Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Statistical Issues and Recommendations for Noninferiority Trials in Oncology: A Systematic Review

To provide an overview of noninferiority trials in oncology with a special emphasis on methodologic issues, we conducted a systematic review of randomized trials assessing noninferiority of antineoplastic treatments. We identified 72 articles, of which 65 were randomized phase III trials with a single control arm, 3 were factorial phase III trials, and 4 were randomized phase II trials. Forty-six were trials in lung, colorectal, or breast cancer. The quality of reporting was improved chronologically (P < 0.01); the major deficiencies were claims of noninferiority when the results did not meet statistical criteria for noninferiority (7 articles) or when the noninferiority margin was not prespecified (5 articles). Four trials (6%) presented plans for switching from superiority to noninferiority. The analysis populations were intent to treat (ITT) in 52, per-protocol set (PPS) in 6, and both ITT and PPS in 11 trials. Noninferiority margins were set in 68 trials (94%); 1 trial used both of the conventional and effect retention methods, 17 trials used the conventional method, 5 trials used the effect retention method, and in 45 trials, the method was not specified. Some trials used margins that possibly were larger than the assured effects of the active controls. No trials explicitly took into consideration uncertainty in historical data. Two trials (3%) specified 2 values of margins. Our findings highlight critical deficiencies in design and reporting of noninferiority trials. Seven practical recommendations are presented. Clin Cancer Res; 18(7); 1837–47. ©2012 AACR.
The management of pregnancy in paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria on long term eculizumab

In Paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria (PNH), pregnancy is associated with increased maternal and foetal complications to such an extent that the condition has been considered relatively contra‐indicated in PNH. Eculizumab has revolutionized the treatment of PNH. We evaluate its use in pregnancy to date. We report on seven patients exposed to eculizumab at different stages of pregnancy including the first two patients to receive the drug from conception to delivery. There was no evidence of complement blockade from cord blood samples taken at delivery. Eculizumab appears safe to use in this setting and is likely to prevent many of the complications usually observed.
Using one’s own professional activities to promote research and publishing

This paper explores issues related to teacher educators publishing in journals. They do so for obvious reasons such as tenure, career advancement, personal satisfaction and university prestige. In order to offer an extra means of helping teacher educators achieve these publishing goals, the paper explores how using one’s own professional experiences in a number of spheres may offer substantial opportunities for publishing. Using a Grounded Theory analysis, the author presents an analysis of his own publications. These are laid out in five categories in which his professional pursuits with teacher trainees have led to a considerable number of publications, 34 of which have appeared in international journals, 25 of them in international Grade A and B journals. The author calls for academics to examine their own practices, suggesting that there is much in one’s own professional experiences that can be of worth to the international community.
Domains of father involvement, social competence and problem behavior in preschool children

Abstract Many studies reported that father involvement is associated with a wide range of developmental outcomes; however, evidence is weaker when controlling for correlated mother involvement and when using different informants to assess father involvement and children development. Our study aimed to research the association between father involvement and preschoolers’ social competence, controlling for mother involvement, family demographics, parental stress, time spent in day-care, existence of siblings and child’s characteristics. Participants were 295 children between 36 and 71 months of age, 52% girls, all living in resident-father families. Hierarchical multiple regression models were performed entering the predictors in three blocks: Child related variables, family demographics and stress, father relative involvement with the child. Results suggest that father involvement in leisure activities outdoors is a direct predictor of social competence, and also of lower externalizing problems, especially for boys.
Skeleton-based abdominal aorta registration technique

Vascular diseases are the most challenging health problems in developed countries. The vascular segmentation as well as registration techniques are the topics of past and ongoing research activities. In this work we target an abdominal aorta registration technique. The developed methodology is useful in the assessment of abdominal aortic aneurysm treatment by visualizing the correspondence between pre- and postoperative Computed Tomography (CT) data. The presented approach makes it possible to match all voxels belonging to the aorta from different CT series. It is based on aorta lumen segmentation and graph matching method. To segment the lumen area a hybrid level-set active contour approach is used. The matching step is performed based on a path similarity skeleton graph matching procedure. The registration results have been tested on the database of 8 patients, for which two different contrast-enhanced CT series were acquired. All registration results achieved with our system and verified by an expert prove the efficiency of the approach and encourage to further develop this method.
An Arg 307 to Gln Polymorphism within the ATP-binding Site Causes Loss of Function of the Human P 2 X 7 Receptor *

The P2X7 receptor is a ligand-gated channel that is highly expressed on mononuclear cells of the immune system and that mediates ATP-induced apoptosis. Wide variations in the function of the P2X7 receptor have been observed, explained in part by loss-of-function polymorphisms that change Glu to Ala (E496A) and Ile to Asn (I568N). In this study, a third polymorphism, which substitutes an uncharged glutamine for the highly positively charged Arg (R307Q), has been found in heterozygous dosage in 12 of 420 subjects studied. P2X7 function was measured by ATP-induced fluxes of Rb , Ba , and ethidium into peripheral blood monocytes or various lymphocyte subsets and was either absent or markedly decreased. Transfection experiments showed that P2X7 carrying the R307Q mutation lacked either channel or pore function despite robust protein synthesis and surface expression of the receptor. The monoclonal antibody (clone L4) that binds to the extracellular domain of wild type P2X7 and blocks P2X7 function failed to bind to the R307Q mutant receptor. Differentiation of monocytes to macrophages up-regulated P2X7 function in cells heterozygous for the R307Q to a value 10–40% of that for wild type macrophages. However, macrophages from a subject who was double heterozygous for R307Q/I568N remained totally non-functional for P2X7, and lymphocytes from the same subject also lacked ATP-stimulated phospholipase D activity. These data identify a third loss-of-function polymorphism affecting the human P2X7 receptor, and since the affected Arg is homologous to those amino acids essential for ATP binding to P2X1 and P2X2, it is likely that this polymorphism abolishes the binding of ATP to the extracellular domain of P2X7.
Wear, point, and tilt: designing support for mobile service and maintenance in industrial settings

Through theoretical influences, particularly drawing on the phenomenological notion of embodiment, and through the findings of an ethnographic study of the work practice of service technicians at two industrial assembly manufacturing units, we present the philosophy behind and practice in designing a mobile support system for real-life application. In this particular setting, we have come to question both the usefulness of the currently available and applied styles of interaction, and the role such a system should play in the everyday activities of service and maintenance. In this paper, we introduce the findings of the field study and explain how these findings have been interpreted to constitute design incentives. We especially focus on three aspects of the design of the prototype system: the functionality it encompasses; the interaction style with which the user performs input to the device; and the mobile prototype's graphical user interface
Making a career in PESP in the corporatized university: reflections on hegemony, resistance, collegiality and scholarship

This lecture considers how it might be possible to make a career as a university scholar at a time when the university is becoming increasingly corporatised. Consistent with the intent of the Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy (PESP) Special Interest Group (SIG) Scholar Lecture, I draw on personal experiences from my own career as a university teacher, researcher, teacher educator and leader to consider the extent to which the hegemony of corporatisation might be challenged and subverted, the kinds of resistance that can and should take place, and the central importance of collegiality and scholarship to the sustainability of the university as an institution of higher learning. I will consider more specifically what it means to develop a career as a scholar in a practical and marginalised field such as PESP, and the possibilities that exist to secure the future of the field of research and praxis.
The Fingerprint of Human Referring Expressions and their Surface Realization with Graph Transducers

The algorithm IS-FP takes up the idea from the IS-FBN algorithm developed for the shared task 2007. Both algorithms learn the individual attribute selection style for each human that provided referring expressions to the corpus. The IS-FP algorithm was developed with two additional goals (1) to improve the indentification time that was poor for the FBN algorithm and (2) to push the dice score even higher. In order to generate a word string for the selected attributes, we build based on individual preferences a surface syntactic dependency tree as input. We derive the individual preferences from the training set. Finally, a graph transducer maps the input strucutre to a deep morphologic structure.
A genetic family-based association study of OLIG2 in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

CONTEXT Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a debilitating familial psychiatric illness with associated brain abnormalities in the white matter. The gene for oligodendrocyte lineage transcription factor 2 (OLIG2) is an essential regulator in the development of cells that produce white matter (myelin). The OLIG2 gene is also highly expressed in brain regions implicated in OCD. OBJECTIVES To examine OLIG2 as a candidate gene for OCD susceptibility and to explore whether comorbidity subtypes of OCD have distinct associations with OLIG2 and the functionally related OLIG1 gene. It was hypothesized a priori that OLIG2 and OLIG1 were associated with OCD regardless of the presence of comorbid Tourette disorder (TD), but not with TD alone. DESIGN Family-based association candidate gene study. SETTING Participants and their family members were recruited from tertiary care OCD and TD specialty clinics. PARTICIPANTS Families of 66 probands with OCD with and without TD and 31 probands with TD without OCD. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Genotypes of single nucleotide polymorphism markers and related haplotypes. RESULTS The following 3 single nucleotide polymorphism markers on OLIG2 were associated with the OCD without TD phenotype: rs762178 (minor allele frequency, 35%; P<.001), rs1059004 (minor allele frequency, 44%; P = .005), and rs9653711 (minor allele frequency, 44%; P = .004). A 5-marker haplotype (A/C/T/T/G) constituting these single nucleotide polymorphisms and exonic single nucleotide polymorphisms rs6517137 and rs13046814 was undertransmitted (frequency, 32%; permuted P=.004), whereas the G/A/T/T/C haplotype (frequency, 22%; permuted P=.02) was overtransmitted to probands with OCD alone, with a significant global P value (permuted P=.008). CONCLUSIONS This is the first study reporting an association between OLIG2 and OCD, specifically when TD comorbidity is absent. The findings support a role for white matter abnormalities in the etiology of the disorder.
'Structural autoregulation'--the local adaptation of vascular beds to chronic changes in pressure.

Blood vessels readily adapt their design in response to sustained functional changes. If pressure (P) increases, the resulting thickening of the walls (w) of the resistance vessels, associated with a reduction in average inner radius (ri), keeps wall tension per unit wall layer (T) constant, because the increased w/ri ratio largely balances the raised pressure (Laplace's law: T = P X ri/w). The opposite occurs when there are sustained reductions in pressure. This locally elicited, mainly precapillary structural adaptation is a long-range equivalent to precapillary functional autoregulation and deserves to be called structural autoregulation. In primary hypertension there is an early 'structural resetting' of the systemic precapillary resistance, due to narrowing of ri and to vascular hyperreactivity ensuing from the increase in w/ri. These structural changes imply an increased resistance to flow at normal levels of vascular smooth muscle activity. Furthermore, even mild functional pressor influences will, if sustained, by a positive feedback interaction with the initially mild vascular hyperreactivity gradually accentuate the structural increase in w/ri. Marked rises in pressure may ensue from this interaction, implying that it is a major causative element in primary hypertension. As the renal preglomerular resistance vessels are similarly structurally autoregulated, this implies an early largely parallel resetting of the important renal 'long-term barostat function'. Further, as the walls of large arteries get thicker and stiffer, this helps to reset the baroreceptors. Finally, as the venous capacitance vessels adapt in a similar way the slight rise in average venous pressure in primary hypertension will reduce venous compliance, which helps to 'centralize' the usually slightly reduced blood volume.
Distress among women receiving uninformative BRCA1/2 results: 12‐month outcomes

Objective: Few data are available regarding the long‐term psychological impact of uninformative BRCA1/2 test results. This study examines change in distress from pretesting to 12‐months post‐disclosure, with medical, family history, and psychological variables, such as pretesting perceived risk of carrying a deleterious mutation prior to testing and primary and secondary appraisals, as predictors.
Robust Machine Vision Framework for localization of unknown objects

In this paper an approach to the detection of unknown objects is presented. The proposed algorithm is applied to the rehabilitation robot FRIEND II for the localization of objects situated in complex scenes. Also, the method was designed to cope with changes in the illumination conditions. The approach used in this work is the inclusion of feedback control in the image processing chain used by the Machine Vision Framework of the robot. A closed-loop control system was designed at image segmentation level for improving the robustness and reliability of the feature extraction module. The design of the closed-loop is based on an Extremum Searching Algorithm which searches for the optimal parameters of the image segmentation method. The performance of the proposed framework is investigated in comparison with a traditional open-loop method.
Performance evaluation metrics for motion detection and tracking

This work introduces a methodology for evaluating the operational range of a video surveillance system in terms of robustness and reliability. We propose the generation of semi and full-synthetic video sequences under controlled variation of selected parameters. This data provides the necessary ground truth information for evaluating the motion detection and tracking systems. In addition, we propose several error metrics for quantitative evaluation.
Weak Lensing-Induced Correlations between 1 Jy QSOs and APM Galaxies on Angular Scales of a Degree

We find angular correlations between high-redshift radio-selected QSOs from the 1 Jy catalog and Automatic Plate Measuring Facility (APM) galaxies on ≲1° scales. We demonstrate that observed correlations are qualitatively consistent with a gravitational lensing explanation and are inconsistent with a Galactic dust obscuration model. Comparing our results with those of Benítez & Martínez-González, who also use 1 Jy sources and APM galaxies, we come to the conclusion that galaxy selection criteria can have a major effect on the angular scale and amplitude of detected correlations.
Optimal Uniform and L p Rates for Random Fourier Features

Kernel techniques are among the most powerful approaches in machine learning and Bayesian modelling due to their capability to represent and model complex relations. However, this flexibility and richness of kernels has a price: by resorting to implicit construction of feature maps these methods operate on the Gram matrix of the data, which raises serious computational challenges while dealing with large scale data. In order to mitigate this severe numerical limitation, recently randomized constructions have been proposed in the literature, which allow the application of fast linear algorithms.
Relationship Among Circulating Inflammatory Proteins, Platelet Gene Expression, and Cardiovascular Risk

Objective—Cardiovascular disease is a complex disorder influenced by interactions of genetic variants with environmental factors. However, there is no information from large community-based studies examining the relationship of circulating cell–specific RNA to inflammatory proteins. In light of the associations among inflammatory biomarkers, obesity, platelet function, and cardiovascular disease, we sought to examine the relationships of C-reactive protein (CRP) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) to the expression of key inflammatory transcripts in platelets. Approach and Results—We quantified circulating levels of CRP and IL-6 in 1625 participants of the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) Offspring cohort examination 8 (mean age, 66.6±6.6 years; 46% men). We measured the expression of 15 relevant genes by high-throughput quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction from platelet-derived RNA and used multivariable regression to relate serum concentrations of CRP and IL-6 with gene expression. Levels of CRP and IL-6 were associated with 10 of the 15 platelet-derived inflammatory transcripts, ALOX5, CRP, IFIT1, IL6, PTGER2, S100A9, SELENBP1, TLR2, TLR4, and TNFRSF1B (P<0.001). Associations between platelet mRNA expression with CRP and IL-6 persisted after multivariable adjustment for potentially confounding factors. Six genes positively associated with CRP or IL-6 in the FHS sample were also upregulated in megakaryocytes in response to CRP or IL-6 exposure. Conclusions—Our data highlight the strong connection between the circulating inflammatory biomarkers CRP and IL-6 and platelet gene expression, adjusting for cardiovascular disease risk factors. Our results also suggest that body weight may directly influence these associations.
The Efficacy of Ecological Macro-Models in Preservice Teacher Education: Transforming States of Mind

The present study aimed to describe and evaluate a transformative, embodied, emergent learning approach to acquiring ecological literacy through higher education. A class of teacher candidates in a bachelor of education program filled out a survey, which had them rate their level of agreement with 15 items related to ecological macro-models. Participants also completed self-efficacy measures pre- and postcourse. Overall, participants rated ecological macro-model learning very highly, and they rated the ambiguity and emergent learning approach significantly higher than information-transmission approaches. Participants’ self-efficacy regarding understanding of ecological concepts and teaching approaches also significantly increased. The main implication of the study are that the ecological macro-model approach offered participants the opportunity for emergent learning, and that educators who are interested in this deeper form of learning should consider how they might apply this approach.
Feature extraction by hierarchical overlapped elastic meshing for handwritten Chinese character recognition

Meshing is a popular technology for feature extraction in handwritten Chinese character recognition. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical overlapped elastic meshing (HOEM), which integrates overlap, fuzzy membership and hierarchical division into elastic meshing. The overlapping zones and the fuzzy memberships of the pixels in each zone are dynamically calculated through mapping the input image to a virtual normalized image. Such mapping is fulfilled by nonlinear shape normalization based on weighted dot density. Furthermore, using hierarchical division, the global overlapped elastic meshing (GOEM) is extended to the proposed HOEM. Experiments are conducted on the ETL9B database to compare different meshing methods. The results indicate that the proposed method achieves a higher recognition rate than conventional meshing methods.
Continuous glucose monitoring: an Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline.

OBJECTIVE The aim was to formulate practice guidelines for determining settings where patients are most likely to benefit from the use of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). PARTICIPANTS The Endocrine Society appointed a Task Force of experts, a methodologist, and a medical writer. EVIDENCE This evidence-based guideline was developed using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) system to describe both the strength of recommendations and the quality of evidence. CONSENSUS PROCESS One group meeting, several conference calls, and e-mail communications enabled consensus. Committees and members of The Endocrine Society, the Diabetes Technology Society, and the European Society of Endocrinology reviewed and commented on preliminary drafts of these guidelines. CONCLUSIONS The Task Force evaluated three potential uses of CGM: 1) real-time CGM in adult hospital settings; 2) real-time CGM in children and adolescent outpatients; and 3) real-time CGM in adult outpatients. The Task Force used the best available data to develop evidence-based recommendations about where CGM can be beneficial in maintaining target levels of glycemia and limiting the risk of hypoglycemia. Both strength of recommendations and quality of evidence were accounted for in the guidelines.
Effects of Participation in a Martial Arts-Based Antibullying Program in Elementary Schools.

This study evaluated the Gentle Warrior Program, a traditional martial arts–based intervention to reduce aggression in children, as it was implemented in three elementary schools. The sample consisted of 254 children in grades 3, 4, and 5 who participated in the Gentle Warrior Program as part of a larger school violence intervention. Results indicated that boys who participated in more Gentle Warrior sessions reported a lower frequency of aggression and greater frequency of helpful bystanding (i.e., helpful behavior toward victims of bullying) over time, relative to boys with less frequent participation. The effect of participation on aggression was partially mediated by empathy. The effect of participation on helpful bystanding was fully mediated by changes in student empathy. No significant results were found for girls. Results of the study provide preliminary support for the use of martial arts–based interventions to address bullying in schools for boys, by teaching empathy, self-control, and peaceful strategies to resolve conflicts. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.