Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
β2‐Microglobulin, Cystatin C, and Creatinine and Risk of Symptomatic Peripheral Artery Disease

Background β2‐Microglobulin and cystatin C may have advantages over creatinine in assessing risk associated with kidney function. We therefore investigated whether emerging filtration markers, β2‐microglobulin and cystatin C, are prospectively associated with risk of the development of peripheral artery disease (PAD). Methods and Results We conducted nested case‐control studies among women within the Nurses’ Health Study (1990–2010) and among men within the Health Professionals Follow‐up Study (1994–2008) with the use of archived blood samples collected before PAD diagnosis. During follow‐up, symptomatic PAD was confirmed in 144 women and 143 men. Controls were matched 3:1 based on age, race, smoking status, fasting status, and date of blood sampling. Conditional logistic regression models were used to estimate relative risks (RRs) and were adjusted for plasma creatinine and cardiovascular risk factors. In women, the RRs (95% CI) per 1‐SD) increment were 1.16 (0.85 to 1.58) for β2‐microglobulin and 0.94 (0.69 to 1.28) for cystatin C. Corresponding RRs in men were 1.50 (1.08 to 2.09) for β2‐microglobulin and 1.54 (1.07 to 2.22) for cystatin C. There was no association between creatinine and PAD risk in women, whereas the association in men (RR 1.41, 95% CI 1.10 to 1.81) disappeared after adjustment for either β2‐microglobulin or cystatin C. In pooled analyses of men and women, only β2‐microglobulin was associated with PAD risk (RR 1.31, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.64). Conclusions In pooled analyses, β2‐microglobulin was associated with an increased risk of symptomatic PAD; a similar association with cystatin C was observed only in men. The findings suggest that β2‐microglobulin may capture the atherosclerosis‐promoting or atherosclerosis‐related elements of kidney dysfunction better than creatinine.
Urologic Pathologies of Child at Ouagadougou

Introduction: Urologic pathologies of children are frequent. Urinary apparatus diseases occupy the third position after those of respiratory and digestive tracts in children. Objectives: The objective of this study was to investigate epidemiologic, diagnostic, and therapeutic aspects of urologic pathologies of children in our hospital. Patients and Methods: This work is a descriptive and retrospective study from January 1st 2005 to December, 31st 2012 on children from 0 to 15 years old admitted and treated in Teaching Pediatric Hospital Charles de Gaulle for a urologic pathology. Results: In total, 711 patients had been registered with 7.3 sex-ratio, an average age of 4 years old (0 - 15 years old). Malformative pathologies were represented by the majority (62.7%). They were mainly composed of peritoneovaginal canal pathology, posterior urethra valves (PUV), and Pyeloureteral junction anomaly (PUJA). Urolithiasis, infectious, and tumoural pathologies were second, third and fourth with 19.4%, 7.6% and 5.8% respectively. Surgical treatment was necessary for 83.2% of patients. A total nephrectomy has been realized in 5 cases for PUJA with mute kidney. Some post-operative complications have been observed in 2.6% of operated patients. The global mortality rate was 2.9% with Wilms’ tumor predominance in aetiology (58.8%). Conclusion: Urologic pathologies of children are dominated by urogenital malformations. The decreasing of their lethality is guided by a MU antenatal diagnosis and a personal qualification to improve the diagnosis and the treatment.
A New Clustering Approach on the Basis of Dynamical Neural Field

In this letter, we present a new hierarchical clustering approach based on the evolutionary process of Amari's dynamical neural field model. Dynamical neural field theory provides a theoretical framework macroscopically describing the activity of neuron ensemble. Based on it, our clustering approach is essentially close to the neurophysiological nature of perception. It is also computationally stable, insensitive to noise, flexible, and tractable for data with complex structure. Some examples are given to show the feasibility.
LLAMA: A Cache/Storage Subsystem for Modern Hardware

LLAMA is a subsystem designed for new hardware environments that supports an API for page-oriented access methods, providing both cache and storage management. Caching (CL) and storage (SL) layers use a common mapping table that separates a page's logical and physical location. CL supports data updates and management updates (e.g., for index re-organization) via latch-free compare-and-swap atomic state changes on its mapping table. SL uses the same mapping table to cope with page location changes produced by log structuring on every page flush. To demonstrate LLAMA's suitability, we tailored our latch-free Bw-tree implementation to use LLAMA. The Bw-tree is a B-tree style index. Layered on LLAMA, it has higher performance and scalability using real workloads compared with BerkeleyDB's B-tree, which is known for good performance.
Axial-flux PM wind generator with a soft magnetic composite core

This paper presents the potential application of soft magnetic composite (SMC) material in low speed, directly driven, axial-flux permanent magnet (PM) wind generators. Comparative design studies are conducted on PM wind generators of different configurations with both lamination cores and SMC core. Finite element analysis is used to enhance the design precision, from which analytical formulas are modified. Through careful design an axial-flux PM wind generator with slotted SMC core is built and tested, demonstrating the advantages of better performance, reduced size and weight, low part count and low cost.
Loss of Inositol Phosphorylceramide Sphingolipid Mannosylation Induces Plant Immune Responses and Reduces Cellulose Content in Arabidopsis[OPEN]

Identification and characterization of a putative Arabidopsis sphingolipid glycosyltranferase suggests that glycosylation of these crucial lipids affects cellulose content and plant defense signaling. Glycosylinositol phosphorylceramides (GIPCs) are a class of glycosylated sphingolipids found in plants, fungi, and protozoa. These lipids are abundant in the plant plasma membrane, forming ∼25% of total plasma membrane lipids. Little is known about the function of the glycosylated headgroup, but two recent studies have indicated that they play a key role in plant signaling and defense. Here, we show that a member of glycosyltransferase family 64, previously named ECTOPICALLY PARTING CELLS1, is likely a Golgi-localized GIPC-specific mannosyl-transferase, which we renamed GIPC MANNOSYL-TRANSFERASE1 (GMT1). Sphingolipid analysis revealed that the Arabidopsis thaliana gmt1 mutant almost completely lacks mannose-carrying GIPCs. Heterologous expression of GMT1 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) cv Bright Yellow 2 resulted in the production of non-native mannosylated GIPCs. gmt1 displays a severe dwarfed phenotype and a constitutive hypersensitive response characterized by elevated salicylic acid and hydrogen peroxide levels, similar to that we previously reported for the Golgi-localized, GIPC-specific, GDP-Man transporter GONST1 (Mortimer et al., 2013). Unexpectedly, we show that gmt1 cell walls have a reduction in cellulose content, although other matrix polysaccharides are unchanged.
Drag:on: A Virtual Reality Controller Providing Haptic Feedback Based on Drag and Weight Shift

Standard controllers for virtual reality (VR) lack sophisticated means to convey a realistic, kinesthetic impression of size, resistance or inertia. We present the concept and implementation of Drag:on, an ungrounded shape-changing VR controller that provides dynamic passive haptic feedback based on drag, i.e. air resistance, and weight shift. Drag:on leverages the airflow occurring at the controller during interaction. By dynamically adjusting its surface area, the controller changes the drag and rotational inertia felt by the user. In a user study, we found that Drag:on can provide distinguishable levels of haptic feedback. Our prototype increases the haptic realism in VR compared to standard controllers and when rotated or swung improves the perception of virtual resistance. By this, Drag:on provides haptic feedback suitable for rendering different virtual mechanical resistances, virtual gas streams, and virtual objects differing in scale, material and fill state.
Differentiated Latency in Data Center Networks with Erasure Coded Files Through Traffic Engineering

This paper proposes an algorithm to minimize weighted service latency for different classes of tenants (or service classes) in a data center network where erasure-coded files are stored on distributed disks/racks and access requests are scattered across the network. Due to the limited bandwidth available at both top-of-the-rack and aggregation switches, and differentiated service requirements of the tenants, network bandwidth must be apportioned among different intra- and inter-rack data flows for different service classes in line with their traffic statistics. We formulate this problem as weighted queuing and employ a class of probabilistic request scheduling policies to derive a closed-form upper-bound of service latency for erasure-coded storage with arbitrary file access patterns and service time distributions. The result enables us to propose a joint weighted latency (over different service classes) optimization over three entangled “control knobs”: the bandwidth allocation at top-of-the-rack and aggregation switches for different service classes, dynamic scheduling of file requests, and the placement of encoded file chunks (i.e., data locality). The joint optimization is shown to be a mixed-integer problem. We develop an iterative algorithm which decouples and solves the joint optimization as 3 sub-problems, which are either convex or solvable via bipartite matching in polynomial time. The proposed algorithm is prototyped in an open-source, distributed file system, Tahoe, and evaluated on a cloud testbed with 16 separate physical hosts in an OpenStack cluster using Cisco switches. Experiments validate our theoretical latency analysis and show significant latency reduction for diverse file access patterns. The results provide valuable insights on designing low-latency data center networks with erasure coded storage.
Production of the polyunsaturated fatty acids arachidonic acid and eicosapentaenoic acid by the fungus Pythium ultimum.

Several strains of species of the fungal genus Pythium, and of Phytophthora cinnamomi, were screened for content of the polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) arachidonic acid (AA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). The aim of the investigation was to establish alternative sources of these PUFAs, which are of importance in human nutrition. As a relatively prolific producer of EPA and AA, P. ultimum strain #144 was selected for a study of conditions that enhance their production over baseline levels that are present in the fungus when cultured for 6 d at 25 degrees C with rotary shaking (120 r.p.m.) in Vogel's medium containing sucrose as the carbon substrate. The levels of AA and EPA under these conditions were 133 +/- 27 and 138 +/- 25 mg l-1 (n = 5), respectively. Maximal production of these fatty acids was accomplished by the following sequence of steps. (1) Incubate the cultures for 6 d after inoculation under the conditions described above. Then (2) add glucose to the cultures (2%, w/v, final concentration) and incubate for a further 6 d at 13 degrees C. Under these conditions, the AA content of the mycelium was 205% higher than baseline levels and the EPA content was 198% higher. (3) Allow the cultures to remain stationary for 10 d which increases the AA content to 253% above baseline levels and the EPA content by 236%. Using such a procedure, 322 mg AA l-1 and 383 mg EPA 1-1 were produced.
Effect of Treatment of Carotid Artery Stenosis on Blood Pressure: A Comparison of Hemodynamic Disturbances After Carotid Endarterectomy and Endovascular Treatment

Background and Purpose— Carotid intervention by carotid endarterectomy (CEA) or endovascular treatment may cause hemodynamic change. The immediate and long-term effects on blood pressure after these procedures were assessed. Methods— Patients were randomized to CEA (n=49) or endovascular treatment (n=55) that comprised percutaneous transluminal angioplasty alone (n=31), balloon-expandable stent (n=13), or self-expandable stent (n=11). A baseline 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure recording was made before carotid intervention and repeated at 24 hours, 1 month, and 6 months after the procedure. Results— In the first 24 hours after the procedure, episodes of hypotension occurred in 75% of the CEA group and 76% of the endovascular group; hypertension occurred in 11% and 13%, respectively. There was a significant fall in blood pressure at 1 hour after the procedure in both groups (24 and 16 mm Hg fall in CEA and endovascular groups, respectively), but this was only sustained in the endovascular group. The pattern of blood pressure response in the first 24 hours was significantly different (P <0.0001, ANCOVA). Systolic blood pressure was significantly lower at 1 and 6 months only in the surgical group (6 and 5 mm Hg fall, respectively). Conclusions— Both CEA and endovascular treatment have an effect on blood pressure stability, particularly within the first 24 hours after the procedure.
VALIDATION OF FAMILY INTERACTION PATTERNS SCALE

SUMMARY A Family Interaction Patterns Scale (FIPS) consisting of 106 items pertaining to six areas of family functioning: leadership, communication, role, reinforcement, cohesiveness, social support system; was standardised by administering it to 30 neurotic depressives, 30 hysterical neurotics, 20 alcoholics and 30 normal, and one of their family members. HIPS mean score for depressives, hystericals, alcoholics and normals were 243.8, 236.67, 262.75 and 133.17 respectively. The means of patient population were statistically significantly different from the normal population. There was no variation in the scores of patient and his/her family member. All six sub scales of FIPS were compared between the groups. The scale had the capacity to discriminate between neurotics and normals and alcoholics. Based on these observations we feel FIPS is a valid tool to measure the quality of family functioning.
Abnormal dopaminergic modulation of striato-cortical networks underlies levodopa-induced dyskinesias in humans

Abnormal dopaminergic modulation of connectivity between the putamen and cortex is thought to underlie the emergence of levodopa-induced dyskinesias. Herz et al. confirm this directly by showing that in individuals with Parkinson's disease who have taken a single dose of levodopa, changes in connectivity preceding dyskinesias accurately predict their severity.
Does It Feel Real?: Using Tangibles with Different Fidelities to Build and Explore Scenes in Virtual Reality

Professionals in domains like film, theater, or architecture often rely on physical models to visualize spaces. With virtual reality (VR) new tools are available providing immersive experiences with correct perceptions of depth and scale. However, these lack the tangibility of physical models. Using tangible objects in VR can close this gap but creates the challenges of producing suitable objects and interacting with them with only the virtual objects visible. This work addresses these challenges by evaluating tangibles with three haptic fidelities: equal disc-shaped tangibles for all virtual objects, Lego-built tangibles, and 3D-printed tangibles resembling the virtual shapes. We present results from a comparative study on immersion, performance, and intuitive interaction and interviews with domain experts. The results show that 3D-printed objects perform best, but Lego offers a good trade-off between fast creation of tangibles and sufficient fidelity. The experts rate our approach as useful and would use all three versions.
Cardiomyopathy and Worsened Ischemic Heart Failure in SM22-&agr; Cre-Mediated Neuropilin-1 Null Mice: Dysregulation of PGC1&agr; and Mitochondrial Homeostasis

Objective—Neuropilin-1 (NRP-1) is a multidomain membrane receptor involved in angiogenesis and development of neuronal circuits, however, the role of NRP-1 in cardiovascular pathophysiology remains elusive. Approach and Results—In this study, we first observed that deletion of NRP-1 induced peroxisome proliferator–activated receptor &ggr; coactivator 1&agr; in cardiomyocytes and vascular smooth muscle cells, which was accompanied by dysregulated cardiac mitochondrial accumulation and induction of cardiac hypertrophy- and stress-related markers. To investigate the role of NRP-1 in vivo, we generated mice lacking Nrp-1 in cardiomyocytes and vascular smooth muscle cells (SM22-&agr;-Nrp-1 KO), which exhibited decreased survival rates, developed cardiomyopathy, and aggravated ischemia-induced heart failure. Mechanistically, we found that NRP-1 specifically controls peroxisome proliferator–activated receptor &ggr; coactivator 1 &agr; and peroxisome proliferator–activated receptor &ggr; in cardiomyocytes through crosstalk with Notch1 and Smad2 signaling pathways, respectively. Moreover, SM22-&agr;-Nrp-1 KO mice exhibited impaired physical activities and altered metabolite levels in serum, liver, and adipose tissues, as demonstrated by global metabolic profiling analysis. Conclusions—Our findings provide new insights into the cardioprotective role of NRP-1 and its influence on global metabolism.
Robotic emotional model with personality factors based on Pleasant-Arousal scaling model

Emotion and personality are significant factors in communication. In general, during a decision making process in human-human communication, emotional factors will be affected not only the logical thinking, but also the emotional responses. Furthermore, personality gives individual differences among people in behavior patterns, cognitive process and emotional responses. In this paper, we propose the three stages (core affects, emotion and mood) robotic emotional model with OCEAN model as the personality factors based on 2D (Pleasant-Arousal) scaling model. The emotion states in proposed model are represented on pleasant-arousal plane. The results from simulation experiment show that the proposed model is able to generate the different emotional properties based on the personality factors.
G-Free: defeating return-oriented programming through gadget-less binaries

Despite the numerous prevention and protection mechanisms that have been introduced into modern operating systems, the exploitation of memory corruption vulnerabilities still represents a serious threat to the security of software systems and networks. A recent exploitation technique, called Return-Oriented Programming (ROP), has lately attracted a considerable attention from academia. Past research on the topic has mostly focused on refining the original attack technique, or on proposing partial solutions that target only particular variants of the attack. In this paper, we present G-Free, a compiler-based approach that represents the first practical solution against any possible form of ROP. Our solution is able to eliminate all unaligned free-branch instructions inside a binary executable, and to protect the aligned free-branch instructions to prevent them from being misused by an attacker. We developed a prototype based on our approach, and evaluated it by compiling GNU libc and a number of real-world applications. The results of the experiments show that our solution is able to prevent any form of return-oriented programming.
Measuring Empathetic Care

Purpose: This study describes the development of a self-report survey measure of empathetic care. Empathetic care is defined as caregiving that supports clients’ socioemotional capabilities and addresses their emotional needs. It is distinct from instrumental care, which involves assisting with physical needs such as activities of daily living. Design and Method: Based on a literature review, structured interviews, and focus groups, we identify three dimensions of empathetic care: extra-role behavior, emotional support, and relational richness. We then developed a large pool of items that could tap into these dimensions and administered versions of the survey to nearly 300 health care paraprofessionals. Results: After performing exploratory factor analyses on a larger survey of 138 paraprofessionals, a 10-item, three-factor measure, the Empathetic Care Scale (ECS), was developed that predicts decisions on consequential allocation scenarios. A second sample of 125 paraprofessionals provided data for a confirmatory factor analysis; results suggested that the ECS has desirable psychometric properties and evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. Further samples demonstrated acceptable levels of test-retest reliability and no social desirability bias. Implications: This study provides a short self-report measure that can be used to gauge care workers’ individual levels of empathetic care. Future research can use this measure to explore relationships between ECS responses and previously proposed but untested outcomes such as patient well-being and employee burnout or turnover rates.
Time Series Classification Using Compression Distance of Recurrence Plots

There is a huge increase of interest for time series methods and techniques. Virtually every piece of information collected from human, natural, and biological processes is susceptible to changes over time, and the study of how these changes occur is a central issue in fully understanding such processes. Among all time series mining tasks, classification is likely to be the most prominent one. In time series classification there is a significant body of empirical research that indicates that k-nearest neighbor rule in the time domain is very effective. However, certain time series features are not easily identified in this domain and a change in representation may reveal some significant and unknown features. In this work, we propose the use of recurrence plots as representation domain for time series classification. Our approach measures the similarity between recurrence plots using Campana-Keogh (CK-1) distance, a Kolmogorov complexity-based distance that uses video compression algorithms to estimate image similarity. We show that recurrence plots allied to CK-1 distance lead to significant improvements in accuracy rates compared to Euclidean distance and Dynamic Time Warping in several data sets. Although recurrence plots cannot provide the best accuracy rates for all data sets, we demonstrate that we can predict ahead of time that our method will outperform the time representation with Euclidean and Dynamic Time Warping distances.
Barometric phone sensors: more hype than hope!

The inclusion of the barometer sensor in smartphones signaled an opportunity for aiding indoor localization efforts. In this paper, we therefore investigate a possible use of the barometer sensor for detecting vertically oriented activities. We start by showing the accuracies of various commodity measurement devices and the challenges they bring forth. We then show how to use the barometer values to build a predictor that can detect floor changes and the mode (elevator, escalator, or stairs) used to change floors with nearly 100% accuracy. We validate these properties with data collected using 3 different measurement devices from 7 different buildings. Our investigation reveals that while the barometer sensor has potential, there is still a lot left to be desired.