Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Endocardium tracking by fusing optical flows in straightened images with learning based detections

The endocardium tracking in ultrasound images is challenging due to large shape variations and the signal dropout. In this paper, we present a method to fuse multiple information sources to robustly track the endocardium. The first novelty of the method is to perform tracking in a straightened shape space, to minimize the image pattern changes caused by cardiac motions. Straightened images are used in an optical flow based tracking method to accurately estimate endocardium motions. The second novelty is to fuse the optical flow tracking method with learning based detections to improve tracking accuracy. We demonstrate through experiments that the presented method can achieve robust and accurate tracking of endocardial boundary.
A CFD based approach for determination of ammonia concentration profile and flux from poultry houses with natural ventilation

The understanding of concentration and emissions distribution of gases such as ammonia (NH3) in agricultural installations is of growing importance due to its effect on health and productivity of animals and workers. The objective of this study was to use validated Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model as a tool to predict NH3 concentration distribution and mass fluxes in a non-insulated broiler chicken installation with natural ventilation, typically found in subtropical and tropical countries. Results from this study indicated that simulation with CFD can be used to predict NH3 concentration distribution and mass flux inside similar installations with incident winds from different directions of entrance at the lateral opening of the installation. The most direct application of the proposed model would be to help improving the existing buildings and also to help in the conception of new ones, and may also apply the model to help in the development of NH3 emission inventories
Reliability-oriented energy storage sizing in wind power systems

Energy storage can be used to suppress the power fluctuations in wind power systems, and thereby reduce the thermal excursion and improve the reliability. Since the cost of the energy storage in large power application is high, it is crucial to have a better understanding of the relationship between the size of the energy storage and the reliability benefit it can generate. Therefore, a reliability-oriented energy storage sizing approach is proposed for the wind power systems, where the power, energy, cost and the control strategy of the energy storage are all taken into account. With the proposed approach, the computational effort is reduced and the impact of the energy storage system on the reliability of the wind power converter can be quantified.
FK506‐binding protein 51 interacts with Clostridium botulinum C2 toxin and FK506 inhibits membrane translocation of the toxin in mammalian cells

The binary Clostridium botulinum C2 toxin consists of the binding/translocation component C2IIa and the separate enzyme component C2I. C2IIa delivers C2I into the cytosol of eukaryotic target cells where C2I ADP‐ribosylates actin. After receptor‐mediated endocytosis of the C2IIa/C2I complex, C2IIa forms pores in membranes of acidified early endosomes and unfolded C2I translocates through the pores into the cytosol. Membrane translocation of C2I is facilitated by the activities of host cell chaperone Hsp90 and the peptidyl‐prolyl cis/trans isomerase (PPIase) cyclophilin A. Here, we demonstrated that Hsp90 co‐precipitates with C2I from lysates of C2 toxin‐treated cells and identified the FK506‐binding protein (FKBP) 51 as a novel interaction partner of C2I in vitro and in intact mammalian cells. Prompted by this finding, we used the specific pharmacological inhibitor FK506 to investigate whether the PPIase activity of FKBPs plays a role during membrane translocation of C2 toxin. Treatment of cells with FK506 protected cultured cells from intoxication with C2 toxin. Moreover, FK506 inhibited the pH‐dependent translocation of C2I across membranes into the cytosol but did not interfere with the enzyme activity of C2I or binding of C2 toxin to cells. Furthermore, FK506 treatment delayed intoxication with the related binary actin ADP‐ribosylating toxins from Clostridium perfringens (iota toxin) and Clostridium difficile (CDT) but not with the Rho‐glucosylating Clostridium difficile toxin A (TcdA). In conclusion, our results support the hypothesis that clostridial binary actin‐ADP‐ribosylating toxins share a specific FKBP‐dependent translocation mechanism during their uptake into mammalian cells.
An explanatory model of adjustment to type I diabetes based on attachment, coping, and self-regulation theories

The aim of this study was to develop and test a model of adjustment to type I diabetes. Three hundred young adults (172 females and 128 males) with type I diabetes were asked to complete the Adult Attachment Inventory (AAI), the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire (Brief IPQ), Task-oriented subscale of the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS), D-39, and well-being subscale of the Mental Health Inventory (MHI). HbA1c was obtained from laboratory examination. Results from structural equation analysis partly supported the hypothesized model. Secure and avoidant attachment styles were found to have effects on illness perception, ambivalent attachment style did not have significant effect on illness perception. Three attachment styles had significant effect on task-oriented coping strategy. Avoidant attachment had negative direct effect on adjustment too. Regression effects of illness perception and task-oriented coping strategy on adjustment were positive. Therefore, positive illness perception and more usage of task-oriented coping strategy predict better adjustment to diabetes. So, the results confirmed the theoretical bases and empirical evidence of effectiveness of attachment styles in adjustment to chronic disease and can be helpful in devising preventive policies, determining high-risk maladjusted patients, and planning special psychological treatment.
Engineering the l-Arabinose Isomerase from Enterococcus Faecium for d-Tagatose Synthesis

l-Arabinose isomerase (EC 5.3.1.4) (l-AI) from Enterococcus faecium DBFIQ E36 was overproduced in Escherichia coli by designing a codon-optimized synthetic araA gene. Using this optimized gene, two N- and C-terminal His-tagged-l-AI proteins were produced. The cloning of the two chimeric genes into regulated expression vectors resulted in the production of high amounts of recombinant N-His-l-AI and C-His-l-AI in soluble and active forms. Both His-tagged enzymes were purified in a single step through metal-affinity chromatography and showed different kinetic and structural characteristics. Analytical ultracentrifugation revealed that C-His-l-AI was preferentially hexameric in solution, whereas N-His-l-AI was mainly monomeric. The specific activity of the N-His-l-AI at acidic pH was higher than that of C-His-l-AI and showed a maximum bioconversion yield of 26% at 50 °C for d-tagatose biosynthesis, with Km and Vmax parameters of 252 mM and 0.092 U mg−1, respectively. However, C-His-l-AI was more active and stable at alkaline pH than N-His-l-AI. N-His-l-AI follows a Michaelis-Menten kinetic, whereas C-His-l-AI fitted to a sigmoidal saturation curve.
The Necessary Angel

Thomas Moore, author of the New York Times long bestselling title, Care ofthe Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life, published by HarperCollins in 1992, has with his new book Soul Mates again planted rich, once acadeIuic, seeds of mythology, poetry, spirituality and Jungian psychology within the cOlnmon consciousness of everyday life, to be nourished and coaxed into young plants by those who care to l11editate on the life of the soul. In Soul Mates) Moore returns to areas that concerned him in his earlier book-experiences of love, ordinary relatedness, suffering, pathology, everyday vernacular life, beauty, home and the sacred. His critique continues to center on the dysfunctions of an increasingly technical world caught in its mystique of efficiency, wherein our technological post-Protestant virtues of simplicity, cleanness, literalisl11, and facticity tend to deprive everyday life of its soulfulness, its messiness, and its textural al11biguity. Moore's assessment, though clinical, has much in COI11nl011 with Robert Sardello's in rejecting the medical attitude which "nlakes us forgetful of the world itself as suffering loss of soul. " (Facing the World With Soul (Hudson, NY, Lindisfarne Press, 1992, p. 74) Rather than put us 011 Prozac, Sardello would return us to tlle image of Sophia, goddess of wisdom, as a force implicit in the retrieval of soul. He understands her absence as basic to the nlodern illnesses that are endelnic to all forms of economics and physiological diseases, and even connects her loss to violence and its relation to beauty. Moore's Soul Mates is nlore pluralistic; he wishes to honor the presence of several divine and
[Association between the evaluation by a patient care team and compliance with the claim of drugs in pharmacy].

CONTEXT currently is recognized the achieving challenge a adequate adherence. There are multiple methods to detect whether a patient is non-adherent, including claims history of drugs in pharmacy. This method has been considered adequate. OBJECTIVE To determine the association between care by an patient care team (including an pharmacist) and compliance with the claim of medicines in pharmacy. METHOD case-control study in patients with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or allergic rhinitis, they claimed their medicines in pharmacies between October of 2012 and November 2013 (n = 526) . was defined as a case the patients that during the observation period claimed their drugs in pharmacy >95% of the time (n: 263). For univariate analysis absolute and relative frequencies and summary measures were used. For binary analysis, contingency tables, chi-square tests, t-Student (Mann-Whitney U) and ANOVA (Kruskal-Wallis H). The statistical measure of force used was the odds ratio. Was performed multivariate logistic regression. RESULTS 78.3% of cases and 47.1% of controls had been treated by an interdisciplinary group (p<0,001), which had an exposure time of 1.75 (interquartile range 0.79 to 2.34) and 0.32 years (interquartile range 0.24 to 1.02) years, respectively(p<0,001). The cases claimed their drugs in pharmacy 2.52 times more than controls (OR ajusted 2.52 [1.17 to 5.42]). Conclusions: be attended by an patient care team was associated with greater compliance with the claim of medicines in pharmacy.
Mining Live Transliterations Using Incremental Learning Algorithms

We study an adaptive learning framework for phonetic similarity modeling (PSM) that supports the automatic acquisition of transliterations by exploiting minimum prior knowledge about machine transliteration to mine transliterations incrementally from the Web. We formulate an incremental learning strategy for the framework based on Bayesian theory for PSM adaptation. The idea of incremental learning is to benefit from the continuously developing history to update a static model towards the intended reality. In this way, the learning process refines the PSM incrementally while constructing a transliteration lexicon at the same time. We further demonstrate that the proposed learning framework is reliably effective in mining live transliterations from Web query results.
HapBlock – A Suite of Dynamic Programming Algorithms for Haplotype Block Partitioning and Tag SNP Selection Based on Haplotype and Genotype Data

The suite of programs, HapBlock, is developed for haplotype block partitioning and tag SNP selection under the joint guidance of Ting Chen, Fengzhu Sun, and Michael Waterman within the Center for Computational and Experimental Genomics at the University of Southern California and with collaboration with Zhaohui Qin and Jun Liu in the department of statistics at Harvard University. This suite of programs is implemented and maintained by Dr. Kui Zhang, a former research associate in the center. The partition-ligation-expectation-maximization (PL-EM) algorithm for haplotype inference incorporated in this program is implemented by Dr. Zhaohui Qin, a former research associate in Jun Liu’s lab at Harvard University.
Role of HLA-DP Expression in Graft-Versus-Host Disease After Unrelated Donor Transplantation.

PURPOSE The main aim of this study was to evaluate the significance of HLA-DPB1 expression in acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) after hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) from HLA-A, -B, -C, -DRB1, -DQB1-matched and -mismatched unrelated donors. PATIENTS AND METHODS Between January 1, 2017, and January 10, 2019, we assessed 19,136 patients who received HCT from an HLA-A, -B, -C, -DRB1, -DQB1-matched or -mismatched unrelated donor performed in Australia, the European Union, Japan, North America, and the United Kingdom between 1988 and 2016. Among transplant recipients with one HLA-DPB1 mismatch, the patient's mismatched HLA-DPB1 allotype was defined as low or high expression. Multivariable regression models were used to assess risks of GVHD associated with high expression relative to low expression HLA-DPB1 mismatches. The effect of increasing numbers of HLA-DPB1 mismatches on clinical outcome was assessed in HLA-mismatched transplant recipients. RESULTS In HLA-A, -B, -C, -DRB1,-DQB1-matched transplant recipients, donor mismatching against one high-expression patient HLA-DPB1 increased moderate (odds ratio [OR], 1.36; P = .001) and severe acute GVHD (OR, 1.32; P = .0016) relative to low-expression patient mismatches, regardless of the expression level of the donor's mismatched HLA-DPB1. Among transplant recipients with one HLA-A, -B, -C, -DRB1, or -DQB1 mismatch, the odds of acute GVHD increased with increasing numbers of HLA-DPB1 mismatches (OR, 1.23 for one; OR, 1.40 for two mismatches relative to zero mismatches for moderate GVHD; OR, 1.19 for one; OR, 1.40 for two mismatches relative to zero for severe GVHD), but not with the level of expression of the patient's mismatched HLA-DPB1 allotype. CONCLUSION The level of expression of patient HLA-DPB1 mismatches informs the risk of GVHD after HLA-A, -B, -C, -DRB1, -DQB1-matched unrelated HCT, and the total number of HLA-DPB1 mismatches informs the risk of GVHD after HLA-mismatched unrelated HCT. Prospective consideration of HLA-DPB1 may help to lower GVHD risks after transplantation.
Cancer Screening Delivery in Persistent Poverty Rural Counties

Background: Rural populations are diagnosed with cancer at different rate and stages than nonrural populations, and race/ethnicity as well as the area-level income exacerbates the differences. The purpose of this analysis was to explore cancer screening rates across persistent poverty rural counties, with emphasis on nonwhite populations. Methods: The 2008 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System was used, combined with data from the Area Resource File (analytic n = 309 937 unweighted, 196 344 347 weighted). Unadjusted analysis estimated screening rates for breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer. Multivariate analysis estimated the odds of screening, controlling for individual and county-level effects.Results: Rural residents, particularly those in persistent poverty counties, were less likely to be screened than urban residents. More African Americans in persistent poverty rural counties reported not having mammography screening (18.3%) compared to 15.9% of urban African Americans. Hispanics had low screening rates across all service types. Multivariate analysis continued to find disparities in screening rates, after controlling for individual and county-level factors. African Americans in persistent poverty rural counties were more likely to be screened for both breast cancer (odds ratio, 1.44; 95% confidence interval, 1.12-1.85) and cervical cancer (1.46; 1.07-1.99) when compared with urban whites. Conclusions: Disparities in cancer screening rates exist across not only race/ethnicity but also county type. These disparities cannot be fully explained by either individual or county-level effects. Programs have been successful in improving screening rates for African American women and should be expanded to target other vulnerable women as well as other services such as colorectal cancer screening.
A comparison of the functional difficulties in staged and simultaneous open carpal tunnel decompression

There is no agreement about whether patients with bilateral carpal tunnel syndrome should undergo staged or simultaneous open decompression. The purpose of this study was to quantify and compare the functional difficulties during the recovery from surgery for patients undergoing staged or simultaneous decompressions. Sixty-three patients had surgery; 33 had staged decompression (Group 1) and 30 simultaneous decompressions (Group 2). Functional difficulties were recorded using the Levine and Quick-DASH scores along with a visual analogue score for pain. There were no complications in either group. There was no significant difference in terms of pain or satisfaction. Functional difficulties were greater in the simultaneous group; however, there was no difference in completing simple tasks. Patients reported high satisfaction with either management approach. However, significantly fewer would consider undergoing simultaneous decompression again.
Prediction of bone mass change after parathyroidectomy in patients with primary hyperparathyroidism.

A major challenge in the management of primary hyperparathyroidism (pHPT) is the decision regarding which patients should undergo parathyroidectomy (PTX), although the Consensus Development Conference of the NIH has proposed guidelines for the indication of surgery. In the present study, changes in bone mineral density (BMD) after PTX were compared between pHPT patients who did and did not meet the NIH criteria, and we further tried to predict the BMD change after PTX from preoperative parameters. The subjects were 44 pHPT patients (30 women and 14 men) who had had successful PTX. Lumbar and radial BMD were measured before and 1 yr after PTX by dual energy x-ray absorptiometry and single photon absorptiometry, respectively. Average annual percent increases in lumbar and radial BMD after PTX were 12.2 +/- 1.4% and 11.6 +/- 1.6% (mean +/- SEM), respectively, and those net increases were 0.0803 +/- 0.0008 and 0.0484 +/- 0.0006 g/cm2, respectively. There were no significant differences in percent or net changes in either radial or lumbar BMD after PTX between the groups divided according to each of the NIH criteria, such as age (> or =50 and <50 yr), serum calcium level (> or =12 and <12 mg/dL) or the existence of urinary stones (presence and absence). On the other hand, when the subjects were divided on the basis of radial BMD (above and below a z-score of -2), the annual percent and net increases in lumbar BMD and percent increase in radial BMD after PTX were significantly higher in the group with the lower z-score. Next, patients were divided into two groups with and without the indication of PTX based on NIH guidelines. Twenty-nine patients had the surgical indication by meeting one or more of these criteria and 15 patients had no indication without meeting any of the criteria. There were no significant differences between the two groups in annual percent or net changes in radial or lumbar BMD after PTX. A stepwise multiple regression analysis revealed that serum alkaline phosphatase level and the severity of cortical bone mass reduction were the best predictors of both percentage and net changes in lumbar BMD, with high determination coefficients (r2 > 0.7). In conclusion, a considerable increase in BMD could be obtained after PTX even in patients without surgical indication from the NIH. Alkaline phosphatase and the severity of cortical bone mass reduction are clinically useful for predicting the changes in lumbar BMD after PTX. The present findings provide a useful clue for the indication of surgery in pHPT.
Variation in intake among group-fed pregnant Scottish Blackface ewes given restricted amounts of food

The intakes of concentrates and hay by individuals in three groups of ewes were estimated at three-weekly intervals in late pregnancy from faecal output; chromic oxide was incorporated as a marker in the concentrates. The groups were: (1) 16 mature ewes, (2) 16 2-year-old ewes, (3) eight mature and eight 2-year-old ewes. A constant daily hay allowance of 734 g dry matter (DM)/sheep was given but the concentrate was increased from an equivalent of 96 g DM/sheep at the beginning of the experiment to 435 g at the end. Individual concentrate intakes were most variable when the group allowance was small (CV over 50% in the mixed group) but variation decreased when amounts of concentrates were increased to contribute up to 47% of the total digestible DM intake. The CV for the total digestible DM intake ranged from 13 to 24%. The younger sheep were at no disadvantage when penned with mature ewes. Intakes by individual ewes were compared with their calculated requirements and several twin-bearing ewes were shown to have a substantial energy deficit which was confirmed by their higher plasma ketone concentrations. A major practical difficulty in group-feeding pregnant ewes is to ensure that the ewes with the highest foetal burden are adequately fed.
Integrating IT Portfolio Management with Enterprise Architecture Management

The management of information technology (IT) as a business has become a crucial factor in today’s complex and dynamic environments. Many firms thus have implemented IT portfolio and enterprise architecture (EA) management practices, and academic research has paid increasing attention to these concepts. However, their integration seems poorly substantiated; this article therefore seeks to answer two main questions: (1) What are differences and common characteristics of IT portfolio and EA management, and in what way can they be integrated? and (2) what factors and types might describe an integrated process design of EA management and project portfolio management in particular? To answer these questions, this study synthesises previous research and surveys EA practitioners to propose an EA management process map, as well as three descriptive factors and four clusters, which provide an integrated process design with project portfolio management. The interrelations with organisational aspects and software tool support are also explored. This article thereby clarifies and systematises the subject area while also offering advice for researchers and practitioners.
A DIRECT BOUNDARY ELEMENT METHOD FOR SIGNORINI PROBLEMS

In this paper, a Signorini problem is reduced to a variational inequality on the boundary, and a direct boundary element method is presented for its solution. Furthermore, error estimates for the approximate solutions of Signorini problems are given. In addition, we show that the Signorini problem may be formulated as a saddle-point problem on the boundary.