Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Anterior Mediastinal Lesion Segmentation Based on Two-Stage 3D ResUNet With Attention Gates and Lung Segmentation

Objectives Anterior mediastinal disease is a common disease in the chest. Computed tomography (CT), as an important imaging technology, is widely used in the diagnosis of mediastinal diseases. Doctors find it difficult to distinguish lesions in CT images because of image artifact, intensity inhomogeneity, and their similarity with other tissues. Direct segmentation of lesions can provide doctors a method to better subtract the features of the lesions, thereby improving the accuracy of diagnosis. Method As the trend of image processing technology, deep learning is more accurate in image segmentation than traditional methods. We employ a two-stage 3D ResUNet network combined with lung segmentation to segment CT images. Given that the mediastinum is between the two lungs, the original image is clipped through the lung mask to remove some noises that may affect the segmentation of the lesion. To capture the feature of the lesions, we design a two-stage network structure. In the first stage, the features of the lesion are learned from the low-resolution downsampled image, and the segmentation results under a rough scale are obtained. The results are concatenated with the original image and encoded into the second stage to capture more accurate segmentation information from the image. In addition, attention gates are introduced in the upsampling of the network, and these gates can focus on the lesion and play a role in filtering the features. The proposed method has achieved good results in the segmentation of the anterior mediastinal. Results The proposed method was verified on 230 patients, and the anterior mediastinal lesions were well segmented. The average Dice coefficient reached 87.73%. Compared with the model without lung segmentation, the model with lung segmentation greatly improved the accuracy of lesion segmentation by approximately 9%. The addition of attention gates slightly improved the segmentation accuracy. Conclusion The proposed automatic segmentation method has achieved good results in clinical data. In clinical application, automatic segmentation of lesions can assist doctors in the diagnosis of diseases and may facilitate the automated diagnosis of illnesses in the future.
Basolateral Amygdala Serotonin 2C Receptor Regulates Emotional Disorder-Related Symptoms Induced by Chronic Methamphetamine Administration

Globally, methamphetamine (MA) is the second most abused drug, with psychotic symptoms being one of the most common adverse effects. Emotional disorders induced by MA abuse have been widely reported both in human and animal models; however, the mechanisms underlying such disorders have not yet been fully elucidated. In this study, a chronic MA administration mouse model was utilized to elucidate the serotonergic pathway involved in MA-induced emotional disorders. After 4 weeks of MA administration, the animals exhibited significantly increased depressive and anxious symptoms. Molecular and morphological evidence showed that chronic MA administration reduced the expression of the 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) rate-limiting enzyme, tryptophan hydroxylase 2, in the dorsal raphe and the concentrations of 5-HT and its metabolite 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) nuclei. Alterations in both 5-HT and 5-HT receptor levels occurred simultaneously in BLA; quantitative polymerase chain reaction, western blotting, and fluorescence analysis revealed that the expression of the 5-HT2C receptor (5-HT2CR) increased. Neuropharmacology and virus-mediated silencing strategies confirmed that targeting 5-HT2CR reversed the depressive and anxious behaviors induced by chronic MA administration. In the BLA, 5-HT2CR-positive cells co-localized with GABAergic interneurons. The inactivation of 5-HT2CR ameliorated impaired GABAergic inhibition and decreased BLA activation. Thus, herein, for the first time, we report that the abnormal regulation of 5-HT2CR is involved in the manifestation of emotional disorder-like symptoms induced by chronic MA use. Our study suggests that 5-HT2CR in the BLA is a promising clinical target for the treatment of MA-induced emotional disorders.
High-Performance All-Solid-State Lithium–Sulfur Batteries Enabled by Slurry-Coated Li6PS5Cl/S/C Composite Electrodes

Among many lithium secondary batteries, lithium–sulfur batteries stand out because of their high theoretical specific energy, low cost, non-toxicity and the fact that they cause no environmental pollution. However, due to poor electronic and ionic conductivity, shuttle effect, lithium dendrites and other defects, it remains a big challenge to achieve large-scale application of lithium-sulfur batteries. Here we report an all-solid-state lithium–sulfur battery based on Li-argyrodite Li6PS5Cl solid-state electrolytes through a slurry-coating method. Li6PS5Cl with a high ionic conductivity of 1.3 × 10–3 S cm−1 at room temperature is used as the solid electrolyte and the ion conductive additive in the electrode. The sulfur-based composite cathode is fabricated through a slurry-coating process by dispersing sulfur, Li6PS5Cl, ethyl cellulose, and carbon black in 1,3-dioxolane (DOL). This method can disperse the Li6PS5Cl around sulfur particles well, and the solvent does not react with any component of composite cathodes during preparation. The battery delivers a high discharge capacity of 962 mA h g−1 at room temperature for the first cycle at 80 mA g−1. While the Coulombic eﬃciency is approximately 99.5% during 100 cycles. This work provides a new insight into the combination method between the sulfide-type SSEs and sulfur cathodes, which is critical to the electrochemical performance of all-solid-state lithium-sulfur batteries.
Precise Evaluation of the Cochlear Duct Length by Flat-panel Volume Computed Tomography (fpVCT)—Implication of Secondary Reconstructions

Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text Hypothesis: Flat-panel volume computed tomography (fpVCT) and secondary reconstruction allow for more accurate measurements of two-turn length (2TL), cochlear duct length (CDL), and angular length (AL). Background: Cochlear geometry is a controversially debated topic. In the meantime, there are many different studies partly reporting highly divergent values. Our aim is to discuss the differences and to propose a radiological possibility to improve cochlear measurements using 3D-curved multiplanar reconstruction and fpVCT. Methods: Performing different image modalities and settings, we tried to find a clinically usable option that allows for a high degree of accuracy. Therefore, we tested them against reference values of high-definition micro-computed tomography. Results: Comparison of 99 μm slice thickness secondary reconstruction of fpVCT and reference showed no significant differences for 2TL and CDL (p ≥ 0.05). Accordingly, ICC (intraclass correlation) values were excellent (ICC ≥ 0.75; lower limit of confidence interval [CI] ≥ 0.75; Cronbach's alpha [α] ≥ 0.9). Evaluating AL, there was a significant difference (difference: −17.27°; p = 0.002). The lower limit of the CI of the ICC was unacceptable (ICC = 0.944; lower limit of CI = 0.248; α = 0.990). Regarding the Bland-Altman plots, there were no clinically unacceptable errors, but a systematic underestimation of AL. Conclusion: Secondary reconstruction is a suitable tool for producing reliable data that allow the accurate measurement of 2TL and CDL. The option of generating these reconstructions from raw data limits the need for higher radiation doses. Nevertheless, there is an underestimation of AL using secondary reconstructions.
Hearing Outcomes With a Novel Total Ossicular Replacement Prosthesis

Introduction: A total ossicular replacement prosthesis (TORP) is used to reconstruct the ossicular chain in the absence of the stapes suprastructure. The Wildcat prosthesis is a novel TORP that eliminates the need for a separate footplate shoe prosthesis and aims to improve ease-of-use and stability. This study evaluates hearing outcomes using the Wildcat prosthesis. Study Design: Case series with chart review. Setting: Tertiary neurotology referral center. Methods: Retrospective chart review of 64 patients undergoing ossicular chain reconstruction using the Wildcat TORP. Hearing outcomes after surgery were assessed with air conduction pure-tone average, bone conduction pure-tone average, air-bone gap (ABG), speech recognition threshold , and word recognition score as primary outcome measures. The stability of hearing outcomes was evaluated on subsequent long-term follow-up. Results: At mean short-term follow-up of 4.4 ± 2.7 months, ABG improved from 31.0 ± 13.0 dB preoperatively to 22.5 ± 10.0 dB (p < 0.001) with 51.6% achieving ABG less than 20 dB. No significant difference in any primary outcome measures was found when analyzing outcomes by initial versus revision surgery, use of cartilage graft, or type of mastoidectomy. The only exception was a smaller reduction in ABG of 4.2 dB for patients with canal wall down mastoidectomy compared with a 13.7 dB ABG closure in patients with canal wall up mastoidectomy (p = 0.039). Conclusion: Total ossicular chain reconstruction using the Wildcat demonstrates versatility in challenging cases to provide hearing outcomes that are comparable to published data using TORPs.
Tautomers and electronic states of jet-cooled adenine investigated by double resonance spectroscopy

We present resonant two-photon ionization (R2PI) and IR-UV double resonance spectra of the nucleobase adenine seeded in a supersonic jet. We show that there are two tautomers of adenine which absorb in the wavelength range 35 400 to 36 700 cm−1. The IR spectra, measured in the range 3200 to 3700 cm−1via hole burning at 36 105 (35 824) cm−1, show bands at 3452 (3437), 3508 (3507/3514) and 3569 (3550) cm−1, which we assign to the symmetric NH2, N–H and antisymmetric NH2 stretching vibrations of the 9H-(7H-) tautomers of adenine by comparison with ab initio based normal mode calculations. The IR spectrum taken via a much weaker band at 35 497 cm−1 agrees completely with the 9H spectrum analysed at 36 105 cm−1 so that an earlier hypothesis (N. J. Kim, G. Jeong, Y. S. Kim, J. Sung and S. K. Kim, J. Chem. Phys., 2000, 113, 10 051, ) of an nπ* transition contributing to the red part of the spectrum is very probable. It is shown that the conventional IR absorption spectrum of adenine in the gas phase is a superposition of the IR spectra of the 9H- and 7H-tautomers and possibly other tautomers. Despite the short lifetime of electronically excited adenine we were able to perform two-color R2PI to obtain the ionization threshold of the 9H tautomer (69 400 ± 50 cm−1 = 8.606 ± 0.006 eV).
Fluoreszenz in situ Hybridisierung an dreidimensional erhaltenen Interphasekernen

Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit war es, eine Methode zu entwickeln und zu etablieren, mit der es moglich ist, Interphasezellkerne dreidimensional zu erhalten und chromosomale Strukturen mittels Fluoreszenz in situ Hybridisierung (FISH) zu farben. Aus unterschiedlichen methodischen Ansatzen entstanden zwei Verfahren. Eines, welches als ML-(multilayer)-FISH bezeichnet wurde und mit welchem Fluoreszenz in situ Hybridisierung an Zellkernen solider Gewebe durchgefuhrt werden kann. Die zweite Methode, welche unter dem Namen suspension-FISH (SFISH) publiziert wurde, ist fur die FISH-Farbung aller in Suspension zu bringender Zellen geeignet. Die Methode konnte fur eine grose Anzahl verschiedenen Zelltypen etabliert werden.
Traceable thickness determination of organic nanolayers by X‐ray reflectometry

While several methods are available for layer thickness determination in the nanometer range, very few of them are suited for absolute measurements that can be traced to the SI units. Layer thickness determination from the oscillations that are observed in X‐ray reflectometry for metallic layers or oxides is well established, but the low density of most organic materials results in low contrast and thus weak oscillations. However, by using synchrotron radiation instead of X‐ray tubes, any photon energy can be selected, also in the range below 2 keV, to enhance the contrast significantly. The organic layers systems investigated here are Irganox 1010 and Fmoc‐pentafluoro‐L‐phenylalanine layers with nominal thicknesses between 20 and 100 nm, deposited on silicon wafers with a nominal 20 nm SiO2 layer. The measurements were performed at a photon energy of 1841 eV close to the Si K‐absorption edge. Pronounced oscillations with different periodicities were observed for all investigated systems. After determination of the critical angle, the measured reflectance is divided by the Fresnel reflectance. A Fourier transform of the remaining signal results in the power spectral density. The peaks in the spectra correspond to the thicknesses of individual layers or groups of layers. These organic bilayer systems can be clearly distinguished from monolayers and, with some knowledge on the sample structure, the individual layer thicknesses are obtained with low uncertainties. This enables the development of reference materials with certified thickness of organic layers. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Protein conjugated carboxylated gold@reduced graphene oxide for aflatoxin B1 detection

A sensitive, reproducible, stable and label-free immunosensor has been prepared via simultaneous reduction of graphene oxide and gold(III) salt using an eco-friendly and non-toxic reducing agent sodium citrate resulting in uniformly distributed gold nanoparticles on reduced graphene oxide (rGO) sheets. The in situ grown gold@carboxylated reduced graphene oxide (Au@rGO) surface has been used for bioconjugation with monoclonal antibodies of aflatoxin B1 using EDC-NHS chemistry. The in situ growth of AuNPs (gold nanoparticles) onto the rGO sheet results in improved electrocatalytic activity and loading of the antibodies due to the enhanced surface area. The monodispersion of the Au nanoparticles on the rGO sheets yields heterogeneous electron transfer (2.85 × 10−4 cm s−1) resulting in improved biosensor efficacy compared to that based on the rGO electrode. This immunosensor is sensitive to detect as low as 0.1 ng mL−1 concentration of aflatoxin compared to the reported ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) standard method. The Au@rGO based immunosensor exhibits high sensitivity (182.4 μA (ng mL−1)−1 cm−2) in a wide linear detection range of 0.1–12 ng mL−1. Results of the studies related to this immunosensor reveal that the Au@rGO nanocomposite is a suitable platform for the development of a compact biosensing device for food toxin monitoring.
化学的解析と分子モデリングによるコエンザイムQ10の γ-シクロデキストリン包接体の構造に関する研究

The stability, dispersibility and oral bioavailability of coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) are known to be improved upon complexing CoQ10 with -cyclodextrin (-CD). However, the details of the three-dimensional structure of the -CD/CoQ10 complex are not well understood. Therefore, the molecular composition and three-dimensional structure of the complex were investigated using chemical analyses and molecular modeling. The molecular ratio of -CD and CoQ10 in the complex was investigated by NMR as well as by HPLC to determine the -CD/CoQ10 ratio of 2.5. DSC analysis of the -CD/CoQ10 complex indicated formation of the inclusion complex. Three different complex models (-CDx2+CoQ10; -CDx3+CoQ10; -CDx5+CoQ10x2) that correspond to the derived -CD/CoQ10 ratio were also constructed and then molecular mechanics and dynamics calculations were carried out to provide several possible complex structures. Based on the complex structures thus obtained, structural and energetic features of the complexes were examined.
Dielectric parameters relevant to microwave dielectric heating

Microwave dielectric heating is rapidly becoming an established procedure in synthetic chemistry. This review summarises the basic theory underlying microwave dielectric heating and collates the dielectric data for a wide range of organic solvents which are commmonly used in microwave syntheses. The loss tangents of the solvents, which may be related to the ability of the solvent to absorb energy in a microwave cavity, depend on the relaxation times of the molecules. These relaxation times depend critically on the nature of the functional groups and the volume of the molecule. Functional groups capable of hydrogenbonding have a particularly strong influence on the relaxation times. The relaxation times of solvents decrease as the temperature of the solvent is increased. Loss tangent data at different microwave frequencies are also presented and discussed.
Methanolysis of Carica papaya Seed Oil for Production of Biodiesel

The future of fossil fuel sources of energy has necessitated the need to search for renewable alternatives. Thus, Carica papaya seed oil (CPSO) was employed as feedstock for the production of biodiesel by methanolysis. The seed was obtained locally, dried, and extracted with n-hexane. The CPSO was analyzed for specific gravity, viscosity, iodine value, and saponification value, among others using standard methods. The oil was transesterified by two-stage catalysis with oil to methanol mole ratio of 1 : 9. The biodiesel produced was subjected to standard fuel tests. The seed has an oil yield of 31.2% which is commercially viable. The kinematic viscosity of the oil at 313 K was 27.4 mm2s−1 while that of Carica papaya oil methylester (CPOME) was reduced to 3.57 mm2s−1 and the specific gravity was 0.84 comparable with other seed-oil biodiesels and number 2 diesel. Other oil properties were compared favourably with seed oils already documented for biodiesel synthesis. CPOME’s cloud and pour points were 275 K and 274 K, respectively, and relatively higher than other biodiesels and number 2 diesel. CPOME exhibits moderate corrosion of copper strip. The methanolysis improved the fuel properties of the CPOME similar to other biodiesels. CPSO therefore exhibits a potential for biodiesel production.
Capturing and querying fine-grained provenance of preprocessing pipelines in data science

Data processing pipelines that are designed to clean, transform and alter data in preparation for learning predictive models, have an impact on those models' accuracy and performance, as well on other properties, such as model fairness. It is therefore important to provide developers with the means to gain an in-depth understanding of how the pipeline steps affect the data, from the raw input to training sets ready to be used for learning. While other efforts track creation and changes of pipelines of relational operators, in this work we analyze the typical operations of data preparation within a machine learning process, and provide infrastructure for generating very granular provenance records from it, at the level of individual elements within a dataset. Our contributions include: (i) the formal definition of a core set of preprocessing operators, and the definition of provenance patterns for each of them, and (ii) a prototype implementation of an application-level provenance capture library that works alongside Python. We report on provenance processing and storage overhead and scalability experiments, carried out over both real ML benchmark pipelines and over TCP-DI, and show how the resulting provenance can be used to answer a suite of provenance benchmark queries that underpin some of the developers' debugging questions, as expressed on the Data Science Stack Exchange.
Effects of plant growth regulators on in vitro propagation of Cymbidium

Cymbidium faberi Rolfe is one of the oldest cultivated orchids in China, which is often sold as a precious potted specimen because of its beautiful and fragrant flowers in eastern Asia. However, the propagation of C. faberi is greatly restricted by the low seed germination rate due to immature embryo and no endosperm under natural conditions. In this study, the effects of plant growth regulators on in vitro propagation of C. faberi were investigated to establish in vitro propagation protocol. The results demonstrated that seeds began to form into white spots on 2.0 mg/L N6-benzyladenine (BA) + 1.5 mg/L α-naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA) and the highest number was on 2.0 mg/L BA + 2.0 mg/L NAA. And 1/2 Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium + 0.5 mg/L NAA was the optimal medium for protocorm-like bodies (PLB) turning green. In the subculture of PLB, 1/2 MS supplemented with NAA was more effective, its optimal concentration for growth and multiplication of PLB was 2.0 and 1.0 mg/L, respectively. In adventitious shoots induction, the optimal medium was 1/2 MS + 1.0 mg/L thidiazuron (TDZ) + 0.5 mg/L NAA whose induction rate was up to 56.8%. Additionally, 1/2 MS supplemented with 0.5 mg/L indole-3butyric acid (IBA) was the best culture medium for rooting. These results may provide available technique for cultivar breeding and large-scale propagation of C. faberi.
TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH

In this master’s thesis, we propose Direct Sparse Mapping with Loop Closure (LDSM), a direct SLAM system with global mapping, loop closure detection, and global pose graph optimization as an extension of Direct Sparse Mapping (DSM) [1] by introducing loop closure detection and pose graph optimization. The point selection procedure is modified to introduce repeatable feature points. Loop closures are detected with a feature-based bag of words (BoW) technique. We verify detected loop closures and estimate relative pose constraints by minimizing geometric errors. A global pose graph with relative pose constraints from loop closures and covisibility graph is optimized. The global map is then updated based on optimization results, enabling local tracking and mapping in the active window to utilize global corrections. An appearance-based verification step is added to the covisible window selection criteria to ensure reliability of covisibility graph in non-convex environments. We limit the search range of covisible window selection strategy to partly remedy the inefficiency of unbounded nature of the global map in long trajectories. In our evaluations on public datasets, we demonstrate that the modified point selection strategy preserves the accuracy and pose graph optimization improves the performance significantly by reducing accumulated drifts in trajectories with large loops. LDSM achieves accurate results comparable to the state-of-the-art direct and indirect monocular methods.
The Boko Haram Conflict and Food Insecurity: Does Resilience Capacity Matter?

Drawing from a robust identification strategy and household panel data collected before and after households were exposed to the Boko Haram conflict, this paper addresses the question of whether resilience capacity is an important factor in mitigating household risks of food insecurity due to conflict shocks. Using the non-parametric difference-in-differences framework, the paper identifies that the shocks negatively affect food security, but resilience capacity attenuates the effects. While resilience actively protects households from the adverse stressors, the paper observes that the pillars of resilience were also significantly decimated by the conflict, thereby weakening households’ long-run capacity to withstand future shocks. The results are prescriptively unchanged after adjusting the operating spatial distance of exposure or switching the measure of conflict exposure to conflict intensity represented as battle fatalities. These estimates align well with the various hypotheses of the resilience approach to sustainable development. It is, therefore, recommended that conflict intervention programs incorporate rebuilding resilience, which might help restore households’ ability to overcome future shocks.