Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A controlled trial of antepartum glucocorticoid treatment for prevention of the respiratory distress syndrome in premature infants.

A controlled trial of betamethasone therapy was carried out in 282 mothers in whom premature delivery threatened or was planned before 37 weeks' gestation, in the hope of reducing the incidence of neonatal respiratory distress syndrome by accelerating functional maturation of the fetal lung. Two hundred and thirteen mothers were in spontaneous premature labor. When necessary, ethanol or salbutamol infusions were used to delay delivery while steroid or placebo therapy was given. Delay for at least 24 hours was achieved in 77% of the mothers. In these unplanned deliveries, early neonatal mortality was 3.2% in the treated group and 15.0% in the controls (p 0.01). There were no deaths with hyaline membrane disease or intraventricular cerebral hemorrhage in infants of mothers who had received betamethasone for at least 24 hours before delivery. The respiratory distress syndrome occurred less often in treated babies (9.0%) than in controls (25.8%, p 0.003), but the difference was confined to babies of under 32 weeks' gestation who had been treated for at least 24 hours before delivery (11.8% of the treated babies compared with 69.6% of the control babies p. 0.02). There may be an increased risk of fetal death in pregnancies complicated by severe hypertensionedema-proteinuria syndromes and treated with betamethasone, but no other hazard of steroid therapy was noted. We conclude that this preliminary evidence justifies further trials, but that further work is needed before any new routine procedure is established.
Exploring the Effects of Polymer Functionality on the Activity and Stability of Lysozyme and Cellulase Conjugates

EXPLORING THE EFFECTS OF POLYMER FUNCTIONALITY ON THE ACTIVITY AND STABILITY OF LYSOZYME AND CELLULASE CONJUGATES by Melissa Eileen Dougherty Biomacromolecules made by covalent attachment of polymers to the surfaces of proteins are an interesting area of research with significant applications in drug therapies and growing interest in energy and nanotechnology. Protein-polymer conjugates are typically synthesized by either the grafting-to or grafting-from approach. In grafting-to, polymer is separately synthesized and characterized prior to linkage to the protein. However, in grafting-from, an initiating group is attached to the protein, which allows for growth of the polymer directly from the protein surface. Herein, a hybrid approach is used, combining the advantages of both conjugation techniques. RAFT polymerization is used to grow water soluble polymers for grafting-to and subsequent chain extension from enzymes of interest. First, conjugates made from the well-studied, model enzyme lysozyme are discussed. Next, cellulase-polymer conjugates with potential applications in biofuel production are explored. In these studies, the impact of polymer size and functional groups on enzymatic activity, thermal and chemical stability are investigated. Important trends gleaned from this work contribute to the understanding of structure-property correlations in protein-polymer conjugates. These relationships are critical to the advancement of protein-polymer conjugates in efforts to produce engineered biomacromolecules with tunable behaviors for specific applications. EXPLORING THE EFFECTS OF POLYMER FUNCTIONALITY ON THE ACTIVITY AND STABILITY OF LYSOZYME AND CELLULASE CONJUGATES
Coronary luminal and wall mask prediction using convolutional neural network

A significant amount of research has been done on the segmentation of coronary arteries. However, the resulting automated boundary delineation is still not suitable for clinical utilization. The convolutional neural network was driving advances in the medical image processing. We propose the brief convolutional network (BCN) that automatically produces the labeled mask with the luminal and wall boundaries of the coronary artery. We utilized 50 patients of CCTA - intravascular ultrasound matched image data sets. Training and testing were performed on 40 and 10 patient data sets, respectively. The prediction of luminal and wall mask was performed using stacked BCN on the each image view: axial, coronal, and sagittal of straightened curved planar reformation. We defined the vector that includes probability from BCN result on each image view and proposed amplified probability. We used an Adaptive Boost regressor with an extremely randomized tree regressor to determine the label for unknown probability vector.
Two-stage power supply based on double resonant tank LLC-DCX for magnetic levitation control system applications

330V high-voltage direct current (HVDC) power system is a preferred option of the magnetic train power supply system. The power supply for magnetic levitation control system is used to provide stable operation voltage to the suspension control circuits, which is the key part of magnetic train. The suspension control power supply is typically the converter with high input voltage and low multiple output voltages. The traditional solutions have these problems, such as uncontrolled duty ratio, poor cross-regulation rate, and low reliability. In order to solve these limits, a novel two-stage solution employing the double resonant tank LLC-DCX is proposed and developed in this paper, which can overcome the problems in traditional design. The proposed solution not only can increase the overall conversion efficiency significantly because of the achieving soft-switching over the entire operation range, but also can achieve the low input current ripple and high reliability owing to the uniform thermal distribution. A 210-W, 220-380V input prototype with four outputs, is fabricated and tested in the lab, and the results are presented in this paper. The declared features are demonstrated well by the experimental results.
Tutorial on fiber-based sources for biophotonic applications

Abstract. Fiber-based lasers and master oscillator power fiber amplifier configurations are described. These allow spectral versatility coupled with pulse width and pulse repetition rate selection in compact and efficient packages. This is enhanced through the use of nonlinear optical conversion in fibers and fiber-coupled nonlinear crystals, which can be integrated to provide all-fiber pump sources for diverse application. The advantages and disadvantages of sources based upon supercontinuum generation, stimulated Raman conversion, four-wave mixing, parametric generation and difference frequency generation, allowing spectral coverage from the UV to the mid-infrared, are considered.
Digitally strategic: how young people respond to parental views about the use of technology for learning in the home

In recent years parents have invested heavily in providing their children with technologies at home in order to support their present and future educational activities. UK education policy has encouraged parents to help their children use these technologies to support their learning, but within a broader social context of growing anxiety about issues of Internet safety, and the unreliability of knowledge taken from the Internet. This paper draws on recent research within a large-scale mixed methods project looking at a range of issues relating to the use of technologies in the home for learning, in order to explore the ways in which parents try to balance the sometimes contradictory roles of being both technology providers and technology regulators, and the ways in which young people act in response. While parents inevitably experience a gradual loss of control over their children's uses of technology as they enter the later years of adolescence, findings show that although some young people develop highly autonomous and innovative uses of technology for learning, many others come to moderate their uses of technology in ways that are acceptable to their parents.
High-performance noise-tolerant circuit techniques for CMOS dynamic logic

Dynamic CMOS gates are widely exploited in high-performance designs because of their speed. However, they suffer from high noise sensitivity. The main reason for this is the sub-threshold leakage current flowing through the evaluation network. This problem becomes more and more severe with continuous scaling of the technology. A new circuit technique for increasing the noise tolerance of dynamic CMOS gates is studied. A comparison with previously reported schemes is presented. Simulations proved that, when 90 nm CMOS technology is used to realise wide fan-in gates, the proposed design technique can achieve the highest level of noise robustness. A 16 bits OR gate designed as proposed here shows a maximum unity noise gain of 675 mV, a computational delay of ∼115 ps and an energy dissipation of ∼33 fJ. Moreover, at the parity of energy-delay product (EDP), the novel approach achieves a noise robustness 10% higher than the most efficient technique existing in the literature, whereas, at the parity of noise robustness, it exhibits an EDP 33% lower.
The alpha chain gene of H-2O has an unexpected location in the major histocompatibility complex

A previously unknown major histocompatibility complex class II molecule consisting of the beta chain encoded by the H-2Ob gene and an unknown alpha chain was recently described. We now report that the alpha chain occurs in two allelic forms distinguished by charge difference. Using inbred recombinant mouse strains we were able to map the H-2Oa gene to a location between the A.TL and B10.MBR recombination points. Cosmids covering this region were used to isolate the gene. Sequence analysis revealed that the H-2Oa gene is the murine equivalent of the human HLA- DNA gene. These results indicate that the human HLA-DNA gene, the existence of which has long been known, is indeed coding for DO alpha, the alpha chain pairing with DO beta.
Communications multi-utilisateurs dans les réseaux d’accès radio centralisés : architecture, coordination et optimisation

Dans les reseaux mobiles du future, un deploiement plus dense des points d’acces radio est prevu pour satisfaire la demande accrue de debit, mais les terminaux utilisateurs peuvent etre affectes par une interference inter-cellulaire plus forte. Par chance, la centralisation des traitements de signal en bande de base dans l’achitecture Cloud RAN (C-RAN) offre la possibilite de la coordination et du traitement conjoint de plusieurs cellules. Pour reellement permettre de deployer ces techniques, une etude bout-a-bout du CRAN est necessaire selon plusieurs aspects, notamment l’architecture fonctionnelle, la strategie de coordination, l’implementation du traitement de signal multiutilisateur et les optimisations possibles pour un fonctionnement plus efficace.Dans cette these, nous proposons en premier une architecture qui definit le placement des fonctions du traitement en bande de base entre les unites distribuees et le serveur central. Le but de ce design est de permettre la realisation des fonctions multi-utilisateurs en transmettant avec la moins de debit possible sur les liens de fronthaul reliant les differentes entites. Dans un second temps, nous presentons comment il est possible de coordiner les differentes cellules servies par le C-RAN en utilisant le concept de reseaux definis par logiciels adapte pour les reseaux d’acces radio. Nous avons mis en place un prototype demontrant la faisabilite de la methode de controle proposee. Finalement, nous etudions l’allocation adaptative du debit sur les liens de fronthaul transportant les symboles numeriques quantifies des utilisateurs en besoin de traitement multi-cellulaire sur la voie montante pour exploiter l’interference entre eux. Nous proposons un modele d’optimisation qui inclut le cout des transmissions fronthaul pour maximiser ainsi le gain obtenu par l’operateur du reseau ou la communication multiutilisateur a lieu. Nous realisons l’optimisation pour differents modeles de cout et en utilisants deux types de donnees: d’abord les estimations de canal supposees parfaites et disponibles en temps reel, puis seulement les statistiques du canal. Nous montrons que la methode d’optimisation proposee permet d’exploiter plus efficacement les liens de fronthaul dans l’architecture precedemment definie.
Factors influencing the adoption of mobile gaming services

The current chapter focuses the adoption process of mobile gaming. After providing a brief introduction to the topic of re-commerce and m-services, several relevant adoption factors are highlighted. These factors have been researched empirically, via a conjoint study conducted in the Netherlands. The results illustrated a hierarchical importance of the factors identified, whereby perceived risk, complexity, and compatibility were identified as the three main regarded as the factors that are mainly influencing the adoption of mobile gaming applications. Based on these findings, we have provided several managerial implications.
Failure of Aspirin plus Dipyridamole To Prevent Restenosis after Carotid Endarterectomy

OBJECTIVE To evaluate therapy with aspirin plus dipyridamole in reducing restenosis after carotid endarterectomy. PATIENTS A total of 163 patients having 175 surgical carotid endarterectomies. INTERVENTION Eighty-three patients (90 endarterectomies) were randomly assigned to receive oral aspirin, 325 mg, plus dipyridamole, 75 mg, beginning 12 hours preoperatively, followed by a second dose administered within 8 hours after the operation, and given three times daily thereafter for 1 year. Eighty patients (85 endarterectomies) received placebo medication that was identical in appearance to the study drugs. MEASUREMENTS After the adequacy of the surgical procedure was confirmed by intraoperative angiography, restenosis at the endarterectomy sites was evaluated using serial duplex ultrasound studies before hospital discharge and at 3-month intervals postoperatively for 1 year. RESULTS Based on the time for developing identifiable restenosis and on efficacy analysis, greater than 50% restenosis developed in 11 operated vessels (16%) in the treated group and in 10 arteries (14%) in the placebo group, yielding an observed risk increase of 14% (95% CI, -52% to 167%; P greater than 0.2). By intention-to-treat analysis, greater than 50% restenosis developed in 16 of 90 operated vessels in treated patients and in 10 of 85 arteries in patients receiving placebo (26% for the treated group and 12% for the placebo group; P = 0.18, Mantel-Haenszel statistic), representing an observed risk increase of 110% (CI, -5% to 365%). Similar differences were observed for greater than 20% restenosis and for the comparison of patients rather than operated vessels by either intention-to-treat or efficacy analyses. CONCLUSIONS Because therapy not only failed to reduce carotid restenosis but may have actually increased its frequency, treatment with aspirin plus dipyridamole probably has no clinically important benefit on restenosis in patients having carotid endarterectomy.
A Double Moving Average Control Chart

The double exponentially weighted moving average (DEWMA) technique has been investigated in recent years for detecting shifts in the process mean and has been shown to be more efficient than the corresponding exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) technique. In this article, we extend the DEWMA technique of performing exponential smoothing twice to the double moving average (DMA) technique by computing the moving average twice. Using simulation, we show that our proposed DMA chart improves upon the ARL performance of the moving average (MA) chart in detecting mean shifts of small to moderate magnitudes. It is also shown through simulation that, generally, the DMA charts with spans, w = 10 and 15 provide comparable average run length (ARL) performances to the EWMA and cumulative sum (CUSUM) charts, designed for detecting small shifts.
Long‐term remission after intensive chemotherapy in advanced myelodysplastic syndromes is generally associated with restoration of polyclonal haemopoiesis

The clonality of peripheral blood cells was assessed in eight female patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) by means of the human androgen receptor gene‐based assay (HUMARA). The patients were in complete remission for a median follow‐up time of 83 months after intensive chemotherapy. X‐chromosome inactivation patterns (XCIPs) indicated polyclonal haemopoiesis in five patients. Two patients had skewed lyonization (i.e. unbalanced XCIPs in both granulocytes and T cells) and one patient presented monoclonal granulocytes together with polyclonal T cells. We conclude that long‐term remission in MDS following intensive chemotherapy is usually associated with polyclonal haemopoiesis.
Surveillance Camera Coordination Through Distributed Scheduling Cash

A challenge to scaling a video surveillance system is the amount of human supervision required for control of the cameras. In this paper, we consider the problem of coordinating a network of video cameras for the purpose of identifying people. We pose the problem as a machine scheduling problem where each person is a job that should be scheduled before a deadline. To ensure scalability, we propose a distributed algorithm that only depends on neighbor to neighbor communication. We compare the performance of this algorithm to a localized scheduling approach.
The Pattern of Change in the Abundances of Specific Bacterioplankton Groups Is Consistent across Different Nutrient-Enriched Habitats in Crete

ABSTRACT A common source of disturbance for coastal aquatic habitats is nutrient enrichment through anthropogenic activities. Although the water column bacterioplankton communities in these environments have been characterized in some cases, changes in α-diversity and/or the abundances of specific taxonomic groups across enriched habitats remain unclear. Here, we investigated the bacterial community changes at three different nutrient-enriched and adjacent undisturbed habitats along the north coast of Crete, Greece: a fish farm, a closed bay within a town with low water renewal rates, and a city port where the level of nutrient enrichment and the trophic status of the habitat were different. Even though changes in α-diversity were different at each site, we observed across the sites a common change pattern accounting for most of the community variation for five of the most abundant bacterial groups: a decrease in the abundance of the Pelagibacteraceae and SAR86 and an increase in the abundance of the Alteromonadaceae, Rhodobacteraceae, and Cryomorphaceae in the impacted sites. The abundances of the groups that increased and decreased in the impacted sites were significantly correlated (positively and negatively, respectively) with the total heterotrophic bacterial counts and the concentrations of dissolved organic carbon and/or dissolved nitrogen and chlorophyll α, indicating that the common change pattern was associated with nutrient enrichment. Our results provide an in situ indication concerning the association of specific bacterioplankton groups with nutrient enrichment. These groups could potentially be used as indicators for nutrient enrichment if the pattern is confirmed over a broader spatial and temporal scale by future studies.
Can treating depression improve diabetic management?

Abstract Diabetes with comorbid depression increases healthcare use, expenditures, and risk for complications. This study investigated current practice patterns for diabetic management as measured by HbA1C (A1C). Results indicated significant increases in Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ)-9 and HbA1C scores among patients with diabetes who take antidepressant drugs .
A knowledge-based approach to scientific workflow composition

Scientific Workflow Systems have been developed as a means to enable scientists to carry out complex analysis operations on local and remote data sources in order to achieve their research goals. Systems typically provide a large number of components and facilities to enable such analysis to be performed and have matured to a point where they offer many complex capabilities. This complexity makes it difficult for scientists working with these systems to readily achieve their goals. In this thesis we describe the increasing burden of knowledge required of these scientists in order for them to specify the outcomes they wish to achieve within the workflow systems. We consider ways in which the challenges presented by these systems can be reduced, focusing on the following questions: How can metadata describing the resources available assist users in composing workflows? Can automated assistance be provided to guide users through the composition process? Can such an approach be implemented so as to work with the resources provided by existing Scientific Workflow Systems? We have developed a new approach to workflow composition which makes use of a number of features: an ontology for recording metadata relating to workflow components, a set of algorithms for analyzing the state of a workflow composition and providing suggestions for how to progress based on this metadata, an API to enable both the algorithms and metadata to utilise the resources provided by existing Scientific Workflow Systems, and a prototype user interface to demonstrate how our proposed approach to workflow composition can work in practice. We evaluate the system to show the approach is valid and capable of reducing some of the difficulties presented by existing systems, but that limitations exist regarding the complexity of workflows which can be composed, and also regarding the challenge of initially populating the metadata ontology.
An Explicit Convergence Rate for Nesterov's Method from SDP

The framework of Integral Quadratic Constraints (IQC) introduced by Lessard et al. (2014) reduces the computation of upper bounds on the convergence rate of several optimization algorithms to semi-definite programming (SDP). In particular, this technique was applied to Nesterov's accelerated method (NAM). For quadratic functions, this SDP was explicitly solved leading to a new bound on the convergence rate of NAM, and for arbitrary strongly convex functions it was shown numerically that IQC can improve bounds from Nesterov (2004). Unfortunately, an explicit analytic solution to the SDP was not provided. In this paper, we provide such an analytical solution, obtaining a new general and explicit upper bound on the convergence rate of NAM, which we further optimize over its parameters. To the best of our knowledge, this is the best, and explicit, upper bound on the convergence rate of NAM for strongly convex functions.