Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bmc Medical Informatics and Decision Making Unified Wavelet and Gaussian Filtering for Segmentation of Ct Images; Application in Segmentation of Bone in Pelvic Ct Images

Background: The analysis of pelvic CT scans is a crucial step for detecting and assessing the severity of Traumatic Pelvic Injuries. Automating the processing of pelvic CT scans could impact decision accuracy, decrease the time for decision making, and reduce health care cost. This paper discusses a method to automate the segmentation of bone from pelvic CT images. Accurate segmentation of bone is very important for developing an automated assisted-decision support system for Traumatic Pelvic Injury diagnosis and treatment.
Improving the business impact of foresight

Abstract Achieving an impact on business decision-makers with foresight does not appear to be an easy task. Therefore, the Macro Trends team at Deutsche Bank Research has formulated some criteria to guide foresight projects. They should aim to produce plausibility, provide convenience and inspiration as well as an appropriate time perspective with regard to the content of foresight results. In addition, a structured way of producing and delivering foresight, a seamless inclusion in organisational procedures, a high level of interaction with decision-makers, ideational entrepreneurship, innovation regarding communication with business people, and persistence and synchronisation with the business organisation are the key criteria for achieving a higher impact from foresight projects. To live up to these criteria, the Macro Trends team has developed a ‘trend map’ which provides a conceptual aggregation of trends – to provide orientation for decision-makers and stakeholders.
Efficient spectrum utilization with selfish secondary users in cognitive radio networks

In cognitive radio networks, secondary users (SUs) are considered as selfish spectrum users, thus how to maximize the spectrum efficiency by these selfish users becomes an endless research topic. Recent studies mostly focus on the competition analysis between SUs using economic mechanism, such as game theory and auction, but the spectrum owner can hardly increase the spectrum efficiency directly when SUs apply the distributed manner. In this paper, we consider the slotted uplink scenario where several SUs have data transmitted to secondary access point (AP) under distributed random access manner. The AP decides how to divide its spectrum which maximizes the whole throughput, then SUs select the channels which would maximize their own profit. Our results show that SUs' channel selection process leads to a Nash Equilibrium, and the AP derives the proper number of channels based on the properties of NE. Moreover, we derive a rule for AP to decide which SUs should access the spectrum and lead to the increment in the whole throughput.
Evidence for α-synuclein prions causing multiple system atrophy in humans with parkinsonism

Significance Prions are proteins that assume alternate shapes that become self-propagating, and while some prions perform normal physiological functions, others cause disease. Prions were discovered while studying the cause of rare neurodegenerative diseases of animals and humans called scrapie and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, respectively. We report here the discovery of α-synuclein prions that cause a more common neurodegenerative disease in humans called multiple system atrophy (MSA). In contrast to MSA, brain extracts from Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients were not transmissible to genetically engineered cells or mice, although much evidence argues that PD is also caused by α-synuclein, suggesting that this strain (or variant) is different from those that cause MSA. Prions are proteins that adopt alternative conformations that become self-propagating; the PrPSc prion causes the rare human disorder Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD). We report here that multiple system atrophy (MSA) is caused by a different human prion composed of the α-synuclein protein. MSA is a slowly evolving disorder characterized by progressive loss of autonomic nervous system function and often signs of parkinsonism; the neuropathological hallmark of MSA is glial cytoplasmic inclusions consisting of filaments of α-synuclein. To determine whether human α-synuclein forms prions, we examined 14 human brain homogenates for transmission to cultured human embryonic kidney (HEK) cells expressing full-length, mutant human α-synuclein fused to yellow fluorescent protein (α-syn140*A53T–YFP) and TgM83+/− mice expressing α-synuclein (A53T). The TgM83+/− mice that were hemizygous for the mutant transgene did not develop spontaneous illness; in contrast, the TgM83+/+ mice that were homozygous developed neurological dysfunction. Brain extracts from 14 MSA cases all transmitted neurodegeneration to TgM83+/− mice after incubation periods of ∼120 d, which was accompanied by deposition of α-synuclein within neuronal cell bodies and axons. All of the MSA extracts also induced aggregation of α-syn*A53T–YFP in cultured cells, whereas none of six Parkinson’s disease (PD) extracts or a control sample did so. Our findings argue that MSA is caused by a unique strain of α-synuclein prions, which is different from the putative prions causing PD and from those causing spontaneous neurodegeneration in TgM83+/+ mice. Remarkably, α-synuclein is the first new human prion to be identified, to our knowledge, since the discovery a half century ago that CJD was transmissible.
Functional analysis of the internal translation initiation site of foot-and-mouth disease virus

Mutagenesis of the large untranslated sequence at the 5' end of the genome of foot-and-mouth disease virus revealed that a region of approximately 450 nucleotides preceding the open reading frame of the viral polyprotein is involved in the regulation of translation initiation at two internal start sites. Variations in two domains of this region reduced the translation efficiency up to 10-fold, whereas an intermediate segment seemed to be less essential. A pyrimidine-rich sequence preceding the start codon was most sensitive in that conversion of single pyrimidine residues to purines decreased the translation efficiency strongly. The data are in agreement with a recently proposed general structural model for the internal ribosome entry site of the cardiovirusaphthovirus subgroup of picornaviruses (E. V. Pilipenko, V. M. Blinov, B. K. Chernov, T. M. Dmitrieva, and V. I. Agol, Nucleic Acids Res. 17:5701-5711, 1989). They suggest, however, that this model represents only a core structure for the internal entry of ribosomes and that foot-and-mouth disease virus and other members of the picornaviruses need additional regulatory RNA elements for efficient translation initiation.
Talking about sex after Traumatic Brain Injury : perceptions and experiences of professionals

Background: Research indicates that although 50-60% of people who have had a traumatic brain injury (TBI) experience changes in sexual functioning, sexuality issues remain largely unaddressed in rehabilitation. Studies have investigated professionals’ perspectives about communicating about sexual issues with service-users2 post-TBI, with a number of barriers being identified. However, as studies have tended to use quantitative methodologies, it was felt that qualitative research would provide a richer understanding. Aim: This study aimed to explore professionals’ perceptions and experiences of discussing sexuality with service-users who have had a TBI. Method: This study employed a qualitative design. Purposeful sampling was used to recruit 24 participants from two local National Health Service (NHS) trusts, and from a national charity. Four focus groups were carried out with pre-existing teams of professionals, using a semi-structured interview schedule. Focus group data were transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic analysis. Results: Six main themes were derived from the analysis: 1) Sexuality after TBI is a specialist issue; 2) Sexuality is a sensitive subject; 3) Practicalities of discussing sexuality; 4) Roles and responsibilities; 5) Dilemmas about risk and vulnerabilities, and 6) Organisational and structural factors. Each of these themes have between two and five subthemes. Conclusions and recommendations: In order that sexuality becomes accepted as an integral part of holistic rehabilitation, it is recommended that a more proactive approach is taken. It is recommended that sexuality is incorporated into assessments, and that written information is available for service-users. Support for professionals is also needed in the form of the development of policy, on-going training, and supervision.
Verification of DFIG and PMSG wind turbines' LVRT characteristics through field testing

Low voltage Ride through (LVRT) capability has become more and more an issue for newly integrated wind turbines. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to develop field tests for real wind turbines on Northeast China wind farms. It is therefore different from other papers that validate LVRT control strategies through running software simulations on a computer. To examine a single wind turbine's LVRT capability, wind turbine's terminal voltage dip is achieved by using a grid voltage dip emulator, which is located on the 690V side of the generator transformer. Apart from that, short circuiting a wind farm's 35kv transmission line is implemented to testify a wind farm's LVRT capability. This short circuit test is more efficient than the previous one to deal with massive wind turbines in a large area. By artificially making various grid fault circumstances, dynamic behavior of DFIG and PMSG wind turbines are analyzed and compared in both of these tests. Various control strategies such as active/passive crowbar and chopper protection schemes are verified in reality. New active/reactive power compensation methods are investigated and compared.
Development of scaffold-free elastic cartilaginous constructs with structural similarities to auricular cartilage.

External ear reconstruction with autologous cartilage still remains one of the most difficult problems in the fields of plastic and reconstructive surgery. As the absence of tissue vascularization limits the ability to stimulate new tissue growth, relatively few surgical approaches are currently available (alloplastic implants or sculpted autologous cartilage grafts) to repair or reconstruct the auricle (or pinna) as a result of traumatic loss or congenital absence (e.g., microtia). Alternatively, tissue engineering can offer the potential to grow autogenous cartilage suitable for implantation. While tissue-engineered auricle cartilage constructs can be created, a substantial number of cells are required to generate sufficient quantities of tissue for reconstruction. Similarly, as routine cell expansion can elicit negative effects on chondrocyte function, we have developed an approach to generate large-sized engineered auricle constructs (≥3 cm(2)) directly from a small population of donor cells (20,000-40,000 cells/construct). Using rabbit donor cells, the developed bioreactor-cultivated constructs adopted structural-like characteristics similar to native auricular cartilage, including the development of distinct cartilaginous and perichondrium-like regions. Both alterations in media composition and seeding density had profound effects on the formation of engineered elastic tissue constructs in terms of cellularity, extracellular matrix accumulation, and tissue structure. Higher seeding densities and media containing sodium bicarbonate produced tissue constructs that were closer to the native tissue in terms of structure and composition. Future studies will be aimed at improving the accumulation of specific tissue constituents and determining the clinical effectiveness of this approach using a reconstructive animal model.
Numerical Study of Quantum-Dot-Embedded Solar Cells

A quantum-dot-embedded solar cell model with antireflection coating is proposed and studied numerically. The device model was designed by using MATLAB coding. A proper inclusion of quantum-dot-enhanced carrier absorption was achieved through a modified absorption coefficient and a structure dependent carrier lifetime. The transmission matrix and quasi-drift diffusion method were applied to simulate the optical and electrical characteristics of the device. The experimental results were fitted first to validate the model and provide parameters for optimization. The final simulation showed that the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of an ideal InGaP/GaAs+InAs QD dual-junction cell could achieve 39.04%.
An Episodic Outbreak of Genetically Related Burkholdebja cepacia Among Non-Cystic Fibrosis Patients at a University Hospital

Abstract Objective: To investigate an outbreak of Burkholderia cepacia. Design: Observational study and chart review. Patients: Adult non-cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. Setting: Intensive care units (ICUs) at a university-affiliated teaching hospital. Methods: As part of the epidemiological investigation, we conducted a chart review and collected environmental samples. A review of work schedules of healthcare workers also was performed. We used B cepacia selective agar for preliminary screening for all isolates, which subsequently were confirmed as members of the B cepacia complex by polyphasic analysis employing conventional biochemical reactions and genus- and species-specific polymerase chain reaction assays. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, randomly amplified polymorphic DNA typing, and automated ribotyping were used to genotype the isolates. As part of the intervention, contact isolation precautions were initiated for all patients identified as having had a culture positive for B cepacia. Results: Between September 1997 and September 1999, B cepacia was isolated from 31 adult patients without CF in ICUs at a university-affiliated teaching hospital. Based on geographic clustering and genotypic analysis, three distinct clusters were observed involving 20 patients. Isolates from 17 of these patients were available for testing and were found to be of the same strain (outbreak strain). Further taxonomic analysis indicated that the outbreak strain was B cepacia complex genomovar III. Twelve (71%) of the 17 patients were judged to be infected, and 5 (29%) were colonized with this strain. Six of 200 environmental cultures from multiple sources in the hospital's ICUs yielded B cepacia. Two of these isolates, both recovered from rooms of colonized patients, were the same genotype as the outbreak strain recovered from patients. Conclusion: Despite an extensive investigation, the source of the B cepacia clone involved in this outbreak remains unknown. The spatial and temporal pattern of cases suggests that cross-transmission of a genetically related strain contributed to clustering among patients. The initiation of contact isolation may have limited the extent of this transmission. Additional studies are needed to elucidate better the epidemiology of nosocomial B cepacia infection among non-CF adult patients.
A fast and reliable decoding scheme with prior-hash bits in distributed video coding

Distributed video coding (DVC) has attracted increasing research efforts due to its low-complexity encoding requirements and its applications in wireless video sensor networks for monitoring. This paper proposes a modified Prior-Hash-Based Side-Information Search for decoding Scheme in DVC. LDPC is introduced to produce the syndromes to realize DVC. And a hash-based side-information search scheme is proposed to get the most possible side information before syndrome decoding, named the Prior-Hash bits scheme. The proposed scheme not only reduces the bits of hash in the encoder, but also greatly decreases the computation complexity and delay in the decoder. Simulation results illustrate the performance of PSNR and the complexity advantages of the proposed scheme compared with the original PRISM [1] scheme.
Adolescent obesity in contextual settings: a scoping study of multilevel and hierarchical examinations

Multilevel/hierarchical obesity studies analyze adolescent and family, neighbourhood and social settings’ characteristics to generate data needed to design prevention interventions. This scoping study summarizes such studies’ characteristics and key findings to provide information to decision makers, which allows them to quickly grasp the state of the evidence and potential policy implications for adolescent obesity prevention. PubMed, CINAHLplus, PsychINFO and Sociological Abstracts were searched for peer‐reviewed studies spanning 1 January 2000–31 August 2014. Inclusion criteria included (i) outcome weight status, physical activity and weight status, or physical activity alone if the aim was obesity prevention; (ii) 12‐ to 19‐year‐old participants in a cross‐sectional study, a separate analysis in a cross‐sectional study or a longitudinal follow‐up. Nineteen studies were published in the United States of America; four in Canada; two in Spain, China and Vietnam, respectively; and one in Germany. Self‐efficacy, parental physical activity support, perceived neighbourhood support, social cohesion and access to recreational facilities were associated with increased activity levels; neighbourhood physical disorder and perceived lack of safety associated with reduced physical activity levels. Overweight or obesity was associated with sugar‐sweetened beverage intake and household availability thereof; reduced odds were reported with fruit and vegetable intake and household availability of these, daily breakfast and family meal frequency. Potential adolescent obesity risk regulators may be found at the individual, family or social contextual levels.
Indirect adaptive MPC for output tracking of uncertain linear polytopic systems

We present an indirect adaptive model predictive control algorithm for output tracking of linear systems with polytopic uncertainty. The proposed approach is based on the velocity form of the system model, and achieves input-to-state stable output tracking with respect to the parameter estimation error and the rate of change of time-varying references. For the constrained case, recursive feasibility is achieved by including robust constraints designed from a robust control invariant set for the system model, and terminal constraints designed from a positive invariant set for the velocity model. Simulation results for a numerical example and an air conditioning control application demonstrate the method.
Popularity-aware caching increases the capacity of wireless networks

In wireless ad hoc networks, due to the interference between concurrent transmissions, the per node capacity generally decreases with the increasing number of nodes in the network. Caching can help improve the network capacity, as it shortens the content transmission distance and reduces the communication interference. However, current researches on the capacity of wireless ad hoc networks with caching generally assume that content popularity follows uniform distribution. They ignore the fact that contents in reality have skewed popularity, which may lead to totally different capacity results. In this paper, we evaluate how the distribution of the content popularity affects the network capacity, and derive different capacity scaling laws based on the skewness of the content popularity. Our results suggest that for wireless networks with caching, when contents have skewed popularity, increasing the number of nodes monotonically increases the per node capacity.
Random matrix based method for joint DOD and DOA estimation for large scale MIMO radar in non-Gaussian noise

Traditional methods of target parameter estimation in MIMO radar are carried out under the assumption that the number of observations is much larger than the number of array elements. However, their estimation performance will decline for the MIMO radar with large arrays and insufficient observations. In this paper, we investigate the situation in bistatic MIMO radar that the product of the numbers of the transmit and receive elements and the number of observations grow at the same rate. We propose a robust method for joint direction-of-departure (DOD) and direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation in non-Gaussian noise environment. The method uses robust M-estimator to form an estimate of the covariance matrix, and then applies random matrix theory (RMT) and polynomial rooting algorithm to receive accurate DOD and DOA estimates for large scale MIMO radar. The simulation results demonstrate the robustness and improvement in accuracy.
Cholesterol and coronary heart disease mortality. A 23-year follow-up study of 9902 men in Israel.

A 23-year follow-up study of 10,059 40- to 65-year-old participants in the Israeli Ischemic Heart Disease Study found that of 3473 deaths (34.5%), in 1098 (10.9%) coronary heart disease (CHD) was the underlying cause. Total serum cholesterol (TC) was measured in 9902 individuals. During the study, CHD mortality was elevated primarily in individuals in quintiles 4 and 5 (TC levels greater than or equal to 217 mg/dl). Although CHD mortality increased marginally with increasing TC at levels below 217 mg/dl, this was entirely explained by age and other correlated risk factors in a multivariate adjustment of the survival curves. The "net" 23-year survival in terms of CHD was 87% in quintile 5 (TC greater than 241) versus 93% in quintile 1 (TC less than 176 mg/dl). CHD mortality was inversely related to the percent of cholesterol in high density lipoprotein (PHDL). All-cause mortality increased only when TC was above 240 mg/dl and in the subjects with PHDL levels in the lowest 20%. Lipids appeared to be somewhat less effective in predicting subsequent CHD mortality than did hypertension and smoking and were clearly secondary in assessing risk of all-cause death. The results raise the question whether intensive treatment for hypercholesterolemia is indicated for men at "borderline" levels. We conclude that the association between serum cholesterol and long-term mortality partly reflects the role that levels of co-existing CHD risk factors play in prognosis. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
A Parallel-Hierarchical Model for Machine Comprehension on Sparse Data

Understanding unstructured text is a major goal within natural language processing. Comprehension tests pose questions based on short text passages to evaluate such understanding. In this work, we investigate machine comprehension on the challenging {\it MCTest} benchmark. Partly because of its limited size, prior work on {\it MCTest} has focused mainly on engineering better features. We tackle the dataset with a neural approach, harnessing simple neural networks arranged in a parallel hierarchy. The parallel hierarchy enables our model to compare the passage, question, and answer from a variety of trainable perspectives, as opposed to using a manually designed, rigid feature set. Perspectives range from the word level to sentence fragments to sequences of sentences; the networks operate only on word-embedding representations of text. When trained with a methodology designed to help cope with limited training data, our Parallel-Hierarchical model sets a new state of the art for {\it MCTest}, outperforming previous feature-engineered approaches slightly and previous neural approaches by a significant margin (over 15\% absolute).
UVM-SystemC-AMS based framework for the correct by construction design of MEMS in their real heterogeneous application context

Each new embedded system tends to integrate more sensors with tight software-driven control, digitally assisted analog circuits, and heterogeneous structure. A more responsive simulation environment is needed to support the co-design and verification of such complex architectures including all its digital hardware/software and analog/multi-physical aspects using Multi-Disciplinary Virtual Prototyping (MDVP). Taking a Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) vibration sensor as an example, we introduce a reusable framework based on the state-of-the-art technologies SystemC AMS, Finite Elements/Reduced-Order modeling, and UVM to design, simulate, and verify such systems in their real application context.