Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hand-assisted laparoscopic hepatectomy for tumors located in posterior segment.

BACKGROUND/AIMS In spite of recent advances in laparoscopic surgery, laparoscopic approach is still not a standard option for the tumors located in the posterior segment of the right hepatic lobe mainly due to its technical difficulties and the risk for injuring major adjacent vessels. METHODOLOGY In order to evaluate the feasibility of laparoscopic posterior segment hepatectomy (LPSH) compared to open posterior segment hepatectomy (OPSH), we retrospectively reviewed a total of 46 laparoscopic hepatectomies and 169 open hepatectomies. Among them, three patients underwent LPSH and seven patients underwent OPSH for tumors located in the posterior segment of the right hepatic lobe. RESULTS Although duration of operation showed a trend toward being longer in LPSH, LPSH was not accompanied by significant increase of blood loss. Furthermore, LPSH had a trend to result in earlier recovery of the patients, including shorter hospital stay and earlier start of walking or meal. CONCLUSIONS In conclusion, our data suggested that LPSH could be as safe and feasible as OPSH for tumors located in the posterior segment.
Posteromedial Parietal Cortical Activity and Inputs Predict Tactile Spatial Acuity

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural circuitry underlying tactile spatial acuity at the human finger pad. Stimuli were linear, three-dot arrays, applied to the immobilized right index finger pad using a computer-controlled, MRI-compatible, pneumatic stimulator. Activity specific for spatial processing was isolated by contrasting discrimination of left–right offsets of the central dot in the array with discrimination of the duration of stimulation by an array without a spatial offset. This contrast revealed activity in a distributed frontoparietal cortical network, within which the levels of activity in right posteromedial parietal cortical foci [right posterior intraparietal sulcus (pIPS) and right precuneus] significantly predicted individual acuity thresholds. Connectivity patterns were assessed using both bivariate analysis of Granger causality with the right pIPS as a reference region and multivariate analysis of Granger causality for a selected set of regions. The strength of inputs into the right pIPS was significantly greater in subjects with better acuity than those with poorer acuity. In the better group, the paths predicting acuity converged from the left postcentral sulcus and right frontal eye field onto the right pIPS and were selective for the spatial task, and their weights predicted the level of right pIPS activity. We propose that the optimal strategy for fine tactile spatial discrimination involves interaction in the pIPS of a top-down control signal, possibly attentional, with somatosensory cortical inputs, reflecting either visualization of the spatial configurations of tactile stimuli or engagement of modality-independent circuits specialized for fine spatial processing.
Simple Empty-Space Removal for Interactive Volume Rendering

Interactive volume rendering methods such as texture-based slicing techniques and ray casting have been well developed in recent years. The rendering performance is generally restricted by the volume size, the fill-rate, and the texture fetch speed of the graphics hardware. For most 3D data sets, a fraction of the volume is empty, which will reduce the rendering performance without specific optimization. In this paper, we present a simple kd-tree-based space partitioning scheme to efficiently remove the empty spaces from the volume data sets at the preprocessing stage. The splitting rule of the scheme is based on a simple yet effective cost function evaluated through a fast approximation of the bounding volume of the nonempty regions. The scheme culls a large number of empty voxels and encloses the remaining data with a small number of axis-aligned bounding boxes, which are then used for interactive rendering. The number of boxes is controlled by halting criteria. In addition to its simplicity, our scheme requires little preprocessing time and improves the rendering performance significantly.
Validation of the Faith Development Scale Using Longitudinal and Cross-Sectional Designs

Two studies were conducted to further evaluate the validity of the Faith Development Scale (FDS). Study 1 used a longitudinal design and evaluated the change in scores on the scale in response to normal maturational and faith-based experiences over 4 years. Study 2 examined the differences in level of faith development between entering freshmen and graduating senior college students. Both studies found differences consistent with the hypothesis that the FDS is sensitive to: (a) between groups expected to differ in faith development and (b) to changes in faith development within groups over time. Despite limitations within both studies, it was concluded that the results offer further support for the validity of the FDS. Implications of these results are discussed.
Minimal Perfect Hashing-Based Information Collection Protocol for RFID Systems

For large-scale RFID systems, this paper studies the practically important problem of target tag information collection, which aims at collecting information from a specific set of target tags instead of all. However, the existing solutions are of low time-efficiency because of two reasons. First, the serious collisions among tags due to hashing randomness seriously reduce the frame utilization, whose upper bound is just 36.8 percent. Second, they cannot efficiently distinguish the target tags from the non-target tags and thus inevitably collect a lot of irrelevant information on non-target tags, which further deteriorates the effective utilization of the time frame. To overcome the above two drawbacks, this paper proposes the minimal Perfect hashing-based Information Collection (PIC) protocol, which first leverages lightweight indicator vectors to establish a one-to-one mapping between target tags and slots, thereby improving the frame utilization to nearly 100 percent; and then uses the novel data structure called Minimal Perfect Hashing based Filter (MPHF) to filter out the non-target tags, thereby preventing them from interfering with the process of collecting information from target tags. Sufficient theoretical analyses are also presented in this paper to minimize the execution time of the proposed PIC protocol. Extensive simulations are conducted to compare the proposed PIC protocol with prior works side-by-side. The simulation results demonstrate that PIC significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art protocols in terms of time-efficiency.
Identification of plant promoters in situ by T‐DNA‐mediated transcriptional fusions to the npt‐II gene

We have constructed an Agrobacterium‐mediated plant vector,pHTT88,which upon integration into the plant chromosomes can produce transcriptional fusions between upstream control elements in the plant genome and the gene for neomycin phosphotransferase II (npt‐II). The vector is based on a juxtaposition of a T‐DNA right border to the coding sequence of npt‐II. Using this system it is possible to isolate kanamycin‐resistant plant calli where the site of integration is suitably positioned downstream of plant transcription signals. We have demonstrated that the NPT‐II activity of such tobacco transformants shows different tissue‐specific patterns of regulation in the regenerated plants. Among eight transformants analyzed, we have isolated one gene fusion expressed only in roots and others expressed only in stem. The results demonstrate that a gene fusion vector can be used effectively in plants to identify and characterize regulatory elements.
User profiles of internet addicts in Serbia

This work was a part of a broader empirical study of Internet users with excessive and dysfunctional Internet use symptoms. The aim of this particular article was to describe user profiles of Internet addicts in Serbia. The study recruited 100 subjects in total, 50 in both the clinical and control group. The clinical group included the Internet users who asked for professional help due to the symptoms of the excessive Internet use and fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for Internet behavior disorder proposed by the American Psychology Association. The results have shown that population with Internet addiction symptoms equally included both males and females, mostly adolescent and younger population, teenagers and university students, persons with higher income and users from economically more developed areas of Serbia. The user profile of this group is characterized by frequent logging on with intervals of several hours online at one time, mainly in the evening or at night, and also intensive negative reactions to any form of Internet access deprivation. By means of factor analysis, three dimensions of pathological use have been established: mixed type with particular need for up-to-date information, social interaction addiction and need for fun-seeking, namely pursuing hobbies online (cyberpornography, online games, music, art and so on).
A New Approach to the Generation of Orthoimages of Cultural Heritage Objects - Integrating TLS and Image Data

This paper discusses the issue of automation of orthoimage generation based on Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) data and digital images. The following two problems are discussed: automatic generation of projection planes based on TLS data, and automatic orientation of digital images in relation to TLS data. The majority of popular software applications use manual definitions of projection planes. However, the authors propose an original software tool to address the first issue, which defines important planes based on a TLS point cloud utilizing different algorithms (RANdom SAmple Consensus–RANSAC, Hough transform, “region growing”). To address the second task, the authors present a series of algorithms for automated digital image orientation in relation to a point cloud. This is important in cases where scans and images are acquired from different places and at different times. The algorithms utilize Scale Invariant Feature Transform(SIFT) operators in order to find points that correspond in reflectance intensity between coloure images (Red Green Blue—RGB) and orthoimages, based on TLS data. The paper also presents a verification method using SIFT and Speeded-Up Robust Features (SURF) operators. The research results in an original tool and applied Computer Vision(CV) algorithms that improve the process of orthoimage generation.
Product Metrics for Automatic Identification of "Bad Smell" Design Problems in Java Source-Code

Refactoring can have a direct influence on reducing the cost of software maintenance through changing the internal structure of the source-code to improve the overall design that helps the present and future programmers evolve and understand a system. Bad smells are a set of design problems with refactoring identified as a solution. Locating these bad smells has been described as more a human intuition than an exact science. This paper addresses the issue of identifying the characteristics of a bad smell through the use of a set of software metrics. Then by using a pre-defined set of interpretation rules to interpret the software metric results applied to Java source-code, the software engineer can be provided with significant guidance as to the location of bad smells. These issues are addressed in a number of ways. Firstly, a precise definition of bad smells is given from the informal descriptions given by the originators Fowler and Beck. The characteristics of the bad smells have been used to define a set of measurements and interpretation rules for a subset of the bad smells. A prototype tool has been implemented to enable the evaluation of the interpretation rules in two case studies.
Speaker Diarization For Multiple-Distant-Microphone Meetings Using Several Sources of Information

Human-Machine interaction in meetings requires the localization and identification of the speaker that interacts with the system and the recognition of the message spoken. A seminal phase towards this goal is the so-called rich transcription research, which covers speaker diarization together with the annotation of sentence boundaries and elimination of speaker disfluencies. The subarea of speaker diarization intends to identify the number of participants in a meeting and create a list of speech time intervals for each such participant. In this paper we analyze the correlation between signals coming from different microphones and propose an improved method to do speaker diarization for meetings with multiple distant microphones. The proposed algorithm makes use of acoustic information and information about the delays between signals coming from all the sources. With this procedure, we have been able to achieve the best performance in the last spring 2006 National Institute of Standards Rich Transcription Evaluation, improving from 15% to 20% relative the Diarization Error Rate (DER) compared to previous systems.
Measurement properties of gingival biotype evaluation methods

BACKGROUND There are numerous methods to measure the dimensions of the gingival tissue, but few have compared the effectiveness of one method over another. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to describe a new method and to estimate the validity of gingival biotype assessment with the aid of computed tomography scanning (CTS). MATERIALS AND METHODS In each patient different methods of evaluation of the gingival thickness were used: transparency of periodontal probe, transgingival, photography, and a new method of CTS). Intrarater and interrater reliability considering the categorical classification of the gingival biotype were estimated with Cohen's kappa coefficient, intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), and ANOVA (P < .05). The criterion validity of the CTS was determined using the transgingival method as the reference standard. Sensitivity and specificity values were computed along with theirs 95% CI. RESULTS Twelve patients were subjected to assessment of their gingival thickness. The highest agreement was found between transgingival and CTS (86.1%). The comparison between the categorical classifications of CTS and the transgingival method (reference standard) showed high specificity (94.92%) and low sensitivity (53.85%) for definition of a thin biotype. CONCLUSION The new method of CTS assessment to classify gingival tissue thickness can be considered reliable and clinically useful to diagnose thick biotype.
The Culture of National Security : Norms and Identity in World Politics

Since the end of the Cold War, states have increasingly come under pressure to intervene militarily and, in fact, have intervened militarily to protect citizens other than their own from humanitarian disasters. Recent efforts to enforce protected areas for Kurds and no-fly zones over Shiites in Iraq, efforts to alleviate starvation and establish some kind of political order in Somalia, the huge un military effort to disarm parties and rebuild a state in Cambodia, and to some extent even the military actions to bring humanitarian relief in Bosnia are all instances of military action whose primary goal is not territorial or strategic but humanitarian.
Prediction of Secondary Metabolism Pathways from Genomic Information and Compounds Data

Genome sequencing projects have determined complete genomic sequences of more than 20 organisms. Now we obtain catalogs of complete gene sets of these species. But we really want to know is not only catalogs of each gene or protein. What we want to know is how they express biological functions. Biological function can be understood only by the overall behavior of an organic system. Thus we must understand how biological system is constructed from elemental genes and molecules and the interaction of these molecules. Pathway informatics or process informatics is a methodology to understand the construction and the behavior of the living system based on informatics. The aim of pathway informatics includes the construction of pathway databases like KEGG [5], the development of pathway reconstruction method in silico, and the simulation of biological system using above databases and methods. To achieve the third goal, our current knowledge is insufficient. Limiting to the metabolic system, we relatively well know about primary metabolism, but we have little knowledge about secondary metabolism. Drug metabolism is one of the example we want to reveal, for we must develop drugs with good efficacy and least toxicity. Here we propose a method to predict uncharacterized metabolic pathways from genetic information and compounds data.
On the Bipolarity of Androgyny: A Critical Comment on Kottke (1988)

In 1988 Kottke proposed that androgyny, as measured on the Bern Sex-role Inventory according to Bern's 1977 classification method, is not two-dimensional but unidimensional and tested whether this concept could just as well be assessed with a single bipolar Masculinity-Femininity scale with Androgyny as a midpoint. In testing the relationship between the two assessment methods two errors have been made. First, the median splits were calculated for the sexes separately instead of for both sexes combined, leading to incomparable scores for men and women which are nevertheless combined in the analyses. Second, subjects who were undifferentiated according to Bern's classification were removed from the analyses, although Bern's definition of undifferentiated subjects corresponds exactly to Kottke's definition of androgynous subjects. Therefore, Kottke's study is not conclusive on the bipolarity of androgyny It is concluded that the concept of androgyny needs theoretical reconsideration
Having an eye for it: aesthetics, ethnography and the senses

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss participant‐led photography as a response to the author's need for an “aesthetic approach” to ethnography during fieldwork, including the importance of an embodied, sensory orientation to ethnography in organizational contexts.Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews a range of literature and draws on the author's experiences to support a conceptual argument.Findings – There is currently scant attention to the sensory dimension of ethnographic practice and the paper puts forward an agenda for future research.Research limitations/implications – Suggestions are made as to how aesthetic and/or sensory ethnography can support changing landscapes of organizational research.Originality/value – In drawing together multidisciplinary literature, the paper advances the agenda of ethnographic research in organizational life.
Decentralized robust receding horizon control for multi-vehicle guidance

This paper presents a decentralized robust model predictive control algorithm for multi-vehicle trajectory optimization. The algorithm is an extension of a previous robust safe but knowledgeable (RSBK) algorithm that uses the constraint tightening technique to achieve robustness, an invariant set to ensure safety, and a cost-to-go function to generate an intelligent trajectory around obstacles in the environment. Although the RSBK algorithm was shown to solve faster than the previous robust MPC algorithms, the approach was based on a centralized calculation that is impractical for a large group of vehicles. This paper decentralizes the algorithm by ensuring that each vehicle always has a feasible solution under the action of disturbances. The key advantage of this algorithm is that it only requires local knowledge of the environment and the other vehicles while guaranteeing robust feasibility of the entire fleet. The new approach also facilitates a significantly more general implementation architecture for the decentralized trajectory optimization, which further decreases the delay due to computation time
Design of an algorithm to deliver demand side flexibility from aggregated resources to distribution system operators

Demand side flexibility is crucial for matching supply and demand in the future as power and energy balancing of the system is likely to become a difficult task using conventional tools in scenarios with high penetration of nenewable energy sources. Aggregators are meant to contribute to the increase of the share of demand side flexibility provided by relatively small residential and commercial resources. In particular, distribution system operators may benefit from the activation of such flexibility in order to alleviate congestions in load areas operated by them. A specific flexibility product is studied in this paper in which the capacity for a specified generation/demand modification is previously procured for a specific period of time but the activation is optionally triggered by a control signal from the flexibility buyer at short notice. When delivering flexibility, aggregators need to have tools to correct bad performance of flexibility resources due to technical issues arising in real-time domain in order to remain qualified players for flexibility trading. In this paper, an algorithm to allocate flexibility volumes among available resources connected to the same load area is developed. The algorithm corrects possible failures to deliver by means of the verification of energy measurements from the aggregator's resources portfolio. The aim of this design is to help increase the efficiency of flexibility delivery from residential network users and contribute to a better utilization of their resources. The algorithm is implemented in MATLAB and validated in a case study where energy measurements deviated from expected values are artificially generated.
Sudan and South Africa - a framing analysis of Mail & Guardian Online's coverage of Darfur

This study examines how the Mail & Guardian Online, a leading African news outlet, covered and analysed the conflict in Darfur, Western Sudan, using framing as its theoretical framework and methodological approach. The exploration produces five frames and two sub-frames: Genesis, resolution/intransigence, humanitarian (African cataclysm and world benevolence), international ambivalence and African impotence. The article concludes that the Mail & Guardian Online did not offer extensive investigative reports that explored the causes and origin of the crisis, nor did their reports offer substantive suggestions for solving the crisis, but that the newspaper must still be praised for its extensive coverage of the crisis. The case-study approach demonstrates that the African media are striving to hold African governments, leaders and role players responsible for their actions, which augurs well for the African Union and the African masses, but the press's ability to do so is dependent on financial and human resources.
Determining Adequate Yearly Progress from Kindergarten Through Grade 6 with Curriculum-Based Measurement

Curriculum-based measurement (CBM) bridges traditional psychometric and classroom-based observational assessment paradigms to forge an innovative approach to measurement, with several advantages over traditional and other forms of classroom assessment. This article provides a framework for extending CBM in two ways. First, the authors explain how CBM may be used effectively and efficiently to fulfill the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) accountability requirement of No Child Left Behind and how such an approach may be linked to special education accountability. Second, with the goal of tracking AYP across the elementary school grades, the authors introduce a system of CBM indicators that extends the CBM passage reading fluency task down to the beginning of kindergarten and up through the end of sixth grade. Across these two extensions to CBM, the goal is to provide a seamless approach to progress monitoring in reading across the elementary grades and across general and special education.