Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Endothelial Keratoplasty: Descemet’s Stripping Automated Endothelial Keratoplasty Versus Descemet’s Membrane Endothelial Keratoplasty

Over the previous 15 years, endothelial keratoplasty (EK) has established itself as the standard of care for the treatment of endothelial dysfunction in the absence of significant stromal pathology. EK, primarily of the Descemet’s stripping automated endothelial keratoplasty (DSAEK) variety, supplanted penetrating keratoplasty (PK) in prevalence in the United States for the first time in 2012 and was 35% more common than PK in the 2014 Eye Bank Association of America report (19,294 PK vs. 25,965 EK). Although DSAEK remains the most frequently performed EK procedure, Descemet’s membrane endothelial keratoplasty (DMEK) has gained progressively wider acceptance and the number of DMEK surgeries performed in the United States has quadrupled since 2012, with nearly 3000 cases reported in 2014. This rise in the prevalence of DMEK has been attributed to its faster and superior visual rehabilitation, lower rejection rates, and patient preference for the procedure, when compared with DSAEK. We believe that these advantages, in conjunction with simplified and standardized techniques, will enable DMEK surgery to gain widespread adoption and become the standard of care for the surgical management of uncomplicated endothelial dysfunction. And while the data does support the assertion that DMEK provides superior outcomes relative to DSAEK, it is important to recognize that DSAEK remains indispensable in the management of eyes with certain comorbid conditions, as discussed below.
Packing Steiner Trees: Further Facets

Abstract In this paper we continue the investigations in [3] for the Steiner tree packing polyhedron. We present several new classes of valid inequalities and give sufficient (and necessary) conditions for these inequalities to be facet-definining. It is intended to incorporate these inequalities into an existing cutting plane algorithm that is applicable to practical problems arising in the design of electronic curcuits.
Brain Correlates of the Interaction Between 5-HTTLPR and Psychosocial Stress Mediating Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Severity.

OBJECTIVE The serotonin transporter 5-HTTLPR genotype has been found to moderate the effect of stress on severity of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), with stronger effects of stress in carriers of the short allele than in individuals homozygous for the long allele. The underlying neurobiological mechanism of this gene-environment interaction in ADHD is unknown. The authors aimed to determine whether 5-HTTLPR moderates the effect of stress on brain gray matter volume and, if so, which brain regions mediate the effect of this gene-environment interaction on ADHD severity. METHOD Structural MRI, 5-HTTLPR genotype, and stress exposure questionnaire data were available for 701 adolescents and young adults participating in the multicenter ADHD cohort NeuroIMAGE study (from 385 families; 291 with ADHD, 78 with subthreshold ADHD, 332 healthy comparison subjects; 55.8% male; average age: 17.0 years). ADHD symptom count was determined through multi-informant questionnaires. For the analysis, a whole-brain voxel-based morphometry approach was combined with mediation analysis. RESULTS Stress exposure was associated with significantly less gray matter volume in the precentral gyrus, middle and superior frontal gyri, frontal pole, and cingulate gyrus in S-allele carriers compared with participants homozygous for the l-allele. The association of this gene-environment interaction with ADHD symptom count was mediated by gray matter volume in the frontal pole and anterior cingulate gyrus. CONCLUSIONS 5-HTTLPR genotype moderates the effect of stress on brain regions involved in social cognitive processing and cognitive control. Specifically, regions important for cognitive control link this gene-environment interaction to ADHD severity.
Optimal bearing gap of a multiarc radial bearing in a hydrodynamically levitated centrifugal blood pump for the reduction of hemolysis.

We have developed a hydrodynamically levitated centrifugal pump as a bridge-to-decision device. The purpose of the present study is to determine the optimal bearing gap of a multiarc radial bearing in the developed blood pump for the reduction of hemolysis. We prepared eight pump models having bearing gaps of 20, 30, 40, 80, 90, 100, 180, and 250 μm. The driving conditions were set to a pressure head of 200 mm Hg and a flow rate of 4 L/min. First, the orbital radius of the impeller was measured for the evaluation of the impeller stability. Second, the hemolytic property was evaluated in an in vitro hemolysis test. As a result, the orbital radius was not greater than 15 μm when the bearing gap was between 20 and 100 μm. The relative normalized index of hemolysis (NIH) ratios in comparison with BPX-80 were 37.67 (gap: 20 μm), 0.95 (gap: 30 μm), 0.96 (gap: 40 μm), 0.82 (gap: 80 μm), 0.77 (gap: 90 μm), 0.92 (gap: 100 μm), 2.76 (gap: 180 μm), and 2.78 (gap: 250 μm). The hemolysis tended to increase at bearing gaps of greater than 100 μm due to impeller instability. When the bearing gap decreased from 30 to 20 μm, the relative NIH ratios increased significantly from 0.95 to 37.67 times (P < 0.01) due to high shear stress. We confirmed that the optimal bearing gap was determined between 30 and 100 μm in the developed blood pump for the reduction of hemolysis.
Research on Influencing Factors of the Thermal Contact Resistance in Thin-Wall Injection Molding

Abstract Thermal contact resistance, a parameter that describes the thermal transferability of the interface between the melt and the metallic wall, exercises a significant influence on the surface quality of the resulting part, especially in thin wall injection molding. In this study, temperature data of the melt was quantitatively measured with only 2 micro thermocouples, and TCR of specimens with 4 kinds of thickness was calculated after data processing with a new mathematical model. It was demonstrated that TCR was deeply affected by mold temperature. When the mold temperature increased from 90 °C to 130 °C, the rate of TCR decline was 56.72 %. Melt cooling simulation was performed with different values of TCR, which played the dominant role of TCR in calculating the temperature distribution in thin-wall injection molding. It showed that TCR exercises a significant influence on the simulation of the cooling rate, and the influence cannot be ignored, especially in thin-wall injection molding.
MGFD: the maize gene families database

Most gene families are transcription factor (TF) families, which have fundamental roles in almost all biological processes (development, growth and response to environmental factors) and have been employed to manipulate various types of metabolic, developmental and stress response pathways in plants. Maize (Zea mays) is one of the most important cereal crops in the world due its importance to human nutrition and health. Thus, identifying and annotating all the gene families in maize is an important primary step in defining their functions and understanding their roles in the regulation of diverse biological processes. In this study, we identified 96 predicted maize gene families and systematically characterized all 5826 of the genes in those families. We have also developed a comprehensive database of maize gene families (the MGFD). To further explore the functions of these gene families, we extensively annotated the genes, including such basic information as protein sequence features, gene structure, Gene Ontology classifications, phylogenetic relationships and expression profiles. The MGFD has a user-friendly web interface with multiple browse and search functions, as well as data downloading. The MGFD is freely available to users at http://mgfd.ahau. edu.cn/. Database URL: http://mgfd.ahau. edu.cn/
Tire-Suspension-Steering Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation

Safety and performance have always been important factors in automotive testing. These factors are highly dependent on the tires and suspensions, which should be simulated and tested throughout the development process. During development, Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) simulations may be used so that testings and tunings can be done earlier in the process. In this paper, designs and configurations of a newly developed tire-suspension-steering HIL are shown. An actual wheel assembly with suspension and steering components can be installed for testing with dynamic models of the rest of the car. The slip angle of the tire can be imposed in the test rig while actual tire forces can be measured and used in the dynamic model. Comparisons of HIL simulations and real experiments using the skidpad test and the step steering test are given using Formula SAE race cars. It was found that the HIL simulation results are more accurate compared to non-HIL simulations.
A Time-Aware Language Model for Microblog Retrieval

Abstract : This paper describes our work (the IIEIR participation) in the TREC 2012 Microblog Adhoc Track. We proposed a ranking algorithm with temporal information based query. More and more research work proved that time is an important factor for improving the search result, especially for Microblog search. Based on Language Model, the representative work used time information as the document's prior information. Intuitively, there were two ways for making use of this feature. One way was query relevant while the other was query irrelevant. The hypothesis of the two models is the newer of the document, the more important. However, different query had different hot time points (the top time of relevance documents' time distribution). Take this into consideration; we supposed four models based on hot time points (HTLM). On this basis, we considered the model which is not relevant with query as document's background information and the model which is relevant with query as document's independent information. We used smoothing operation and supposed a mix timed language model. The results suggested that HTLM models are more effective for Microblog search and mix model further improved compared with the single model.
Interrelation between the Degree of Carotid Stenosis, Collateral Circulation and Cerebral Perfusion

Background: In patients with carotid artery stenosis, ipsilateral hemodynamic compromise is associated with an increased risk of stroke. It is unclear which factors determine cerebral perfusion. We studied the effect of both the degree of the stenosis and the collateral circulation via the circle of Willis (CoW) on cerebral perfusion in patients with symptomatic carotid artery stenosis. Methods: In 88 patients with unilateral symptomatic carotid artery stenosis of ≧50%, CT perfusion was used to measure the relative cerebral blood volume (rCBV), the difference in mean transit time (ΔMTT) and the relative cerebral blood flow (rCBF). CT angiography was used to measure the degree of carotid stenosis and to assess the configuration of the CoW. Differences in mean rCBF, rCBV and ΔMTT between patients with a carotid stenosis of ≤69, 70–79, 80–89 and 90–99%, and between patients with a complete and those with an incomplete CoW were determined by analysis of covariance. Results: The ipsilateral rCBF showed a gradual decrease with increasing severity of carotid stenosis (1.09 ± 0.06, 0.93 ± 0.06, 0.90 ± 0.04 and 0.83 ± 0.04 ml/100 g/min, respectively; p = 0.005), and the ΔMTT showed a gradual increase (–0.02 ± 0.33, 0.16 ± 0.34, 1.08 ± 0.22 and 1.47 ± 0.20 s, respectively; p < 0.001). The rCBV was not related to the severity of stenosis. No relation was found between the configuration of the CoW and the cerebral perfusion parameters. Conclusions: Cerebral perfusion is inversely related to the degree of stenosis in patients with symptomatic carotid artery stenosis. A relation between the configuration of the CoW and cerebral perfusion was not detected, suggesting that other collateral pathways play an important role.
Questions remaining about the minimally conscious state.

Disorders of human consciousness continue to fascinate and perplex neurologists and neuroscientists. In their landmark monograph, Plum and Posner1 drafted the first comprehensive map of this elusive area and provided the now widely accepted clinical definitions of consciousness and its states of impairment including stupor and coma. Within the continuum of brain damage resulting from diffuse neuronal insults by trauma, hypoxia, or ischemia, several distinct clinical syndromes have been identified and accepted by neurologists. At the most extreme end, the syndrome of brain death indicates the permanent and global loss of neuronal function such that all the clinical functions of the brain are lost permanently.2 The persistent vegetative state (PVS), a condition whose name and essential features were described in 1972 by Plum and Jennett3 and further delineated in a 1994 multi-society task force report,4,5⇓ features the tragic and ironic dissociation of the two cardinal elements of human consciousness: wakefulness and awareness. Wakefulness is maintained but awareness is lost because the lesions producing PVS preserve the ascending reticular activating system but disconnect it from the thalami and cerebral hemispheres.6 Neurologic disorders that impair consciousness have important ethical, legal, political, and economic implications, largely because of the poignancy of affected patients’ loss of our uniquely human faculty and the vexing questions that follow of why, when, and how we should treat such patients. Brain death is …
Opposing Effects of n-6 and n-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids on Pancreatic Cancer Growth

Objectives: Epidemiologic studies suggest that fish oil, rich in n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), possesses antitumor activity, whereas n-6 PUFAs may stimulate the development of cancers. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of n-6 and n-3 PUFAs on the growth of pancreatic cancer. Methods: The n-6 PUFA arachidonic acid (AA) stimulated the growth of cyclooxygenase (COX) 2 positive human pancreatic cancer (PaCa) cells, which was mediated by COX-2 generated prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) binding to EP2 and EP4 receptors. In contrast, the n-3 PUFA eicosapentaenoic acid decreased the growth of COX-2-positive and COX-2-negative PaCa cells. The COX-2-dependent mechanism of eicosapentaenoic acid was mediated by binding of PGE3 to EP2 and EP4 receptors. Dietary intake of n-3 PUFAs decreased the growth of pancreatic cancers in a xenograft model, which was accompanied by a decrease of PGE2 and an increase of PGE3 in the tumors. Conclusions Our studies provide evidence that n-3 PUFAs possess antitumor activities, whereas n-6 PUFAs stimulate pancreatic tumor growth. The opposite effects of n-3 and n-6 PUFAs are mediated by the formation of different prostaglandin species. n-3 PUFAs may prove beneficial as monotherapy or combination therapy with standard chemotherapeutic agents in pancreatic cancer patients.
High Precision Hypertext Navigation Based on NLP Automatic Extractions

The growing popularity of hypertext navigation systems and the availability of large documentary databases is leading to the design of navigation systems that allow to explore these masses of documents. In this article, we present a prototype hypertext system for navigating through the dispatch archives created from Agence France-Presse. Taking account of the volume of documents to be processed, we show how we use natural language processing to produce automatically the data required to construct the hypertext. We describe a data model hinged around the notions of actor, event and role. We show that this model can be used to structure information contained in news archives and to explore them intuitively with a browser.
Power-aware modulo scheduling for high-performance VLIW processors

For high-performance processors, the step power and peak power, which are closely related to the chip reliability, are important design constraints, often more than the average power. In VLIW processors where a single instruction may contain a variable number of operations, the step power and peak power vary significantly depending on the parallel schedule generated by a parallelizing compiler. In this paper, we propose a power-aware modulo scheduling algorithm for high-performance VLIW processors. The proposed algorithm reduces both the step power and peak power by producing a more balanced parallel schedule while not compromising performance. Experimental results show that the proposed scheduling technique significantly improves the power characteristics of high-performance processors over an existing power-unaware modulo scheduling technique.
Joint User Modeling across Aligned Heterogeneous Sites

An accurate and comprehensive user modeling technique is crucial for the quality of recommender systems. Traditionally, we model user preferences using only actions from the target site and may suffer from cold-start problem. As nowadays people normally engage in multiple online sites for various needs, we consider leveraging the cross-site actions to improve the user modeling accuracy. Specifically, in this paper we aim at achieving a more comprehensive and accurate user modeling by modeling user's actions in multiple aligned heterogeneous sites simultaneously. To do so, we propose a modularized probabilistic graphical model framework JUMA. We further integrate topic model and matrix factorization into JUMA for joint user modeling over text-based and item-based sites. We assemble and publish large-scale dataset for comprehensive analyzing and evaluation. Experimental results show that our framework JUMA out performs traditional within-site user modeling techniques, especially for cold-start scenarios. For cold-start users, we achieve relative improvements of 9.3% and 12.8% comparing to existing within-site approaches for recommendation in item-based and text-based sites respectively. Thus we draw the conclusion that aligning heterogeneous sites and modeling users jointly do help to improve the quality of online recommender systems.
A distributed spatial reuse (DSR) MAC protocol for IEEE 802.11 ad-hoc wireless LANs

The paper proposes a distributed spatial reuse (DSR) MAC protocol for IEEE 802.11 ad-hoc wireless LANs (WLANs) to increase bandwidth utilization and reduce power consumption. Through power control, the communications that do not interfere with each other can transmit simultaneously. Therefore, the overall efficiency and effectiveness of IEEE 802.11 ad-hoc WLANs can be enhanced. DSR allows the maximum number of interference-free communication pairs to transmit in parallel without collisions. According to the experiment results, DSR is much better than traditional WLAN protocol, IEEE 802.11 DCF, and the related work. The protocol indeed can effectively enhance the overall WLANs efficiency.
A Succinct Solver for ALFP

We develop a solver algorithm which allows to efficiently compute the stable model of a very expressive fragment of predicate logic. The succinct formulation of the algorithm is due to the disciplined use of continuations and memoisation. This facilitates giving a precise characterisation of the behaviour of the solver and to develop a complexity calculation which allows to obtain its formal complexity. Practical experiments on a control-flow analysis of the ambient calculus show that the solver frequently performs better than the worst-case complexity estimates.
Independent analysis of feature based face recognition algorithms under varying poses

Feature based face recognition algorithms are computationally efficient compared to model based approaches. These algorithms have proved themselves for face identification under variations in poses. However, the literature lacks with direct and detailed investigation of these algorithms in completely equal working conditions. This motivates us to carry out an independent performance analysis of well known feature based face identification algorithms for different poses with mug-shot face database situation. The analysis focuses on variations in performance of feature based algorithms in terms of identification rates due to variation in poses. The analysis is carried out in face identification scenario using large amount of images from the standard face databases such as AT&T, Georgian Face database and Head Pose Image database. We analysed state-of-the art feature based algorithms such as PCA, log Gabor, DCT and FPLBP and found that, log Gabor outperforms for larger degree of pose variation with an average identification rate 82.47% with three training images for Head Pose Image database.
Proof planning: A methodology for developing AI systems incorporating design issues

Abstract In cases where a domain theory can be successfully expressed in a logical formalism and can be used to formulate a task in that domain in mathematical terms, the task of building sound knowledge-based systems is greatly facilitated. However, it is not immediately obvious how the design aspects of such tasks, where these are an important feature of problem solving, can be incorporated in this approach. Design issues differ from search problems in that there may be several choices, each valid in some sense, but not (necessarily) equally good or equally appropriate in the current context. A case study is described in which a methodology is used based on the development of proof plans. The ability to conduct research according to the Popperian framework of hypothesis, validation, testing, and modification in response to empirical evidence – the hypothetico-deductive approach – seems essential to any rigorous scientific endeavor. It is believed that proof planning is a method which readily exploits this inherently incrementalist approach and could prove to be a powerful tool in designing AI systems.
Building and Comparing Qualitative Descriptions of Three-Dimensional Design Sketches

We describe a method for constructing qualitative structural descriptions of hand-drawn sketches of 3D objects. We use visual grouping and segmentation operations to extract edges and surfaces, and use line labeling with an extension of Malik’s (1987) junction catalog to identify threedimensional features in order to construct an orientationinvariant symbolic representation. These symbolic representations can be used to identify corresponding surfaces and edges in two different sketches drawn in different perspectives of the same object. The comparison process uses the Structure-Mapping Engine, with additional sketch-specific matching constraints. We evaluate our techniques with a sketch recognition task, using drawings of 12 objects from an engineering design textbook.
Nutritional Recovery Promotes Hypothalamic Inflammation in Rats during Adulthood

We evaluated whether protein restriction in fetal life alters food intake and glucose homeostasis in adulthood by interfering with insulin signal transduction through proinflammatory mechanisms in the hypothalamus and peripheral tissues. Rats were divided into the following: a control group (C); a recovered group (R); and a low protein (LP) group. Relative food intake was greater and serum leptin was diminished in LP and R compared to C rats. Proinflammatory genes and POMC mRNA were upregulated in the hypothalamus of R group. Hypothalamic NPY mRNA expression was greater but AKT phosphorylation was diminished in the LP than in the C rats. In muscle, AKT phosphorylation was higher in restricted than in control animals. The HOMA-IR was decreased in R and C compared to the LP group. In contrast, the K itt in R was similar to that in C and both were lower than LP rats. Thus, nutritional recovery did not alter glucose homeostasis but produced middle hyperphagia, possibly due to increased anorexigenic neuropeptide expression that counteracted the hypothalamic inflammatory process. In long term protein deprived rats, hyperphagia most likely resulted from increased orexigenic neuropeptide expression, and glucose homeostasis was maintained, at least in part, at the expense of increased muscle insulin sensitivity.