Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparative study of video-assisted thoracic surgery versus open thymectomy for thymoma in one single center.

BACKGROUND Due to the popularity of video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) techniques in clinical, thymoma patients via VATS thymectomy are increasing rapidly. However, compared with open thymectomy, the potential superiorities and defects of VATS thymectomy remain controversial. METHODS A number of 129 patients who underwent thymectomy of early stage thymoma (Masaoka stage I and stage II) in one single center from January 2007 to September 2013 were selected in this retrospective study. Of those patients, 38 thymoma patients underwent VATS thymectomy (VATS group) and 91 underwent open thymectomy (open group) via either transsternal [44] or transthoracic approach [47] in the same period. The postoperative variables, which included postoperative hospital length of stay (LOS), the intensive care unit (ICU) LOS, the entire resection ratio, the number of thoracic drainage tubes, the quantity of output and duration of drainage, were analyzed. Meanwhile, the operation time and blood loss were considered as intraoperative variables. RESULTS All thymoma patients in the analysis included 19 thymoma patients with myasthenia gravis, among which five patients via VATS thymectomy and 14 patients via open thymectomy respectively. There was no death or morbidity due to the surgical procedures perioperatively. The ICU LOS, operation time, entire resection ratio, and the number of chest tubes were not significantly different in two groups. The postoperative hospital LOS of VATS thymectomy was shorter than that of open thymectomy (5.26 versus 8.32 days, P<0.001). The blood loss of VATS thymectomy was less than open thymectomy (114.74 versus 194.51 mL, P=0.002). Postoperatively, the quantity of chest tubes output in VATS group was less than that in open thymectomy group (617.86 versus 850.08 mL, P=0.007) and duration of drainage in VATS group was shorter than that in open thymectomy group (3.87 versus 5.22 days, P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS VATS thymectomy is a safe and practicable treatment for early-stage thymoma patients. Thymoma according with Masaoka staging I-II without evident invading seems to be performed through VATS approach appropriately, which has shorter postoperative hospital LOS, less blood loss and less restrictions to activities, hence patients will recover sooner.
A Configurable Modular Test Processor and Scan Controller Architecture

Test technology development for processor-based Systems on a Chip (SoCs) has mainly focused on quality and cost of production test. More recently, test technologies that facilitate self test in the field of application are getting additional attention. Hardware-based built-in self test (BIST) is well understood for logic and for memory block, but can hardly cope with changing test strategies. We present a scalable test architecture based on a configurable test processor and a distributed modular scan controller that facilitates self test for logic and for bus structures and can optionally support externally controlled production test.
Finding Temporally Consistent Occlusion Boundaries in Videos Using Geometric Context

We present an algorithm for finding temporally consistent occlusion boundaries in videos to support segmentation of dynamic scenes. We learn occlusion boundaries in a pair wise Markov random field (MRF) framework. We first estimate the probability of an spatio-temporal edge being an occlusion boundary by using appearance, flow, and geometric features. Next, we enforce occlusion boundary continuity in a MRF model by learning pair wise occlusion probabilities using a random forest. Then, we temporally smooth boundaries to remove temporal inconsistencies in occlusion boundary estimation. Our proposed framework provides an efficient approach for finding temporally consistent occlusion boundaries in video by utilizing causality, redundancy in videos, and semantic layout of the scene. We have developed a dataset with fully annotated ground-truth occlusion boundaries of over 30 videos (~5000 frames). This dataset is used to evaluate temporal occlusion boundaries and provides a much needed baseline for future studies. We perform experiments to demonstrate the role of scene layout, and temporal information for occlusion reasoning in dynamic scenes.
A Survey of Textual Event Extraction from Social Networks

In the last decade, mining textual content on social networks to extract relevant data and useful knowledge is becoming an omnipresent task. One common application of text mining is Event Extraction, which is considered as a complex task divided into multiple sub-tasks of varying di culty. In this paper, we present a survey of the main existing text mining techniques which are used for many di erent event extraction aims. First, we present the main data-driven approaches which are based on statistics models to convert data to knowledge. Second, we expose the knowledgedriven approaches which are based on expert knowledge to extract knowledge usually by means of pattern-based approaches. Then we present the main existing hybrid approaches that combines data-driven and data-knowledge approaches. We end this paper with a comparative study that recapitulates the main features of each presented method. Key-words: Event Extraction, Text Mining, Information Extraction, So-
Personality traits and the process of store loyalty in a transactional prone context

Purpose – This study sets out to replicate Garbarino and Johnson's paper, where the effects of trust, commitment and satisfaction towards service provider loyalty were examined. However, whereby Garbarino and Johnson tested their model in a relationship prone environment, i.e. a theatre company, this study was set in a retail context where transactional customers are more likely. Personality traits as a means to identify customers who are prone to forming relationships with their service providers were also investigated.Design/methodology/approach – In total, customers of two fast food independent stores in Melbourne, Australia completed 202 questionnaires.Findings – The findings in the paper showed that in this transactional context, only trust and commitment had a significant direct effect on store behavioral loyalty. Satisfaction did not offer any unique explanatory power but was a significant predictor of both trust and commitment. Further, trust, commitment and satisfaction all had significant direct.
The Patient- And Nutrition-Derived Outcome Risk Assessment Score (PANDORA): Development of a Simple Predictive Risk Score for 30-Day In-Hospital Mortality Based on Demographics, Clinical Observation, and Nutrition

Objective To develop a simple scoring system to predict 30 day in-hospital mortality of in-patients excluding those from intensive care units based on easily obtainable demographic, disease and nutrition related patient data. Methods Score development with general estimation equation methodology and model selection by P-value thresholding based on a cross-sectional sample of 52 risk indicators with 123 item classes collected with questionnaires and stored in an multilingual online database. Setting Worldwide prospective cross-sectional cohort with 30 day in-hospital mortality from the nutritionDay 2006-2009 and an external validation sample from 2012. Results We included 43894 patients from 2480 units in 32 countries. 1631(3.72%) patients died within 30 days in hospital. The Patient- And Nutrition-Derived Outcome Risk Assessment (PANDORA) score predicts 30-day hospital mortality based on 7 indicators with 31 item classes on a scale from 0 to 75 points. The indicators are age (0 to 17 points), nutrient intake on nutritionDay (0 to 12 points), mobility (0 to 11 points), fluid status (0 to 10 points), BMI (0 to 9 points), cancer (9 points) and main patient group (0 to 7 points). An appropriate model fit has been achieved. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for mortality prediction was 0.82 in the development sample and 0.79 in the external validation sample. Conclusions The PANDORA score is a simple, robust scoring system for a general population of hospitalised patients to be used for risk stratification and benchmarking.
Efficacy and safety of recombinant human activated protein C for severe sepsis.

BACKGROUND Drotrecogin alfa (activated), or recombinant human activated protein C, has antithrombotic, antiinflammatory, and profibrinolytic properties. In a previous study, drotrecogin alfa activated produced dose-dependent reductions in the levels of markers of coagulation and inflammation in patients with severe sepsis. In this phase 3 trial, we assessed whether treatment with drotrecogin alfa activated reduced the rate of death from any cause among patients with severe sepsis. METHODS We conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial. Patients with systemic inflammation and organ failure due to acute infection were enrolled and assigned to receive an intravenous infusion of either placebo or drotrecogin alfa activated (24 microg per kilogram of body weight per hour) for a total duration of 96 hours. The prospectively defined primary end point was death from any cause and was assessed 28 days after the start of the infusion. Patients were monitored for adverse events; changes in vital signs, laboratory variables, and the results of microbiologic cultures; and the development of neutralizing antibodies against activated protein C. RESULTS A total of 1690 randomized patients were treated (840 in the placebo group and 850 in the drotrecogin alfa activated group). The mortality rate was 30.8 percent in the placebo group and 24.7 percent in the drotrecogin alfa activated group. On the basis of the prospectively defined primary analysis, treatment with drotrecogin alfa activated was associated with a reduction in the relative risk of death of 19.4 percent (95 percent confidence interval, 6.6 to 30.5) and an absolute reduction in the risk of death of 6.1 percent (P=0.005). The incidence of serious bleeding was higher in the drotrecogin alfa activated group than in the placebo group (3.5 percent vs. 2.0 percent, P=0.06). CONCLUSIONS Treatment with drotrecogin alfa activated significantly reduces mortality in patients with severe sepsis and may be associated with an increased risk of bleeding.
Two-kidney, one clip renal hypertension in the marmoset.

The purpose of this study was to assess whether two-kidney, one clip (2K1C) renal hypertension can be induced in the marmoset. During the first 3-5 weeks after renal arterial clipping, blood pressure (BP) and plasma renin activity (PRA) increased in approximately one-third of the operated marmosets. However, within 10 weeks after clipping, BP and PRA had returned to control values. There was a significant positive correlation between BP and log PRA 3 and 5 weeks after the operation, but no correlation was observed at 10 weeks. In a selected group of marmosets with the highest values of BP (greater than 140 mmHg; n = 4), the converting enzyme inhibitor, enalapril (2 mg/kg s.c.) lowered BP by 58 +/- 7 (s.e.m.) mmHg when given 3 weeks after clipping. At 18 weeks the response to enalapril was only -17 +/- 6 mmHg. These results demonstrate that unilateral renal arterial clipping in marmosets results in a transient renin-dependent hypertension. Marmosets in this initial hypertensive phase could be useful for investigating the antihypertensive effects of inhibitors of human renin.
Historicizing New Media: A Content Analysis of Twitter

This paper seeks to historicize Twitter within a longer historical framework of diaries to better understand Twitter and broader communication practices and patterns. Based on a review of historical literature regarding 18th and 19th century diaries, we created a content analysis coding scheme to analyze a random sample of publicly available Twitter messages according to themes in the diaries. Findings suggest commentary and accounting styles are the most popular narrative styles on Twitter. Despite important differences between the historical diaries and Twitter, this analysis reveals long-standing social needs to account, reflect, communicate, and share with others using media of the times.
CS 224 W Final Report : An Efficient Algorithm for Local Higher-Order Community Detection

We design a local higher-order community detection algorithm based on motif conductance that outperforms SNAP by a factor of about 60 in the precomputation of the non-local helper matrices. Working with the Wikipedia graph and considering categories on Wikipedia as ground-truth communities, we identify a three node motif with respect to which local higher-order clustering achieves optimal clustering quality relative a Jaccard similarity based metric similar to the well-established purity metric. The identified motif, M3 (two undirected edges and one directed edge), significantly outperforms the induced undirected triangle for local higher-order clustering across a wide range of hyper-parameters on the Catalan Wikipedia graph. We also analyze how the quality and performance of clustering responds to changes in various parameters and observe that each motif has different importance across the various editions of Wikipedia.
A validation model for the DSR protocol

We present a validation model for the dynamic source routing (DSR) protocol. This model includes a formal specification of the protocol and a set of scenarios. The scenarios test the conformance of a given implementation to some targeted system functionalities. The DSR protocol has been specified following the IETF draft [D.B. Johnson, et al., (2003)]. The formal specification has been performed using the SDL language and the scenarios have been generated from the specification using a method and a tool developed at INT [A. Cavalli, et al., (1999)]. The test generation method is based on a set of test purposes that express specific system properties and is completely automated. We also present the experimentation results of the application of our tool to the DSR protocol.
Being SMART about failures: assessing repairs in SMART homes

Inexpensive wireless sensing products are dramatically reducing the cost of in-home sensing. However, these sensors have been found to fail often and prohibitive maintenance costs may negate the cost benefits of inexpensive hardware and do-it-yourself installation. In this paper, we describe a new technique called SMART that uses application-level semantics to detect, assess, and adapt to sensor failures. SMART detects sensor failures at run-time by analyzing the relative behavior of multiple classifier instances trained to recognize the same set of activities based on different subsets of sensors. Once a failure is detected, SMART assesses its importance and adapts the classifier ensemble in attempt to avoid maintenance dispatch. Evaluation on three homes from two public datasets shows that SMART decreases the number of maintenance dispatches by 55% on average, identifies non-fail-stop failures at run-time with more than 85% accuracy, and improves the activity recognition accuracy under sensor failures by 15% on average.
Control theoretic approach to stationary iterative methods for large-scale Toeplitz-type equations

In this paper, stationary iterative methods for large-scale Toeplitz-type equations are investigated from a control theoretic point of view. We utilize spatially invariant structure of Toeplitz matrices, to avoid the curse of dimensionality arising in analysis and design of the convergence properties. Nonlinearities in the system are theoretically handled with the small gain theorem and stability analysis for Lur'e systems. This theory enables us to achieve the desired global convergence of the proposed numerical scheme. We also evaluate the efficacy of the proposed method through a numerical simulation comparison with the Broyden's method.
Big and Mighty: Preverbal Infants Mentally Represent Social Dominance

Infants use size as a predictor in judging which contestant will win. Human infants face the formidable challenge of learning the structure of their social environment. Previous research indicates that infants have early-developing representations of intentional agents, and of cooperative social interactions, that help meet that challenge. Here we report five studies with 144 infant participants showing that 10- to 13-month-old, but not 8-month-old, infants recognize when two novel agents have conflicting goals, and that they use the agents’ relative size to predict the outcome of the very first dominance contests between them. These results suggest that preverbal infants mentally represent social dominance and use a cue that covaries with it phylogenetically, and marks it metaphorically across human cultures and languages, to predict which of two agents is likely to prevail in a conflict of goals.
Word distributions in Dutch tweets. A quantitative appraisal of the distinction between function and content words

In this paper, we investigate the distinction between function words and content words in the light of their distribution over domains and/or topics. More specifically, we investigate whether this distinction should be viewed as a dichotomy or rather as a continuum. Observing that function words ought to be generally applicable while content words are domain/topic-dependent, we measure how widely words are being used, by examining their distribution over the 1,000 most frequent hashtags on Twitter. Based on the results of these measurements, we conclude that a continuum ranging from fully grammatical words to fully content- bearing words is the more promising viewpoint.
Use of Positive Core Memories in LTC

ABSTRACT We present a treatment for residents of LTC facilities, positive core memories (PCMs). Initially, we discuss memories at later life, research areas that have considered memory and memory repair at later life-issues of cognitive aging, reminiscence, self-defined memories (and other methods that highlight the PCM), memory repair methods, and the pragmatics of memory therapies that have been applied in LTC. We do this to highlight the PCM. We then present results of a small study on the use of PCMs. Finally, we endorse this form of therapy and place it in the context of treatment in LTC. In the appendix we present our treatment manual.
Stem Cells and Healing: Impact on Inflammation.

SIGNIFICANCE The number of patients with nonhealing wounds has rapidly accelerated over the past 10 years in both the United States and worldwide. Some causative factors at the macro level include an aging population, epidemic numbers of obese and diabetic patients, and an increasing number of surgical procedures. At the micro level, chronic inflammation is a consistent finding. RECENT ADVANCES A number of treatment modalities are currently used to accelerate wound healing, including energy-based modalities, scaffoldings, the use of mechano-transduction, cytokines/growth factors, and cell-based therapies. The use of stem cell therapy has been hypothesized as a potentially useful adjunct for nonhealing wounds. Specifically, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been shown to improve wound healing in several studies. Immune modulating properties of MSCs have made them attractive treatment options. CRITICAL ISSUES Current limitations of stem cell therapy include the potentially large number of cells required for an effect, complex preparation and delivery methods, and poor cell retention in targeted tissues. Comparisons of published in-vitro and clinical trials are difficult due to cell preparation techniques, passage number, and the impact of the micro-environment on cell behavior. FUTURE DIRECTIONS MSCs may be more useful if they are preactivated with inflammatory cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor alpha or interferon gamma. This article will review the current literature with regard to the use of stem cells for wound healing. In addition the anti-inflammatory effects of MSCs will be discussed along with the potential benefits of stem cell preactivation.
Software timing analysis using HW/SW cosimulation and instruction set simulator

Timing analysis for checking satisfaction of constraints is a crucial problem in real-time system design. In some current approaches, the delay of software modules is precalculated by a software performance estimation method, which is not accurate enough for hard real-time systems and complicated designs. In this paper we present an approach to integrate a clock-cycle-accurate instruction set simulator (ISS) with a fast event-based system simulator. By using the ISS, the delay of events can be measured instead of estimated. An interprocess communication architecture and a simple protocol are designed to meet the requirement of robustness and flexibility. A cached refinement scheme is presented to improve the performance at the expense of accuracy. The scheme is especially effective for applications in which the delay of basic blocks is approximately data-independent. We also discuss the implementation issues by using the Ptolemy simulation environment and the ST20 simulator as an example.
GALAXY CLUSTERS IN THE SWIFT/BAT ERA. II. 10 MORE CLUSTERS DETECTED ABOVE 15 keV

We report on the discovery of 10 additional galaxy clusters detected in the ongoing Swift/Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) all-sky survey. Among the newly BAT-discovered clusters there are Bullet, A85, Norma, and PKS 0745-19. Norma is the only cluster, among those presented here, which is resolved by BAT. For all the clusters, we perform a detailed spectral analysis using XMM-Newton and Swift/BAT data to investigate the presence of a hard (non-thermal) X-ray excess. We find that in most cases the clusters' emission in the 0.3–200 keV band can be explained by a multi-temperature thermal model confirming our previous results. For two clusters (Bullet and A3667), we find evidence for the presence of a hard X-ray excess. In the case of the Bullet cluster, our analysis confirms the presence of a non-thermal, power-law-like, component with a 20–100 keV flux of 3.4 × 10−12 erg cm−2 s−1 as detected in previous studies. For A3667, the excess emission can be successfully modeled as a hot component (kT ∼ 13 keV). We thus conclude that the hard X-ray emission from galaxy clusters (except the Bullet) has most likely a thermal origin.
ATLAS/ti and NUD·IST: A Comparative Review of Two Leading Qualitative Data Analysis Packages

Tools for the management and analysis of qualitative data have come of age. In this review, I compare the features of two codebased theory-builder programs, ATLASIti and NUD-IST, arguably the best of their genre. According to Weitzman and Miles (1 9 9 9 , code-based theory builders enable the researcher to associate codes or labels with chunks of text, to search these codes for patterns, and to construct classifications of codes that reflect testable models of the conceptual structure of the underlying data. These programs typically do much more than this but in my view, it is their facility for constructing code classifications or networks is what sets them apart from text retrievers and textbase managers.