Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ligation of the FcRγ Chain-Associated Human Osteoclast-Associated Receptor Enhances the Proinflammatory Responses of Human Monocytes and Neutrophils1

We have previously described the human osteoclast associated receptor (hOSCAR), expressed in all cells of the myeloid lineage, and its immune functions. This receptor, which associates with the FcRγ chain to transduce an activating signal, induces calcium flux in monocytes and dendritic cells, and modulates specific responses of dendritic cells. In this study, we have examined the effects of hOSCAR ligation on various proinflammatory responses of monocytes and neutrophils. Monocytes stimulated via hOSCAR ligation released IL-8/CXCL8 and other chemokines such as epithelial neutrophil-activating peptide-78/CXCL5, macrophage-derived chemokine/CCL22, and MCP-1/CCL2 and up-regulated markers involved in cell adhesion and costimulatory functions. Monocytes stimulated via hOSCAR in the absence of survival factors had an increased life span. Although the life span of neutrophils was unaffected, these cells, when stimulated via hOSCAR, rapidly released reactive oxygen intermediates, degranulated lactoferrin, myeloperoxidase, and matrix metalloproteinase-9 and also secreted IL-8/CXCL8. Neutrophils also underwent changes in cell surface molecule expression with the cleavage of CD62L and increased expression of CD11b and CD66b after 2-h stimulations. Finally, we demonstrated synergy between hOSCAR and TLR ligands on both monocytes and neutrophils, with up to 8-fold increases in cytokine secretion when hOSCAR was cross-linked in the presence of LPS or R-848. Overall, our data demonstrate that hOSCAR is a functional receptor on monocytes and neutrophils, involved in the induction of the primary proinflammatory cascade and the initiation of downstream immune responses.
Mediastinal lymphadenopathy: diagnostic yield of transbronchial mediastinal lymph node biopsy with CT fluoroscopic guidance-initial experience.

PURPOSE To determine whether the use of computed tomographic (CT) fluoroscopy to guide transbronchial needle aspiration (TBNA) of mediastinal lymph nodes can improve the diagnostic yield. MATERIALS AND METHODS CT fluoroscopy was used to guide TBNA in 12 consecutive patients with mediastinal lymphadenopathy who had previously undergone nondiagnostic conventional TBNA. CT fluoroscopy was used to confirm the location of the biopsy needle by using a "quick-check" technique (ie, fluoroscopy was performed sparingly after needle insertion). The location of each needle, the total procedural and fluoroscopic times, and any complications were recorded. RESULTS All CT fluoroscopic procedures were performed in less than 1 hour, and a tissue diagnosis was established in all patients. Eighteen lymph nodes with a diameter of 0.8-2.4 cm were sampled with 116 needle passes. CT fluoroscopy documented inadequate positioning in 48 of the 116 (41.3%) needle passes. Eighteen (15.5%) needles did not fully penetrate the tracheobronchial tree. Six needles (5.2%) were placed into the great vessels. Malignant disease was diagnosed in nine patients, and benign disease was diagnosed in three. The mean fluoroscopic exposure time was 20.5 seconds +/- 12.7. No pneumothoraces or substantial hemorrhage were observed. CONCLUSION CT fluoroscopic guidance for TBNA procedures is a safe and efficient means of providing diagnostic material and should be considered for patients who have previously undergone nondiagnostic blinded TBNA.
Long‐term safety of oral nucleos(t)ide analogs for patients with chronic hepatitis B: A cohort study of 53,500 subjects

Widespread and long‐term use of oral nucleos(t)ide analogs (NAs) to treat chronic hepatitis B (CHB) brings about safety data in a real‐life setting. We aimed to determine the risks of renal and bone side effects in patients receiving or who have received NAs as CHB treatment. A territory‐wide cohort study using the database from Hospital Authority, the major provider of medical services in Hong Kong, was conducted. We identified CHB patients by International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification diagnosis codes, diagnosed between 2000 and 2012. The primary events were renal (incident renal failure and renal replacement therapy [RRT]) and bone events (incident hip, vertebral, and all fractures). A 3‐year landmark analysis was used to evaluate the relative risk of primary outcome in patients with or without NA treatment. A total of 53,500 CHB patients (46,454 untreated and 7,046 treated), who were event free for 3 years, were included in the analysis. At a median follow‐up of 4.9 years, chronic renal failure, RRT, all fractures, hip fractures, and vertebral fractures occurred in 0.6%, 0.2%, 0.7%, 0.1%, and 0.1% of untreated subjects and 1.4%, 0.7%, 1.3%, 0.2%, and 0.2% of treated subjects. After propensity score weighting, NA therapy did not increase the risk of any of the events (hazard ratios [HRs] ranged from 0.79 to 1.31; P = 0.225‐0.887). Exposure to nucleotide analogues, compared with nucleoside analogs, increased the risk of hip fracture (HR = 5.69; 95% confidence interval: 1.98‐16.39; P = 0.001), but not other events (HR = 0.58‐1.44; P = 0.202‐0.823). Conclusions: NA treatment does not increase the risk of renal and bone events in general. Nucleotide analogs may increase the risk of hip fracture, but the overall event rate is low. (Hepatology 2015;62:684–693)
Filter Optimization for Self-Homodyne Coherent WDM Systems Using Interleaved Polarization Division Multiplexing

We examine the impact of filtering on self-homodyne coherent WDM systems using the interleaved polarization division-multiplexing scheme. To investigate the performance limit and to provide more insight into previously obtained experimental results, we perform numerical simulations in which different filter shapes and filter bandwidths are used. It is shown that with proper prefiltering of the data and filtering of the pilot tone in the receiver, performance can approach that of an intradyne system. This would make it possible to implement coherent systems with high spectral efficiency without any digital signal processing in the receiver.
Distributed consensus filtering based on event-driven transmission for wireless sensor networks

This paper addresses a distributed event-based filtering problem for wireless sensor networks. In order to reduce the data transmission rate of the sensor nodes, we consider an event-driven transmission scheme based on the Kullback-Leibler divergence. In this scheme, each sensor node makes transmission decision only by using local data from its neighbors, and transmission occurs only if the Kullback-Leibler divergence exceeds a prescribed threshold. With this transmission scheme, we derive the optimal distributed consensus Kalman filter based on event-driven transmission. In order to get a scalable form of the filter, a suboptimal version of distributed consensus filter is then developed based on event-driven transmission. Finally, simulation studies are presented to validate the performance of the proposed algorithm.
A coarse-fine fingerprint scaling method

Fingerprint scaling is an important issue for fingerprints from different capture sensors. A good scale would process the resolution difference and somewhat the distortion of fingerprints. In this paper, we develop a coarse-fine method to estimate the optimal scale between the input and template fingerprints. The global scale is coarsely calculated based on the ridge distance map and finally determined by the histogram of local refined scale between all the matchable minutiae pairs. Experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm effectively improves the matching accuracy of the fingerprints from multi-type capture sensors.
A hedonic wage model-based methodology for evaluating the benefits of IT investments in public-sector organisations

The economic justification of investments in information technology (IT) is a basic issue for IT management in private and in public‐sector organisations. Usually, the expenses made for any investment are compared to the cost saved. While the costs for implementing a new system are uncertain, only a small percentage of the benefits accrues as cost savings given the type of IT systems used today and the particularities of the public‐sector. In this paper, we present a methodology for the monetary quantification of the benefits resulting from the introduction of a modern IT application and demonstrate its use on the basis of a case of prison administration.
Shaping smoking cessation in hard-to-treat smokers.

OBJECTIVE Contingency management (CM) effectively treats addictions by providing abstinence incentives. However, CM fails for many who do not readily become abstinent and earn incentives. Shaping may improve outcomes in these hard-to-treat (HTT) individuals. Shaping sets intermediate criteria for incentive delivery between the present behavior and total abstinence. This should result in HTT individuals having improving, rather than poor, outcomes. We examined whether shaping improved outcomes in HTT smokers (never abstinent during a 10-visit baseline). METHOD Smokers were stratified into HTT (n = 96) and easier-to-treat (ETT [abstinent at least once during baseline]; n = 50) and randomly assigned to either CM or CM with shaping (CMS). CM provided incentives for breath carbon monoxide (CO) levels <4 ppm (approximately 1 day of abstinence). CMS shaped abstinence by providing incentives for COs lower than the 7th lowest of the participant's last 9 samples or <4 ppm. Interventions lasted for 60 successive weekday visits. RESULTS Cluster analysis identified 4 groups of participants: stable successes, improving, deteriorating, and poor outcomes. In comparison with ETT, HTT participants were more likely to belong to 1 of the 2 unsuccessful clusters (odds ratio [OR] = 8.1, 95% CI [3.1, 21]). This difference was greater with CM (OR = 42, 95% CI [5.9, 307]) than with CMS, in which the difference between HTT and ETT participants was not significant. Assignment to CMS predicted membership in the improving (p = .002) as compared with the poor outcomes cluster. CONCLUSION Shaping can increase CM's effectiveness for HTT smokers.
Motion Profile Design to Reduce Residual Vibration of High-Speed Positioning Stages

Precision positioning machines are required to run with higher speed and higher accuracy. The high running speed can cause strong excitations on the machine structure, which results in severe structure vibration and long settling time. This paper presents a low-vibration motion profile generation method to reduce the residual vibration. The acceleration profile is designed by using a level-shifted sinusoidal waveform to have an s-shape in order to control its change rate. Simulation and experimental studies showed that in comparison with conventional trapezoidal profile and s-curve profile, the residual vibration by using the proposed motion profile can be reduced significantly.
No association between fish consumption and risk of stroke in the Spanish cohort of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC-Spain): a 13·8-year follow-up study

Abstract Objective To prospectively assess the associations between lean fish, fatty fish and total fish intakes and risk of stroke in the Spanish cohort of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC-Spain). Design Fish intake was estimated from a validated dietary questionnaire. Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to assess the association between the intakes of lean fish, fatty fish and total fish and stroke risk. Models were run separately for men and women. Setting Five Spanish regions (Asturias, San Sebastian, Navarra, Granada and Murcia). Subjects Individuals (n 41 020; 15 490 men and 25 530 women) aged 20–69 years, recruited from 1992 to 1996 and followed-up until December 2008 (December 2006 in the case of Asturias). Only participants with definite incident stroke were considered as cases. Results During a mean follow-up of 13·8 years, 674 strokes were identified and subsequently validated by record linkage with hospital discharge databases, primary-care records and regional mortality registries, comprising 531 ischaemic, seventy-nine haemorrhagic, forty-two subarachnoid and twenty-two unspecific strokes. After multiple adjustments, no significant associations were observed between lean fish, fatty fish and total fish consumption and the risk of stroke in men or women. In men, results revealed a non-significant trend towards an inverse association between lean fish (hazard ratio=0·84; 95 % CI 0·55, 1·29, P trend=0·06) and total fish consumption (hazard ratio=0·77; 95 % CI 0·51, 1·16, P trend=0·06) and risk of total stroke. Conclusions In the EPIC-Spain cohort, no association was found between lean fish, fatty fish and total fish consumption and risk of stroke.
WarnFi: Non-invasive wifi-based abnormal activity sensing using non-parametric model

Abnormal activity sensing has attracted increasing research attention in military surveillance, patient monitoring, and health care of children and elderly, etc. Researchers have exploited the characteristics of wireless signals to sense “keystrokes” and “human talks”, relieving the privacy invasion concern caused by mounting the surveillance cameras or wearing the smart devices. However, existing technologies usually require some specialized hardware, and can only sense a fixed set of pre-defined activities through a supervised learning from those wireless signals patterns. In this paper, we propose WarnFi, a non-invasive abnormal activity sensing system with only two commodity off-the-shelf (COTS) WiFi devices. The intuition of WarnFi is that whenever the human body occludes the wireless signal transmitting from the access point to the receiver, the time-series of Channel State Information (CSI) will experience a unique variation. By using a non-parametric model, WarnFi can dynamically cluster the human body activities for abnormal sensing. Extensive experiments in various scenarios demonstrate the satisfactory performance of WarnFi.
Predicting Growth in Word Level Reading Skills in Children With Developmental Dyslexia Using an Object Rhyming Functional Neuroimaging Task

ABSTRACT An object rhyming task that does not require text reading and is suitable for younger children was used to predict gains in word level reading skills following an intensive 2-year reading intervention for children with developmental dyslexia. The task evoked activation in bilateral inferior frontal regions. Growth in untimed pseudoword reading was associated with increased pre-intervention activation of the left inferior frontal gyrus, and growth in timed word reading was associated with pre-intervention activation of the left and right inferior frontal gyri. These analyses help identify pre-intervention factors that facilitate reading skill improvements in children with developmental dyslexia.
The National Acoustic Laboratories' (NAL) New Procedure for Selecting the Gain and Frequency Response of a Hearing Aid

A new procedure is presented for selecting the gain and frequency response of a hearing aid from pure-tone thresholds. This was developed from research which showed that a previous procedure did not meet its aim of amplifying all frequency bands of speech to equal loudness but that frequency responses which did so were considerably more effective. Measurements of 30 sensorineurally hearing-impaired ears (27 subjects), together with data from other studies, were analyzed to determine the best formula for predicting the optimal frequency response, for each individual, from the audiogram. The analysis indicated that a flat audiogram would require a rising frequency response characteristic of about 8 dB/octave up to 1.25 kHz and thereafter a falling characteristic of about 2 dB/octave. Variations in audiogram slope required about one-third as much variation in response slope. Three frequency average (3FA) gain was calculated to equal the 3FA gain of the previous procedure. Forty-four subjects (67 aided ears) fitted by the new procedure were evaluated by paired comparison judgments of the intelligibility and pleasantness of speech. The prescribed frequency response was seldom inferior to, and usually better than, any of several variations having more, or less, low and/or high-frequency amplification. On the average, used gain was approximately equal to prescribed gain. It is concluded that the new formula should prescribe a near optimal frequency response with few exceptions.
Iliac Screw Fixation in Neuromuscular Scoliosis

Study Design. A retrospective review of children with neuromuscular scoliosis treated at our institution with posterior spinal fusion and instrumentation including iliac screws. Objectives. To determine the safety and effectiveness of iliac screws in neuromuscular scoliosis constructs. Summary of Background Data. The Galveston technique has been a standard method of impacting rods in the iliac wings to provide anchorage for neuromuscular scoliosis constructs. Numerous studies have shown the increased strength of constructs using screws as part of segmental spinal instrumentation. The ideal method of caudal anchorage is still unclear, and the role of iliac screws has yet to be defined. Methods. The medical records and radiographs of 50 patients with neuromuscular scoliosis treated with a modified Luque-Galveston posterior spinal fusion and instrumentation technique were reviewed. The instrumentation was anchored to the pelvis via iliac screws: Group A constructs included 2 screws; Group B constructs included 4 screws. The radiographs were analyzed for Cobb angle and pelvic obliquity before surgery and after surgery. Complications were recorded, including infections and implant-related problems. Results. The average curve correction was 48%. The average pelvic tilt correction was 59%. Complications included 4 deep infections requiring reoperation (8%), 10 screw-related complications (7 in Group A, 3 in the Group B), and 12 non–screw-related implant complications (11 in the Group A, 1 in the Group B). Conclusions. The use of screw fixation in the ilium as a means of spinopelvic anchorage is safe and effective in the treatment of neuromuscular scoliosis. The use of 2 screws in each iliac wing provides more stable fixation with fewer implant-related complications than using a single screw.
Evolving Paradigms in Regional Development in Malaysia

In seeking to foster economic growth, policy-makers in Malaysia have also had to grapple conceptually and operationally with how best to deal with differing income levels in different parts of the country. In addition, this challenge has changed in nature over time, in line with the country’s increasing wealth and urbanization, and as understandings of what regional development is and how it should be pursued have evolved. Over the decades, approaches have shifted away from a sole focus on rural development and an aspatial approach to regional development towards a greater emphasis on urbanization and a deeper understanding of the relationship between location and economic growth. Basing itself on the analysis of central government planning documents and budgetary allocations, this article will look at the evolution of regional development policy in Malaysia. In so doing, it will analyse what Malaysian policy-makers have understood regional development to be, how they have sought to approach it, what resources they have spent on this issue, and how the government has been structured to tackle it.
The sea as humanitarian space: Non-governmental Search and Rescue dilemmas on the Central Mediterranean migratory route

Abstract In 2016 only, more than 5000 migrants lost their lives while attempting to cross the Mediterranean. To mitigate this humanitarian emergency, ten different non-governmental organisations (NGOs) started conducting Search and Rescue (SAR) operations offshore Libya. While operating at sea ostensibly provides humanitarian relief organisations with the possibility to work free of political interference, non-governmental SAR entails operational and ethical dilemmas, forcing NGOs to accept uneasy compromises on the principles of neutrality, impartiality and independence that underlie humanitarian action.
Cruise travel motivations and repeat cruising behaviour: impact of relationship investment

Passenger retention is undoubtedly one of the major challenges for cruise lines. Given that little is known about passengers’ post-purchase behaviour in the luxury cruise sector, this study addressed this omission by empirically verifying the imperative role of motivations, values, image, desire, and relationship investment in generating repeat cruising intentions. The proposed conceptual framework comprising these triggers was in general supported. In addition, its prediction ability for repurchase decision was sufficient. Specifically, our empirical findings demonstrated the adequacy of the higher order structure of cruise travel motivations that considerably increase hedonic and utilitarian values. Our results further identified the comparative importance of overall company image in determining intention. The mediating role of the study variables was also found. Lastly, the results of the metric-invariance model assessment revealed that relationship investment significantly moderated the value–image–desire linkages. Implications for tourism academics and cruise practitioners and future research directions are discussed.
Millimeter-Wave CRAN with Lens Antenna Arrays

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication has emerged as a promising candidate for next-generation wireless systems due to the availability of large bandwidth, while cloud radio access network (CRAN), in which low-complexity remote radio heads (RRHs) are deployed to serve users in a distributed manner, is a cost-effective solution to achieve network densification. However, for a CRAN operating over a large bandwidth in the mmWave frequencies, the fronthaul links would be easily saturated by the large amount of sampled and quantized signals to be transferred between RRHs and the central processor. To tackle this problem, we propose in this paper a new architecture for mmWave CRAN with advanced lens antenna arrays at the RRHs. With the energy focusing property, lens antenna arrays are effective in exploiting the angular sparsity of the mmWave channel to simplify the signal processing required to achieve high data rates with multiple antennas, even when the channel is frequency selective. We consider the uplink transmission in a mmWave CRAN with lens antenna arrays and propose a low-complexity quantization bit allocation scheme for multiple antennas at each RRH to meet the stringent fronthaul rate constraint. We compare the proposed mmWave CRAN using lens antenna arrays, with a conventional CRAN using uniform planar arrays at the RRHs, and show that the proposed design achieves significant throughput gains with much lower complexity.