Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Generative Design applied to Cloud Modeling

Geometric modeling has recently leveraged the power of Generative Design. Generative Design can be seen as a framework in which models can be generated by systematically exploring a space of shapes generated by recombination of parametric shape descriptors. In this work, we explore the use of Generative Design for modeling 3D clouds. Clouds are usually modeled in Computer Graphics as voxelized models by using a combination of implicit and procedural techniques. Hence, they are described by a large number of parameters. Although these parameters usually include parameters that define a combination of scalar fields, noise functions and affine transforms, the controlled use of such parameters is rather complex. How to tune them up to obtain a plausible result is not obvious. We propose a method based on generative design combined with Machine Learning to produce families of cloud shapes automatically. Our generative design method is based on an evolutionary approach that generates instances of plausible 3D cloud shapes by optimizing a fitness function that measures the likelihood of a shape be a cloud. As the manual design of a fitness function is also quite complex, we propose using a Convolutional Neural Network to learn the fitness of arbitrary 2D views of the generated clouds. We perform several experiments that confirm the viability of the proposed method compared to manually modeled clouds.
EFFECTS OF MYOFASCIAL–MERIDIAN STIMULATION THERAPY (MMST) ON SHOULDER PAIN

Fifty patients with shoulder pain were classified into two groups according to the type of pain: a capsular-pattern group (N = 22) and a non-capsular-pattern group (N = 28). Both groups received myofascial–meridian stimulation therapy four times in two weeks. After therapy, the pain level was significantly lower in the capsular-pattern than in the non-capsular-pattern group. The capsular-pattern group showed a nonsignificant trend toward greater range of motion than the non-capsular-pattern group. These data suggest that myofascial–meridian stimulation therapy might be useful as a new treatment to reduce pain and increase range of motion in patients with shoulder pain.
Feed Safe: a multidisciplinary partnership approach results in a successful mobile application for breastfeeding mothers.

Issue addressed: Mobile applications are increasingly being used in health promotion initiatives. Although there is evidence that developing these mobile health applications in multidisciplinary teams is good practice, there is a gap in the literature with respect to evaluation of the process of this partnership model and how best to disseminate the application into the community. The aim of this paper is twofold, to describe the partnership model in which the Feed Safe application was developed and to investigate what worked in terms of dissemination.Methods: The process of working in partnership was measured using the VicHealth partnership analysis tool for health promotion. The dissemination strategy and reach of the application was measured using both automated analytics data and estimates of community-initiated promotion.Results: The combined average score from the partnership analysis tool was 138 out of a possible 175. A multipronged dissemination strategy led to good uptake of the application among Australian women.Conclusions: Multidisciplinary partnership models are important in the development of health promotion mobile applications. Recognising and utilising the skills of each partner organisation can help expand the reach of mobile health applications into the Australian population and aid in good uptake of health promotion resources.So what? : Developing mobile applications in multidisciplinary partnerships is good practice and can lead to wide community uptake of the health promotion resource.
Clinical Investigation : Central Nervous System Tumor Treatment Outcomes , Growth Height , and Neuroendocrine Functions in Patients With Intracranial Germ Cell Tumors Treated With Chemoradiation Therapy

Treatment Outcomes, Growth Height, and Neuroendocrine Functions in Patients With Intracranial Germ Cell Tumors Treated With Chemoradiation Therapy Kazumasa Odagiri, M.D.,*,y Motoko Omura, M.D.,*,y Masaharu Hata, M.D.,* Noriko Aida, M.D.,y Tetsu Niwa, M.D.,y Ichiro Ogino, M.D.,k Hisato Kigasawa, M.D.,{ Susumu Ito, M.D.,z Masataka Adachi, M.D.,x and Tomio Inoue, M.D.* *Department of Radiology, Yokohama City University Graduate School of Medicine; yDepartments of Radiology, zNeurosurgery, and xEndocrinology, and {Division of Hemato-oncology/Regeneration Medicine, Kanagawa Children’s Medical Center; and kDepartment of Radiology, Yokohama City University Medical Center, Yokohama, Japan
Some principles for designing a wide-area optical network

Explores design principles for next generation optical wide-area networks, employing wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM), and targeted to nationwide coverage. This almost-all-optical network will exploit wavelength multiplexers and optical switches in routing nodes, so that arbitrary virtual topologies may be imbedded on a given physical network. The virtual topology, which is packet switched and which consists of a set of all-optical lightpaths, is set up to exploit the relative strengths of both optics and electronics viz. packets of information are carried by the virtual topology "as far as possible" in the optical domain, but packet forwarding from lightpath to lightpath is performed via electronic switching, whenever required. Algorithms are developed so that the WDM-based network architecture will (a) provide a high aggregate system capacity due to spatial reuse of wavelengths, and (b) support a large and scalable number of users, given a limited number of wavelengths. The authors illustrate their approaches by employing experimental traffic statistics collected from NSFNET. <<ETX>>
Repair of type A dissection-benefits of dissection rota.

BACKGROUND Acute type A aortic dissection repair is a surgical emergency associated with high mortality. In 2007, Liverpool Heart & Chest Hospital was the first institution in the United Kingdom to implement a thoracic aortic on-call dissection rota. We set out to investigate whether the dissection rota improved hospital quality outcomes and long-term survival. METHODS Data from a prospectively collected database was analysed following case note validation. Two hundred patients underwent acute type A aortic dissection repair between October 1998 and November 2015. To assess the effect of the post-dissection rota on operative and postoperative outcomes, propensity matching of pre- and post-dissection rota patients was used. RESULTS Eighty patients were identified from the pre-dissection rota era and 120 from the post-dissection rota era. Sixty patients from each era were then propensity matched. Comparative analyses showed that patients who underwent acute type A dissection repair in the post-dissection rota period were less likely to suffer in-hospital mortality in both the matched and unmatched groups (30% vs. 13.3%; P=0.004 and 28.3% vs. 11.7%; P=0.055, respectively). A similar improvement was shown in acute renal failure (26.3% vs. 14.2%; P=0.033 and 31.7% vs. 15.0%; P=0.044, respectively). However, cardiopulmonary bypass times and aortic cross clamp times were still significantly longer in the matched post-dissection rota cohort. There was a significant improvement in 5-year survival for the pre- and post-dissection rota in both the matched and unmatched patients (P=0.004 and P=0.034). CONCLUSIONS Reorganization of surgical expertise, activity and implementation of a dissection rota within our hospital have resulted in lower in-hospital mortality and better survival outcomes in this group of patients.
High shear homogenization of lignin to nanolignin and thermal stability of nanolignin-polyvinyl alcohol blends.

A new method to prepare nanolignin using a simple high shear homogenizer is presented. The kraft lignin particles with a broad distribution ranging from large micron- to nano-sized particles were completely homogenized to nanolignin particles with sizes less than 100 nm after 4 h of mechanical shearing. The (13) C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and (31) P NMR analysis showed that there were no major changes in the chemical composition between the starting kraft lignin particles and the nanolignin obtained after 4 h of mechanical treatment. The nanolignin particles did not show any change in molecular weight distribution and polydispersity compared to the original lignin particles. The nanolignin particles when used with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) increased the thermal stability of nanolignin/PVA blends more effectively compared to the original lignin/PVA blends.
Multi-parametric approach to identify coffee components that regulate mechanisms of gastric acid secretion.

SCOPE Chlorogenic acid (CA), caffeine (CAFF), pyrogallol (PYR), catechol (CAT), (β)N-alkanoyl-hydroxytryptamides (C5HT) and N-methylpyridinium (N-MP) were evaluated for their influence on mechanisms of gastric acid secretion as single compounds and in biomimetic mixtures. METHODS AND RESULTS Compounds were tested in coffee representative concentrations. Human gastric cancer cells (HGT-1) were used to study the proton secretory activity by Ussing chamber experiments and FACS analysis. For activation of EGFr, Akt1, ERK1/2, ATF-2 and cAMP levels, we performed pathway screening assays. Time-dependent expression of related genes were determined by real-time PCR. Part of the data was used for neural network modeling to identify the most relevant compounds. N-MP increased the expression of the anti-secretory somatostatin receptor by 114%, whereas C5HT decreased its expression by 52%. N-MP down-regulated the pro-secretory CHRM3 receptor by 36% and the H⁺,K⁺-ATPase by 36%. CAFF stimulated the secretory activity in the functional assays, whereas N-MP and CA decreased proton secretion. After applying a pathway analysis, we were able to discriminate between CAFF, CA, CAT, C5HT, PYR and histamine-activating EGFr signaling and N-MP-associated ERK1/2 signaling. CONCLUSION By applying a multi-parametric approach, N-MP was shown to effectively down-regulate mechanisms of gastric acid secretion in human parietal gastric cells.
Reinforcement Learning-based Quadcopter Control

Analysis of quadcopter dynamics and control is conducted. A linearized quadcopter system is controlled using modern techniques. A MATLAB quadcopter control toolbox is presented for rapid visualization of system response. Waypoint-based trajectory control of a quadcopter is performed and appended to the MATLAB toolbox. Finally, an investigation of control using reinforcement learning is conducted.
Zoom out CNNs features for optical remote sensing change detection

In this paper, we propose a novel unsupervised optical remote sensing change detection (CD) based on pre-trained convolutional neural network (CNN) on ImageNet dataset and superpixel (SLIC) segmentation technique. The proposed approach can be divided into three steps. First, bi-temporal images are stacked, and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is applied to extract three higher uncorrelated channels, which will be later segmented into superpixels. Second, we zoom out each region into three levels and fit them separately into a pre-trained CNN. Third, we extract features of different zooming levels that represent the same region (superpixel) and concatenate them. We compare the concatenated features to get the final change map. The experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach.
Downlink Secure Transmission with Base Station Cooperation Using Artificial Noise

With the development of wireless communication, one of the critical demands is secure transmission especially in downlink communication. In this paper, downlink secure transmission in two-cell base station cooperation multiuser network is studied. The two base stations are fully cooperated and an artificial noise (AN) is added to degrade the eavesdropper(EVE)'s channel. Perfect channel state information (CSI) of all users is known by the base stations and regularized channel inversion (RCI) precoding is used. The close form expression of secrecy sum rate is derived in the large system regime. The regularization parameter and the power allocation ratio are optimized based on larger system regime results. From analysis, base station cooperation network could serve more users per cell in secure transmission than single cell network. The numerical results show large system regime results are accurate even in finite case. In the simulation figures, the analytical optimal results can well approximate to the simulation results.
Rapid progression to cardiac tamponade in Erdheim–Chester disease despite treatment with interferon alpha

Erdheim–Chester disease (ECD) is a rare form of non-Langerhans histiocytosis with heterogeneous clinical manifestations. The most common presentation is bone pains typically involving the long bones. Approximately 75% of the patients develop extraskeletal involvement. Cardiac involvement is seen in up to 45% of the patients, and although, pericardial involvement is the most common cardiac pathology of this rare disease, cardiac tamponade due to ECD has been very rarely reported. We describe a case of a patient found to have ECD with multi-organ involvement and small pericardial effusion, which progressed to cardiac tamponade despite treatment with interferon alpha.
PiggyBac Transposon-Mediated Mutagenesis in Rats Reveals a Crucial Role of Bbx in Growth and Male Fertility

ABSTRACT Bobby sox homolog (Bbx) is an evolutionally conserved gene, but its biological function remains elusive. Here, we characterized defects of Bbx mutant rats that were created by PiggyBac-mediated insertional mutagenesis. Smaller body size and male infertility were the two major phenotypes of homozygous Bbx mutants. Bbx expression profile analysis showed that Bbx was more highly expressed in the testis and pituitary gland than in other organs. Histology and hormonal gene expression analysis of control and Bbx-null pituitary glands showed that loss of Bbx appeared to be dispensable for pituitary histogenesis and the expression of major hormones. BBX was localized in the nuclei of postmeiotic spermatids and Sertoli cells in wild-type testes, but absent in mutant testes. An increased presence of aberrant multinuclear giant cells and apoptotic cells was observed in mutant seminiferous tubules. TUNEL-positive cells costained with CREM (round spermatid marker), but not PLZF (spermatogonia marker), gammaH2Ax (meiotic spermatocyte marker), or GATA4 (Sertoli cell marker). Finally, there were drastically reduced numbers and motility of epididymal sperm from Bbx-null rats. These results suggest that loss of BBX induces apoptosis of postmeiotic spermatids and results in spermiogenesis defects and infertility.
Efficacy of a single ultrasound-guided injection for the treatment of hip osteoarthritis

Background Intra-articular injection is effective for osteoarthritis, but the best single injection strategy is not known, nor are there established predictors of response. The objectives of this study were to assess and predict response to a single ultrasound-guided injection in moderate to severe hip osteoarthritis. Methods 77 hip osteoarthritis patients entered a prospective, randomised controlled trial, randomised to one of four groups: standard care (no injection); normal saline; non-animal stabilised hyaluronic acid (durolane) or methylprednisolone acetate (depomedrone). Main Outcome Measures Numerical rating scale (NRS 0–10) ‘worst pain’, Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Arthritis Index (WOMAC) pain/function. Potential predictors of response (including radiographic severity, ultrasound synovitis and baseline symptom severity) were examined using univariate logistic regression analysis and Fisher's exact test. Results NRS pain, WOMAC pain and function improved significantly for the steroid arm alone. Effect sizes at week 1 were striking: NRS pain 1.5, WOMAC pain 1.9 and WOMAC function 1.3. Outcome Measures in Rheumatoid Arthritis Clinical Trials—Osteoarthritis Research Society responder criteria identified 22 responders (intention-to-treat): steroid 14 (74%; number needed to treat, two); saline, four (21%); durolane, two (11%); and no injection, two (10%; χ2 test between groups, p<0.001). Corticosteroid arm response was maintained over 8 weeks (summary measures analysis of variance, p<0.002 for NRS pain). Synovitis was a significant predictor of response at weeks 4 and 8 (p<0.05, Fisher's exact test; week 4 OR 16.7, 95% CI 1.4 to 204). Conclusions Ultrasound-guided corticosteroid injections are highly efficacious; furthermore synovitis on ultrasound is a biomarker of response to injection.
Machine learning of human responses to images

The human user is an often ignored component of the imaging chain. In medical diagnostic tasks, the human observer plays the role of the decision-maker, forming opinions based on visual assessment of images. In content-based image retrieval, the human user is the ultimate judge of the relevance of images recalled from a database. We argue that data collected from human observers should be used in conjunction with machine-learning algorithms to model and optimize performance in tasks that involve humans. In essence, we treat the human observer as a nonlinear system to be identified. In this paper, we review our work in two applications of this general idea. In the first, a learning machine is trained to predict the accuracy of human observers in a lesion detection task for purposes of assessing image quality. In the second, a learning machine is trained to predict human users' perception of the similarity of two images for purposes of content-based image retrieval from a database. In both examples, it is shown that a nonlinear learning machine can accurately identify the nonlinear human system that maps images into numerical values, such as detection performance or image similarity.
Effect of wearing an ice cooling jacket on repeat sprint performance in warm/humid conditions

Objective: To examine the effect of cooling the skin with an ice jacket before and between exercise bouts (to simulate quarter and half time breaks) on prolonged repeat sprint exercise performance in warm/humid conditions. Methods: After an initial familiarisation session, seven trained male hockey players performed two testing sessions (seven days apart), comprising an 80 minute intermittent, repeat sprint cycling exercise protocol inside a climate chamber set at 30°C and 60% relative humidity. On one occasion a skin cooling procedure was implemented (in random counterbalanced order), with subjects wearing an ice cooling jacket both before (for five minutes) and in the recovery periods (2 × 5 min and 1 × 10 min) during the test. Measures of performance (work done and power output on each sprint), heart rates, blood lactate concentrations, core (rectal) and skin temperatures, sweat loss, perceived exertion, and ratings of thirst, thermal discomfort, and fatigue were obtained in both trials. Results: In the cooling condition, chest (torso) skin temperature, thermal discomfort, and rating of thirst were all significantly lower (p<0.05), but no significant difference (p>0.05) was observed between conditions for measures of work done, power output, heart rate, blood lactate concentration, core or mean skin temperature, perceived exertion, sweat loss, or ratings of fatigue. However, high effect sizes indicated trends to lowered lactate concentrations, sweat loss, and mean skin temperatures in the cooling condition. Conclusions: The intermittent use of an ice cooling jacket, both before and during a repeat sprint cycling protocol in warm/humid conditions, did not improve physical performance, although the perception of thermal load was reduced. Longer periods of cooling both before and during exercise (to lower mean skin temperature by a greater degree than observed here) may be necessary to produce such a change.
Object tracking-by-detection under cluttered environments based on a discriminative approach

In many visual tracking applications, an object is first detected and a tracker is then trained to track the object only based on the one-shot information. Such mechanism is called tracking-by-detection and has become increasingly popular. This paper describes a discriminative algorithm, which requires no offline training and is adaptive to variations of the appearance of the target, for tracking-by-detection. A discriminative tracking model does not build an exact representation of the target but tries to find decision boundaries between the object and the background. In this paper, the classifier employed to distinguish the object from the background is trained by a boosting learning algorithm. To suppress undesirable drifting effect, weight saturation is incorporated into the boosting learning algorithm. Drifting effect which is commonly seen in many adaptive trackers is inevitable since each time the tracker is updated, some error is introduced. Tracking-by-detection will make the tracker even more unstable because of the imperfect detection. Experimental results show that our approach can alleviate drifting effect while the adaptiveness is still retained. Also our approach is comparable to other visual tracking algorithms in hostile situations such as occlusion and cluttered backgrounds.
Capacity Games in Assembly Systems with Uncertain Demand

An assembler needs sets of components, each produced by a different supplier. To produce the components and assemble the final product, the firms involved need to construct their individual production capacities before observing the actual demand. The firms have an incentive scheme (contract) to induce a "proper" capacity build-up. The key parameters of the contract are the set oftransfer prices the assembler pays each supplier for a unit of its component. We consider two game settings as to how the terms of the contract are determined. The first is one where the assembler sets the prices, and the second is for the suppliers to simultaneously select the prices each wants to charge for its component.We first characterize the optimal capacity decision when the system is centralized, and then derive the decentralized equilibrium capacities under each of the two game settings. We show that the decentralized channel performances depend heavily on system structure/parameters. In particular, under the first setting, the performance improves as the assembler's share of the systemwide capacity cost increases and it is not affected by the number of suppliers in the system, while under the second setting, the performance degrades both in the assembler's share of capacity cost and in the number of suppliers. We show that the first setting dominates the second in terms of system performance if and only if the assembler's share of capacity cost is larger than the reciprocal of the number of firms involved.
The Combination of Exposure‐Response and Case‐Control Analyses in Regulatory Decision Making

To reduce the bias introduced by confounding risk factors, a case‐control comparison was incorporated in the exposure‐response (ER) analysis to evaluate the recommended dosing regimen for trastuzumab in a pivotal trial. Results of Kaplan‐Meier survival analysis suggest that patients with metastatic gastric cancer (mGC) in the lowest quartile trough concentrations of trastuzumab in cycle 1 (Cmin 1) had shorter overall survival (OS) than did those in other quartiles. The result of the case‐matched control comparison suggests that adjusting for these risk factors, patients with the lowest quartile of trastuzumab exposure did not benefit from addition of trastuzumab treatment to chemotherapy. The identified subgroup without survival benefit and the ER relationship support the recommendation on conducting clinical trials to identify a treatment regimen with greater exposure and acceptable safety profiles and to prospectively evaluate whether this treatment regimen will result in survival benefit for the identified subgroup.