Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comprehensive biomarker monitoring in cytokine therapy: heterogeneous, time‐dependent, and persisting immune effects of interleukin‐10 application in psoriasis

Cytokine and anticytokine treatments represent promising approaches for therapy of immune‐mediated diseases. In humans, however, regulatory consequences of interference with the cytokine network are only partially understood. Biomarker analysis in clinical studies may help to overcome this complexity and provide novel information about the in vivo relevance of individual cytokines. We report systemic immunological effects of IL‐10 therapy in 10 psoriasis patients during a 7‐week treatment period followed by a 7‐week observation period. IL‐10 was given s.c. at 8 μg/kg/day or 20 μg/kg/3×/week, and a broad range of immunological biomarkers was analyzed in an extended kinetics (17 time‐points) before, during, and after IL‐10 therapy. Besides the expected anti‐inflammatory effects (e.g., inhibition of LPS‐induced cytokine secretion), we found unexpected effects, such as activation of NK cells and an increase in parameters indicating proinflammatory activity (C‐reactive protein and soluble IL‐2R). Furthermore, cumulative effects (IgE and IgA), loss of effect (IL‐1R antagonist and IFN‐γ secretion), or counter‐regulation during and rebound after IL‐10 therapy (TNF‐α and IL‐12/IL‐23 p40) were found. Remarkably, some alterations were retained long after the 7‐week treatment period (IL‐4 secretion, monocytic CD86, and TGF‐β1). In summary, we found manifold effects of IL‐10 far beyond the immediate anti‐inflammatory activity considered initially. These findings may explain the rather disappointing clinical effects of IL‐10 therapy in exacerbated inflammation but also hint to its role for sustained immunological reshaping. They further exemplify the importance of analyzing an extended kinetics of an entire panel of biomarkers for understanding the effects of therapeutic interference with the cytokine network.
Non-use of cochlear implants by post-lingually deafened adults

Abstract Objectives To document the occurrence of medical/surgical complications in the provision of cochlear implants to a cohort of post-lingually deafened adult patients; to compare cumulative mortality in the cohort with cumulative mortality predicted from an aged-matched control population; to relate the occurrence of medical/surgical complications to the patient's position in the case series; to identify risk factors for elective non-use of implants; and to examine the impact of complications, mortality and elective non-use on the cost of creating a successful user of a cochlear implant Design Longitudinal prospective observational study. Setting Nine hospitals in the UK, which received central funding between 1990 and 1994 to participate in a programme of adult implantation. Participants All 313 post-lingually deafened adults who received multichannel cochlear implants in this programme. Main outcome measures Status of patients in July 1998 (dead, an elective non-user or a user); duration of use prior to death or elective non-use; costs of creating and sustaining a successful user; ability to identify environmental sounds; self-reported benefit. Results Cumulative mortality after 7.5 years was 6.3% (95% CI 2.5−10.1%) and was no different from cumulative mortality predicted from life expectancy in the general population. Cumulative elective non-use was stable at 6.3% (95% CI 3.6%−9.1%) between 4 and 7 years after implantation but rose to 11.0% (95% CI 1.7%−20.3%) at 7.5 years after implantation. Major medical/surgical complications were experienced by 25/313 patients (8.0%). The occurrence of such complications declined to ca. 1% over the first 50 cases in a hospital's case series. For patients who were users, self-reported benefit did not differ between patients who had experienced complications and those who had not. Older age at implantation, greater duration of deafness prior to implantation or an early position in a hospital's case series were not significant risk factors for elective non-use. Experiencing a major complication was a marginally significant risk factor (odds ratio = 3.2, 95% CI 1.0−10.6). Low auditory performance (odds ratio = 8.2, 95% CI 2.1−31.9) and low self-reported benefit (odds ratio = 19.6, 95% CI 4.6−84.4) were significant risk factors. Medical/surgical complications raised the cost of creating a successful user by less than 1%. Elective non-use raised the cost by between 5% and 10%. Conclusions Medical/surgical complications were generally managed successfully without detriment to benefit; life expectancy in the general population can be used to predict the length of time for which patients have the potential to use cochlear implants; patients who experience little benefit are most at risk for elective non-use; given the high cost of cochlear implantation, benefit should be monitored to allow early rehabilitative intervention in cases of low benefit; patient cohorts such as the present one should continue to be followed up with a view to identifying pre-operative risk factors for elective non-use.
eHealth for Patient Engagement: A Systematic Review

eHealth interventions are recognized to have a tremendous potential to promote patient engagement. To date, the majority of studies examine the efficacy of eHealth in enhancing clinical outcomes without focusing on patient engagement in its specificity. This paper aimed at reviewing findings from the literature about the use of eHealth in engaging patients in their own care process. We undertook a comprehensive literature search within the peer-reviewed international literature. Eleven studies met the inclusion criteria. eHealth interventions reviewed were mainly devoted to foster only partial dimensions of patient engagement (i.e., alternatively cognitive, emotional or behavioral domains related to healthcare management), thus failing to consider the complexity of such an experience. This also led to a great heterogeneity of technologies, assessed variables and achieved outcomes. This systematic review underlines the need for a more holistic view of patient needs to actually engage them in eHealth interventions and obtaining positive outcomes. In this sense, patient engagement constitute a new frontiers for healthcare models where eHealth could maximize its potentialities.
Opacity and Abstractions

The opacity property characterises the absence of confidential information flow towards inquisitive attackers. Verifying opacity is well established for finite automata but is known to be not decidable for more expressive models like Turing machines or Petri nets. As a consequence, for a system dealing with confidential information, formally certifying its confidentiality may be impossible, but attackers can still infer confidential information by approximating systems’ behaviours. Taking such attackers into account, we investigate the verification of opacity using abstraction techniques to compute executable counterexamples (attack scenarios). Considering a system and a predicate over its executions, attackers are modelled as semi-conservative decision process determining from observed traces the truth of that predicate. Moreover, we will show that the most precise the abstraction is, the most accurate(and then dangerous) the corresponding class of attackers will be. Consequently, when no attack scenario is detected on an approximate analysis, we know that this system is safe against all “less precise” attackers. Therefore, this can be used to provide a level of certification relative to the precision of abstractions.
Augmented Cues Facilitate Learning Transfer from Virtual to Real Environments

The aim of this study was to investigate whether augmented cues that have previously been shown to enhance performance and user satisfaction in VR training translate into performance improvements in real environments. Subjects were randomly allocated into 3 groups. Group 1 were trained to perform a real tyre change, group 2 were trained in a conventional VR setting, while group 3 were trained in VR with augmented cues. After training participants were tested on a real tyre change task. Overall time to completion was recorded as objective measure; subjective ratings of presence, perceived workload and discomfort were recorded using questionnaires. The performances of the three groups were compared. Overall, participants who received VR training performed significantly faster on the real task than participants who completed the real tyre change only. The difference between the virtual reality training groups was found to be not significant. However, participants who were trained with augmented cues performed the real tyre change with fewer errors than participants in the minimal cues training group. Systematic differences in subjective ratings that reflected objective performance were also observed.
A study of using an out-of-box commercial MT system for query translation in CLIR

Recent availability of commercial online machine translation (MT) systems makes it possible for layman Web users to utilize the MT capability for cross-language information retrieval (CLIR). To study the effectiveness of using MT for query translation, we conducted a set of experiments using Google Translate, an online MT system provided by Google, for translating queries in CLIR. The experiments show that MT is an excellent tool for the query translation task, and with the help of relevance feedback, it can achieve significant improvement over the monolingual baseline. The MT based query translation not only works for long queries, but is also effective for the short Web queries.
Genetic Barcodes for Improved Environmental Tracking of an Anthrax Simulant

ABSTRACT The development of realistic risk models that predict the dissemination, dispersion and persistence of potential biothreat agents have utilized nonpathogenic surrogate organisms such as Bacillus atrophaeus subsp. globigii or commercial products such as Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. kurstaki. Comparison of results from outdoor tests under different conditions requires the use of genetically identical strains; however, the requirement for isogenic strains limits the ability to compare other desirable properties, such as the behavior in the environment of the same strain prepared using different methods. Finally, current methods do not allow long-term studies of persistence or reaerosolization in test sites where simulants are heavily used or in areas where B. thuringiensis subsp. kurstaki is applied as a biopesticide. To create a set of genetically heterogeneous yet phenotypically indistinguishable strains so that variables intrinsic to simulations (e.g., sample preparation) can be varied and the strains can be tested under otherwise identical conditions, we have developed a strategy of introducing small genetic signatures (“barcodes”) into neutral regions of the genome. The barcodes are stable over 300 generations and do not impact in vitro growth or sporulation. Each barcode contains common and specific tags that allow differentiation of marked strains from wild-type strains and from each other. Each tag is paired with specific real-time PCR assays that facilitate discrimination of barcoded strains from wild-type strains and from each other. These uniquely barcoded strains will be valuable tools for research into the environmental fate of released organisms by providing specific artificial detection signatures.
White matter volume change and its correlation with symptom severity in patients with schizophrenia: a VBM-DARTEL study

The aim of this study was to evaluate the white matter (WM) volume change and its correlation with symptom severity in patients with schizophrenia using voxel-based morphometry. A total of 20 patients with schizophrenia and 20 age-matched healthy controls participated in this study. MR image data were processed using SPM8 software with diffeomorphic anatomical registration through an exponentiated Lie algebra (DARTEL) algorithm. The patients with schizophrenia showed significant decreases (P=0.042) in the WM volumes of the temporal lobe and superior frontal gyrus compared with the healthy controls. The WM volumes of the middle temporal gyrus were negatively correlated with the scores of both the Positive Subscale (Pearson’s &rgr;=−0.68, P=0.001) and the Negative Subscale (&rgr;=−0.71, P=0.0005) in the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. In addition, the scores of the General Psychopathology Subscale were negatively correlated with the WM volumes of the superior frontal gyrus (&rgr;=−0.68, P=0.0009). This study evaluated the WM volume of patients with schizophrenia compared with healthy controls using DARTEI-based voxel-based morphometry and also assessed the correlation of the localized WM volume changes with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. These findings will be useful to understand the neuropathology associated with WM abnormality in schizophrenia.
Seamster: inconspicuous low-distortion texture seam layout

Surface texturing aids the visualization of polygonal meshes by providing additional surface orientation cues and feature annotations. Such texturing is usually implemented via texture mapping, which is easier and more effective when the distortion of the mapping from the surface to the texture map is kept small. We have previously shown that distortion occurs when areas of high surface curvature are flattened into the texture map. By cutting the surface in these areas one can reduce texture map distortion at the expense of additional seam artifacts. This paper describes a faster technique for guiding a texture map seam through high distortion regions, while restricting the seam to regions of low visibility. This results in distortion reducing seams that are less visually distracting and take less time to compute. We have also observed that visibility considerations improve the speed of a recent method that adds cuts to reduce a surface genus.
Should Syntactic N-grams Contain Names of Syntactic Relations?

In this paper, we discuss a specific type of mixed syntactic n-grams: syntactic n-grams with relation names, snr-grams. This type of syntactic n-grams combines lexical elements of the sentence with the syntactic data, but it keeps the properties of traditional n-grams and syntactic n-grams. We discuss two possibilities related to labelling of the relation names for snr-grams: based on dependencies and based on constituencies. Examples of various types of n-grams, sn-grams, and snr-grams are given.
A Capacitive Sensor System for Measuring Laplacian Electromyogram through Cloth: A Pilot Study

A possibility for capacitive sensor system for measuring the surface Laplacian electromyogram (Laplacian EMG) was studied under conditions whereby a thin cloth was inserted between the electrodes and the skin of the subject. The system was designed based on a tri-polar concentric electrode unit and on a principle of the capacitive electrode involving the conductive electrodes, the cloth, and the skin. A pilot sensor and detecting circuit using this design were assembled and evaluated to explore the feasibility of this approach. The experimental results showed that the Laplacian EMG obtained in this way was comparable and synchronized with the surface EMG obtained using traditional bipolar electrodes, although its S/N was reduced. Though there are still a lot of challenges to be addressed to achieve practical performances, it seems promising for use in human-machine interfaces because the proposed approach eliminates discomfort due to conventional electrode-to-skin coupling.
QUALITY-DRIVEN FEATURE IDENTIFICATION AND DOCUMENTATION FROM SOURCE CODE

Software companies develop a large number of software products cater to the needs of customers in different domains. Each product offers a set of features to serve customers in a particular domain. Over the time, the product features (resp. their implementations) should be improved, changed or removed to meet new demands of customers. Identifying source code elements that implements each feature plays a pivot role in such software maintenance tasks. In this article, we present an approach to support effective feature identification and documentation from source code. The novelty of our approach is that we identify each feature implementation based on a semantic-correctness model that can achieve satisfactory results according to well-known evaluation metrics on the subject. We have implemented our approach and conducted evaluation with a large case study. Our evaluation showed that our approach always achieves promising results.
Pressure widgets

Current user interface widgets typically assume that the input device can only provide x-y position and binary button press information. Other inputs such as the continuous pressure data provided by styluses on tablets are rarely used. We explore the design space of using the continuous pressure sensing capabilities of styluses to operate multi-state widgets. We present the results of a controlled experiment that investigates human ability to perform discrete target selection tasks by varying a stylus' pressure, with full or partial visual feedback. The experiment also considers different techniques for confirming selection once the target is acquired. Based on the experimental results, we discuss implications for the design of pressure sensitive widgets. A taxonomy of pressure widgets is presented, along with a set of initial concept sketches of various pressure widget designs.
Reduction in impulse noise-induced permanent threshold shift with intracochlear application of an NADPH oxidase inhibitor.

BACKGROUND Toxic levels of reactive oxygen species are key contributors to the lesion of dead outer hair cells (OHCs) seen in the cochlea after noise exposure. The current study follows previous work in which paraquat was used to demonstrate that NADPH oxidase is active in the cochlea and can contribute to cochlear reactive oxygen species formation and hair cell loss. PURPOSE The current study was undertaken to test whether pharmacological blockade of NADPH oxidase in the cochlea would lead to reduced noise-induced hearing loss and OHC death. STUDY SAMPLE A total of 18 chinchillas (36 ears) were assessed in the study. INTERVENTION AEBSF (4-[2-aminoethyl]benzenesulfonyl fluoride), an inhibitor of NADPH oxidase activation, was dissolved in distilled water and delivered into the cochlea via diffusion across the round window membrane. The contralateral ears received distilled water as a vehicle control. Following treatment, chinchillas were exposed to one of two noises: a 4 kHz octave band noise at 106 dB SPL for 6 hr or an impulse noise that consisted of 75 pairs of 155 dB pSPL impulses. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS Pre- and post-noise exposure, thresholds of the auditory brainstem response at 2-8 kHz were measured. Postmortem OHC counts were conducted at the conclusion of the study. Two- and three-factor ANOVAs were used for statistical analysis of the OHC losses and ABR threshold shifts induced by the noise exposures. RESULTS Permanent threshold shift from the impulse noise was reduced in the ears treated with the NADPH oxidase inhibitor, but no differences were found in the groups exposed to the continuous noise. OHC losses were not statistically different between the treated and untreated ears for either noise exposure. CONCLUSIONS The results suggest that NADPH oxidase-mediated superoxide has a role in cochlear damage from impulse noise, and pharmacologic inhibition of NADPH oxidase can reduce cochlear susceptibility to noise damage. The lack of protection from the longer-duration continuous noise can be attributed to a number of possibilities related to dose level and delivery schedule.
Inferring the goal of an approaching agent: A human-robot study

The ability to infer intentions and predict actions enables coordinating of one's own actions with those of another human and allows smooth and intuitive interaction. The aim to achieve equally effective human-robot interactions is a crucial aspect of current robotic studies. Thus, we assume that studying human-human interaction provides valuable insights allowing to implement mutual intention recognition and action prediction in robotic systems. A common scenario of interaction, be it in everyday life or in an industrial setting, is that two or more agents share the same workspace and perform tasks without interference. If humans are involved, the robots should act sufficiently predictable to enable the human to attribute goals and predict motion trajectories. In the present work, we first analyzed how well a human recognizes the goal of another person entering the room, and whether this ability is deteriorated by concealing gaze direction of the other person. In a second setup, the same experiment was repeated by replacing the approaching person with a wheeled robot. On average, the distance at which subjects predicted the goal of the approaching agent was approx. 4 m and depended on subject and goal position, but not on the type of agent. However, goal attribution showed a considerable proportion of errors for the robot (19%), much less for a human with hidden gaze direction (6%), and almost none for a human with visible gaze (1%). Thus, our subjects apparently decided on the goal of the approaching agent without taking into account the reliability of directional cues, thus resulting in more errors. In a human-robot setting, such wrong predictions about robotic behavior may easily lead to dangerous situations. For smooth and safe interaction, it is therefore important to ameliorate the predictability of robotic actions.
SAR Sea-Ice Image Analysis Based on Iterative Region Growing Using Semantics

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has been intensively used for sea-ice monitoring in polar regions. A computer-assisted analysis of SAR sea-ice imagery is extremely difficult due to numerous imaging parameters and environmental factors. This paper presents a system which, with some limited information provided, is able to perform an automated segmentation and classification for the SAR sea-ice imagery. In the system, both the segmentation and classification processes are based on a Markov random-field theory and are formulated in a joint manner under the Bayesian framework. Solutions to the formulation are obtained by a region-growing technique which keeps refining the segmentation and producing semantic class labels at the same time in an iterative manner. The algorithm is a general-segmentation approach named iterative region growing using semantics, which, in this paper, is dedicated to the problem of classifying the operational SAR sea-ice imagery provided by the Canadian Ice Service (CIS). The classified image results have been validated by the CIS personnel, and the resulting classifications are quite successful using the same algorithm applied to diverse data sets.