Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Decrease in vitamin D receptor and calcium-sensing receptor in highly proliferative parathyroid adenomas.

OBJECTIVE A significant decrease in vitamin D receptor (VDR) and calcium-sensing receptor (CaSR) protein expression has been demonstrated recently in parathyroid (PT) adenomas. In this study, we investigated the relationships between the proliferative activity of parathyroid glands (PTGs) and the expression of VDR as well as CaSR, and compared it with the clinical severity in patients with primary hyperparathyroidism (1 degrees HPT). DESIGN Seven patients with 1 degrees HPT were included in this study. Four patients with thyroid carcinoma served as controls. METHODS Immunohistochemical staining was performed on serial sections of PTGs with specific antibodies against CaSR, VDR, and Ki67. Areas examined in each section were selected at random in relation to the gland size. The number of Ki67-positive cells was expressed as a labeling index (LI; positive cells per 1000 PT cells). The expression of CaSR and VDR was semi-quantitatively analyzed based on the intensity of staining. After averages of the scores from all areas were calculated, CaSR and VDR scores, and Ki67 LI were assigned to each gland for use in statistical analyses. RESULTS In PT adenomas, scores of VDR and CaSR were markedly lower than in normal PTGs (P<0.01), while the proportion of Ki67-positive cells in PT adenomas was significantly higher than in normal PTGs (P<0.01). Single regression analyses revealed that Ki67 LI was positively correlated with serum levels of intact parathyroid hormone and Ca, and PTG weight (R=0.70, P<0.05, R=0.78, P<0.01 and R=0.84, P<0.05 respectively). Ki67 LI was negatively correlated with CaSR and VDR scores (R=-0.78, P<0.01 and R=-0.72, P<0.05 respectively). Moreover, there was a strong positive relationship between CaSR and VDR expression (R=0.95, P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS Marked decreases in VDR and CaSR expression could, at least in part, be responsible for the high proliferation of PT cells and the pathological progression of 1 degree HPT.
Implementation of NAMD molecular dynamics non-bonded force-field on the cell broadband engine processor

We present results of porting an important kernel of a production molecular dynamics simulation program, NAMD, to the Cell/B.E. processor. The non-bonded force-field kernel, as implemented in the NAMD SPEC 2006 CPU benchmark, has been implemented. Both single-precision and double-precision floating-point kernel variations are considered, and performance results obtained on the Cell/B.E. , as well as several other platforms, are reported. Our results obtained on a 3.2 GHz Cell/B.E. blade show linear speedups when using multiple synergistic processing elements.
Does Antiplatelet Therapy during Bridging Thrombolysis Increase Rates of Intracerebral Hemorrhage in Stroke Patients?

Background Symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage (sICH) after bridging thrombolysis for acute ischemic stroke is a devastating complication. We aimed to assess whether the additional administration of aspirin during endovascular intervention increases bleeding rates. Methods We retrospectively compared bleeding complications and outcome in stroke patients who received bridging thrombolysis with (tPA+ASA) and without (tPA-ASA) aspirin during endovascular intervention between November 2008 and March 2014. Furthermore, we analyzed bleeding complications and outcome in antiplatelet naïve patients with those with prior or acute antiplatelet therapy. Results Baseline characteristics, previous medication, and dosage of rtPA did not differ between 50 tPA+ASA (39 aspirin naïve, 11 preloaded) and 181 tPA-ASA patients (p>0.05). tPA+ASA patients had more often internal carotid artery (ICA) occlusion (p<0.001), large artery disease (p<0.001) and received more often acute stenting of the ICA (p<0.001). 10/180 (5.6%) tPA-ASA patients and 3/49 (6.1%) tPA+ASA patients suffered a sICH (p = 1.0). Rates of asymptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage, systemic bleeding complications and outcome did not differ between both groups (p>0.1). There were no differences in bleeding complications and mortality among 112 bridging patients with antiplatelet therapy (62 preloaded, 39 acute administration, 11 both) and 117 antiplatelet naïve patients. In a logistic regression analysis, aspirin administration during endovascular procedure was not a predictor of sICH. Conclusion Antiplatelet therapy before or during bridging thrombolysis in patients with acute ischemic stroke did not increase the risk of bleeding complications and had no impact on outcome. This finding has to be confirmed in larger studies.
Analyzing scale-free property on human serendipitous encounters using mobile phone data

The recent expanded use of mobile phone dataset for research purpose enables studies not only on human mobility patterns, but also on human contact patterns including proximal contact, face-to-face meeting, and serendipitous encounter. In our previous work, we analyze our dataset of long-term experiment with periodic scanning of proximal devices emitting close-range radio waves for wireless communication to investigate the frequency of human serendipitous encounters. As a result, we have found that the frequency of human serendipitous encounter has a scale-free property where the number of encounters is highly biased and its average means nothing. Our dataset is not Big data (the number of participants in our experiment is a few dozen), but it is Long data, but the property is universally observed. It is important to check from a multilateral perspective whether mobile phone data, which is one of well-used Big datasets, also support this fundamental property of human serendipitous encounter. In this paper, we investigate the scale-free property of human contact frequency using mobile phone data of D4D Challenge Senegal which contains hundreds thousands of human mobility traces. Because the data is not provided with high resolution enough to detect exact human encounter at proximity, we roughly assumed that humans who are considered to be placed around the same cell tower encounter with each other. Despite this rough assumption, we successfully reproduce the scale-free property.
IMAGES. I. Strong evolution of galaxy kinematics since z = 1

Nearly half the stellar mass of present-day spiral galaxies has formed since z = 1, and galaxy kinematics is an ideal tool to identify the underlying mechanisms responsible for the galaxy mass assembly since that epoch. Here, we present the first results of the ESO large program, “IMAGES”, which aims at obtaining robust measurements of the kinematics of distant galaxies using the multi-IFU mode of GIRAFFE on the VLT. 3D spectroscopy is essential to robustly measure the often distorted kinematics of distant galaxies (e.g., Flores et al. 2006, A&A, 455, 107). We derive the velocity fields and σ-maps of 36 galaxies at 0.4 < z < 0.75 from the kinematics of the [O ii] emission line doublet, and generate a robust technique to identify the nature of the velocity fields based on the pixels of the highest signal-to-noise ratios (S/N). Combining these observations with those of Flores et al., we have gathered a unique sample of 63 velocity fields of emission line galaxies (W0([O ii]) ≥ 15 A) at z = 0.4−0.75, which are a representative subsample of the
A μ − architectural Model of Process Variation for Near-Threshold Computing

Near-Threshold Voltage Computing (NTC), where the supply voltage is only slightly higher than the transistors’ threshold voltage, is a promising approach to push back the many-core power wall. A key NTC shortcoming is the higher sensitivity to parameter (process, supply voltage, temperature) variation. This report introduces a μ−architectural model to characterize increased sensitivity to process (static) variation.
On Exact Simulation of Markov Random Fields Using Coupling from the Past

A general framework for exact simulation of Markov random fields using the Propp–Wilson coupling from the past approach is proposed. Our emphasis is on situations lacking the monotonicity properties that have been exploited in previous studies. A critical aspect is the convergence time of the algorithm; this we study both theoretically and experimentically. Our main theoretical result in this direction says, roughly, that if interactions are sufficiently weak, then the expected running time of a carefully designed implementation is O(N log N), where N is the number of interacting components of the system. Computer experiments are carried out for random q‐colourings and for the Widom–Rowlinson lattice gas model.
Human Leukocyte Antigen Genotype and Risk of HIV Disease Progression before and after Initiation of Antiretroviral Therapy

ABSTRACT While the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genotype has been associated with the rate of HIV disease progression in untreated patients, little is known regarding these relationships in patients using highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). The limited data reported to date identified few HLA-HIV disease associations in patients using HAART and even occasional associations that were opposite of those found in untreated patients. We conducted high-resolution HLA class I and II genotyping in a random sample (n = 860) of HIV-seropositive women enrolled in a long-term cohort initiated in 1994. HLA-HIV disease associations before and after initiation of HAART were examined using multivariate analyses. In untreated HIV-seropositive patients, we observed many of the predicted associations, consistent with prior studies. For example, HLA-B*57 (β = −0.7; 95% confidence interval [CI] = −0.9 to −0.5; P = 5 × 10−11) and Bw4 (β = −0.2; 95% CI = −0.4 to −0.1; P = 0.009) were inversely associated with baseline HIV viral load, and B*57 was associated with a low risk of rapid CD4+ decline (odds ratio [OR] = 0.2; 95% CI = 0.1 to 0.6; P = 0.002). Conversely, in treated patients, the odds of a virological response to HAART were lower for B*57:01 (OR = 0.2; 95% CI = 0.0 to 0.9; P = 0.03), and Bw4 (OR = 0.4; 95% CI = 0.1 to 1.0; P = 0.04) was associated with low odds of an immunological response. The associations of HLA genotype with HIV disease are different and sometimes even opposite in treated and untreated patients.
Long reach articulated robots for inspection in hazardous environments, recent developments on robotics and embedded diagnostics

The Interactive Robotics Laboratory of CEA LIST is in charge of the development of remote technologies in order to meet the energy industry requirements. This paper reports the recent Research & Development activities in advanced remote systems for inspection or light intervention in hazardous environment with limited access as blind hot cells in nuclear fission industry and fusion facility vessels. A long reach carrier called Articulated Arm Inspection (AIA) will be described and current development of diagnostics and tools embedded for inspection or intervention will be presented.
Deep neural network-based speech recognition with combination of speaker-class models

This paper proposes a new speech recognition method based on speaker-class (SC) models. In previous studies based on this approach, Gaussian-mixture-model-based hidden Markov models (GMM-HMMs) have mainly been used as acoustic models. In this work, SC models that have deep neural network (DNN)-based HMM (DNN-HMM) structures are investigated and used for speaker-independent (SI) speech recognition. To realize SI speech recognition based on SC models, technological challenges must be solved so that unsupervised adaptation can be performed with only one utterance. To address this problem, we propose a new method of combining DNN outputs. In our experiments, five of 963 SC models were selected automatically, and DNN-HMM-based SC models were combined for each utterance. The results showed that the proposed method outperformed a baseline DNN-HMM system.
Adaptive Hyperinstruments: Applying Evolutionary Techniques to Sound Synthesis and Performance

This paper describes the Genophone [2], a hyperinstrument developed for Sound-Performance-Design using the evolutionary paradigm of selective breeding as the driving process. Sound design , and control assignments (performance mappings), on most current systems rely heavily on an intimate knowledge of the Sound Synthesis Techniques (SSTs) employed by the sound generator (hardware or software based). This intimate knowledge can only be achieved by investing long periods of time playing around with sounds and experimenting with how parameters change the nature of the sounds produced. This experience is also needed when control mappings are defined for performance purposes, so external stimuli can effect changes in SST parameters. Often such experience can be gained after years of interaction with one particular SST. The system presented here attempts to aid the user in designing performance sounds and mappings without the necessity for deep knowledge of the SSTs involved. This is achieved by a selective breeding process on populations of individual sounds and their mapping. The initial populations are made up of individuals of existing hand-coded sounds and their mapping. Initial populations never have randomly derived individuals (this is not an issue as man's best friend was also not selectively bred from protozoa). The user previews the population then expresses how much individuals are liked by their relative repositioning on the screen (fitness). Some individuals are selected as parents to create a new population of offspring, through variable mutation and genetic recombination. These operators use the fitness as a bias for their function, and they were also successfully used in MutaSynth [1]. The offspring are then evaluated (as their parents were) and selected for breeding. This cycle continues until satisfactory sounds and their mapping are reached. Individuals can also be saved to disk for future "strain" development. The aim of the system is to encourage the creation of novel performance mappings and sounds with emphasis on exploration, rather than designs that satisfy specific a priori criteria.
Infinite Horizon Performance Bounds for Uncertain Constrained Systems

We present a new method to bound the performance of controllers for uncertain linear systems with mixed state and input constraints and bounded disturbances. We take as a performance metric either an expected-value or minimax discounted cost over an infinite horizon, and provide a method for computing a lower bound on the achievable performance of any causal control policy in either case. Our lower bound is compared to an upper performance bound provided by restricting the choice of controller to one that is affine in the observed disturbances, and we show that the two bounds are closely related. In particular, the lower bounds have a natural interpretation in terms of affine control policies that are optimal for a problem with a restricted disturbance set. We show that our performance bounds can be computed via solution of a finite-dimensional convex optimization problem, and provide numerical examples to illustrate the efficacy of our method.
A Laplacian Surface Deformation and Optimization Based 3D Registration Algorithm for Image Guided Prostate Radiotherapy

Purpose: To develop a fast landmark-based deformable registration method to capture the soft tissue transformation between the planning 3D CT images and treatment 3D cone-beam CT (CBCT) images for the adaptive external beam radiotherapy (EBRT). Method and Materials: The developed method was based on a global-to-local landmark-based deformable registration algorithm. The landmarks were first acquired by applying a fast segmentation method using the active shape model. The global registration method was applied to establish a registration framework. The Laplacian surface deformation (LSD) and Laplacian surface optimization (LSO) method were then employed for local deformation and remeshing respectively to reach an optimal registration solution. In LSD, the deformed mesh is generated by minimizing the quadratic energy to keep the shape and to move control points to the target position. In LSO, a mesh is reconstructed by minimizing the quadratic energy to smooth the object by minimizing the difference while keeping the landmarks unchanged. The method was applied on 8 EBRT prostate datasets. The distance and volume based estimators were used to evaluate the results. The target volumes delineated by physicians were used as gold standards in the evaluation. Results: The entire segmentation and registration processing time was within 1 minute for all the datasets. The mean distance estimators ranged from 0.43 mm to 2.23 mm for the corresponding model points between the treatment CBCT images and the registered planning images. The mean overlap ratio ranged from 85.5% to 93.2% of the prostate volumes after registration. These results demonstrated reasonably good agreement between the developed method and the gold standards. Conclusion: A novel and fast landmark-based deformable registration method is developed to capture the soft tissue transformation between the planning and treatment images for prostate target volumes. The results show that with the method the image registration and transformation can be completed within one minute and has the potential to be applied to real-time adaptive radiotherapy.
Multimodal menu presentation and selection in immersive virtual environments

Usability has become one of the key ingredients in making virtual reality (VR) systems work, and a big part of a usable VR system is the design of effective interface/interaction schemes. We investigate the usability of various menu presentation and multi-modal selection schemes in immersive virtual environments. We have identified five major menu displays and 13 possible menu selection methods; among them, we have completed the usability testing for two interaction methods across the five display methods: (1) position control by tracking and command-giving by button-pressing, and (2) both position control and command-giving by gesture recognition. Other interaction methods, including by voice, remain to be investigated.
Knowledge retrieval for scientific literatures

The success of several knowledge retrieval experiments in some selected domains proved empirically that knowledge retrieval, if implemented in the restricted-domain, can yield performance gains over classical “bag-of-words” based retrieval systems. The key to their success is the availability of codified high quality domain knowledge accumulated in years. However, this knowledge base is rarely available in other domains. In this paper, we propose innovative and economical ways to generate knowledge-based structural metadata and demonstrate a prototype knowledge retrieval system, WikiBackyard, to serve user’s knowledge oriented information need. The system benefits users by providing structure-level access to scientific papers and automatically inferring structural knowledge from their natural language queries by leveraging knowledge recommendation and knowledge feedback.
SPARSE GRAPHS ARE NOT FLAMMABLE

In this paper, we consider the following k-many firefighter problem on a finite graph G = (V,E). Suppose that a fire breaks out at a given vertex v ∈ V . In each subsequent time unit, a firefighter protects k vertices which are not yet on fire, and then the fire spreads to all unprotected neighbours of the vertices on fire. The objective of the firefighter is to save as many vertices as possible. The surviving rate ρk(G) ofG is defined as the expected percentage of vertices that can be saved when a fire breaks out at a uniformly random vertex of G. Let τk = k+2− 1 k+2 . We show that for any ε > 0 and k ≥ 2, each graph G on n vertices with the average degree at most τk − ε is not flammable; that is, ρk(G) > 2ε 5τk > 0. Moreover, a construction of a family of flammable random graphs is proposed to show that the constant τk cannot be improved.
Copy-Move Image Forgery Detection Based on Center-Symmetric Local Binary Pattern

This paper presents a method to detect copy-move image forgery using CS-LBP (centre symmetric local binary pattern), an extension of basic local binary pattern. In the proposed method, firstly gray level conversion is performed on the given image. Later, the image will be decomposed into fixed sized non- overlapping blocks. Feature extraction can be done using CS- LBP, as this technique is invariant to illumination and rotation. Then distance between the extracted feature vectors is calculated and are sorted lexicographically, and retained only those pairs of blocks that have minimal distances between them. Those minimal distances compared with predefined threshold value serve as the purpose of the copied regions. In the end, post-processing is done using morphological operation and mask is generated for the region detected as forged region.
Resource management for cognitive cloud gaming

In contrary to conventional gaming-on-demand solution, cognitive cloud gaming platform facilitates gaming component migration from the cloud server to the players' terminal, a novel flexible solution to provide Gaming as a Service. In this work, we model the component-based game and investigate the capacity of intelligent resource management for different optimization targets, including cloud resource minimization and throughput-oriented optimization. Experimental results show that, with the cognitive resource management, cloud system is adaptive to various service requirements, such as increasing the quantity of supported devices and reducing the network throughput of user terminals, while satisfying players' quality of experience.
Dynamic domination in fuzzy causal networks

This paper presents a dynamic domination theory for fuzzy causal networks (FCN). There are three major contributions. First, we propose a new inference procedure based on dominating sets. Second, we introduce the concepts of dynamic and minimal dynamic dominating sets (DDS and MDDS) in an FCN. To reflect changes of dominance with time, we also introduce the concept of a dynamic dominating process (DDP) that has significant implications in many real-world problems. We pay a special attention to the minimal dynamic dominating process (MDDP) and develop rules for generating DDP and MDDP. Third, we investigate dynamic dominating sets with extended feedback, which we call effective dynamic dominating sets (EDDS), and related effective dynamic dominating process (EDDP). This study unveils a very important phenomenon in FCN: At any time t, either an EDDS exists or there is a dramatic change of the states of vertices. In the latter case we also identify the special structure of the sub-FCN induced by active vertices.
Markov Switching Models in Empirical Finance

I review the burgeoning literature on applications of Markov regime switching models in empirical finance. In particular, distinct attention is devoted to the ability of Markov Switching models to fit the data, filter unknown regimes and states on the basis of the data, to allow a powerful tool to test hypotheses formulated in light of financial theories, and to their forecasting performance with reference to both point and density predictions. The review covers papers concerning a multiplicity of sub-fields in financial economics, ranging from empirical analyses of stock returns, the term structure of default-free interest rates, the dynamics of exchange rates, as well as the joint process of stock and bond returns.