Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Plasma Fibroblast Growth Factor 23 Concentration Is Increased and Predicts Mortality in Patients on the Liver-Transplant Waiting List

High plasma fibroblast growth factor-23 (FGF23) concentration predicts the risk of death and poor outcomes in patients with chronic kidney disease or chronic heart failure. We checked if FGF23 concentration could be modified in patients with end stage liver disease (ESLD) and predict mortality. We measured plasma FGF23 in 200 patients with ESLD registered on a liver transplant waiting list between January 2005 and October 2008. We found that median plasma FGF23 concentration was above normal values in 63% of the patients. Increased FGF23 concentration was not explained by its classical determinants: hyperphosphataemia, increased calcitriol concentration or decreased renal function. FGF23 concentration correlated with the MELD score, serum sodium concentration, and GFR. Forty-six patients died before being transplanted and 135 underwent liver transplantation. We analyzed the prognostic value of FGF23 levels. Mortality was significantly associated with FGF23 levels, the MELD score, serum sodium concentration and glomerular filtration rate. On multivariate analyses only FGF23 concentration was associated with mortality. FGF23 levels were independent of the cause of the liver disease. To determine if the damaged liver can produce FGF23 we measured plasma FGF23 concentration and liver FGF23 mRNA expression in control and diethyl-nitrosamine (DEN)-treated mice. FGF23 plasma levels increased with the apparition of liver lesions in DEN-treated mice and that FGF23 mRNA expression, which was undetectable in the liver of control mice, markedly increased with the development of liver lesions. The correlation between FGF23 plasma concentration and FGF23 mRNA expression in DEN-treated mice suggests that FGF23 production by the liver accounts for the increased plasma FGF23 concentration. In conclusion chronic liver lesions can induce expression of FGF23 mRNA leading to increased FGF23 concentration, which is associated with a higher mortality in patients on a liver-transplant waiting list. In these patients FGF23 concentration was the best predictor of mortality.
Unseen Affective Faces Influence Person Perception Judgments in Schizophrenia

To demonstrate the influence of unconscious affective processing on consciously processed information among people with and without schizophrenia, we used a continuous flash suppression (CFS) paradigm to examine whether early and rapid processing of affective information influences first impressions of structurally neutral faces. People with and without schizophrenia rated visible neutral faces as more or less trustworthy, warm, and competent when paired with unseen smiling or scowling faces compared to when paired with unseen neutral faces. Yet, people with schizophrenia also exhibited a deficit in explicit affect perception. These findings indicate that early processing of affective information is intact in schizophrenia but the integration of this information with semantic contexts is problematic. Furthermore, people with schizophrenia who were more influenced by smiling faces presented outside awareness reported experiencing more anticipatory pleasure, suggesting that the ability to rapidly process affective information is important for anticipation of future pleasurable events.
Towards a New Evaluation Approach in Computational Narrative Systems

Evaluation is one of the major open problems in computational creativity research. Existing evaluation methods, either focusing on system performance or on user interaction, do not fully capture the important aspects of these systems as cultural artifacts. In this position paper, we examine existing evaluation methods in the area of computational narrative, and identify several important properties of stories and reading that have so far been overlooked in empirical studies. Our preliminary work recognizes empirical literary studies as a valuable resource to develop a more balanced evaluation approach for computational narrative systems.
Tracing latitudinal gradient, river discharge and water masses along the subtropical South American coast using benthic Foraminifera assemblages.

More than 30% of Buccella peruviana (D'Orbigny), Globocassidulina crassa porrecta (Earland & Heron-Allen), Cibicides mackannai (Galloway & Wissler) and C. refulgens (Montfort) indicate the presence of cold Sub Antarctic Shelf Water in winter, from 33.5 to 38. 3º S, deeper than 100 m, in the southern part of the study area. In summer, the abundance of this association decreases to less than 15% around 37.5-38. 9º S where two species (Globocassidulina subglobosa (Brady), Uvigerina peregrina (Cushman) take over. G. subglobosa, U. peregrina, and Hanzawaia boueana (D'Orbigny) are found at 27-33º S in both seasons in less than 55 m deep in the northern part, and are linked with warm Subtropical Shelf Water and Tropical Water. Freshwater influence was signalized by high silicate concentration and by the presence of Pseudononion atlanticum (Cushman), Bolivina striatula (Cushman), Buliminella elegantissima (D'Orbigny), Bulimina elongata (D'Orbigny), Elphidium excavatum (Terquem), E. poeyanum (D'Orbigny), Ammobaculites exiguus (Cushman & Brönnimann), Arenoparrella mexicana (Kornfeld), Gaudryina exillis (Cushman & Brönnimann), Textularia earlandi (Parker) and thecamoebians in four sectors of the shelf. The presence of Bulimina marginata (D'Orbigny) between 34.1-32. 8º S in the winter and 34.2-32. 7º S in the summer indicates that the influence of the Subtropical Shelf Front on the sediment does not change seasonally, otherwise, the presence of Angulogerina angulosa (Williamson) in the winter, only in Mar del Plata (38.9º S), show that Malvinas currents are not influencing the sediment in the summer.
UML Diagrams and Source based Automatic Test Suite Regeneration for Improving State Model Coverage

Automated test regeneration intends to ensure high coverage of system model from an existing test suite. While regenerating test suite, most of the existing techniques ignore coverage achieved by existing test suite. As a result, these techniques leave important model elements untested. Thus, an automatic test regeneration technique to achieve high state model coverage is proposed. In the proposed technique, Input Parser module processes inputted UML diagrams, source code and test suite as XML elements, source class and test steps respectively. The Coverage Computational module measures model coverage result by executing the existing test suite. Finally, Test Regeneration module regenerates executable test cases considering coverage result, UML and source information. The experimental results on four projects show that the proposed technique improves transition and state coverage of existing test suite on average by 61.26% and 52.95% respectively. Moreover, the technique has also successfully regenerated 98% executable test cases.
Towards multi-rigid body localization

In this paper we focus on the relative position and orientation estimation between rigid bodies in an anchorless scenario. Several sensor units are installed on the rigid platforms, and the sensor placement on the rigid bodies is known beforehand (i.e., relative locations of the sensors on the rigid body are known). However, the absolute position of the rigid bodies is not known. We show that the relative localization of rigid bodies amounts to the estimation of a rotation matrix and the relative distance between the centroids of the rigid bodies. We measure all the unknown pairwise distances between the sensors, which we use in a constrained least squares estimator. Furthermore, we also allow missing links between the sensors. The simulations support the developed theory.
Automated Question Answering System

We present SFS-QA , an automatic real-time question-answering system, that can answer free-text questions within a minute. SFS-QA system analyzes a question and transforms it into a boolean key-word query using Stanford Dependency Parser and MetaMap tagger. The query is used to obtain matching web pages from the World Wide Web through Google Search API. In addition, two speciﬁc data sources: Yahoo! Answers and Wikipedia are used for matching the documents. The resulting web pages are mined for candidate answers. Finally, Learning to Rank based LambdaMart, and Recurrent Neural Network based BLSTM algorithms are used to learn, rank, and select the best answer from candidate answers. For empirical evaluation, TREC LiveQA 2015 and 2016 datasets which consist of about 1000 questions each were used. The results demonstrate that our system substantially outperforms strong baselines.
Skeletal Growth Dysregulation in Australian Male Infants and Toddlers With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Recent findings suggest that children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are larger in size for head circumference (HC), height, and weight compared to typically developing (TD) children; however, little is known about their rate of growth, especially in height and weight. The current study aimed to: (a) confirm and extend upon previous findings of early generalized overgrowth in ASD; and (b) determine if there were any differences in the rate of growth between infants and toddlers with ASD compared to their TD peers. Measurements of HC, height, and weight were available for 135 boys with ASD and 74 TD boys, from birth through 3 years of age. Size and growth rate in HC, height, and weight were analyzed using a linear mixed‐effects model. Infants with ASD were significantly smaller in size at birth for HC, body length, and weight compared to TD infants (all P < 0.05); however, they grew at a significantly faster rate in HC and height in comparison to the TD children (P < 0.001); there was no significant difference between the groups in growth rate for weight (P > 0.05). The results confirmed that male infants and toddlers with ASD exhibit skeletal growth dysregulation early in life. Autism Res 2018, 11: 846–856. © 2018 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Dose-escalated CHOEP for the treatment of young patients with aggressive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma: II. Results of the randomized high-CHOEP trial of the German High-Grade Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma Study Group (DSHNHL).

BACKGROUND The addition of etoposide to combination chemotherapy with cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine and prednisone [etoposide to combination chemotherapy with cyclophosphamide, vincristine and prednisone (CHOEP)] improved outcome of young patients with good-prognosis aggressive lymphoma. To improve results further, the maximal dose-escalated version of CHOEP-21 tolerable without stem-cell support (high CHOEP: cyclophosphamide 1400 mg/m2, doxorubicin 65 mg/m2, vincristine 2 mg, etoposide 175 mg/m2 x3, prednisone 100 mg x5) was compared with CHOEP-21. PATIENTS AND METHODS Intention-to-treat analysis of 389 young (18-60 years) patients with good-prognosis (age-adjusted International Prognostic Index = 0, 1) aggressive lymphoma randomized to CHOEP-21 (n = 194) or high CHOEP (n = 195). RESULTS There was no difference in 3-year event-free (64% versus 67%; P = 0.734) or overall survival (83% versus 87%; P = 0.849). Neither low-risk nor low-intermediate risk patients benefited from high CHOEP. High CHOEP was more toxic than CHOEP-21 (grades 3 and 4 leukocytopenia 100% versus 87.2%, P < 0.001; thrombocytopenia 80.8% versus 9.6%, P < 0.001; infections 35% versus 11%, P < 0.001; therapy-associated deaths 3.1% versus 0%, P = 0.03). CONCLUSION Dose-escalated CHOEP-21 does not provide clinical benefit for young patients with good-prognosis aggressive lymphomas. Since differences between chemotherapy regimens are compressed by the addition of rituximab, the results of this trial have bearing on strategies aiming to improve outcome of good-prognosis aggressive lymphomas in the rituximab era.
In Vivo and in Situ Spectroscopic Imaging by a Handheld Stimulated Raman Scattering Microscope

Spectroscopic stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) microscopy is a label-free technique that generates chemical maps of live cells or tissues. A handheld SRS imaging system using an optical fiber for laser delivery will further enable in situ and in vivo compositional analysis for applications such as medical diagnosis and surgical guidance. In fiber-delivered SRS, the interaction of two ultrashort pulses in the confined mode area creates a significant background that overwhelms the stimulated Raman signal from a sample. Here, we report the first background-free fiber-delivered handheld SRS microscope for in situ chemical imaging. By temporally separating the two ultrafast pulses propagating in the fiber and then overlapping them on a sample through a highly dispersive material, we detected a stimulated Raman signal that is 200 times weaker than the background induced by the fiber. Broad applications of the handheld SRS microscope were demonstrated through in situ ambient-light chemical mapping of pesticide .
Effective metering data aggregation for smart grid communication infrastructure

Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) systems have been developed to perform automated meter reading, reduce peak loads, and use energy efficiently. Two issues exist regarding this system. The first issue is the communication and handling of consumer data concerning electricity collected by power utilities. The second issue is the management of communication network resources and scheduling of metering to avoid congestions and communication errors. The major device for addressing these two issues is a concentrator that acts as a data relay point in an AMI system. The concentrator collects data from the meter and sends them through communication networks. This study discusses the aggregation methods of the concentrator with respect to the aforementioned two issues and proposes a method to reduce network utilization and message size on a server. The method concatenates small smart metering messages sent from relevant meters. The traditional method aggregates and concatenates messages without numerical processing. The proposed method processes messages at the concentrator to reduce total message size and calculation cost on the server. Moreover, the method that combines the traditional and proposed methods was evaluated by considering a real-world case. These methods were simulated by using an ns-3 network simulator to evaluate their efficiency in sending messages concerning the volume of power consumption to the server. The results of the simulations show that the proposed methods reduce message size by as much as 98.5% in some cases and, by means of the concentrator, shorten the communication time between meters and the server. The proposed method can help to reduce loads on networks and servers.
Measuring quality of life of people with predementia and dementia and their caregivers: a systematic review protocol

Introduction Dementia is the fastest growing major cause of disability globally and may have a profound impact on the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of both the patient with dementia and those who care for them. This review aims to systematically identify and synthesise the measurements of HRQoL for people with, and their caregivers across the full spectrum of, dementia from its preceding stage of predementia to end of life. Methods and analysis A systematic literature review was conducted in Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online , ExcerptaMedicadataBASE, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews , Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effect, National Health Service Economic Evaluation Database and PsycINFO between January 1990 and the end of April 2017. Two reviewers will independently assess each study for inclusion and disagreements will be resolved by a third reviewer. Data will be extracted using a predefined data extraction form following best practice. Study quality will be assessed with the Effective Public Health Practice Project quality assessment tool. HRQoL measurements will be presented separately for people with dementia and caregivers by instrument used and, when possible, HRQoL will be reported by disease type and stage of the disease. Descriptive statistics of the results will be provided. A narrative synthesis of studies will also be provided discussing differences in HRQoL measurements by instrument used to estimate it, type of dementia and disease severity. Ethics and dissemination This systematic literature review is exempt from ethics approval because the work is carried out on published documents. The findings of the review will be disseminated in a related peer-reviewed journal and presented at conferences. They will also contribute to the work developed in the Real World Outcomes across the Alzheimer’s disease spectrum for better care: multimodal data access platform (ROADMAP). Trial registration number CRD42017071416.
I/O efficient QR and QZ algorithms

The QR algorithm solves the standard eigenvalue problem. Analogously, the QZ-algorithm solves the generalised eigenvalue problem. Both are iterative algorithms. We study these algorithms on the External Memory model introduced by Aggarwal and Vitter and analyse them for their 110 and seek complexities. We analyse the multi shift QR algorithm [1]; this algorithm chases m × m bulges, where m is the number of shifts, using both matrix-vector and matrix-matrix operations. We also investigate the small-bulge multishift QR algorithm [2] which was proposed to avoid the phenomenon called shift blurring. We propose a tile based small-bulge multi shift QR algorithm which is scalable and more amenable for multicore architecture than the traditional panel based algorithms and that under certain conditions of the number of shifts has better seek and 110 complexities. We prove analogous results for the QZ algorithm [3] too.
Spectral Magnitude Minimum Mean-Square Error Estimation Using Binary and Continuous Gain Functions

Recently, binary mask techniques have been proposed as a tool for retrieving a target speech signal from a noisy observation. A binary gain function is applied to time-frequency tiles of the noisy observation in order to suppress noise dominated and retain target dominated time-frequency regions. When implemented using discrete Fourier transform (DFT) techniques, the binary mask techniques can be seen as a special case of the broader class of DFT-based speech enhancement algorithms, for which the applied gain function is not constrained to be binary. In this context, we develop and compare binary mask techniques to state-of-the-art continuous gain techniques. We derive spectral magnitude minimum mean-square error binary gain estimators; the binary gain estimators turn out to be simple functions of the continuous gain estimators. We show that the optimal binary estimators are closely related to a range of existing, heuristically developed, binary gain estimators. The derived binary gain estimators perform better than existing binary gain estimators in simulation experiments with speech signals contaminated by several different noise sources as measured by speech quality and intelligibility measures. However, even the best binary mask method is significantly outperformed by state-of-the-art continuous gain estimators. The instrumental intelligibility results are confirmed in an intelligibility listening test.
Two cycles of doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine plus extended-field radiotherapy is superior to radiotherapy alone in early favorable Hodgkin's lymphoma: final results of the GHSG HD7 trial.

PURPOSE To investigate whether combined-modality treatment (CMT) with two cycles of doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine (ABVD) followed by extended-field radiotherapy (EF-RT) is superior to EF-RT alone in patients with early favorable Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL). PATIENTS AND METHODS Between 1993 and 1998, 650 patients with newly diagnosed, histology-proven HL in clinical stages IA to IIB without risk factors were enrolled onto this multicenter study and randomly assigned to receive 30 Gy EF-RT plus 10 Gy to the involved field (arm A) or two cycles of ABVD followed by the same radiotherapy (arm B). Results At a median observation time of 87 months, there was no difference between treatment arms in terms of complete response rate (arm A, 95%; arm B, 94%) and overall survival (at 7 years: arm A, 92%; arm B, 94%; P = .43). However, freedom from treatment failure was significantly different, with 7-year rates of 67% in arm A (95% CI, 61% to 73%) and 88% in arm B (95% CI, 84% to 92%; P <or= .0001). This was due mainly to significantly more relapses after EF-RT only (arm A, 22%; arm B, 3%). No patient treated with CMT experienced relapse before year 3. Relapses were treated mainly with bleomycin, etoposide, doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide, vincristine, procarbazine, and prednisone, or with the combination cyclophosphamide, vincristine, procarbazine, and prednisone/ABVD; treatment of relapse was significantly more successful in arm A than in arm B (P = .017). In total, there were 39 second malignancies, with 21 in arm A and 18 in arm B, respectively. The incidence was approximately 0.8% per year during years 2 to 9 and was highest in older patients (P < .0001) and those with "B" symptoms (P = .012). CONCLUSION CMT consisting of two cycles of ABVD plus EF-RT is more effective than EF-RT alone.
Morphology and biomechanical characteristics of the proximal femur after impaction allografting

For millions of patients world-wide, primary total hip replacement (THR) is an effective way to improve quality of life. Failed THRs are often associated with extensive bone loss which makes the revision difficult. An established technique uses impacted morsellized allograft bone to reconstruct the proximal femur and ensure a rigid accommodation of the cemented revision component. There remains a fundamental lack of understanding of the impaction allografting procedure and its complications, particularly with its morphology and biomechanical characteristics. The objectives of this thesis were to i) describe the morphology after impaction allografting in the femur, ii) incorporate a computer simulation that should help the orthopaedic surgeon to control the morphology during surgery, iii) determine how the morphology affects the immediate strength of the host bone interface, and iv) develop an animal model to investigate the changes in composite morphology and strength with postoperative healing. Around the middle third of the stem, virtually the entire femoral canal was filled with cement, thereby forming a cement-allograft composite, whereas in other locations a pure allograft-host bone interface was found. The computer simulation suggested that cement penetration could be controlled by varying graft impaction and limiting cement volume injection. Cement penetration up to the endosteal surface significantly enhanced the host bone interface strength. In the animal study, the strength of the composite-host bone interface increased significantly at 3 weeks and was higher than the pure allograft construct. In contrast to the composite, the pure allograft construct failed at the cementallograft interface. At 6 weeks the interface strength of the composite decreased, presumably due to cortical cancellation caused by damaged endosteal circulation. Cement penetration to the endosteal surface appears to be important for immediate postoperative clinical stability. However, the presence of the cement does not allow reconstitution of the host bone stock. Cortical cancellisation and medullary canal widening caused by a damaged endosteal circulation may be responsible for clinically unstable implants postoperatively. These findings suggest that the optimal reconstruction provide clinical stability without the , cement reaching the endosteal surface, thereby enabling revascularisation and subsequent bone remodelling.