Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
“One-Stop Shop”: Free-Breathing Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Kidney Using Iterative Reconstruction and Continuous Golden-Angle Radial Sampling

Aims and ObjectivesThe purpose of the present study was to evaluate a recently introduced technique for free-breathing dynamic contrast-enhanced renal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) applying a combination of radial k-space sampling, parallel imaging, and compressed sensing. The technique allows retrospective reconstruction of 2 motion-suppressed sets of images from the same acquisition: one with lower temporal resolution but improved image quality for subjective image analysis, and one with high temporal resolution for quantitative perfusion analysis. Materials and MethodsIn this study, 25 patients underwent a kidney examination, including a prototypical fat-suppressed, golden-angle radial stack-of-stars T1-weighted 3-dimensional spoiled gradient-echo examination (GRASP) performed after contrast agent administration during free breathing. Images were reconstructed at temporal resolutions of 55 spokes per frame (6.2 seconds) and 13 spokes per frame (1.5 seconds). The GRASP images were evaluated by 2 blinded radiologists. First, the reconstructions with low temporal resolution underwent subjective image analysis: the radiologists assessed the best arterial phase and the best renal phase and rated image quality score for each patient on a 5-point Likert-type scale.In addition, the diagnostic confidence was rated according to a 3-point Likert-type scale. Similarly, respiratory motion artifacts and streak artifacts were rated according to a 3-point Likert-type scale.Then, the reconstructions with high temporal resolution were analyzed with a voxel-by-voxel deconvolution approach to determine the renal plasma flow, and the results were compared with values reported in previous literature. ResultsReader 1 and reader 2 rated the overall image quality score for the best arterial phase and the best renal phase with a median image quality score of 4 (good image quality) for both phases, respectively. A high diagnostic confidence (median score of 3) was observed. There were no respiratory motion artifacts in any of the patients. Streak artifacts were present in all of the patients, but did not compromise diagnostic image quality.The estimated renal plasma flow was slightly higher (295 ± 78 mL/100 mL per minute) than reported in previous MRI-based studies, but also closer to the physiologically expected value. ConclusionsDynamic, motion-suppressed contrast-enhanced renal MRI can be performed in high diagnostic quality during free breathing using a combination of golden-angle radial sampling, parallel imaging, and compressed sensing. Both morphologic and quantitative functional information can be acquired within a single acquisition.
Redefining CMOS logic style for subthreshold operation

Sub-threshold design of CMOS logic circuits is important for ultra low-power operation. With continuous scaling of MOS devices to nanometer sizes however, conventional CMOS logic style may not function properly at 65nm and below due to a variety of leakage currents flowing. Thus alternative logic styles, such as, transmission-gate, have been proposed for sub-threshold operation in nanometer regime. In this work, a new CMOS logic style, that results in reduced leakage currents both in active and idle modes of operation leading to a better static and dynamic performance, is proposed. Simulations have been carried out in Cadence Spectre to verify the functionality of the gates using standard 65nm technology. Results indicate that static power reduction of up to 25% has been achieved. The utility of the new logic style is demonstrated with a 1-bit full-adder circuit.
The Antibacterial and Anticancer Activity of Marine Actinomycete Strain HP411 Isolated in the Northern Coast of Vietnam

— Since the marine environmental conditions are extremely different from the other ones, marine actinomycetes might produce novel bioactive compounds. Therefore, actinomycete strains were screened from marine water and sediment samples collected from the coastal areas of Northern Vietnam. Ninety-nine actinomycete strains were obtained on starch-casein agar media by dilution technique, only seven strains, named HP112, HP12, HP411, HPN11, HP 11, HPT13 and HPX12, showed significant antibacterial activity against both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria ( Bacillus subtilis ATCC 6633, Staphylococcus epidemidis ATCC 12228, Escherichia coli ATCC 11105). Further studies were carried out with the most active HP411 strain against Candida albicans ATCC 10231. This strain could grow rapidly on starch casein agar and other media with high salt containing 7-10% NaCl at 28-30 o C. Spore-chain of HP411 showed an elongated and circular shape with 10 to 30 spores/chain. Identification of the strain was carried out by employing the taxonomical studies including the 16S rRNA sequence. Based on phylogenetic and phenotypic evidence it is proposed that HP411 to be belongs to species Streptomyces variabilis . The potent of the crude extract of fermentation broth of HP411 that are effective against wide range of pathogens: both gram-positive, gram-negative and fungi. Further studies revealed that the crude extract HP411 could obtain the anticancer activity for cancer cell lines: Hep-G2 (liver cancer cell line); RD (cardiac and skeletal muscle letters cell line); FL (membrane of the uterus cancer cell line). However, the actinomycetes from marine ecosystem will be useful for the discovery of new drugs in the future.
Directive EBG Antennas Based on Lattice Modes

The emission of radiators can be shaped by means of electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) materials exploiting proper Bloch waves supported by the lattice rather than its bandgaps. So far, such a method has relied only on the dispersion diagram of the periodic structure, i.e., on the eigenvalues of the lattice, neglecting the particular configuration of the associated eigenfunction. This paper explores the radiation mechanism under a novel viewpoint, which is mostly focused on the electric field pattern of lattice modes, allowing a deeper understanding of the underlying physics. Such an approach is profitably used here to improve the performance of antennas based on different Bloch waves by reducing spurious lattice modes. Geometrical configurations coupled to a line source are provided with little adjustments, getting EBGs to work at a frequency where they had no bandgap originally. As a proof-of-concept of the proposed perspectives, a compact antenna using a cheap low-permittivity dielectric is conceived, fabricated, and successfully tested.
Multipliers on Spaces of Analytic Functions

Abstract In the paper we find, for certain values of the parameters, the spaces of multipliers (H(p, q, α), H(s, t, β) and (H(p, q, α), ls), where H(p, q, α) denotes the space of analytic functions on the unit disc such that . As corollaries we recover some new results about multipliers on Bergman spaces and Hardy spaces.
Efficacy of donepezil on cognitive functions in mildcognitive impairment

Efficacy of donepezil on cognitive functions in mild cognitive impairment Objective: The condition characterized by clinically distinctive cognitive impairment and likely to affect occupational and social functioning is known as Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Acetyl- cholinesterase inhibitors have been used for the treatment of MCI up to now. However, there have been few studies to show the efficacy of these drugs on cognitive functions. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of donepezil on cognitive functions in patients with MCI. Method: This study included 51 patients. 26 patients were randomized to the study group and 25 to the control group. The study group received donepezil HCl for 24 weeks. The control group did not receive any psychotropic drugs. Cognitive functions of all patients were evaluated by seven subscales of the Wechsler Memory Scale- Revised (WMS-R) at baseline, 4th week and 24th week of the study. Results: There was a significant difference in figural memory, verbal paired associates and logical memory subscale scores between the groups (p<0,001). Although there was an improvement in verbal paired associates and logical memory subscale scores in the study group, there was a decrease on the figural memory test scores. Conclusion: It was found that donepezil led to an improvement especially in memory and attention in MCI. The decrease in figural memory scores can be explained by the fact that donepezil does not exert the same effect on all areas of the brain.
International workshop on software quality and maintainability

SQM 2014 (http://sqm2014.sig.eu), the 8th International workshop on software quality and maintainability, was organized as a satellite event of the CSMR-WCRE 2014 conference in Antwerp, on February 3, 2014. The workshop received 18 submissions, focusing on research, empirical studies, industry practices and experiences in the area of software quality, maintainability and traceability. This year, the special theme of the workshop is “exploring the boundaries between the theory and practice of software quality”.
Effect of Intravenous Calcitriol on Cardiac Systolic and Diastolic Function in Patients on Hemodialysis

The systolic and diastolic function of the heart of hemodialysis (HD) patients and the effect of intravenous vitamin D therapy on cardiac function was studied by Doppler and digitized M-mode echocardiography in 10 HD patients before and after 3–4.5 months of calcitriol therapy. Calcitriol was administered intravenously 1–3 times a week at a dose of 1–2 µg after the dialysis sessions. Ten age- and sex-matched healthy controls were also examined echocardiographically. Before calcitriol therapy cardiac wall thicknesses (interventricular septum, posterior wall) and left ventricle (LV) dimensions (end diastolic, end systolic) were greater, and LV diastolic (peak late diastolic velocity, peak early diastolic velocity/peak late diastolic velocity ratio, isovolumic relaxation time) and systolic (fractional shortening) function was impaired in HD patients as compared to controls. The LV posterior wall thickness was related to plasma parathyroid hormone (PTH; r = 0.70, p = 0.01) in the patients. Calcitriol therapy raised serum ionized Ca from 1.23±0.04 to 1.33 ± 0.04 mmol/l and reduced PTH from 41.1±10.7 to 34.2±11.7 pmol/l (29±11%). Calcitriol therapy did not cause any significant changes in cardiac function in the whole patient group. However, in a subgroup of 5 patients with severe but controllable hyperparathyroidism (PTH >3 times upper normal margin) the LV dimensions and systolic function improved (LV end systolic dimension from 39.0 ± 4.0 to 31.3 ± 2.9 mm, p = 0.03; LV end diastolic dimension from 57.7 ± 3.1 to 53.4 ± 3.0 mm, p = 0.06; fractional shortening from 33 ± 4 to 42 ± 3%, p = 0.03). The diastolic indices improved also, but not significantly. In conclusion, left ventricle hypertrophy and systolic and diastolic dysfunction was observed in HD patients. Intravenous calcitriol therapy improved cardiac function in patients with severe secondary hyperparathyroidism.
Frequency of Anxiety and Depression in Epileptic Patients

Objectives: Depression and anxiety are commonly seen among epileptic patients. These comorbidities have a negative effect on achievement of effective treatment and improvement in the quality of life of epileptic patients. We aimed to determine the frequency of anxiety and depression in epilepsy and in subgroups of epileptic patients and their correlation with disease duration and seizure frequency. Methods: Forty-one young male patients (13 temporal lobe epilepsy and 28 extra-temporal lobe epilepsy) and 48 young males as a healthy control group were included in the study. Each study participants completed the Beck Depression Inventory and the Beck Anxiety Inventory. Results: There were high frequencies of anxiety (26.8%) and depression (34.14%) in the epileptic patients compared with control group (p=0.003, p=0.001, respectively). Although there was no statistical significance, the temporal lobe epilepsy group had higher anxiety and depression frequencies than the extra-temporal lobe epilepsy group (p=0.280, p=0.089, respectively). There was no significant correlations between disease duration and either anxiety inventory scores or depression inventory scores. However in the temporal lobe epilepsy group, we found a correlation with a medium level of significance between seizure frequency and Beck Anxiety Inventory scores as well as Beck Depression Inventory scores (r= 0.521, p= 0.068; r= 0.615, p= 0.025). Conclusion: There were high frequencies of anxiety and depression in epileptic patients. A multidisciplinary approach and inter-disciplinary help co-operation is needed in the treatment of epilepsy. There is a need for controlled studies with larger sample sizes.
Are Algorithms Directly Optimizing IR Measures Really Direct ?

In information retrieval (IR), the objective of ranking pro blem is to construct and return a ranked list of relevant documents to the user. The document ranking list is demanded to satisfy user’s information need as much as possible with respect to a user’s query. To evaluate the goodness of th e re urned document ranking list, performance measures, such as Normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain (NDCG) and Me an Average Precision (MAP), are adopted. Many learning to rank algorithms, which automatically lear n ranking function through optimizing specially designed objective functions, are proposed to resolve the r anking problem. Intuitively, the IR performance measures are the ideal objective functions to be optimized to learn ra king function. However, IR performance measures, such as NDCG and MAP, are non-smooth and non-differentiable with respect to the ranking function parameter. Thus, most existing learning to rank algorithms are designe d to optimize objective functions that are loosely related to the IR performance measures. As a result, such alg orithms may only achieve sub-optimization of the IR performance measures even they can perform very well on opti mizing their adopted objective functions. Therefore, it is highly demanded that learning to rank algorithms shoul d be improved to be able to directly or approximately directly optimize information retrieval performance meas ures. To tackle the challenge of direct optimization of IR performance measures, several approaches, such as SoftRan k[1] d SVM-MAP[2] are proposed. Although these algorithms can achieve good empirical performance, there a re still some questions that are unclear and not yet answered: a) can ranking function learned by direct optimiz ation of IR performance measures still perform well over unseen queries with respect to the optimized IR perform ance measures? b) how directly are IR performance measures optimized by the proposed approaches? In this report, we will attempt to answer the above questions . We first point out that, under some conditions, the ranking function learned by direct optimization of IR pe rformance measures can also perform well upon unseen queries with respect to the optimized IR performance measur s. Then, to study how directly IR performance measures are optimized by previous approaches, we proposed a directn ess evaluate metric. Based on this metric, SoftRank is analyzed and corresponding results are presented.
Light Field Super-Resolution Using a Low-Rank Prior and Deep Convolutional Neural Networks

Light field imaging has recently known a regain of interest due to the availability of practical light field capturing systems that offer a wide range of applications in the field of computer vision. However, capturing high-resolution light fields remains technologically challenging since the increase in angular resolution is often accompanied by a significant reduction in spatial resolution. This paper describes a learning-based spatial light field super-resolution method that allows the restoration of the entire light field with consistency across all angular views. The algorithm first uses optical flow to align the light field and then reduces its angular dimension using low-rank approximation. We then consider the linearly independent columns of the resulting low-rank model as an embedding, which is restored using a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN). The super-resolved embedding is then used to reconstruct the remaining views. The original disparities are restored using inverse warping where missing pixels are approximated using a novel light field inpainting algorithm. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms existing light field super-resolution algorithms, achieving PSNR gains of 0.23 dB over the second best performing method. The performance is shown to be further improved using iterative back-projection as a post-processing step.
IDENTIFICACIÓN Y DESCRIPCIÓN DE LOS ESTADOS FENOLÓGICOS-TIPO DEL AGUACATE (PERSEA AMERICANA MILL.).

El aguacate es una especie preferentemente alogama que presenta un complejo mecanismo de polinizacion conocido como dicogamia sincronizada. Para facilitar el estudio de la floracion y fructificacion y el discurrir del ciclo floral del aguacate hemos descrito sus estados-tipo hasta ahora conocidos de un modo incompleto. El modelo fenologico propuesto presenta 10 estados desde la yema en latencia hasta el fruto tierno. El primer estado caracteriza a la yema en reposo, mientras que el segundo ilustra los cambios morfologicos asociados al abandono de este reposo. Cuatro estados describen a continuacion el desarrollo de la inflorescencia. El estado de floracion F resume la manifestacion del proceso dicogamo, y contempla a su vez, 3 subestados femeninos y el primer cierre de la flor y 5 subestados masculinos y el cierre definitivo de la flor. La marchitez de tepalos marca la transicion al estado de fruto. Los dos ultimos estados fenologicos describen el fruto recien cuajado y el fruto tierno. La identificacion y descripcion de los estados-tipo ha resultado una herramienta util para caracterizar la floracion y detectar alteraciones y anomalias en ‘Hass’ y sus potenciales polinizadores.
L: context-oriented programming with only layers

Most if not all extensions to object-oriented languages that allow for context-oriented programming (COP) are asymmetric in the sense that they assume a base implementation of a system to be composed into classes and a set of layers to provide behavioral variations applied to those classes at run-time. We propose L as an experimental language to further explore the design space for COP languages. In this position paper we talk about first steps towards the unification of classes and layers and with that the removal of the asymmetry in composition mechanisms of contemporary COP implementations.
α4β1 integrin promotes accumulation of tissue‐resident memory CD8+ T cells in salivary glands

The salivary glands (SGs) of virus‐immune mice contain substantial numbers of tissue‐resident memory CD8+ T cells (TRM cells) that can provide immunity to local infections. Integrins regulate entry of activated T cells into nonlymphoid tissues but the molecules that mediate migration of virus‐specific CD8+ T cells to the SGs have not yet been defined. Here, we found that polyinosinic‐polycytidylic acid (poly(I:C)) strongly promoted the accumulation of P14 TCR‐transgenic CD8+ TRM cells in SGs in an α4β1 integrin‐dependent manner. After infection with lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus, accumulation of P14 TRM cells in SGs and intestine but not in kidney was also α4 integrin dependent. Blockade of α4β7 by monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) inhibited lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus‐induced accumulation of P14 TRM cells in the intestine but not in SGs. In conclusion, our data reveal that α4β1 integrin mediates CD8+ TRM accumulation in SGs and that poly(I:C) can be used to direct activated CD8+ T cells to this organ.
Intimin, Tir, and Shiga Toxin 1 Do Not Influence Enteropathogenic Responses to Shiga Toxin-Producing Escherichia coli in Bovine Ligated Intestinal Loops

ABSTRACT Shiga toxin-producing Escherchia coli (STEC) comprises a group of attaching and effacing (A/E) enteric pathogens of animals and humans. Natural and experimental infection of calves with STEC may result in acute enteritis or subclinical infection, depending on serotype- and host-specific factors. To quantify intestinal secretory and inflammatory responses to STEC in the bovine intestine, serotypes that are associated with human disease (O103:H2 and O157:H7) were introduced into ligated mid-ileal loops in gnotobiotic and conventional calves, and fluid accumulation and recruitment of radiolabeled neutrophils were measured after 12 h. STEC serotype O103:H2, but not serotype O157:H7, elicited strong enteropathogenic responses. To determine if the inflammatory response to STEC O103:H2 in calves requires Shiga toxin 1 or intimate bacterial attachment to the intestinal epithelium, defined mutations were made in the stx1, eae, and tir genes. Our data indicate that some STEC induce intestinal inflammatory responses in calves by a mechanism that is independent of A/E-lesion formation, intimin, or Shiga toxin 1. This may have implications for strategies to reduce STEC carriage in cattle.
Clinicopathological features of colorectal cancer in patients over 70 years of age

Abstract Objective. The aim was to identify the clinical factors and tumor characteristics that predict mortality and survival in patients older than 70 years with colorectal adenocarcinoma. Material and methods . One hundred and ninety-four patients with colorectal cancer aged over 70 years were identified from a computer database and their clinical variables were analyzed by both univariate and multivariate analyses. Results. All patients underwent resective surgery, 79% radical and 21% palliative resection, and postoperative mortality was 6% being associated with the presence of postoperative complications, especially anastomotic leakage. The cumulative 5-year survival was 38%, the median survival 35 months, and the cancer-specific 5-year survival 48% and this did not differ significantly between the age groups. The recurrence rate after radical surgery was 30%, being 12, 22, 56, and 100% in Dukes classes A, B, C, and D. Kaplan-Meier estimates indicated that gender, Dukes staging, grade of tumor, number of lymph node metastasis, venous invasion, and recurrent disease were significant predictors of survival, but in the Cox regression model, only venous invasion and recurrent disease were independent prognostic factors of survival. Conclusions. Low mortality and acceptable survival can be achieved in elderly patients with colorectal cancer. Venous invasion and recurrent cancer are independent predictors of survival.