Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Interleaved narrow‐band PRESS sequence with adiabatic spatial‐spectral refocusing pulses for 1H MRSI at 7T

Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (1H MRSI) is a useful technique for measuring metabolite levels in vivo, with Choline (Cho), Creatine (Cre), and N‐Acetyl‐Aspartate (NAA) being the most prominent MRS‐detectable brain biochemicals. 1H MRSI at very high fields, such as 7T, offers the advantages of higher SNR and improved spectral resolution. However, major technical challenges associated with high‐field systems, such as increased B1 and B0 inhomogeneity as well as chemical shift localization (CSL) error, degrade the performance of conventional 1H MRSI sequences. To address these problems, we have developed a Position Resolved Spectroscopy (PRESS) sequence with adiabatic spatial‐spectral (SPSP) refocusing pulses, to acquire multiple narrow spectral bands in an interleaved fashion. The adiabatic SPSP pulses provide magnetization profiles that are largely invariant over the 40% B1 variation measured across the brain at 7T. Additionally, there is negligible CSL error since the transmit frequency is separately adjusted for each spectral band. in vivo 1H MRSI data were obtained from the brain of a normal volunteer using a standard PRESS sequence and the interleaved narrow‐band PRESS sequence with adiabatic refocusing pulses. In comparison with conventional PRESS, this new approach generated high‐quality spectra from an appreciably larger region of interest and achieved higher overall SNR. Magn Reson Med 59:973–979, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Crystal Structure of a Novel Dimeric Form of NS5A Domain I Protein from Hepatitis C Virus

ABSTRACT A new protein expression vector design utilizing an N-terminal six-histidine tag and tobacco etch virus protease cleavage site upstream of the hepatitis C virus NS5A sequence has resulted in a more straightforward purification method and improved yields of purified NS5A domain I protein. High-resolution diffracting crystals of NS5A domain I (amino acids 33 to 202) [NS5A(33-202)] were obtained by using detergent additive crystallization screens, leading to the structure of a homodimer which is organized differently from that published previously (T. L. Tellinghuisen, J. Marcotrigiano, and C. M. Rice, Nature 435:374-379, 2005) yet is consistent with a membrane association model for NS5A. The monomer-monomer interface of NS5A(33-202) features an extensive buried surface area involving the most-highly conserved face of each monomer. The two alternate structural forms of domain I now available may be indicative of the multiple roles emerging for NS5A in viral RNA replication and viral particle assembly.
Family Functioning and Communication in Spouses of Patients with Parkinsonism

Background Patients with parkinsonism exhibit motor symptoms, cognitive impairment, and neuropsychiatric changes, and these symptoms increase caregiver burden. Family dynamics can be influenced by the presence of comorbidities, which is especially important in diseases causing caregiver burden. We investigated the effects of spousal parkinsonism on family functioning and communication. Methods Couples without parkinsonism, who visited hospital-based family practices, were recruited by 28 family physicians from 22 hospitals between April 2009 and June 2011; patients with parkinsonism and their spouses were recruited from a single institution. The participants completed questionnaires on demographic characteristics, lifestyle factors, family functioning (the Korean version of the Family Adaptation and Cohesion Evaluation Scale [FACES] III), and family communication (the Family Communication Scale of the FACES-IV). We compared family functioning and communication between spouses of the patients with and without parkinsonism. Results The mean family adaptability and cohesion scores of the spouses of the patients with parkinsonism were 23.09±6.48 and 32.40±8.43, respectively, whereas those of the control group were 23.84±5.88 and 34.89±7.59, respectively. Family functioning and family communication were significantly different between the spouses of individuals with and without parkinsonism. After adjusting for age, sex, income, and cardiovascular disease in the logistic regression analysis, family functioning was found to significantly deteriorate in the spouses of patients with parkinsonism but not the control group. Family communication decreased significantly in spouses of patients with parkinsonism. Conclusion Family functioning and family communication significantly deteriorated in spouses of patients with parkinsonism.
Object Storage on CRAQ: High-Throughput Chain Replication for Read-Mostly Workloads

Massive storage systems typically replicate and partition data over many potentially-faulty components to provide both reliability and scalability. Yet many commerciallydeployed systems, especially those designed for interactive use by customers, sacrifice stronger consistency properties in the desire for greater availability and higher throughput. This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of CRAQ, a distributed object-storage system that challenges this inflexible tradeoff. Our basic approach, an improvement on Chain Replication, maintains strong consistency while greatly improving read throughput. By distributing load across all object replicas, CRAQ scales linearly with chain size without increasing consistency coordination. At the same time, it exposes noncommitted operations for weaker consistency guarantees when this suffices for some applications, which is especially useful under periods of high system churn. This paper explores additional design and implementation considerations for geo-replicated CRAQ storage across multiple datacenters to provide locality-optimized operations. We also discuss multi-object atomic updates and multicast optimizations for large-object updates.
Post-Deposition Annealing in Nitrous Oxide Ambient of RF-Magnetron Sputtered Y2O3 Film on Silicon Substrate

In this work, effects of post-deposition annealing (PDA) time (15, 30, and 45 min) in nitrous oxide ambient on Y2O3 film deposited on Si substrate using RF-magnetron sputtering have been systematically studied. Y2O3/Si system subjected to PDA time at 15 and 30 min has demonstrated a negative flatband voltage shift but a change to positive flatband voltage shift was observed when PDA time was prolonged to 45 min. The shift from negative to positive flatband voltage with enhancement of PDA time could be related to the accumulation of nitrogen in the Y2O3 gate that acted as negatively trap charge. It was perceived that sample subjected to PDA time at 30 min has demonstrated the best leakage current density-breakdown voltage (J-VB) characteristic. A correlation between the J-VB characteristics with effective oxide charge, slow trap density, interface trap density, and total interface trap density has been discussed.
The association between endometriosis and survival outcomes of ovarian cancer: Evidence-based on a meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND Although it is generally recognized that endometriosis was significantly associated with higher risk of ovarian cancer, the association between endometriosis and the cancer survival outcomes is still not clear. This meta-analysis aims to pool previous studies and to make an update estimate. METHODS Relevant studies were searched among PubMed, Medline and Embase. Hazard ratio (HR) and the corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) of progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) were pooled with generic inverse variance method. The proportion of the low stage and grade tumors (stage: Stage I and II among total; grade: Grade I among total) in endometriosis-associated ovarian cancer (EAOC) group and in non-EAOC group were assessed with odd ratio and the corresponding 95% CI. RESULTS Endometriosis-associated ovarian cancer were significantly associated with higher rate of OS in crude analysis (HR: 0.74, 95% CI: 0.63-0.87, P = 0.0003). However, in most of the studies included, the OS benefit was not significant under multivariable survival analysis. EAOC patients generally had early-stage, low histological grade tumors and younger age compared with non-EAOC patients. No difference was observed in PFS between the two groups. CONCLUSION The OS benefits associated with endometriosis might be closely related to higher prevalence of patients diagnosed at early-stage and greater chance of receiving optimal cytoreductive surgery or chemotherapy. Endometriosis should not be viewed as an independent prognostic factor of ovarian cancer.
Semi-Supervised Random Forests

Random Forests (RFs) have become commonplace in many computer vision applications. Their popularity is mainly driven by their high computational efficiency during both training and evaluation while still being able to achieve state-of-the-art accuracy. This work extends the usage of Random Forests to Semi-Supervised Learning (SSL) problems. We show that traditional decision trees are optimizing multi-class margin maximizing loss functions. From this intuition, we develop a novel multi-class margin definition for the unlabeled data, and an iterative deterministic annealing-style training algorithm maximizing both the multi-class margin of labeled and unlabeled samples. In particular, this allows us to use the predicted labels of the unlabeled data as additional optimization variables. Furthermore, we propose a control mechanism based on the out-of-bag error, which prevents the algorithm from degradation if the unlabeled data is not useful for the task. Our experiments demonstrate state-of-the-art semi-supervised learning performance in typical machine learning problems and constant improvement using unlabeled data for the Caltech-101 object categorization task.
An Exploratory Study of the Motives Engaged in the Dissemination of Social Word-of-Mouth via Mobile Device

Based on the observed difference in the timing of publishing word-of-mouth, this study attempts to clarify whether there are differences in motivation between word-of-mouth publishes from a computer and from a mobile device. In this study, we use exploratory factor analysis and find the motivation to disseminate word-of-mouth by mobile devices are divided to five dimensions: personal, social, consumption-based, perceptual and monetary conditions. This research further concludes that, social, perceptual and consumption-based conditions are more influential on sWOM dissemination. The findings of this study provide useful implications of the motives to disseminate social word-of-mouth via mobile device and can be further extended to be references and suggestions for the marketing practitioners.
Dynamic reprogramming of chromatin: paradigmatic palimpsests and HES factors

Temporal and spatial control of transcription in development is dictated to a great extent by transcriptional repressors. Some repressor complexes, such as Polycomp-group proteins, induce relatively long-term non-permissive states, whereas others such as hairy/enhancer of split (HES) family repressors are linked to dynamically modulated chromatin states associated with cycling expression of target genes. The mode of action and specificity of repressors involved in mediating this latter form of epigenetic control are unknown. Oscillating expression of HES repressors controlled by signaling pathways such as Notch suggests that the entire ensemble of HES–associated co-repressors and histone modifying complexes readily cycle on and off genes. Dynamic interactions between these factors and chromatin seem to be crucial in maintaining multipotency of progenitor cells, but the significance of such interactions in more differentiated cells is less well understood. We discuss here how genome-wide analyses and real-time gene expression measurements of HES regulated genes can help decipher the detailed mechanisms and biological importance of highly dynamic transcriptional switching mediated by epigenetic changes.
Neither ‘foolish’ nor ‘finished’: identity control among older adults with HIV in rural Malawi

Abstract Prevalence of HIV after age 50 is considerable, especially in southern Africa. Negative social constructions of HIV in older age, and the health consequences of ageing with the virus, mean that having HIV presents a challenge for many people's roles and social memberships, threatening to disrupt their sense of self. Using constructivist grounded theory and qualitative data from rural Malawi, this paper describes how older men and women deal with these identity challenges. Drawing on a symbolic interactionist framework, it uses identity control theory to explore how the study's participants presented their post‐diagnosis behaviours in ways that maintained their most significant pre‐diagnosis identities as ‘adults’, a label they gave to the core identity of being a person who belongs in the social world. Considering the processes through which older people with HIV navigated challenges to their identities in light of the intersectional influences of HIV and age‐related stigma and illness, provides insight into how older people might experience HIV, as well as informing theoretical understandings of identity formation and maintenance in light of chronic and/or stigmatising illness more broadly.
Cancer-Associated Fibroblasts Modify the Response of Prostate Cancer Cells to Androgen and Anti-Androgens in Three-Dimensional Spheroid Culture

Androgen receptor (AR) targeting remains the gold standard treatment for advanced prostate cancer (PCa); however, treatment resistance remains a major clinical problem. To study the therapeutic effects of clinically used anti-androgens we characterized herein a tissue-mimetic three-dimensional (3D) in vitro model whereby PCa cells were cultured alone or with PCa-associated fibroblasts (CAFs). Notably, the ratio of PCa cells to CAFs significantly increased in time in favor of the tumor cells within the spheroids strongly mimicking PCa in vivo. Despite this loss of CAFs, the stromal cells, which were not sensitive to androgen and even stimulated by the anti-androgens, significantly influenced the sensitivity of PCa cells to androgen and to the anti-androgens bicalutamide and enzalutamide. In particular, DuCaP cells lost sensitivity to enzalutamide when co-cultured with CAFs. In LAPC4/CAF and LNCaP/CAF co-culture spheroids the impact of the CAFs was less pronounced. In addition, 3D spheroids exhibited a significant increase in E-cadherin and substantial expression of vimentin in co-culture spheroids, whereas AR levels remained unchanged or even decreased. In LNCaP/CAF spheroids we further found increased Akt signaling that could be inhibited by the phosphatidyl-inositol 3 kinase (PI3K) inhibitor LY294002, thereby overcoming the anti-androgen resistance of the spheroids. Our data show that CAFs influence drug response of PCa cells with varying impact and further suggest this spheroid model is a valuable in vitro drug testing tool.
First-Principles Study of Reaction Process of SiC and HF Molecules in Catalyst-Referred Etching

We have developed a novel abrasive-free planarization method, which we term catalyst-referred etching (CARE). In SiC CARE, Pt is used as a catalyst and HF solution is used as an etchant. CARE produces a crystallographically undamaged and smooth SiC surface. To understand the removal mechanism at the topmost surface of SiC in the CARE process, we performed first-principles reaction path simulations using the Simulation Tool for Atom Technology (STATE) program package. These calculations are based on the density functional theory within the generalized gradient approximation of Perdew et al. The barrier height is evaluated by the climbing image nudged elastic band method. We present simulation results for the initial stages of the etching process. The reaction barrier heights for the adsorption of HF molecules on the first, second, and third Si–C bonds at the edge of the topmost Si-face are 1.8, 1.9, and 1.2 eV, respectively. These barrier heights are reasonably small for a consideration of effect of the Pt catalyst.
Nonlinear Pricing of Information Goods

This paper analyzes optimal pricing for information goods under incomplete information, when both unlimited-usage (fixed-fee) pricing and usage-based pricing are feasible, and administering usage-based pricing may involve transaction costs. It is shown that offering fixed- fee pricing in addition to a non-linear usage-based pricing scheme is always profit-improving in the presence of any non-zero transaction costs, and there may be markets in which a pure fixed-fee is optimal. This implies that the optimal pricing strategy for information goods is almost never fully revealing. Moreover, it is proved that the optimal usage-based pricing schedule is independent of the value of the fixed- fee, a result that simplifies the simultaneous design of pricing schedules considerably, and provides a simple procedure for determining the optimal combination of fixed-fee and non-linear usage-based pricing. The introduction of fixed-fee pricing is shown to increase both consumer surplus and total surplus. The differential effects of setup costs, fixed transaction costs and variable transaction costs on pricing policy are described. These results suggests a number of managerial guidelines for designing pricing schedules. For instance, in nascent information markets, firms may profit from low fixed-fee penetration pricing, but as these markets mature, the optimal pricing mix should expand to include a wider range of usage-based pricing options. The extent of minimum fees, quantity discounts and adoption levels across the different pricing schemes are characterized, strategic pricing responses to changes in market characteristics are described, and the implications of the paper's results for bundling and vertical differentiation of information goods are discussed.
Designing Redundancy toward Building Easily Manageable Wireless Sensor Networks for Humans

The present paper proposes an architecture for collecting sensing data to build robust wireless sensor networks that are easily manageable by humans and evaluates the proposed architecture through simulations. Under the assumption that sensing data is collected from sensor nodes that have exhausted their batteries, we herein assume that the amount of sensing data that humans can analyze at once and that the number of sensor nodes that humans can recover at any given time are small. Furthermore, it is assumed that in an easily manageable network (1) a sensor network is fault-tolerant and can be sustained for a long time, (2) sensing data is obtained in real time, and (3) sensor nodes leave a sensor network dispersively in time. The proposed architecture first requires sensor nodes to leave a sensor network dispersively in time by utilizing innate differences among the sensor nodes in the frequency of sensing and communication and then collects sensing data from the leaving sensor nodes. Simulation results suggest that the proposed architecture with appropriate redundancy contributes to building more robust and easily manageable wireless sensor networks.
Which cannulation (ascending aortic cannulation or peripheral arterial cannulation) is better for acute type A aortic dissection surgery?

A best evidence topic in cardiac surgery was written according to a structured protocol. The question addressed was 'Which cannulation (ascending aortic cannulation or peripheral arterial cannulation) is better for acute type A aortic dissection surgery? ' Altogether 393 papers were found using the reported search, of which 14 represented the best evidence to answer the clinical question. The authors, journal, date and country of publication, patient group studied, study type, relevant outcomes and results of these papers are tabulated. Femoral artery cannulation has the highest rate of mortality, stroke rate and other complications including retrograde cerebral embolization, organ malperfusion and perfusion of the false lumen. Five out of 14 papers were found to be reporting in favour of axillary (or subclavian) artery cannulation over femoral artery cannulation. In a total of 1829 patients evaluated in these studies, 1068 patients demonstrated a significantly lower complication rate with axillary artery cannulation than femoral artery cannulation. Some of the larger studies showed femoral artery cannulation has higher mortality and stroke rates ranging from 6.5% to 40% and 3% to 17%, respectively. Meanwhile, mortality and stroke rates were ranging from 3% to 8.6% and 1.75% to 4%, respectively, in the favour of axillary artery cannulation. A total of seven studies evaluated direct aortic cannulation for the establishment of cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB). They demonstrated mortality and stroke rates from 0% to 15% and 3.8% to 21%, respectively. Central cannulation has promising results with a lower mortality rate but a higher stroke rate. Direct cannulation of the true lumen is a promising method for quick and easy establishment of CPB. Axillary artery cannulation with a side graft, although it takes more time to construct, is proven to be safe and straightforward, with fewer local and systemic complications including lower mortality and neurological complications.
Altered Immunohistochemical Expression of Mast Cell Tryptase and Chymase in the Pathogenesis of Oral Submucous Fibrosis and Malignant Transformation of the Overlying Epithelium

Mast cells (MCs) expressing serine proteases; tryptase and chymase, are associated with fibrosis in various diseases. However, little is known about their involvement in oral submucous fibrosis (OSF). Our goal was to evaluate the role of MC tryptase and chymase in the pathogenesis of OSF and its malignant transformation. Immunohistochemical expression of MC tryptase and chymase was evaluated in 20 cases of OSF, 10 cases of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) and 10 cases of healthy controls. Subepithelial zone of Stage 1 and 2 while deep zone of Stage 3 and 4 OSF demonstrated increased tryptase positive MCs. OSCC revealed a proportionate increase in tryptase and chymase positive MCs irrespective of areas of distribution. An altered balance in the subepithelial and deep distribution of tryptase and chymase positive MCs play an important role in the pathogenesis of OSF and its malignant transformation.
Relationship between tracheotomy and ventilator-associated pneumonia: a case–control study

The aim of the present study was to determine the relationship between tracheotomy and ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP). The study used a retrospective case–control study design based on prospective data. All nontrauma immunocompetent patients, intubated and ventilated for >7 days, were eligible for inclusion in the study. A diagnosis of VAP was based on clinical, radiographical and microbiological criteria. Four matching criteria were used, including duration of mechanical ventilation (MV). The indication and timing of tracheotomy were at the discretion of attending physicians. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to determine risk factors for VAP in cases (patients with tracheotomy) and controls (patients without tracheotomy). In total, 1,402 patients were eligible for inclusion. Surgical tracheotomy was performed in 226 (16%) patients and matching was successful for 177 (78%). The rate of VAP (22 versus 14 VAP episodes·1,000 MV-days−1) was significantly higher in controls than in cases. The rate of VAP after tracheotomy in cases, or after the corresponding day of MV in controls, was also significantly higher in control than in case patients (9.2 versus 4.8 VAP episodes·1,000 MV-days−1). In multivariate analysis, neurological failure (odds ratio (95% confidence interval) 2.7 (1.3–5)), antibiotic treatment (2.1 (1.1–3.2)) and tracheotomy (0.18 (0.1–0.3)) were associated with VAP. In summary, the present study demonstrates that tracheotomy is independently associated with decreased risk for ventilator-associated pneumonia.