Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison Between TANIS and UICC 1997 Stage Grouping in Parotid Gland Carcinoma

To compare the correlation of T and N Integer Score (TANIS) and International Union Against Cancer (UICC) '97 stage grouping with survival rate in parotid gland carcinoma, a series of 134 patients affected by primary carcinoma of the parotid gland was considered in this retrospective study. Data set was classified according to 1997 UICC T-category and then grouped as recommended by the two systems. Data were analyzed by means of survival analyses (Kaplan-Meier and Cox algorithms). Results showed a crude survival rate of 64.9%. Univariate analysis by means of log-rank test yielded significant P values both for TANIS and UICC '97 systems (both P < 0.0001). Multivariate analysis (Cox regression adjusted for age and gender) showed a significant correlation between the two staging systems with the mortality rate. Odds ratios were 2.64 (95% CI 1.84–3.80) and 1.79 (95% CI 1.46–2.20) for UICC '97 and TANIS, respectively. In testing the superiority, UICC '97 resulted in a higher prognostic value and TANIS did not add any statistical contribution in determining survival. In conclusion, the new UICC stage grouping better defines the prognosis for cancer of the parotid gland.
LIKELIHOOD METHODS FOR DETECTING TEMPORAL SHIFTS IN DIVERSIFICATION RATES

Abstract Maximum likelihood is a potentially powerful approach for investigating the tempo of diversification using molecular phylogenetic data. Likelihood methods distinguish between rate-constant and rate-variable models of diversification by fitting birth-death models to phylogenetic data. Because model selection in this context is a test of the null hypothesis that diversification rates have been constant over time, strategies for selecting best-fit models must minimize Type I error rates while retaining power to detect rate variation when it is present. Here I examine model selection, parameter estimation, and power to reject the null hypothesis using likelihood models based on the birth-death process. The Akaike information criterion (AIC) has often been used to select among diversification models; however, I find that selecting models based on the lowest AIC score leads to a dramatic inflation of the Type I error rate. When appropriately corrected to reduce Type I error rates, the birth-death likelihood approach performs as well or better than the widely used gamma statistic, at least when diversification rates have shifted abruptly over time. Analyses of datasets simulated under a range of rate-variable diversification scenarios indicate that the birth-death likelihood method has much greater power to detect variation in diversification rates when extinction is present. Furthermore, this method appears to be the only approach available that can distinguish between a temporal increase in diversification rates and a rate-constant model with nonzero extinction. I illustrate use of the method by analyzing a published phylogeny for Australian agamid lizards.
What can new technology tell us about the reviewing process for journal submissions in BJET?

New technology allows us to collect rich and voluminous data about refereeing—something that was not possible before. In this quantitative study, we consider data about the dates of sending (1) suitable papers to BJET, (2) the papers to referees and (3) when the referees' reports are returned to the editor. To do this, we examined data from over 11 000 reports collected between 2005 (when BJET began using ScholarOne as its online editorial manager) and October 2014. We found that most of the submissions and responses were made in the earlier part of the week, with some evidence of academics (and the editor) working on Sundays. We also found modest agreement between referees on the quality of individual papers.
Gender Differences in Perceived Physical Self-Efficacy among Older Individuals

Gender differences in perceived physical self-efficacy were investigated in 90 subjects, stratified by sex and age (45 to 54 yr., 55 to 64 yr., and 65 to 74 yr.). Application of the scale by Ryckman, Robbins, Thornton, and Cantrell yielded scores for total perceived physical self-efficacy, perceived physical ability, and confidence in physical self-presentation. Men showed greater efficacy than women on the first two scales. There was no evidence of an age effect in perceived physical self-efficacy.
Unnecessary Use of Central Venous Catheters: The Need to Look Outside the Intensive Care Unit

Abstract We developed criteria for justifiable CVC use and evaluated CVC use in a public hospital. Unjustified CVC-days were more common for non-ICU patients compared with ICU patients. Also, insertion-site dressings were less likely to be intact on non-ICU patients. Interventions to reduce CVC-associated bloodstream infections should include non-ICU patients.
Validation of a gauze sponge sampling methodology to detect Tritrichomonas foetus by real-time PCR

Bovine trichomoniasis is a concern for the cattle industry. Advances in testing systems have increased the ability to detect the disease in bulls. However, the greatest limitation is proper collection of an adequate sample. The low repeatability observed with most sample collection techniques can cause false-negative results. The aim of our study was to validate a sample collection technique that increases diagnostic sensitivity and is easier and safer to collect than preputial scraping. Commercial bulls (n = 111) of unknown infection status were sampled for detection of Tritrichomonas foetus using 2 different collection methods: 1) preputial scraping with a dry insemination pipette and 2) penile sponging with a 16-ply gauze sponge. Preputial scraping samples were collected by vigorously scraping preputial and penile mucosa using a rigid insemination pipette while applying negative pressure with a syringe. Penile sponge samples were obtained by swabbing the penile and preputial mucosa with a gauze sponge during full extension of the penis. All samples were processed using a commercial medium and submitted under similar conditions for PCR testing. Positive PCR results were detected in 37 of 111 (33%) bulls using the preputial scraping technique; however, 39 of 111 (35%) were positive using the penile sponging technique. The Newton–Raphson algorithm predicted that the sensitivity of the preputial scraping method was 0.919 (95% CI: 0.689–0.983) and the sensitivity of the penile sponging was 0.949 (95% CI: 0.818–0.987). These data indicate that the penile sponging technique is a reliable alternative to the preputial scraping method.
TLR‐2‐mediated induction of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in cartilage in septic joint disease

Bacterial arthritis is a progressive joint disease which includes rapid destruction of articular cartilage even after clearance of the causal factor. The resulting post‐infectious arthropathy is mainly characterized by self‐perpetuating joint destruction and extensive angiogenesis in the emerging pannus‐like synovial membrane, but the underlying molecular mechanisms of the bacteria‐initiated process remain incompletely understood. This study was conducted to elucidate the expression and regulation of angiogenic and cartilage‐destructive vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in septic arthritis. For that purpose, aspirates of synovial fluid from patients with pyogenic arthritis were examined for VEGF levels by ELISA. In vitro studies with primary and immortalized chondrocytes were performed to determine whether Gram‐positive and Gram‐negative bacteria induce VEGF expression, by using real‐time RT‐PCR, ELISA, and immunohistochemistry. Activation of the transcription factor AP‐1 was assessed by EMSA experiments. The necessity of the Toll‐like receptor‐2 (TLR‐2), ERK‐1/‐2, and AP‐1 pathway for infectious VEGF induction in chondrocytes was examined by using specific blocking reagents. ELISA experiments revealed that aspirates of synovial fluid from patients with pyogenic arthritis contain elevated levels of VEGF. The in vitro results confirmed the transcriptional induction of VEGF in chondrocytes after bacterial challenge by real‐time RT‐PCR, ELISA, and immunohistochemistry. This activation was mediated by a TLR‐2‐, ERK‐1/‐2‐, and AP‐1‐dependent pathway. The findings demonstrate the expression of Toll‐like receptors on mesenchymal articular chondrocytes and reveal TLR‐2‐mediated VEGF induction in human chondrocytes after Gram‐positive bacterial sensing. Since VEGF is a potent angiogenic and tissue remodelling factor, evidence that Toll‐like receptors contribute to destructive arthropathy after microbial joint infection is provided. VEGF may be a therapeutic target in the future for the prevention of post‐infectious cartilage degradation in articular joints. Copyright © 2006 Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Age-related changes in haematology and serum chemistry of Weiser–Maples guineapigs (Cavia porcellus)

Age-related changes in haematology and serum chemistry values were examined in male and female Weiser–Maples guineapigs (Cavia porcellus). Haematological changes that significantly (P < 0.01) correlated with ageing were increased white blood cell and neutrophil counts in both sexes, decreased lymphocyte counts in both sexes, decreased reticulocyte and platelet counts in males, and decreased basophil counts in females. For serum chemistry, increases in total protein, triglycerides, blood urea nitrogen and creatinine were seen in both sexes, along with increases in total cholesterol in males and sodium in females. Decreased alkaline phosphatase in both sexes and decreased chloride in males were significantly (P < 0.01) associated with age. These age-related changes are compared with the published literature.
Impact of bile acid malabsorption on steatorrhoea and symptoms in patients with chronic diarrhoea

Objective Bile acids are important for fat absorption. The relationship between bile acid malabsorption and steatorrhoea and gastrointestinal symptoms in patients with chronic diarrhoea has only been studied on a limited scale. Design Ninety‐four patients referred for chronic diarrhoea were prospectively investigated with the 75SeHCAT test, a faecal fat excretion test and registration of symptoms in addition to the standard clinical work‐up. Methods The correlation between the 75SeHCAT value and the faecal fat excretion was calculated for different groups of patients. Symptoms were registered in a questionnaire over a period of seven consecutive days. Results Forty‐two patients had a 75SeHCAT value < 10%. Mild steatorrhoea was common in patients with nonorganic bile acid malabsorption (50%) and in patients with functional diarrhoea (38%). There was no correlation between low 75SeHCAT values and steatorrhoea, although some patients with severe organic disease had a concomitant malabsorption of fat and of bile acids. In coeliac disease, severe steatorrhoea was common even in patients with high 75SeHCAT values. Patients with bile acid malabsorption had more frequent (P < 0.008) and looser (P = 0.0021) stools compared with patients with functional diarrhoea. There was no difference in abdominal pain, distension or flatulence. Conclusion Mild steatorrhoea is common in both nonorganic bile acid malabsorption and functional diarrhoea. The 75SeHCAT value cannot predict the risk of steatorrhoea. The high prevalence of bile acid malabsorption in patients with chronic diarrhoea and the absence of specific symptoms, except frequent and more liquid stools, indicates that the 75SeHCAT test should be performed early in the investigation of these patients. Eur J Gastroenterol Hepatol 12:541‐547
Inhibiting Browser Fingerprinting and Tracking

This paper discusses possible approaches to address the loss of user privacy when browsing the web and being tracked by websites which compute a browser fingerprint identifying the user computer. The key problem is that the current fingerprinting countermeasures are insufficient to prevent fingerprinting tracking and also frequently produce side-effects on the web browser. The advantages and disadvantages of possible countermeasures are discussed in the context of improving resistance against browser fingerprinting. Finally, using a new browser extension is proposed as the best way to inhibit fingerprinting as it could probably inhibit some of the fingerprinting techniques used and also diminish the side-effects on the user browser experience, compared with existing techniques.
Structure and function of cyclic nucleotide-dependent protein kinases.

Cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase (cAK) was first described in 19631964 (43, 132) as a cAMP-dependent glycogen synthase kinase that, in the presence of Mg/ A TP, transferred the 'V-phosphate of A TP to serines or threonines on many cellular enzymes. It was found to phosphorylate a number of proteins and was permanently named in 1968 (168). Ensuing years produced vast numbers of reports regarding properties of cAK and the signal mechanisms that elicit its activation. Many of these have been reviewed recently (8, 33,47, 85, 141, 155, 181). In 1970 cyclic GMP-de­ pendent protein kinase (cGK) was discovered (86). cGK is homologous in structure and function to cAK (24, 49, 59, 66, 93, 141, 154). The role of cGMP in physiological processes is increasingly appreciated (15, 39, 92, 94, 113, 170), but cGK is only one of several intracellular receptors for cGMP. Studies of the heterogeneity, function, and regulation of cAK and cGK have provided insight into the enzymology of diverse protein kinases and into the roles of these kinases in cellular processes.
Rapport de stage Structure multi-´echelle des grands graphes

L’analyse de nombreux phenomenes conduit a considerer des grands reseaux. Ces reseaux apparaissent dans de nombreux domaines tels que la sociologie, la biologie, la linguistique, l’informatique, etc. Il est courant de les representer par des graphes. Cette structure de donnees permet en effet de modeliser efficacement les relations entre differents acteurs d’un systeme complexe. On appelle souvent ces graphes des graphes de terrain, ou complex networks en anglais. La plupart des graphes de terrain, bien que provenant de contextes tres divers, ont des proprietes communes non triviales qui ont fait l’objet de nombreuses etudes [1, 2]. Par exemple, la distance entre deux nœuds de ces graphes est souvent tres faible comparativement a la taille du graphe. Ce phenomene a ete constate par Milgram en 1967 dans la celebre experience des six degres de separation [3], puis etudie plus en detail par Watts et Strogratz en 1998 [4]. Les graphes ayant cette caracteristique sont appeles des graphes petits mondes (small-world networks). Une autre caracteristique commune est l’heterogeneite des degres des nœuds : il existe des nœuds ayant un tres fort degre et la distribution de degres obeit souvent a une loi de puissance. Les graphes ayant cette caracteristique sont appeles scale-free networks. L’etude de ces proprietes communes est cruciale, d’une part pour comprendre la structure de ces graphes en general et d’autre part pour developper une algorithmique adaptee. La taille des graphes consideres rend, en effet, difficilement envisageable d’utiliser des algorithmes dont la complexite est plus que quadratique en la taille du graphe, et souvent une complexite lineaire s’avere necessaire. Les objectifs peuvent etre tres varies selon les disciplines : l’analyse de l’infrastructure des reseaux informatiques va, par exemple, chercher a detecter leurs points faibles [5], les moteurs de recherches vont essayer d’evaluer la pertinence des pages en se basant sur un graphe du Web [6] ou on peut vouloir etudier la propagation des epidemies dans un reseau social de contacts physiques [7]. Il est apparu que les nœuds des graphes de terrain peuvent etre souvent classes en communautes, qui elles meme sont susceptibles d’en contenir, et ainsi a plusieurs niveaux de profondeur. On peut par exemple imaginer une communaute de toutes les relations d’une personne, elle meme decoupee en un cercle familial, un cercle d’amis et un cercle de collegues. Le cercle familial peut a nouveau se decouper en la famille de sa mere, et la famille de son pere.
Contraction based adaptive control of a class of nonlinear systems

Adaptive control problem of nonlinear systems having dynamics in parametric strict feedback form is addressed here. Effort is made to derive adaptive methodology for controller design in contraction framework. General results and conditions for stabilization are derived using backstepping. At each step of recursive design, system is made contracting by suitable selection of control inputs. As contraction property is not intrinsic to the systems, so proposed strategy helps in identifying a coordinate transformation along with controller to establish contracting nature of the system. Contracting dynamics ensures exponential convergence of state trajectories to each other. Results are further extended to address control problem of systems having uncertain parameters. Tracking control problem of single link manipulator with actuator dynamics is addressed using the proposed scheme. Numerical simulations justify the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.
Tier-Centric Resource Allocation in Multi-Tier Cloud Systems

In IT service delivery and support, the cloud paradigm has introduced the problem of resource over-provisioning through rapid automation (or orchestration) of manual IT operations. Due to the elastic nature of cloud computing, this shortcoming ends up significantly reducing the real benefit, viz., the cost-effectiveness of cloud adoption for Cloud Service Consumers (CSC). Similarly, detecting and eliminating such over-provisioning of cloud resources without affecting the quality of service (QoS) is extremely difficult for Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) since they have visibility only into the state of the IT services (cloud resources) but none into the actual performance of business services. In this paper, we propose Tier-centric Business Impact and Cost Analysis (T-BICA), a tier-centric optimal resource allocation algorithm, to address the problem of rapid provisioning of IT resources in modern enterprise cloud environments, through extensive data gathering and performance analyses of business services in a simulated environment emulating a mature cloud service provider. We have derived improved analytics to address the issues and to accelerate real cloud adoption for large enterprises within the context of meeting (or exceeding) business service level objectives (SLOs) and minimizing the cloud subscription cost (OpEx) for the business. While investigating the problem, we consider the time and the cost of delivering business service in medium- to large-size enterprise environments, quantifying the negative impact of IT resource over-provisioning (due to highly mature IT services centric orchestration capabilities) on the business, and indicate how the suggested cloud analytics could assist in reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) of the business service. From our analysis of the test data, we have observed that our suggested approach and analytic reduces the cost of delivering business services by 65.19 percent, and improves the performance (total time to deliver) by 74.18 percent when compared to the existing modern cloud management and resource provisioning approach. Using T-BICA dramatically reduces upfront costs (CapEx) for CSPs (from the capacity procurement and management points of view) through efficient on-demand resource de-provisioning, without affecting business SLOs and IT service level agreements (SLAs). The improved dynamic allocation of resources also makes for better efficiency of utilization, which in turn has desirable consequences for sustainability, and makes this an approach for “Green” IT.
A new intelligent digital redesign for T-S fuzzy systems: global approach

This paper proposes a novel and efficient global intelligent digital redesign technique for a Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy system. The term of intelligent digital redesign involves converting an existing analog fuzzy-model-based controller into an equivalent digital counterpart in the sense of state-matching. The proposed method should be notably discriminated from the previous works in that it allows us to globally match the states of the overall closed-loop T-S fuzzy system with the predesigned analog fuzzy-model-based controller and those with the digitally redesigned fuzzy-model-based controller, and further to examine the stabilizability by the redesigned controller in the sense of Lyapunov. The key idea is that the global intelligent digital redesign problem is viewed as a convex minimization problem of the norm distance between nonlinearly interpolated linear operators to be matched. Sufficient conditions for the global state-matching and the stability of the digitally controlled system are formulated in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). A complex nonlinear system, Duffing-like chaotic oscillator is simulated and demonstrated to validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed digital redesign technique, which implies the safe applicability to the digital control system.
Advanced imaging in gout.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this article is to describe the role of advanced imaging using ultrasound, CT, and MRI in the assessment and diagnosis of gout. CONCLUSION Dual-energy CT can quantitatively identify monosodium urate crystal deposits with high sensitivity and specificity within joints, tendons, and periarticular soft tissues. There are several characteristic ultrasound imaging findings, which include visualization of echogenic monosodium urate crystal deposition, tophus, and adjacent erosions. MRI is sensitive in showing soft-tissue and osseous abnormalities of gout, although the imaging findings are not specific. Gout commonly involves specific joints and anatomic structures, and knowledge of these sites and imaging appearances are clues to the correct diagnosis.
Assessing innovation management in a company from the steel industry

Innovation management is a structured process that enables an organization to perceive new ways to create value. In this context, this paper aims at analyzing how a steel firm manages innovation. It makes an analysis based on a conceptual model from the literature that represents innovation value chain. Other important aspects for understanding organizational practices of innovation management are how new ideas are generated, selected, and prioritized, whether the process of innovation is aligned with company strategy, and which performance measures are adopted. Field data indicate that the company does not have a structured methodology for the development of new ideas and further diffusion of such ideas into new business models. Therefore, such issues should be further explored in future work.