engineered regularizers, our approach can suppress the noise well without additional regularization. Empirically, we show that our method consistently outperforms the state of the art on the largest available benchmarks on Text-based Zero-shot Learning.
How Should Foreign Retailers Deal With Chinese Consumers? A Cross-National Comparison of the Formation of Customer Satisfaction

China is becoming one of the world's most attractive retail markets. Though the literature lacks a comprehensive theory on country differences in the formation of customer satisfaction, such knowledge would enable foreign retailers to better adapt their marketing strategies to Chinese consumers. This study creates such a theory and tests it with data from seven countries. Hierarchical linear modeling shows that country differences in economic development and culture influence both (a) the level of customer satisfaction and (b) how customer satisfaction is influenced by its antecedents. Additional analyses specifically inform foreign retailers about how to adapt to Chinese consumer needs.