Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Eltrombopag for the Treatment of Immune Thrombocytopenia: The Aegean Region of Turkey Experience

Objective: Immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) is an immune-mediated disease characterized by transient or persistent decrease of the platelet count to less than 100x109/L. Although it is included in a benign disease group, bleeding complications may be mortal. With a better understanding of the pathophysiology of the disease, thrombopoietin receptor agonists, which came into use in recent years, seem to be an effective option in the treatment of resistant cases. This study aimed to retrospectively assess the efficacy, long-term safety, and tolerability of eltrombopag in Turkish patients with chronic ITP in the Aegean region of Turkey. Materials and Methods: Retrospective data of 40 patients with refractory ITP who were treated with eltrombopag in the Aegean region were examined and evaluated. Results: The total rate of response was 87%, and the median duration of response defined as the number of the platelets being over 50x109/L was 19.5 (interquartile range: 5-60) days. In one patient, venous sinus thrombosis was observed with no other additional risk factors due to or related to thrombosis. Another patient with complete response and irregular follow-up for 12 months was lost due to sudden death as the result of probable acute myocardial infarction. Conclusion: Although the responses to eltrombopag were satisfactory, patients need to be monitored closely for overshooting platelet counts as well as thromboembolic events.
Jump Surface Estimation, Edge Detection, and Image Restoration

Surface estimation is important in many applications. When conventional smoothing procedures (e.g., running averages, local polynomial kernel smoothing procedures, smoothing spline procedures) are used for estimating jump surfaces from noisy data, jumps are blurred at the same time when noise is removed. In recent years, new smoothing methodologies have been proposed in the statistical literature for detecting jumps in surfaces and for estimating jump surfaces with jumps preserved. We provide a review of these methodologies. Because a monochrome image can be considered a jump surface of the image intensity function, with jumps at the outlines of objects, edge detection and image restoration problems in image processing are closely related to the jump surface estimation problem in statistics. We also review major methodologies on edge detection and image restoration, and discuss connections and differences among these methods and related methods in the statistical literature.
Analysis of information on rheumatology from a selected Internet forum in the context of the need for telemedicine solutions

Objectives The aim of this study was to determine how often patients and undiagnosed people who complain of musculoskeletal system and rheumatic diseases look for knowledge contained on an Internet forum. Content analysis was used to identify the level of Internet users’ activity in the rheumatology section, compared to other areas of medicine. Material and methods Material included information posted on the Internet forum established at http://medyczka.pl/. The method employed was a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the content. The method was based on qualitative assessment of the first post in each thread presented on the rheumatologic subforum, by assigning keywords, subjectively determined by the researcher, to such a post. For each keyword a specific definition was established, determining a situation in which a given keyword was used. Results The quantitative analysis qualified rheumatology in the last place in terms of Internet users’ activity compared to other branches of medicine. The qualitative assessment of the rheumatologic forum indicated that the three most common keywords were joint pain (32), joints swelling (13), and schoolage (13). The three most common intentional keywords (arranged in order of their decreasing number) were diagnosis based on symptoms (29), interpretation of the laboratory test results (9), and how to deal with symptoms (8). Conclusions The analysis leads to the conclusion that the rheumatologic subforum, along with other subforums listed above, presents a critically low level of discussion. There is a large disproportion between the number of active and passive forum users, suggesting that numerous individuals search the forum for presented information. Based on the qualitative analysis of the information stocks of the rheumatologic subforum, it was established that most of the questions posted concerned young individuals, who complained of joint pain and swelling, and asked for a possible diagnosis based on the presented symptomatology, interpretation of the laboratory test results and alleviation of disease symptoms.
Smart Node: Intelligent Traffic Interpretation

The wide application of GPS navigation system on vehicles has increased the quality of the driving experience. The current GPS based navigation system, however, suffers from the limited real-time traffic updates, and therefore poses a need to cover more areas with traffic sensor infrastructure. In this paper, we propose a framework for intelligent traffic interpretation aiming to enhance the quality of vehicle probe data for navigation applications. In the proposed framework, traffic interpretation can be achieved by either a single smart camera or through the communication within a network of smart cameras mounted on vehicles. Each individual smart camera collects sensory data, which are further processed by different modules of the system to estimate the speed of the nearby vehicles on individual lanes. The sensory data that are collected include sequence of images from video camera, motion parameters from vehicle CAN bus, position information from GPS, and road information from digital map. The estimated speeds are then either used to infer the traffic status within the smart camera per se or shared among the network to achieve a better interpretation by aggregation. The system and the framework will be described in detail in this paper.
A collaborative filtering algorithm fusing user-based, item-based and social networks

The traditional collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm can be divided into the user-based and the item-based two methods, which only uses the information in the rating matrix. Because of the limitation of the information capacity they used, it is difficult to further improve the accuracy of the recommendation, and cold start problem also affects the normal operation of the recommendation system. This paper presented a collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm (UISA) fusing user-based, item-based and social networks data. The algorithm uses the data of the neighbor relations in social networks, calculating the users' friends not reflected in the rating matrix. At the same time, we can calculate the similarity between items by using the data of item text in social networks, mining similar items not reflected in the rating matrix. In this way, it can fundamentally expand available information capacity of the traditional filtering collaboration recommendation algorithms, improve the recommendation accuracy, alleviate cold start problem. Experimental results based on KDD CUP 2012 real data show that compared with the traditional collaborative filtering system, this system has obvious advantages in the recommendation accuracy and ease of cold start.
De Novo Genome and Transcriptome Assembly of the Canadian Beaver (Castor canadensis)

The Canadian beaver (Castor canadensis) is the largest indigenous rodent in North America. We report a draft annotated assembly of the beaver genome, the first for a large rodent and the first mammalian genome assembled directly from uncorrected and moderate coverage (< 30 ×) long reads generated by single-molecule sequencing. The genome size is 2.7 Gb estimated by k-mer analysis. We assembled the beaver genome using the new Canu assembler optimized for noisy reads. The resulting assembly was refined using Pilon supported by short reads (80 ×) and checked for accuracy by congruency against an independent short read assembly. We scaffolded the assembly using the exon–gene models derived from 9805 full-length open reading frames (FL-ORFs) constructed from the beaver leukocyte and muscle transcriptomes. The final assembly comprised 22,515 contigs with an N50 of 278,680 bp and an N50-scaffold of 317,558 bp. Maximum contig and scaffold lengths were 3.3 and 4.2 Mb, respectively, with a combined scaffold length representing 92% of the estimated genome size. The completeness and accuracy of the scaffold assembly was demonstrated by the precise exon placement for 91.1% of the 9805 assembled FL-ORFs and 83.1% of the BUSCO (Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs) gene set used to assess the quality of genome assemblies. Well-represented were genes involved in dentition and enamel deposition, defining characteristics of rodents with which the beaver is well-endowed. The study provides insights for genome assembly and an important genomics resource for Castoridae and rodent evolutionary biology.
GEST: a gene expression search tool based on a novel Bayesian similarity metric

Gene expression array technology has made possible the assay of expression levels of tens of thousands of genes at a time; large databases of such measurements are currently under construction. One important use of such databases is the ability to search for experiments that have similar gene expression levels as a query, potentially identifying previously unsuspected relationships among cellular states. Such searches depend crucially on the metric used to assess the similarity between pairs of experiments. The complex joint distribution of gene expression levels, particularly their correlational structure and non-normality, make simple similarity metrics such as Euclidean distance or correlational similarity scores suboptimal for use in this application. We present a similarity metric for gene expression array experiments that takes into account the complex joint distribution of expression values. We provide a computationally tractable approximation to this measure, and have implemented a database search tool based on it. We discuss implementation issues and efficiency, and we compare our new metric to other standard metrics.
Parallelism and the cloud

ver the past decade, scientific and engineering research via computing has emerged as the third pillar of the scientific process, complementing theory and experiment. Several national studies have highlighted the importance of computational science as a critical enabler of scientific discovery and national competitiveness in the physical and biological sciences, medicine and healthcare, and design and manufacturing [1-3]. As the term suggests, computational science has historically focused on computation: the creation and execution of mathematical models of natural and artificial processes. Driven by opportunity and necessity, computational science is expanding to encompass both computing and data analysis. Today, a rising tsunami of data threatens to overwhelm us, consuming our attention by its very volume and diversity. Driven by inexpensive, seemingly ubiquitous sensors, broadband networks, and high-capacity storage systems, the tsunami encompasses data from sensors that monitor our planet from deep in the ocean, from land instruments, and from space-based imaging systems. It also includes environmental measurements and healthcare data that quantify biological processes and the effects of surrounding conditions. Simply put, we are moving from data paucity to a data plethora, which is leading to a relative poverty of human attention to any individual datum
Isoprene photooxidation: new insights into the production of acids and organic nitrates

Abstract. We describe a nearly explicit chemical mechanism for isoprene photooxidation guided by chamber studies that include time-resolved observation of an extensive suite of volatile compounds. We provide new constraints on the chemistry of the poorly-understood isoprene δ-hydroxy channels, which account for more than one third of the total isoprene carbon flux and a larger fraction of the nitrate yields. We show that the cis branch dominates the chemistry of the δ-hydroxy channel with less than 5% of the carbon following the trans branch. The modelled yield of isoprene nitrates is 12&plusmn3% with a large difference between the δ and β branches. The oxidation of these nitrates releases about 50% of the NOx. Methacrolein nitrates (modelled yield ~ 15±3% from methacrolein) and methylvinylketone nitrates (modelled yield ~ 11±3% yield from methylvinylketone) are also observed. Propanone nitrate, produced with a yield of 1% from isoprene, appears to be the longest-lived nitrate formed in the total oxidation of isoprene. We find a large molar yield of formic acid and suggest a novel mechanism leading to its formation from the organic nitrates. Finally, the most important features of this mechanism are summarized in a condensed scheme appropriate for use in global chemical transport models.
AMIRE – Authoring Mixed Reality

This paper describes the requirements of a training demonstrator based on Mixed Reality in the context of the AMIRE project. The overall objective and idea of the AMIRE project is to define and implement a software system that allows content experts to easily design and implement mixed reality applications without detailed knowledge about the underlying base technologies of MR. Therefore, it describes a generic framework that allows an easy communication between the objects (MR components) used in the AMIRE applications. The AMIRE framework uses
Affective Expression in Computer Generated Music and its Effect on Player Experience

In games, unlike in traditional linear storytelling media such as novels or films, narrative events unfold in response to the player input. Therefore, the music composer in an interactive environment needs to create music that is dynamic and non-repetitive. We investigate how to express emotions and moods in music and how to apply this research to improve player experience in games. The main novelty in our approach, compared to most algorithmically generated music research, is our focus on affective and cognitive modelling, coupled with real-time adjustment of the music. This focus on the emotional meaning that procedurally generated music should express has also been identified by Collins as one of the lacking features that prevent procedurally generated music to be more widely used in the game industry [1].
Research on TCP Optimization Strategy of Application Delivery Network

In any network conditions, regardless of how rich application features, to ensure the security of applications and quickness are very important. Undoubtedly, ADN (application delivery network) optimization technology has become a global network of construction at this stage. This paper presents a strategy based on DOMS architecture which achieves the purpose of application acceleration through different built-in hardware module for TCP optimization, TCP acceleration, content compression, TCP shaping technology. The full-proxy architecture abandons the traditional packet-based solutions and deploys the full agent between the clients and servers. It has its own TCP connection behavior, such as buffering, forwarding, and TCP options. The new TCP congestion control strategy is mainly described with the TCP flow velocity control and the modification of windows size. The simulation experiment results show that the full-proxy based TCP optimization strategy has excellent performance on ADN.
Projection-Based User Interface for Smart Home Environments

Nowadays, technology has made it relatively easy to build a smart home environment. To better interact with the devices and services available in such a smart environment, the user interface plays an important role. In view of this, this paper presents a vision and projection-based user interface that allows the user to remotely control the devices through the movement of fingertips over a projected surface, thereby offering a more natural and intuitive way of user interaction. To realize the proposed bare hand interface, a real-time fingertips detection method and a fingertips tracking method are proposed, where the fingertips detection is accomplished by applying computer vision techniques to the images acquired by a camera. In addition, we propose a gesture recognition model to enable a mapping from the position of fingertips to the high level user actions and events, so that several common gestures (e.g. tap/click and drag) can be correctly detected. To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach, a proof-of-concept experiment, a prototype of the projection-based user interface, is conducted and presented based on a typical smart home scenario.
Linear optimization queries

Abstract Let Γ0 be a set of n halfspaces in Ed (where the dimension d is fixed) and let m be a parameter, n ≤ m ≤ n⌊d/2⌋. We show that Γ0 can be preprocessed in time and space O(m1+δ) (for any fixed δ > 0) so that given a vector c ∈ Ed and another set Γq of additional halfspaces, the function c · x can be optimized over the intersection of the halfspaces of Γ0 ∪ Γq in time O((n/m1/⌊d/2⌋ + |Γq|)log4d+3n). The algorithm uses a multidimensional version of Megiddo′s parametric search technique and recent results on halfspace range reporting. Applications include an improved algorithm for computing the extreme points of an n-point set P in Ed, improved output-sensitive computation of convex hulls and Voronoi diagrams, and a Monte-Carlo algorithm for estimating the volume of a convex polyhedron given by the set of its vertices (in a fixed dimension).
Routing-Verification-as-a-Service (RVaaS): Trustworthy Routing Despite Insecure Providers

Computer networks today typically do not provide any mechanisms to the users to learn, in a reliable manner, which paths have (and have not! ) been taken by their packets. Rather, it seems inevitable that as soon as a packet leaves the network card, the user is forced to trust the network provider to forward the packets as expected or agreed upon. This can be undesirable, especially in the light of today's trend toward more programmable networks: after a successful cyber attack on the network management system or Software-Defined Network (SDN) control plane, an adversary in principle has complete control over the network. This paper presents a low-cost and efficient solution to detect misbehaviors and ensure trustworthy routing over untrusted or insecure providers, in particular providers whose management system or control plane has been compromised (e.g., using a cyber attack). We propose Routing-Verification-as-a-Service (RVaaS): RVaaS offers clients a flexible interface to query information relevant to their traffic, while respecting the autonomy of the network provider. RVaaS leverages key features of OpenFlow-based SDNs to combine (passive and active) configuration monitoring, logical data plane verification and actual in-band tests, in a novel manner.
ARTIFICIAL CREATIVITY: A SYNTHETIC APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF CREATIVE BEHAVIOUR

We present a novel approach to the computational study of creativity, called artificial creativity. Artificial creativity promotes the study of the creative behaviour of individuals and societies in artificial societies of agents. It is similar to the approach to that taken by Artificial Life researchers involved in developing computational models. We present a framework for developing artificial creativity systems as an adaptation of Liu’s dual generate-and-test model of creativity. An example implementation of an artificial creativity system is presented to illustrate the potential benefits of our new approach as a way of investigating the emergent nature of creativity in societies of communicating agents. Finally, we discuss some future research directions that are possible by extending the abilities of individuals and studying the emergent behaviour of societies.
Model of sprite luminous trail caused by increasing streamer current

This study investigates a possible physical mechanism responsible for the occurrence of the luminous trail of sprite streamers, which is also known as “afterglow. ” According to streamer modeling results, when sprite streamers propagate with expansion, acceleration and brightening, the total current flowing through the streamer body also increases. The increasing current results in the rise of the electric field in the streamer channel far behind the streamer head, which leads to effective production of N2 excited states by electron impact excitation and then the glowing trail.
Evaluation of a cloud federation approach based on Software Defined Networking

This paper introduces a Software Defined Networking based cloud federation approach, which enables a horizontal network federation between different cloud providers, based on a federated Software Defined Networking (SDN) layer. Thus, a new cloud federation agent is introduced, designed, and exemplary evaluated. The described agent is managing the set up and sustainment of a Software Defined Network on the underlying, federated cloud networks. Therefore it includes a virtualization component to virtualize the underlying physical SDN substrate. This offers tenants the opportunity to use the cloud's Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model with fine grained access to the virtualized SDN resources. Theses resources are exposed via an OpenFlow interface and deployed on top of the SDN virtualized control plane. This provides an innovative management and control capability of a virtual SDN (vSDN) substrate which gives tenants the freedom to deploy virtual network appliances or services, also known as Network Function Virtualization (NFV), on top of the allocated vSDN.
Characterizing the effects of prostaglandin E2 on tendon mechanical properties

Elyse Jeannette Baum Characterizing the Effects of Prostaglandin E 2 on Tendon Mechanical Properties (Under the direction of Paul Weinhold) Tendinopathy is a common clinical problem, both athletically and occupationally. It develops from repetitive mechanical loading of tendon; however the molecular mechanisms are not well understood. It is thought that prostaglandin E 2 (PGE 2) and matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) play a role in the early stages of tendinopathy development. This research utilizes a rat tail tendon fascicle explant model to characterize the effects of PGE 2 in statically loaded and unloaded tendon. These effects were quantified through creep measurement during culture and tensile failure tests of the tissue after culture. Both specific and nonspecific MMP inhibitors were used in the system to better characterize the molecular mechanism of PGE 2 's action in the tissue. We found that MMP inhibitors and static loading prevents PGE 2 from decreasing the mechanical properties of the tissue. iii This work is dedicated to Jeffrey, Mom, Dad and Matt, as well as all of my other wonderful family and friends. Without your support, none of this would have been possible. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Relational trouble and student victimisation at schools – categorisation, caring and institutionalisation

Abstract The focus of the present study is on how a number of Swedish schools define and categorise students who have been exposed to different forms of abusive acts and violence at school. The empirical study was designed to explore six Swedish urban secondary schools. The results indicated a recurrent pattern in school officials’ narratives, which is that officials often express difficulty defining the actual problem or crime. The results also revealled ambivalence when students’ problems were taken over by other professionals. Reporting to the police and the social services was sometimes a relief, it can provide an opportunity for professional advice; at the same time the informants reported a lack of information and control during this process. Consequently, there was also a socio-political struggle involved in defining ‘problematic’ situations and solutions to relational difficulties.