Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Automated Segmentation of Real-Time 3D Echocardiography Using an Incompressibility Constraint

Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) is characterized by reduced blood flow and oxygen supply to the heart muscle, resulting from the occlusion of one or more major coronary arteries. CHD remains the most prevalent cause of mortality in developed countries and represents one of the major burdens on the healthcare systems today. Approximately every 25 seconds, an American will suffer from a coronary event, and about every minute, someone will die from one. According to the 2009 American Heart Association (AHS) report (Lloyd-Jones et al., 2009}, an estimated of 16.8 million American adults have CHD (extrapolated to US population in 2009 from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2005-2006) and about 20% of total deaths in the United States are caused by CHD.
Mechanical Pulling of Linked Ring Polymers: Elastic Response and Link Localisation

By using Langevin dynamics simulations, we study how semiflexible rings that are topologically linked respond to mechanical stretching. We use both constant-force and constant-velocity pulling protocols and map out how the mechanical tension affects observables related to metric quantities such as the longitudinal extension or span, and topology-related ones such as the length of the linked portion. We find that the average extension of linked rings, once divided by that of a single equivalent ring, is nonmonotonic in the applied force. We show that this remarkable feature becomes more prominent as the link complexity is increased, and originates from the different stretching compliance of the linked portion and the rest of the rings’ contour. By comparing the results of different pulling protocols, we also establish the best one for telling apart different types of links from their tensile response.
Suffering As the Path to Acceptance: Parents of Gay and Lesbian Young People Negotiating Catholicism in Italy

This article investigates the experiences of parents of gay men and lesbians (GL) as they negotiate the influential Catholic discourse on homosexuality in Italy, and their Catholic belonging and practice. The analysis is based upon in-depth interviews with 46 parents of gay and lesbian people. We explore how parents who are heavily involved in the religious community negotiate their role within it, but also how, more generally, parents frame their notions of what it means to be lesbian or gay in relation to Catholic discourse. Parents draw upon different, and often seemingly contradictory, cultural repertoires in order to combine, negotiate, or integrate what public discourse constructs as irreconcilable positions: acceptance of gay and lesbian lives and identities and Catholic belonging. The notion of the homosexual as being destined to undergo suffering provides room for acceptance of their child's sexual identity whilst preserving heteronormative assumptions. This frame constitutes an alternative to rejection, which is at odds with parents’ ideas of the family as being based on unconditional love. It also provides a bridge with therapeutic culture and narratives of liberation from suffering that inform, especially, middle-class family relations and the cultural resources available to them.
Improved steiner tree algorithm applied to P2MP traffic engineering

Steiner tree algorithms have been investigated for multicast services. The traffic on a multicast service is streamed from a server to multiple terminals, thus a directed Steiner tree should be used. Our proposed algorithm of this type, multiplex-aware route selection (MARS), produces the same tree as minimum-cost path heuristics (MPH). However, the computational complexity of MARS is O(mnlog(m)) compared with the O(m2n) of MPH, where m indicates the number of end nodes of the tree and n indicates the number of nodes on the network. We implemented the MARS algorithm and compared it with MPH and selective closest terminal first algorithm, which is an improvement of MPH, and also demonstrated the efficiency of MARS in terms of processing time and multicast tree cost.
Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Lactate and Glutathione Levels in Euthymic Bipolar I Disorder: 1H-MRS Study

Objective: Oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction are 2 closely integrated processes implicated in the physiopathology of bipolar disorder. Advanced proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy techniques enable the measurement of levels of lactate, the main marker of mitochondrial dysfunction, and glutathione, the predominant brain antioxidant. The objective of this study was to measure brain lactate and glutathione levels in bipolar disorder and healthy controls. Methods: Eighty-eight individuals (50 bipolar disorder and 38 healthy controls) underwent 3T proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (2x2x4.5cm3) using a 2-D JPRESS sequence. Lactate and glutathione were quantified using the ProFit software program. Results: Bipolar disorder patients had higher dorsal anterior cingulate cortex lactate levels compared with controls. Glutathione levels did not differ between euthymic bipolar disorder and controls. There was a positive correlation between lactate and glutathione levels specific to bipolar disorder. No influence of medications on metabolites was observed. Conclusion: This is the most extensive magnetic resonance spectroscopy study of lactate and glutathione in bipolar disorder to date, and results indicated that euthymic bipolar disorder patients had higher levels of lactate, which might be an indication of altered mitochondrial function. Moreover, lactate levels correlated with glutathione levels, indicating a compensatory mechanism regardless of bipolar disorder diagnosis.
Multi-Objective Higher Order Polynomial Networks to Model Insertion Force of Bevel-Tip Needles

Needle insertion has been a very popular minimal invasive surgery method in cancer detection, soft tissue properties recognition and many other surgical operations. Its applications were observed in brain biopsy, prostate brachytherapy and many percutaneous therapies. In this study the authors would like to provide a model of needle force in soft tissue insertion. This model has been developed using higher order polynomial networks. In order to provide a predictive model one-dimensional force sensed on enacting end of bevel-tip needles. The speeds of penetration for quasi-static processes have chosen to be in the range of between 5 mm/min and 300 mm/min. Second and third orders of polynomials employed in the network which contains displacement and speed as their main affecting parameters in the simplified model. Results of fitting functions showed a reliable accuracy in force-displacement graph.
Serial Measurement of Cardiac Troponin T Using a Highly Sensitive Assay in Patients With Chronic Heart Failure: Data From 2 Large Randomized Clinical Trials

Background— Cardiac troponins are emerging as important prognostic markers in chronic cardiovascular conditions like stable coronary artery disease or chronic heart failure (HF). Less is known about the relation between serial measurements of high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hs-cTnT) and future events in HF. We determined the association between changes over time in hs-cTnT and outcome in patients with chronic HF. Methods and Results— We analyzed 5284 patients with chronic HF from 2 independent randomized clinical trials, the Valsartan Heart Failure Trial (Val-HeFT) (n=4053) and the Gruppo Italiano per lo Studio della Sopravvivenza nell'Insufficienza Cardiaca–Heart Failure (GISSI-HF) trial (n=1231). hs-cTnT was measured at randomization and after 3 months (GISSI-HF) or 4 months of follow-up (Val-HeFT). The association between changes over time of hs-cTnT and various outcomes was tested in multivariable models. In both studies, increases in hs-cTnT levels over time were associated with age, diabetes mellitus, worsening of renal function (reduction in estimated glomerular filtration rate), and baseline and increases in N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide concentrations. Increases in hs-cTnT concentrations were associated with all-cause mortality (incidence rates, 8.19 [7.51–8.88] and 6.79 [5.98–7.61] per 100 person-years in Val-HeFT and GISSI-HF, respectively, with hazard ratios [95% confidence intervals] of 1.59 [1.39–1.82] and 1.88 [1.50–2.35]) after adjustment for conventional risk factors and baseline levels of hs-cTnT and N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide. Changes in hs-cTnT concentration modestly improved prognostic discrimination beyond baseline values for fatal outcomes only. Conclusions— Despite very low circulating concentrations, changes in hs-cTnT concentrations over time are robust predictors of future cardiovascular events in patients with chronic HF but add limited prognostic discrimination. Clinical Trial Registration— http://www.clinicaltrials. gov. Unique identifier: NCT00336336.
A young man with acute dilated cardiomyopathy associated with methylphenidate

An 18-year-old obese man with a body mass index of 40, diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and treated with methylphenidate (Concerta®) was acutely admitted to hospital with hypoxia and dyspnoea. On investigation signs of liver-, renal-, and heart-failure were found. Noradrenalin infusion was started. Echocardiography showed dilated left ventricle and an ejection fraction (EF) of 25%. Liver function improved, noradrenalin and dobutamine were tapered, but three days after admission a new echocardiography showed an EF of 10%. The patient was transferred to the National Hospital (Rikshospitalet, Oslo), where intensified treatment including intra aortic balloon pump (IABP) was instituted. Cardiac function improved, and 3 weeks later the IABP was disconnected. EF at this point was 15%. The patient was denied heart transplantation due to various cofactors. The investigation concluded with a probable relationship between his cardiomyopathy and the use of methylphenidate (Concerta).
An Algebraic Approach for Computing Equilibria of a Subclass of Finite Normal Form Games

A Nash equilibrium has become important solution concept for analyzing the decision making in Game theory. In this paper, we consider the problem of computing Nash equilibria of a subclass of generic finite normal form games. We define "rational payoff irrational equilibria games" to be the games with all rational payoffs and all irrational equilibria. We present a purely algebraic method for computing all Nash equilibria of these games that uses knowledge of Galois groups. Some results, showing properties of the class of games, and an example to show working of the method concludes the paper.
Solitary heavy drinking, social relationships, and negative mood regulation in college drinkers

In college students, solitary (i.e., while alone) heavy episodic drinking is associated with depression, suicidal ideation, drinking to cope, and having greater alcohol-related problems than heavy drinking only in social contexts. This study explored the possible explanatory factors for solitary heavy drinking. Social (n = 58) and solitary heavy episodic drinking (n = 32) emerging adult college students were compared in regards to: alcohol-related problems and dependence severity, negative affect, social relationship issues, socially related coping skills, and negative mood regulation. Multiple analyses of covariance revealed that solitary heavy drinkers were significantly higher in alcohol-related problems, severity of dependence, suicidal ideation, hopelessness, depression, loneliness, and drinking to cope and were lower in negative mood regulation expectancies and social competence. Heavy drinking groups did not differ in social network size, perceived social support, or in their drinking social network size or satisfaction. Our findings suggest that solitary heavy drinkers are not socially isolated or lacking in social support; however, they do experience greater social discomfort and difficulties with negative mood regulation than social heavy drinkers. Interventions focused on depression, affect regulation, adaptive coping, and alcohol abuse would be helpful with this population to address their related problems.
Automated Identification and Location Analysis of Marked Stem Cells Colonies in Optical Microscopy Images

Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are characterized by two remarkable peculiarities: the capacity to propagate as undifferentiated cells (self-renewal) and the ability to differentiate in ectoderm, endoderm, and mesoderm derivatives (pluripotency). Although the majority of ESCs divide without losing the pluripotency, it has become evident that ESC cultures consists of multiple cell populations highlighted by the expression of early germ lineage markers during spontaneous differentiation. Hence, the identification and characterization of ESCs subpopulations represents an efficient approach to improve the comprehension of correlation between gene expression and cell specification status. To study markers of ESCs heterogeneity, we developed an analysis pipeline which can automatically process images of stem cell colonies in optical microscopy. The question we try to address is to find out the statistically significant preferred locations of the marked cells. We tested our algorithm on a set of images of stem cell colonies to analyze the expression pattern of the Zscan4 gene, which was an elite candidate gene to be studied because it is specifically expressed in subpopulation of ESCs. To validate the proposed method we analyzed the behavior of control genes whose pattern had been associated to biological status such as differentiation (EndoA), pluripotency (Pou5f1), and pluripotency fluctuation (Nanog). We found that Zscan4 is not uniformly expressed inside a stem cell colony, and that it tends to be expressed towards the center of the colony, moreover cells expressing Zscan4 cluster each other. This is of significant importance because it allows us to hypothesize a biological status where the cells expressing Zscan4 are preferably associated to the inner of colonies suggesting pluripotent cell status features, and the clustering between themselves suggests either a colony paracrine effect or an early phase of cell specification through proliferation. Also, the analysis on the control genes showed that they behave as expected.
CTGE: An Effective Constraint-based Test-case Generation Algorithm for Detecting Regression Bugs in Evolving Programs

In this paper, we investigate a kind of logic error occurring in evolving programs, known as regression bug. This error reflects a practical situation that when a program or software is evolved to meet with new requirements, it may accidentally violate the original requirements. Hence, the paper makes three theoretical contributions. First, we show that the test-case generated by typical white-box approach are not sufficient to cover all probable regression bugs. Next, we propose a new approach based on combined constraint to solve this problem. Finally, we introduce an ultimate CTG (Efficient Constraint-based Test-cases Generation) algorithm whose complexity is reduced into linear time, thus becoming practical. The soundness of our theoretical contribution is formally proved and supported by some initial experiments conducted in education environment.
Using Genre Interest of Users to Detect Profile Injection Attacks in Movie Recommender Systems

While the popularity of recommender systems is growing rapidly in e-commerce services, profile injection attacks are a great threat to their robustness and trustworthiness. Such attacks can be easily produced and inserted in recommender systems to alter the recommendation results. In such systems, attackers intentionally insert attack profiles to change the systems output to their advantage. This paper presents the idea of utilizing a set of genre attributes in order to discriminate between attack and genuine profiles in a movie recommender system. Since attackers typically assign random ratings to the movies in attack profiles, the genre interest of attackers and genuine users who rate movies based on their preferences are different. Based on this idea, we build a system using genre attributes as inputs to a feed forward neural network in order to detect attackers. The performance of our proposed approach is presented and compared to other detection approaches. The results declare superiority of our proposed approach from precision and recall point of view.
Building Adaptive Dialogue Systems Via Bayes-Adaptive POMDPs

Recent research has shown that effective dialogue management can be achieved through the Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) framework. However past research on POMDP-based dialogue systems usually assumed the parameters of the decision process were known a priori. The main contribution of this paper is to present a Bayesian reinforcement learning framework for learning the POMDP parameters online from data, in a decision-theoretic manner. We discuss various approximations and assumptions which can be leveraged to ensure computational tractability, and apply these techniques to learning observation models for several simulated spoken dialogue domains.
A new technique for reducing MAC address overheads in sensor networks

In sensor networks, the size of the medium access control (MAC) address is prohibitively expensive when one considers the small payload and the cost of transmitting one bit. We address this problem by proposing a technique that encodes L-bits of the payload with a key derived from MAC addresses. We show how the decoding process removes the need for MAC addresses in packets.
Legislating the Good

In this article, the authors trace the historical context of character education legislation in the United States, analyze and evaluate current legislative trends, and discuss the inherent dangers in legislating the good. The survey concludes that at no other time in history have Americans attempted to legislate such a specific vision of character education. The authors evaluate this legislation using the criteria of local choice, programmatic integration, comprehensiveness, community involvement, K-12 implementation, and allocation of staff development resources. Their evaluation reveals that few state laws meet these criteria and that some laws even contradict the spirit of comprehensive character education. They conclude that these inadequacies are fatal flaws in current attempts to legislate character.
Learning Through Case Comparisons: A Meta-Analytic Review

Over the past 20 years, there has been much research on how people learn from case comparisons. This work has implemented comparison activities in a variety of different ways across a wide range of laboratory and classroom contexts. In an effort to assess the overall effectiveness of case comparisons across this diversity of implementation and contexts and to explore what variables might moderate learning outcomes, we conducted a meta-analysis of 57 experiments with 336 tests. Random effects analyses of the 336 tests revealed that case comparison activities commonly led to greater learning outcomes than other forms of case study including sequential, single case, and nonanalogous, as well as traditional instruction and control (d = .50), 95% CI [. 44, . 56]. Of 15 potential moderators, four variables were found to reliably moderate the effectiveness of case comparisons: the objective of the comparison, the presentation of a principle, the content, and the lag between the comparison and testing. Asking learners to find similarities between cases, providing principles after the comparisons, using perceptual content, and testing learners immediately are all associated with greater learning. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of these results for cognitive theory and classroom practice.
Genomic structure and alternative transcript of bovine fatty acid synthase gene (FASN): comparative analysis of the FASN gene between monogastric and ruminant species

Fatty acid synthesis differs considerably between monogastric and ruminant species. Fatty acid synthase (FASN) plays a central role in de novo lipogenesis in mammals. FASN has seven active sites which help to catalyse all the reaction steps in the conversion of acetyl-CoA and malonyl-CoA to palmitate. In this work, the bovine fatty acid synthase gene (FASN) was cloned, characterized and compared to the human and rat orthologs. Comparative analysis reveals evolutionarily conserved exon regions and gene flanking sequences. Analysis of the DNA sequence in the 5′ flanking region of the FASN bovine gene revealed a potential TATA box, CAAT box and 5 Sp1 binding sites located in a CpG island. RT-PCR and Western blot analysis showed that FASN expression was higher in brain, testis and adipose tissue than in liver and heart. The longer form of the FASN cDNA includes a 7,542-bp sequence which encodes a protein with 2,513 amino acids. An alternative transcript was discovered in bovine and ovine tissues devoid of part of exon 9. The removal of part of exon 9 by post-transcriptional splicing causes a frameshift in the open reading frame and results in a premature termination codon. We hypothesize that in ruminants, FASN may be regulated by the ratio between the two transcripts. The small transcript is mostly produced in tissues with low fatty acid synthesis.
Chronic disease medication use in managed care and indemnity insurance plans.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the impact of managed care on the use of chronic disease medications. DATA SOURCE Claims data from 1997 from two indemnity and three independent practice association (IPA) model managed care insurance plans. RESEARCH DESIGN Cross-sectional analysis of claims data. DATA COLLECTION Adult patients with diabetes mellitus (DM, n = 26,444), congestive heart failure (CHF, n = 7,978), and asthma (n = 9,850) were identified by ICD-9 codes. Chronic disease medication use was defined through pharmacy claims for patients receiving one or more prescriptions for drugs used in treating these conditions. Using multiple logistic regression we adjusted for patient case mix and the number of primary care visits. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS With few exceptions, managed care patients were more likely to use chronic disease medications than indemnity patients. In DM, managed care patients were more likely to use sulfonylureas (43 percent versus 39 percent for indemnity), metformin (26 percent versus 18 percent), and troglitazone (8.8 percent versus 6.4 percent), but not insulin. For CHF patients, managed care patients were more likely to use loop diuretics (45 percent versus 41 percent), ACE inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers (50 percent versus 41 percent), and beta-blockers (23 percent versus 16 percent), but we found no differences in digoxin use. In asthma, managed care patients were more likely to use inhaled corticosteroids (34 percent versus 30 percent), systemic corticosteroids (18 percent versus 16 percent), short-acting beta-agonists (42 percent versus 33 percent), long-acting beta-agonists (9.9 percent versus 8.6 percent), and leukotriene modifiers (5.4 percent versus 4.1 percent), but not cromolyn or methylxanthines. Statistically significant differences remained after multivariate analysis that controlled for age, gender, and severity. CONCLUSIONS Chronic disease patients in these managed care plans are more likely to receive both inexpensive and expensive medications. Exceptions included older medications partly supplanted by newer therapies. Differences may be explained by the fact that patients in indemnity plans face higher out-of-pocket costs and managed care plans promote more aggressive medication use. The relatively low likelihood of condition-specific medications in both plan types is a matter of concern, however.