Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Deep convolutional neural networks for automatic segmentation of left ventricle cavity from cardiac magnetic resonance images

This work conducts a feasibility study of deep learning approaches for automatic segmentation of left ventricle (LV) cavity from cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) images. Automatic LV cavity segmentation is a challenging task, partially due to the small size of the object as compared to the large CMR image background, especially at the apex. To cater for small object segmentation, the authors present a localisation-segmentation framework, to first locate the object in the large full image, then segment the object within the small cropped region of interest. The localisation is performed by a deep regression model based on convolutional neural networks, while the segmentation is done by the deep neural networks based on U-Net architecture. They also employ the Dice loss function for the training process of the segmentation models, to investigate its effects on the segmentation performance. The deep learning models are trained and evaluated by using public endocardium-annotated CMR datasets from York University and MICCAI 2009 LV Challenge websites. The average dice metric values of the authors’ proposed framework are 0.91 and 0.93, respectively, on these two databases. These results are promising as compared to the best results achieved by the current state-of-art, which shows the potentials of deep learning approaches for this particular application.
Prevalence and determinants of metabolic syndrome according to three definitions in middle-aged Chinese men.

BACKGROUND The prevalence of metabolic syndrome has varied markedly between different studies because of the lack of internationally agreed-upon criteria to define the condition. We estimated the prevalence and lifestyle risk factors of metabolic syndrome according to three definitions of metabolic syndrome in urban Chinese men participating in the Shanghai Men's Health Study (SMHS). METHODS In this cross-sectional study, 3988 middle-aged, urban Chinese men 40-74 years of age who were free of type 2 diabetes at baseline provided fasting blood samples, anthropometric measurements, and information on lifestyle factors and disease history. RESULTS The three definitions of metabolic syndrome used in this report are from the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), the U.S. Third Report of the National Cholesterol Education Program, Adult Treatment Panel (ATP III), and a modified version of the ATP III criteria for Asian populations (ATP III-modified criteria). The prevalence of metabolic syndrome was 18.63%, 18.36%, and 29.34% according to IDF, ATP III, and ATP III-modified criteria, respectively. Agreement between the IDF and ATP III criteria was moderate (kappa = 0.43), whereas agreement between ATP III-modified and the IDF and ATP III criteria was good (kappa = 0.71 and 0.70, respectively). Physical activity was associated with a lower prevalence of metabolic syndrome, whereas drinking more than three drinks per day was associated with a higher risk of metabolic syndrome, regardless of the criteria employed. The association between smoking and the prevalence of metabolic syndrome in this population failed to reach significance. CONCLUSIONS Results from this representative sample of middle-aged, urban Chinese men show that metabolic syndrome is highly prevalent in this population. Our data support the hypothesis that physical activity decreases the risk of developing metabolic syndrome and that high alcohol consumption increases risk.
EVADING: An Evolutionary Algorithm with Dynamic Niching for Data Classification

Multimodal optimization problems (MMOPs) have been widely studied in many fields of machine learning, including pattern recognition and data classification. Formulating the process of rule induction for the latter task as a MMOP and inspired by corresponding findings in the field of function optimization, our current work proposes an evolutionary algorithm (EVADING) capable of discovering a set of accurate and diverse classification rules. The proposed algorithm uses a dynamic clustering technique as a parallel niching method to maintain rule population diversity and converge to the optimal rules for the attribute-space defined by the target dataset. To demonstrate its applicability and potential, EVADING is applied to a series of real-life classification problems and its prediction accuracy is compared to that of other popular non-evolutionary machine learning techniques. Results are encouraging, since EVADING manages to achieve the best overall average ranking and performs significantly better (at significance level a=0.05) from three out of the eight rival algorithms used in this study. This work is concluded with some insights on the factors affecting the proposed algorithm’s performance, along with the directions of our future research.
A test of the leaf-ancestor metric for parse accuracy

The GEIG metric for quantifying the accuracy of parsing became influential through the Parseval programme, but many researchers have seen it as unsatisfactory. The Leaf-Ancestor (LA) metric, first developed in the 1980s, arguably comes closer to formalizing our intuitive concept of relative parse accuracy. We support this claim via an experiment that contrasts the performance of alternative metrics on the same body of automatically-parsed examples. The LA metric has the further virtue of providing straightforward indications of the location of parsing errors.
Network cooperative distributed pricing control system for large-scale optimal charging of PHEVs/PEVs

Efficient demand management policies at the grid side are required for large scale charging of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles and Plug-in Electric vehicles (PHEVs/PEVs). The SoC level and Charging Cost should be optimized while the aggregate load is kept under a safety limit to avoid overloads. Conventionally, optimal managing of the charging rates requires gathering and processing data in a center. However, as the scale of the problem increases to consider thousands of charging stations distributed over a vast geographical area, the central approach suffers from vulnerability to single node/link failures as well as scalability. This paper introduces a novel decentralized network cooperative approach for controlling the PHEV/PEV charging rates. In this approach, each charging station acts as a local retailer of energy, selling the power to the plugged in vehicle while coordinating the price with its neighbors. In response to the offered price, the Smart-Charger of the vehicle adjusts the charging current to maximize the utility of the PHEV/PEV user. By iteratively repeating this process, the convergence to the global optimum is attained without the requirement for any central unit. Robustness to single link/node failures is another advantage of our method.
Mutations in the recD gene of Escherichia coli that raise the copy number of certain plasmids

Chromosomal mutants were isolated in which, for several small plasmids, there was an increased amount of either covalently closed circular plasmid DNA or total plasmid DNA or both. The mutations were mapped to recD, which has been shown to affect exonuclease V activity and a variety of plasmid maintenance and replication functions. Our results suggest that rolling-circle plasmid replication can occur in recD mutants and that site-specific recombination can resolve the resulting linear multimers into covalently closed circular plasmid forms.
Investigation of Electrode Conditioning Mechanism in Vacuum with Impulse Voltage Application

The clarification of breakdown (BD) characteristics is very important in order to improve an electrical insulation technique for high voltage vacuum circuit breakers. In this paper, the authors discuss the electrode conditioning characteristics under non-uniform electric field in vacuum. Firstly, the authors investigated conditioning characteristics using different procedures of impulse voltage application. Negative standard lightning impulse voltages were applied to a rod-to-plane electrode configuration. Experimental results revealed that conditioning characteristics such as the BD field strength and the number of voltage applications required for conditioning were much different depending on the voltage application procedures. Secondly, the authors quantified the conditioning characteristics by relating the discharge energy to the reduction of an equivalent field intensification factor on the electrode surface
Automated detection of heart ailments from 12-lead ECG using complex wavelet sub-band bi-spectrum features

The complex wavelet sub-band bi-spectrum (CWSB) features are proposed for detection and classification of myocardial infarction (MI), heart muscle disease (HMD) and bundle branch block (BBB) from 12-lead ECG. The dual tree CW transform of 12-lead ECG produces CW coefficients at different sub-bands. The higher-order CW analysis is used for evaluation of CWSB. The mean of the absolute value of CWSB, and the number of negative phase angle and the number of positive phase angle features from the phase of CWSB of 12-lead ECG are evaluated. Extreme learning machine and support vector machine (SVM) classifiers are used to evaluate the performance of CWSB features. Experimental results show that the proposed CWSB features of 12-lead ECG and the SVM classifier are successful for classification of various heart pathologies. The individual accuracy values for MI, HMD and BBB classes are obtained as 98.37, 97.39 and 96.40%, respectively, using SVM classifier and radial basis function kernel function. A comparison has also been made with existing 12-lead ECG-based cardiac disease detection techniques.
Intensity profile in a distributed feedback fiber laser characterized by a green fluorescence scanning technique

We report on an experimental technique for investigating the intensity profile in distributed feedback fiber lasers. By scanning along the laser length and monitoring the side green fluorescence, the intensity distribution in the laser can be inferred. With this approach, we experimentally verify the sharply peaked intensity distribution predicted for λ/4 phase‐shifted distributed feedback lasers.
Performance Analysis of IBM POWER 8 Processors

As computational strength of nowadays computers increase, the simple measurements using a clock frequency, number of cores or simple GFLOPS does not seem enough anymore. Most of the current computers have Intel processors, based on the x86 64 architecture, which is well understood, described and proven by many applications. But, there are also other architectures, namely PowerPC architecture with the latest Power8 processor and I will investigate whether these two can compete. In comparison to the previous generation, Power8 was significantly improved at the level of instructions, threads and cores, but also at the the level of the whole system. Various characteristics will be demonstrated on several algorithms and benchmarks in comparison to the recent Intel Haswell-EP architecture. Power8 processor has impressively good memory and caches performance, reaching up to 145 GB/s of sustainable memory bandwidth between processor and the main memory on evaluated system. Also, measurements of simple algorithms exploiting the most of the computational power are comparable or better than the Intel processors, even though I do not have access to the fully equipped Power8 system configuration. This is not only the first complex comparison of IBM Power8 against current Intel processors, but also a guide to understand the architecture and optimizations for current PowerPC platform. For the next year is the new Power9 is announced, which will build with NVIDIA GPUs again one of the TOP 500 supercomputers.
Differential in Vivo Potencies of Naltrexone and 6β-Naltrexol in the Monkey

6β-Naltrexol is the major metabolite of the opioid receptor antagonist, naltrexone, in humans. However, there are no functional studies of 6β-naltrexol in primates. The aim of this study was to compare the in vitro and in vivo potencies of naltrexone and 6β-naltrexol in rhesus monkeys. Affinity and potency were determined using radioligand displacement and stimulation of 5′-O-(3-[35S]thio)triphosphate ([35S]GTPγS) binding in monkey brain membranes. In vivo apparent pA2 analysis was applied to compare the μ-opioid receptor (MOR) antagonist potency of both compounds in nondependent monkeys. In addition, the potencies of both compounds were determined in precipitating withdrawal manifested by increased respiratory parameters in acute morphine-dependent monkeys. In vitro assays revealed that naltrexone displayed 2-fold higher affinity and potency than 6β-naltrexol for the MOR binding site and for MOR agonist-stimulated [35S]GTPγS binding, respectively. 6β-Naltrexol (0.32-3.2 mg/kg) dose-dependently produced parallel rightward shifts of the dose-response curve of alfentanil-induced antinociception. Nevertheless, the apparent pA2 value of 6β-naltrexol (6.5) was 100-fold less potent than that of naltrexone (8.5) determined previously. 6β-Naltrexol was also less potent than naltrexone in antagonizing other MOR-mediated effects including respiratory depression and itch/scratching. Naltrexone (0.0032-0.032 mg/kg) and 6β-naltrexol (0.32-3.2 mg/kg) retained the same potency difference in precipitating withdrawal to a similar degree. Furthermore, 6β-naltrexol failed to block naltrexone-precipitated withdrawal in morphine-dependent monkeys. These results indicate that naltrexone and 6β-naltrexol display similar pharmacological actions with a large in vivo potency difference in monkeys such that 6β-naltrexol may play a minimal role in the therapeutic or antagonist effects of naltrexone in primates.
AUTOMATED MOUNTING BIAS CALIBRATION for AIRBORNE LIDAR SYSTEM

Mounting bias is the major error source of Airborne LIDAR system. In this paper, an automated calibration method for estimating LIDAR system mounting parameters is introduced. LIDAR direct geo-referencing model is used to calculate systematic errors. Due to LIDAR footprints discretely sampled, the real corresponding laser points are hardly existence among different strips. The traditional corresponding point methodology does not seem to apply to LIDAR strip registration. We proposed a Virtual Corresponding Point Model to resolve the corresponding problem among discrete laser points. Each VCPM contains a corresponding point and three real laser footprints. Two rules are defined to calculate tie point coordinate from real laser footprints. The Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) is used to extract corresponding points in LIDAR strips, and the automatic flow of LIDAR system calibration based on VCPM is detailed described. The practical examples illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed calibration method.
An 8‐day extensive elemental, but not contextual, fear conditioning potentiates hippocampal‐lateral septal synaptic efficacy in mice

Previous findings have suggested a critical role for hippocampal‐lateral septal (HPC‐LS) synaptic transmission in the modulation of elemental vs. contextual fear conditioning. Pharmacologically‐ or electrophysiologically‐induced increases in HPC‐LS neurotransmission were shown to be associated with both an increase in elemental and a decrease in contextual fear conditioning. However, elemental conditioning, induced by an unconditional stimulus (US) that was explicitly paired with a simple conditional stimulus (CS), did not result in any change in this neurotransmission when two tone CS‐footshock US pairings were provided. The present experiment was thus designed to investigate directly, in mice, whether extensive elemental conditioning (repeated CS‐US pairings) could induce an increase in HPC‐LS neurotransmission. For that purpose, over 8 days, an elemental conditioning group was repeatedly submitted to CS‐US pairings in either one context (A) or another (B) depending on the training day. Hence, whichever the context, the tone CS was the relevant predictive stimulus for the occurrence of the footshock US. In contrast, a contextual conditioning group was submitted to the same regimen except that the US was delivered only in context A and was never paired with the CS, making, thereby, the context A the relevant predictor for the US regardless of the occurrence of the tone CS. Results show that during re‐exposure of the animals to either context A or B, a significant increase in HPC‐LS neurotransmission was selectively associated with the repeated elemental conditioning. This study supports the idea that changes in HPC‐LS neurotransmission may modulate the strength of simple CS‐US associations, and suggests that alterations of hippocampal functioning might be involved. Synapse 49:270–278, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The source filter concept in voice production

This is a review of recent work on source-filter composition of voiced sounds, describing various alternatives of defining a source function w i t h implications for a m r e profound understandinq of the acoustic processes involved an8 their mdelling in equivalent netmrks. The theoretical study is backed up by experiments with inverse fi l tering and other types of glottq-dphy. Special attention is devoted t o time-varying bandwidths within a glottal 01x33 period and the implications for defining overall effective bandwidths. The presence in the speech wave of voice source comrmnents as well as the presence of formant oscillati.on in the glottal flow are discussed. Expressions for supraand suhglottal pressure fluctuations are also derived. An earlier propsea parametric model of glottal flow and f o m t excitation is reviewed and discussed with rcspect to voice intensity and some dynamic factor in connected speech.
Cryptochrome is present in the compound eyes and a subset of Drosophila's clock neurons

Cryptochrome (CRY) is intimately associated with the circadian clock of many organisms. In the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, CRY seems to be involved in photoreception as well as in the core clockwork. In spite of the critical role of CRY for the clock of Drosophila, it was not quite clear whether CRY is expressed in every clock cell. With the help of a new antibody and a mutant that lacks CRY, we show here that CRY is expressed in specific subsets of Drosophila's pacemaker neurons and in the photoreceptor cells of the compound eyes. In the pacemaker neurons, CRY levels and kinetics under light‐dark cycles are quite different from each other. High‐amplitude oscillations are observed in only three groups of clock neurons, suggesting that these three groups are strongly receptive to light. The different CRY kinetics may account for phase differences in oscillations of the clock proteins observed in these three groups in earlier studies. The molecular clock of the neurons that contain lower CRY levels or are completely CRY negative can still be synchronized by light, probably via intercellular communication with the CRY‐positive neurons as well as via external photoreceptors. J. Comp. Neurol. 508:952–966, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
1 H , 13 C and 15 N resonance assignment of WHEP domains of human glutamyl-prolyl tRNA synthetase

Human bifunctional glutamyl-prolyl tRNA synthetase (EPRS) contains three WHEP domains (R123) linking two catalytic domains. These three WHEP domains have been shown to be involved in protein–protein and protein–nucleic acid interactions. In translational control of gene expression, R12 repeats is known to interact with 30UTR element in mRNAs of inflammatory gene for translational control mechanisms. While, R23 repeats interacts with NSAP1, which inhibits mRNA binding. Here we present the NMR chemical shift assignments for R12 (128 amino acids) as a 14 kDa recombinant protein and whole WHEP domains R123 (208 amino acids) as a 21 kDa recombinant protein. 97 % of backbone and 98 % of side-chain assignments have been completed in R12 analysis and 93 and 92 % of backbone and side-chain, respectively, assignments have been completed in R123 analysis based upon triple-resonance experiments.
Efficacy of 5-Fluorouracil and High-Concentration Cisplatin Suspended in Lipiodol by Short-Term Hepatic Arterial Infusion Chemotherapy for Advanced Hepatocellular Carcinoma with Portal Vein Tumor Thrombosis

Background: Since advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is potentially fatal, and patients’ quality of life (QOL) often deteriorates during their treatment, improving the prognosis and QOL of patients given chemotherapy is very important. In addition, cost-effective treatments are highly desirable when chemotherapy must be given repeatedly. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy and usefulness of 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) and high-concentration cisplatin by short-term hepatic arterial infusion chemotherapy (3-day FPL) in advanced HCC patients. Methods: Thirty patients with unresectable advanced HCC were enrolled. The patients underwent hepatic arterial infusion chemotherapy via the implanted port system with 5-FU on days 1 - 3 and a fine-powder formulation of cisplatin in suspended pre-warmed lipiodol on day 2 every 4 to 10 weeks. Tumor response was assessed one month later with CT. Results: All patients had evidence of portal vein invasion (Vp2-4). Four patients achieved a complete response (CR), 8 patients achieved a partial response (PR), and 7 patients had stable disease (SD). The median progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) were 198 days and 452 days, respectively. The OS was significantly longer in the successful disease control group (CR, PR, and SD) than in the progressive disease group (P
Crystal Structure of the Tyrosine Kinase Domain of Colony-stimulating Factor-1 Receptor (cFMS) in Complex with Two Inhibitors*

The cFMS proto-oncogene encodes for the colony-stimulating factor-1 receptor, a receptor-tyrosine kinase responsible for the differentiation and maturation of certain macrophages. Upon binding its ligand colony-stimulating factor-1 cFMS autophosphorylates, dimerizes, and induces phosphorylation of downstream targets. We report the novel crystal structure of unphosphorylated cFMS in complex with two members of different classes of drug-like protein kinase inhibitors. cFMS exhibits a typical bi-lobal kinase fold, and its activation loop and DFG motif are found to be in the canonical inactive conformation. Both ATP competitive inhibitors are bound in the active site and demonstrate a binding mode similar to that of STI-571 bound to cABL. The DFG motif is prevented from switching into the catalytically competent conformation through interactions with the inhibitors. Activation of cFMS is also inhibited by the juxtamembrane domain, which interacts with residues of the active site and prevents formation of the activated kinase. Together the structures of cFMS provide further insight into the autoinhibition of receptor-tyrosine kinases via their respective juxtamembrane domains; additionally the binding mode of two novel classes of kinase inhibitors will guide the design of novel molecules targeting macrophage-related diseases.