Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Treatment of Retinoblastoma Patients With Chemoreduction Plus Local Therapy: Experience of the AC Camargo Hospital, Brazil

To evaluate the efficacy of conservative management of intraocular retinoblastoma with chemoreduction combined with local therapy with or without plaque radiation in the preservation of the eye, and avoidance of external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) (success rate). From 1995 to 2000, 84 newly diagnosed patients with intraocular retinoblastoma were admitted to the Pediatric Department of the Hospital do Cancer A.C. Camargo, São Paulo, Brazil. All children were treated with 2 to 6 cycles of chemotherapy (carboplatin, vincristine, and etoposide) plus local therapy (cryotherapy, laser photocoagulation, and thermotherapy), or plaque radiation therapy during and/or after the chemotherapy. The Mann-Whitney test was used to compare means of quantitative variables. The χ2 test or the Fisher exact test were employed to verify the association between the outcome and the independent variables. For all tests α=5% was adopted. Success rate was higher for patients with bilateral tumors (54%) than for children with unilateral tumors (19%) (P=0.003). For patients with Reese-Ellsworth stages I, II, and III, no statistically significant differences in the success rates were noted in the group of unilateral (50%) and bilateral tumors (79.1%) (P=0.179). Among children with Reese-Ellsworth stages IV and V, the success rate was significantly higher for patients with bilateral tumors (40.7%) than for those with unilateral (0%) (P=0.012). Chemoreduction combined with local therapy, with or without plaque radiotherapy, is efficacious in avoiding enucleation and the use of external beam radiation therapy for children with intraocular retinoblastoma.
Survival models for developmental genetic data: Age of onset of puberty and antisocial behavior in twins

The use of survival analysis for developmental genetic data is discussed. The main requirements for models based on the decomposition of frailty distributions into shared and unshared components are outlined for the simple case of twins. Extending the earlier work of Clayton, Oakes, and Hougaard, among others, three forms of hazard model are presented, all of which can be applied to pedigree data with flexible baseline hazards without the use of numerical integration. The first two models use an additive decomposition of frailty, with either gamma or positive stable law distributed (PSL) components. The third model previously described by Hougaard involves a multiplicative PSL decomposition. The models are applied to data on the onset of puberty in male twins and illustrate the importance of correct specification of the baseline hazard for correct inference about genetic effects. The difficulty of assessing model specification using information only on the margins is also noted. Overall, the new model with additive PSL components appeared to fit these data best. A second application illustrates the use of a time‐varying covariate in examining the impact of puberty on the onset of conduct disorder symptomotology. © 1994 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
PIECE 2.0: an update for the plant gene structure comparison and evolution database

PIECE (Plant Intron Exon Comparison and Evolution) is a web-accessible database that houses intron and exon information of plant genes. PIECE serves as a resource for biologists interested in comparing intron–exon organization and provides valuable insights into the evolution of gene structure in plant genomes. Recently, we updated PIECE to a new version, PIECE 2.0 (http://probes.pw.usda.gov/piece or http://aegilops.wheat.ucdavis.edu/piece). PIECE 2.0 contains annotated genes from 49 sequenced plant species as compared to 25 species in the previous version. In the current version, we also added several new features: (i) a new viewer was developed to show phylogenetic trees displayed along with the structure of individual genes; (ii) genes in the phylogenetic tree can now be also grouped according to KOG (The annotation of Eukaryotic Orthologous Groups) and KO (KEGG Orthology) in addition to Pfam domains; (iii) information on intronless genes are now included in the database; (iv) a statistical summary of global gene structure information for each species and its comparison with other species was added; and (v) an improved GSDraw tool was implemented in the web server to enhance the analysis and display of gene structure. The updated PIECE 2.0 database will be a valuable resource for the plant research community for the study of gene structure and evolution.
Prognostic model for disease‐specific and overall mortality in newly diagnosed symptomatic patients with Waldenstrom macroglobulinaemia

We sought to define prognostic factors for survival in Waldenstrom macroglobulinaemia (WM). Of 585 patients diagnosed with WM and seen at Mayo Clinic between 1960 and 2001, 337 symptomatic patients met the inclusion criteria and were analysed for overall and disease‐specific survival. The median survival from the time of diagnosis was 6·4 years. The median disease‐specific survival was 11·2 years. Univariate analysis for overall survival identified the following adverse prognostic factors: age >65 years (P < 0·001), organomegaly (P < 0·001), elevated β2‐microglobulin (<0·001), anaemia (Hb < 10·0 g/dl) (P = 0·01), leucopenia (<4·0 × 109/l) (P = 0·03), thrombocytopenia (<150 × 109/l) (P = 0·01), serum albumin <40 g/l (P = 0·001), and quantitative IgM < 0·4 g/l (P = 0·04). On multivariate analysis, age >65 years and organomegaly were associated with poor prognosis. A prognostic model was built based on these two variables. Patients at high risk (1–2 risk factors, median survival 4·2 years) experienced worse survival than patients at low risk (0 risk factors, median survival 10·6 years), P < 0·001. The prognostic model was validated in 204 patients who were not included in the analysis cohort. β2‐microglobulin ≥4 mg/l was associated with a threefold increase in the risk of death when added to the prognostic model. We describe a simple prognostic model for overall survival for newly diagnosed patients with WM.
Minimum-Energy Cooperative Routing in Wireless Networks with Channel Variations

This paper considers the problem of finding minimum-energy cooperative routes in a wireless network with variable wireless channels. We assume that each node in the network is equipped with a single omnidirectional antenna and, motivated by the large body of physical layer research indicating its potential utility, that multiple nodes are able to coordinate their transmissions at the physical layer in order to take advantage of spatial diversity. Such coordination, however, is intrinsically intertwined with routing decisions, thus motivating the work. We first formulate the energy cost of forming a cooperative link between two nodes based on a two-stage transmission strategy assuming that only statistical knowledge about channels is available. Utilizing the link cost formulation, we show that optimal static routes in a network can be computed by running Dijkstra's algorithm over an extended network graph created by cooperative links. However, due to the variability of wireless channels, we argue that a many-to-one cooperation model in static routing is suboptimal. Hence, we develop an opportunistic routing algorithm based on many-to-many cooperation, and show that optimal routes in a network can be computed by a stochastic version of the Bellman-Ford algorithm. We use static and opportunistic optimal algorithms as baselines to develop heuristic link selection algorithms that are energy efficient while being computationally simpler than the optimal algorithms. We simulate our algorithms and show that while optimal cooperation and link selection can reduce energy consumption by almost an order of magnitude compared to non-cooperative approaches, our simple heuristics achieve similar energy savings while being computationally efficient as well.
EVALUASI KESIAPAN PENGGUNA DALAM ADOPSI SISTEM INFORMASI TERINTEGRASI DI BIDANG KEUANGAN MENGGUNAKAN METODE TECHNOLOGY READINESS INDEX

Adopsi Teknologi Informasi dan Komunikasi (TIK) dalam konsep terintegrasi sudah menjadi suatu kebutuhan bagi perusahaan maupun organisasi yang ingin mendapatkan competitive advantages sebagai competitive weapon. Namun, adopsi ini tidak selalu berjalan lancar karena menghadapi berbagai tantangan. Salah satu tantangan berat dalam adopsi TIK adalah kesiapan pengguna TIK. Ketidaksiapan pengguna akan menciptakan resistensi terhadap TIK dan dampak lebih jauh bisa menggagalkan adopsi TIK itu sendiri dan bisa menciptakan lingkugan yang tidak harmonis dalam perusahaan maupun organisasi. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk melakukan evaluasi kesiapan pengguna dalam adopsi TIK diukur dari keyakinan positif dan keyakinan negatif pengguna terhadap teknologi dengan mengadopsi metode Technology Readiness Index (TRI) yang dikembangkan oleh Parasuraman (2000)
Insights from Viewing Ranked Retrieval as Rank Aggregation

We view a variety of established methods for ranked retrieval from a common angle, namely as a process of combining query-independent rankings that were precomputed for certain attributes. Apart from a general insight into what effectively distinguishes various schemes from each other, we obtain three specific results concerned with concept-based retrieval. First, we prove that latent semantic indexing (LSI) can be implemented to answer queries in time proportional to the number of words in the query, which improves over the standard implementation by an order of magnitude; a similar result is established for LSI's probabilistic sibling PLSI. Second, we give a simple and precise characterization of the extent, to which latent semantic indexing (LSI) can deal with polysems, and when it fails to do so. Third, we demonstrate that the recombination of the intricate, yet relatively cheap mechanism of PLSI for mapping queries to attributes, with a simplistic, easy-to-compute set of document rankings gives a retrieval performance which is at least as good as that of the most sophisticated concept-based retrieval schemes and which does not require any precomputation
Multi-Cell MMSE Precoding in Large-Scale DAS with Pilot Contamination

This paper considers imperfect channel state information (CSI) in the downlink precoding of cellular multi-user large-scale distributed antenna system (DAS). Specifically, the uncertainty of channel estimation is mainly caused by the pilot reuse among users in adjacent cells. The phenomenon is termed as pilot contamination in a multi antenna system. Since the large-scale fading may vary from antenna to antenna, it's not easy to jointly estimate the channels from all antennas to a certain user. Instead, this paper only jointly estimates the downlink channels of the antennas at the same site, therefore with the same large-scale fading. Consequently, the channel estimation is executed in a distributed manner while the subsequent precoding is done in a centralized way. Based on the analysis of the properties of the DAS channel estimations, a multi-cell MMSE precoding scheme is proposed which aims to minimize the sum of intra- cell interference and the interference the cell pours to other cells. An approximation of the multi-cell MMSE precoding is further derived to reduce the computational complexity. Simulation results show significant performance gains over traditional singlecell precoding schemes.
Bladder neck contracture after robot-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy: evaluation of incidence and risk factors and impact on urinary function.

PURPOSE Bladder neck contracture (BNC) after radical prostatectomy has been reported to occur in 5% to 32% of men after open radical retropubic prostatectomy (RRP) and 0% to 3% after laparoscopic RRP. Optimal anastomotic closure involves creating a watertight, tension-free anastomosis with well-vascularized, mucosal apposition and correct realignment of the urethra. The cause of BNC is poorly understood; however, it is likely related to multiple factors, including excessive luminal narrowing at the site of reconstruction, local tissue ischemia, failed mucosal apposition, and urinary leakage. In this large series of patients who underwent robot-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy (RLRP), we report the incidence of BNC, evaluate the influence of age, body mass index (BMI), estimated blood loss (EBL), surgical time, and prostate weight on its development and assess follow-up urinary function. MATERIALS AND METHODS Between February 2003 and July 2006, 650 consecutive men underwent RLRP at our institution. Patients with aborted or open conversion procedures were excluded from analysis. The mean overall follow-up for the remaining 634 patients was 19.5 months. Patients presenting with symptoms of outlet obstruction were evaluated with cystoscopy to confirm a BNC. Comparisons of age, BMI, EBL, operative time, and prostate weight were performed using the Student t-test and chi-square analysis. RESULTS BNC was the diagnosis in seven patients (1.1%), with a mean time of presentation of 4.8 (3-12) months postoperatively. The BNC patients had comparable mean age, BMI, prostate weight, and EBL to the non-BNC cohort. Their operative time, however, was significantly longer (283 v 225 min, P = 0.04). CONCLUSIONS The incidence of BNC after radical prostatectomy is 1.1% in a large series of men undergoing RLRP. The diagnosis was made within 1 year. No significant impact on urinary continence or quality-of-life urinary function was observed after BNC management. A running anastomosis, better visualization, improved instrument maneuverability, and decreased blood loss may account for such a low rate.
Socialized Word Embeddings

Word embeddings have attracted a lot of attention. On social media, each user’s language use can be signiﬁcantly affected by the user’s friends. In this paper, we propose a socialized word embedding al-gorithm which can consider both user’s personal characteristics of language use and the user’s social relationship on social media. To incorporate personal characteristics, we propose to use a user vector to represent each user. Then for each user, the word embeddings are trained based on each user’s corpus by combining the global word vectors and local user vector. To incorporate social relationship, we add a regularization term to impose similarity between two friends. In this way, we can train the global word vectors and user vectors jointly. To demonstrate the effectiveness, we used the latest large-scale Yelp data to train our vectors, and designed several experiments to show how user vectors affect the results.
New approaches for ℋ∞ performance preserving controller reduction

This paper proposes several ℋ<inf>∞</inf> performance preserving controller reduction methods. One of the advantages of the proposed methods is that the weighting functions for controller reduction is easy to compute and is readily available from standard ℋ<inf>∞</inf> control design software. Numerical simulations show that the proposed methods are at least as effective as the best method available in the literature.
HCN Survey of Normal Spiral, Infrared-luminous, and Ultraluminous Galaxies

We report systematic HCN J = 1-0 (and CO) observations of a sample of 53 infrared (IR) and/or CO-bright and/or luminous galaxies, including seven ultraluminous infrared galaxies, nearly 20 luminous infrared galaxies, and more than a dozen of the nearest normal spiral galaxies. This is the largest and most sensitive HCN survey of galaxies to date. All galaxies observed so far follow the tight correlation between the IR luminosity LIR and the HCN luminosity LHCN initially proposed by Solomon, Downes, & Radford, which is detailed in a companion paper. We also address here the issue of HCN excitation. There is no particularly strong correlation between LHCN and the 12 μm luminosity; in fact, of all the four IRAS bands, the 12 μm luminosity has the weakest correlation with the HCN luminosity. There is also no evidence of stronger HCN emission or a higher ratio of HCN and CO luminosities LHCN/LCO for galaxies with excess 12 μm emission. This result implies that mid-IR radiative pumping, or populating, of the J = 1 level of HCN by a mid-IR vibrational transition is not important compared with the collisional excitation by dense molecular hydrogen. Furthermore, large velocity gradient calculations justify the use of HCN J = 1-0 emission as a tracer of high-density molecular gas (≳3 × 104/τ cm-3) and give an estimate of the mass of dense molecular gas from HCN observations. Therefore, LHCN may be used as a measure of the total mass of dense molecular gas, and the luminosity ratio LHCN/LCO may indicate the fraction of molecular gas that is dense.
Comparison of the quantitative first pass myocardial perfusion MRI with and without prospective slice tracking: Comparison between breath‐hold and free‐breathing condition

Physiologic motion of the heart is one of the major problems of myocardial blood flow quantification using first pass perfusion–MRI method. To overcome these problems, a perfusion pulse sequence with prospective slice tracking was developed. Cardiac motion was monitored by a navigator directly positioned at heart's basis to overcome no additional underlying model calculations connecting diaphragm and cardiac motion. Additional prescans were used before the perfusion measurement to detect slice displacements caused by remaining cardiac motion between navigator and the perfusion slice readout. The pulse sequence and subsequent quantification of myocardial blood flow was tested in healthy pigs with and without prospective slice tracking under both free‐breathing and breath‐hold conditions. To avoid influences by residual contrast agent concentration time courses were analyzed. Median myocardial blood flow values and interquartile ranges with prospective slice tracking under free‐breathing and in a breath‐hold were (1.04, interquartile range = 0.58 mL/min/g) and (1.20, interquartile range = 0.59 mL/min/g), respectively. This is in agreement with published positron emission tomography values. In measurements without prospective slice tracking (1.15, interquartile range = 1.58 mL/min/g), the interquartile range is significantly (P < 0.012) larger because of residual cardiac motion. In conclusion, prospective slice tracking reduces motion‐induced variations of myocardial blood flow under both during breath‐hold and under conditions of free‐breathing. Magn Reson Med, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Neuromuscular Adjustments of the Quadriceps Muscle after Repeated Cycling Sprints

Purpose This study investigated the supraspinal processes of fatigue of the quadriceps muscle in response to repeated cycling sprints. Methods Twelve active individuals performed 10 × 6-s “all-out” sprints on a cycle ergometer (recovery = 30 s), followed 6 min later by 5 × 6-s sprints (recovery = 30 s). Transcranial magnetic and electrical femoral nerve stimulations during brief (5-s) and sustained (30-s) isometric contractions of the knee extensors were performed before and 3 min post-exercise. Results Maximal strength of the knee extensors decreased during brief and sustained contractions (∼11% and 9%, respectively; P<0.001). Peripheral and cortical voluntary activation, motor evoked potential amplitude and silent period duration responses measured during briefs contractions were unaltered (P>0.05). While cortical voluntary activation declined (P<0.01) during the sustained maximal contraction in both test sessions, larger reductions occurred (P<0.05) after exercise. Lastly, resting twitch amplitude in response to both femoral nerve and cortical stimulations was largely (> 40%) reduced (P<0.001) following exercise. Conclusion The capacity of the motor cortex to optimally drive the knee extensors following a repeated-sprint test was shown in sustained, but not brief, maximal isometric contractions. Additionally, peripheral factors were largely involved in the exercise-induced impairment in neuromuscular function, while corticospinal excitability was well-preserved.
Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease Virus Detected in Pico, Azores, Portugal, Revealed a Unique Endemic Strain with More Than 17 Years of Independent Evolution

Rabbit hemorrhagic disease is caused by a calicivirus, rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV), which is responsible for high mortality in domestic and wild European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus). RHDV strains were sequenced from wild European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus algirus) collected in the Azorean island of Pico, Portugal. Phylogenetic analyses showed that the Pico RHDV strains diverge from all of the others described so far, but cluster with the genogroups 1–5 (G1–G5). The genetic distance between the Pico RHDV sequences and each G1, G2 and G3–G5 genogroup (~0.08) is compatible with an RHDV introduction at least 17 years ago. Our results show that in Pico, RHDV is the outcome of an independent evolution from the original RHDV strain that appeared in its European rabbit population. These are the first sequences of RHDV obtained in the subspecies O. c. algirus, outside of its original region, the Iberian Peninsula. Furthermore, we discuss the risk of rabbit translocations from the Azores to the Iberian Peninsula, where the rabbit wild populations are suffering high mortalities.
Efficient QoS Scheduling Algorithm for Multimedia Services in IEEE 802.11e WLAN

As IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) devices currently have gained wide popularity, demands on quality of service (QoS) capability have increased as well. Although IEEE 802.11e is proposed for the support of QoS by traffic and service differentiation, it still has weakness on the adapting the multimedia services which has the traffic characteristic of variable bit rate (VBR). In this paper, we first discuss problems of the current standard and analyze how to improve the QoS capability in IEEE 802.11e. In addition, we propose a new scheduling algorithm, referred to as ETA-EQN, which aims at supporting multimedia service in HCCA of IEEE 802.11e WLAN. Results from intensive simulations with NS-2 verify that ETA-EQN provides much better network performance in terms of throughput, delay, and packet loss.
A Max Kernel For Text-Independent Speaker Verification Systems

In this paper, we present a principled SVM based speaker verification system. A general approach to compute two sequences of frames is developed that enables the use of any kernel at the frame level. An extension of this approach using the Max operator is then proposed. The new system is compared to state-of-the-art GMM and other SVM based systems found in the literature on the Polyvar database. The new system outperforms, most of the time, the other systems, statistically significantly.
Social Workers’ Religiosity and Its Impact on Religious Practice Behaviors

This study explores the impact of the social work practitioner’s religiosity on religious practice behaviors. A random sample of 1,278 social workers who possessed M.S.W. degrees, who provided direct services to clients and were members of NASW were surveyed regarding their personal religiosity. They were also asked about their views on the appropriateness of six Religion and Prayer in Practice behaviors. Variations in Religion and Prayer Practice behaviors were analyzed in relationship to the worker’s religiosity, race, gender and employing agency auspice. Regardless of all other factors, the more religious a worker is, the more likely a worker is to view religious and prayer activities in practice as appropriate professional behavior. Implications and recommendations regarding the integration of religion and spirituality in social work education and practice are discussed.