Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Early Prediction Model of Patient Hospitalization From the Pediatric Emergency Department

Using a continuously updating prediction model of patient disposition, this study suggests a new design for ED workflow that could shorten waiting times. BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Emergency departments (EDs) in the United States are overcrowded and nearing a breaking point. Alongside ever-increasing demand, one of the leading causes of ED overcrowding is the boarding of hospitalized patients in the ED as they await bed placement. We sought to develop a model for early prediction of hospitalizations, thus enabling an earlier start for the placement process and shorter boarding times. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective cohort analysis of all visits to the Boston Children’s Hospital ED from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015. We used 50% of the data for model derivation and the remaining 50% for validation. We built the predictive model by using a mixed method approach, running a logistic regression model on results generated by a naive Bayes classifier. We performed sensitivity analyses to evaluate the impact of the model on overall resource utilization. RESULTS: Our analysis comprised 59 033 patient visits, of which 11 975 were hospitalized (cases) and 47 058 were discharged (controls). Using data available within the first 30 minutes from presentation, our model identified 73.4% of the hospitalizations with 90% specificity and 35.4% of hospitalizations with 99.5% specificity (area under the curve = 0.91). Applying this model in a real-time setting could potentially save the ED 5917 hours per year or 30 minutes per hospitalization. CONCLUSIONS: This approach can accurately predict patient hospitalization early in the ED encounter by using data commonly available in most electronic medical records. Such early identification can be used to advance patient placement processes and shorten ED boarding times.
Performance Aspects of Object-based Storage Services on Single Board Computers

When an object-based storage service is demanded and the cost for purchase and operation of servers, workstations or personal computers is a challenge, single board computers may be an option to build an inexpensive system. This paper describes the lessons learned from deploying different private cloud storage services, which implement the functionality and API of the Amazon Simple Storage Service on a single board computer, the development of a lightweight tool to investigate the performance and an analysis of the archived measurement data. The objective of the performance evaluation is to get an impression, if it is possible and useful to deploy object-based storage services on single board computers.
Cadmium Effects on Enzymes of Ammonia Assimilation in Excised Etiolated Maize Leaf Segments during Greening: A Mechanistic Approach

Supply of CdCl2 in the presence of NH4NO3 to excised etiolated maize leaf segments during greening decreased the glutamine synthetase and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide reduced (NADH) dependent glutamate synthase activities, while the ferredoxin (Fd) dependent glutamate synthase and glutamate dehydrogenase activities were increased. Inclusion of inorganic nitrogen, metabolites and the inhibitor influenced the effect of Cd on glutamine synthetase activity. The % inhibition of activity caused by Cd was higher with NO3- but lower with NH4+. Glutamine, 2-oxoglutarate, glutathione and sucrose decreased the % inhibition by Cd with the more prominent effect with glutamine and sucrose. Methionine sulfoximine exerted a more prominent effect for + Cd enzyme at lower concentration. The results indicate the involvement of reciprocal effects of Cd on glutamine synthetase and glutamate dehydrogenase activities and also on NADH- and Fd-glutamate synthase activities. For the inhibitory effect of Cd on glutamine synthetase activity, NH4+, glutamine, 2-oxoglutarate, glutathione and sucrose exerted a protective effect with the sucrose being most effective.
Semantic Parallelism in Classical Chinese Poems

We present a quantitative study on semantic parallelism in the Complete Tang Poems . Chinese poems consist of a se- quence of couplets, which contain an identical number of characters. In a semantically “parallel” couplet, the first line in the couplet should correspond in meaning to the sec- ond. In this paper, we evaluate the extent to which a well-known semantic taxonomy (Wang, 2003) covers the phenomenon of parallelism. We then analyze which categories in this taxonomy are most frequently observed in parallel couplets.
Healthcare transition in persons with intellectual disabilities: General issues, the Maastricht model, and Prader–Willi syndrome

In current healthcare, transitional healthcare is a very important and timely issue. Thanks to the major advances made in medical care and technology, many children with childhood onset diseases and/or genetic syndromes survive to adulthood. These children are at risk of not being provided with adequate healthcare as they reach adulthood. Healthcare transition is an essential part of healthcare provision, referred to as the shift from one type of healthcare to another. In Maastricht, we developed a transition/out clinic led by a medical doctor specialized in persons with intellectual disability (ID), together with a clinical geneticist. We aim to coordinate healthcare issues based on guidelines if available. Also questions concerning living, daily activities, relations, sexuality, and sterilization can be discussed. The aging process of persons with ID has been a topic of interest in recent years. Little is known about the aging process of people with specific syndromes, except for persons with Down syndrome. We present some data of a recent questionnaire study in persons with Prader–Willi syndrome. In only 50% in persons with a clinical diagnosis genetic test results could be reported. The majority of persons were obese. Diabetes mellitus, hypertension, skin problems, sleep apnea, and hormonal problems like osteoporosis and hypothyroidism were common. Psychiatric problems were frequent, especially in the persons with uniparental disomy. Osteoporosis and sleep apnoea seem to be underestimated. Further longitudinal research is necessary for a better understanding of the aging process in PWS. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Mutations in the activation region of herpes simplex virus regulatory protein ICP27 can be trans dominant

The herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) immediate-early protein ICP27 is an essential regulatory protein which is required for virus replication. Transfection experiments have demonstrated that ICP27 along with the HSV-1 transactivators ICP4 and ICP0 can positively regulate the expression of some late HSV-1 target plasmids and can negatively regulate the expression of some immediate-early and early target plasmids. We previously showed that mutants defective in the activation of a late target plasmid mapped to the carboxy-terminal half of the protein, whereas mutants defective in the repression of an early target plasmid mapped within the C-terminal 78 amino acids of ICP27 (M. A. Hardwicke, P. J. Vaughan, R. E. Sekulovich, R. O'Conner, and R. M. Sandri-Goldin, J. Virol. 63:4590-4602, 1989). In this study, we cotransfected ICP27 activator and repressor mutants along with wild-type ICP27 plasmid to determine whether these mutants could interfere with the wild-type activities. Mutants which were defective only in the activation function were dominant to the wild-type protein and inhibited the activation of the late target plasmid pVP5-CAT, whereas mutants defective in the repressor function did not inhibit either the activation of pVP5-CAT or the repression of the early target plasmid pTK-CAT. Furthermore, cell lines which stably carried three different activator mutants were impaired in their ability to support the growth of wild-type HSV-1 strain KOS, resulting in virus yields 5- to 40-fold lower than in control cells. The defect in virus replication appeared to stem from a decrease in the expression of HSV-1 late gene products during infection as measured by steady-state mRNA levels and by immunoprecipitation analysis of specific polypeptides. These results indicate that ICP27 activator mutations specifically interfere with the activation function of the protein both in transfection and during infection. Moreover, these results suggest that the repressor region may be important for binding of the polypeptide, since mutations in this region did not interfere with the activities of wild-type ICP27 and therefore presumably could not compete for binding.
On the Solution of Revenue- and Network-Constrained Day-Ahead Market Clearing Under Marginal Pricing—Part I: An Exact Bilevel Programming Approach

The first of this two-paper series addresses a practical day-ahead auction model, where generation revenue constraints are explicitly incorporated in the problem formulation, as routinely done in several national electricity markets across Europe. The revenue-constrained market-clearing procedure includes the effect of the transmission network, inter-temporal constraints associated with generation scheduling, demand-side bidding, and marginal pricing. This auction design is an instance of price-based market clearing which features two major complicating factors. First, locational marginal prices become decision variables of the optimization process. In addition, producer revenues are formulated as bilinear and highly nonconvex products of power outputs and market-clearing prices. The resulting problem is formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear bilevel program with bilinear terms for which available solution techniques rely on heuristics, approximations, or modeling simplifications. This paper presents a novel and exact methodology whereby the original problem is recast as an equivalent single-level mixed-integer linear program. As a consequence, finite convergence to optimality is guaranteed and the use of standard commercial software is allowed. The proposed transformation is based on duality theory of linear programming, Karush-Kuhn-Tucker optimality conditions, and integer algebra results. In the second part of this two-paper series, numerical results from several case studies illustrate the effective performance of the proposed solution approach.
Diferent clinical and laboratory evolutions in ataxia-telangiectasia syndrome: report of four cases

Abstract We report four patients with ataxia-telangiectasia syndrome that presented varied neurologic evolution. Three patients initially presented neurologic alterations of slow progression, evolving to late immunocompromised conditions. The fourth patient presented, from symptom onset, immune and neurologic debilitation, that were both severe and of fast progression. The chronological sequence of the most commonly observed immunocompromised conditions were in our patients, in ascending order, IgA deficiency, IgG2 deficiency and the neutrophil phagocytosis stage and common variable immunodeficiency. The first two reports are of sisters in whom the diagnosis was done between the ages of three and six years, having ocular apraxia, cerebellar ataxia and telangiectasia. Slow progression of neurologic debilitation was observed, without presentation of intermittent infections. The patients began presenting accentuated immunocompromised conditions at the ages of 14 and 17 years, dying at the ages of 16 and 20 years, respectively, due to severe infections that were resistant to treatment. The diagnosis of the third case was established when the patient was two years old, presenting ataxia and telangiectasia. Syndrome progression was slow, presenting at the age of eight years more accentuated neurologic disorders and IgA deficiency. The fourth case presented significant neurologic compromise at the age of five, simultaneous to IgA and IgG2 deficiency, and repeating pneumonias and sinusitis. At this time, intravenous gammaglobulin reposition was done. The neurologic and immune disorders progressed rapidly, and at the age of eight presented the inability to walk. At this time inversion of the CD4/CD8 ration was verified through laboratory tests.
The role of type I interferons in non‐viral infections

Summary: For a long time, the family of type I interferons (IFN‐α/β) has received little attention outside the fields of virology and tumor immunology. In recent years, IFN‐α/β regained the interest of immunologists, due to the phenotypic and functional characterization of IFN‐α/β‐producing cells, the definition of novel immunomodulatory functions and signaling pathways of IFN‐α/β, and the observation that IFN‐α/β not only exerts antiviral effects but is also relevant for the pathogenesis or control of certain bacterial and protozoan infections. This review summarizes the current knowledge on the production and function of IFN‐α/β during non‐viral infections in vitro and in vivo.
Calibration of X-ray absorption in our Galaxy

Prediction of the soft X-ray absorption along lines of sight through our Galaxy is crucial for understanding the spectra of extragalactic sources, but requires a good estimate of the foreground column density of photoelectric absorbing species. Assuming uniform elemental abundances this reduces to having a good estimate of the total hydrogen column density, N(Htot)=N(HI)+2N(H2). The atomic component, N(HI), is reliably provided using the mapped 21 cm radio emission but estimating the molecular hydrogen column density, N(H2), expected for any particular direction, is difficult. The X-ray afterglows of GRBs are ideal sources to probe X-ray absorption in our Galaxy because they are extragalactic, numerous, bright, have simple spectra and occur randomly across the entire sky. We describe an empirical method, utilizing 493 afterglows detected by the Swift XRT, to determine N(Htot) through the Milky Way which provides an improved estimate of the X-ray absorption in our Galaxy and thereby leads to more reliable measurements of the intrinsic X-ray absorption and, potentially, other spectral parameters, for extragalactic X-ray sources. We derive a simple function, dependent on the product of the atomic hydrogen column density, N(HI), and dust extinction, E(B-V), which describes the variation of the molecular hydrogen column density, N(H2), of our Galaxy, over the sky. Using the resulting N(Htot) we show that the dust-to-hydrogen ratio is correlated with the carbon monoxide emission and use this ratio to estimate the fraction of material which forms interstellar dust grains. Our resulting recipe represents a significant revision in Galactic absorption compared to previous standard methods, particularly at low Galactic latitudes.
Detection of Steady-State Visual Evoked Potentials based on the Multisignal Classification Algorithm

In this work we evaluated a method for detection of steady-state visual evoked potentials in one-second EEG recordings, based on the multisignal classification (MUSIC) algorithm and support vector machine classification. Three experiments were carried out to test the performance of the method and its applicability for BCI related tasks. The first experiment showed the advantages of using pseudo-spectral features derived from MUSIC over DFT-based detection, using synthetic data within a range of SNR values. A second experiment tested classification of pseudo-spectral features in a dual checkerboard stimuli condition. Finally, a third experiment with ten subjects included an additional no-stimulus condition to be detected. Results showed a faster and more accurate performance for the two- and three-class problems than previously reported DFT-based approaches.
Pathway‐analysis of published genome‐wide association studies of lung cancer: A potential role for the CYP4F3 locus

The fatty acids (FAs) metabolism is suggested to play a pivotal role in the development of lung cancer, and we explored that by conducting a pathway‐based analysis. We performed a meta‐analysis of published datasets of six genome wide association studies (GWASs) from the Transdisciplinary Research in Cancer of the Lung (TRICL) consortium, which included 12 160 cases with lung cancer and 16 838 cancer‐free controls. A total of 30 722 single‐nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from 317 genes relevant to FA metabolic pathways were identified. An additional dataset from the Harvard Lung Cancer Study with 984 cases and 970 healthy controls was also added to the final meta‐analysis. In the initial meta‐analysis, 26 of 28 SNPs that passed false discovery rate multiple tests were mapped to the CYP4F3 gene. Among the 26 top ranked hits was a proxy SNP, CYP4F3 rs4646904 (P = 8.65 × 10−6, FDR = 0.018), which is suggested to change splicing pattern/efficiency and to be associated with gene expression levels. However, after adding data of rs4646904 from the Harvard GWAS, the significance in the combined analysis was reduced to P = 3.52 × 10−3 [odds ratio (OR) = 1.07, 95% confidence interval (95%CI) = 1.03–1.12]. Interestingly, the small Harvard dataset also pointed to the same direction of the association in subgroups of smokers (OR = 1.07) and contributed to a combined OR of 1.13 (95% CI = 1.06–1.20, P = 6.70 × 10−5). The results suggest that a potentially functional SNP in CYP4F3 (rs4646904) may contribute to the etiology of lung cancer, especially in smokers. Additional mechanistic studies are warranted to unravel the potential biological significance of the finding.
Efficient Constant Modulus Based Carrier Frequency Offset Estimation for CO-OFDM Systems

This paper proposes a blind carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation method for coherent optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (CO-OFDM) systems, using constant modulus signaling. The proposed scheme is based on a robust cost-function, which deviates from the common assumption that the channel frequency response slowly varies either in time or frequency domain. The proposed method adopts a cost-function similar to the Godard's method for blind channel equalization. Using Monte Carlo simulations, the proposed method is shown to offer a superior performance compared to prominent existing methods, in a practical optical link scenario. Also, we show that the proposed cost-function can be approximated and expressed in a closed-form in such a way that the CFO estimate is obtained using only three trial values.
Cascade fuzzy variable structure control of induction motor based on the approach of fuzzy modelling of Ben-Ghalia

In this article, a control design concept using fuzzy sets for an induction motor is presented. The aim of the proposed modelling approach is to provide a fuzzy set-based representation of the cascade sliding mode control of an induction motor fed by PWM voltage source inverter, which operates in a fixed reference frame. For this purpose, a new decoupled and reduced model is first proposed. Then, a set of simple surfaces and associated control laws are synthesised. A piecewise smooth control function with a threshold is adopted. However, the magnitude of this function depends closely on the upper bound of uncertainties, which include parameter variations and external disturbances. This bound is difficult to obtain prior to motor operation. To solve this problem, a fuzzy modelling approach is presented to improve the design and tuning of a fuzzy logic controller using variable structure control theory. The robust fuzzy control design is made feasible without resorting to model simplification or imposing restrictive conditions on the system uncertainty. The fuzzy controller is designed in order to improve the control performances and to reduce the control energy and the chattering phenomenon. Simulation results reveal some very interesting features and show that the proposed fuzzy sliding mode controller could be considered as an alternative to the conventional sliding mode control of induction motors.
Microstrip patch antennas on thick substrates

It is demonstrated that a thick patch with an annular gap matching capacitor is an optimum element from a practical design point of view, giving wide bandwidth operation, although at the expense of poor cross polarization. Feed inductance and radiation pattern effects are examined and a new patch equivalent circuit is developed that gives significantly improved results over the existing lumped element model. <<ETX>>
Immigration and the Transformation of Europe: The effectiveness of governments’ attempts to control unwanted migration

Public policy making on asylum takes place in an environment of intense public scrutiny, strong institutional constraints and international collective action problems. By assessing the relative importance of key pull factors of international migration, this article explains why, even when controlling for their differences in size, some states receive a much larger number of asylum seekers than others. The analysis of 20 OECD countries for the period 1985-1999 further shows that some of the most high profile public policy measures—safe third country provisions, dispersal and voucher schemes—aimed, at least in part, at deterring unwanted migration and at addressing the highly unequal distribution of asylum burdens have often been ineffective. This is because the key determinants of an asylum seeker’s choice of host country are historical, economic and reputational factors that largely lie beyond the reach of asylum policy makers. Finally, the chapter argues that the effectiveness of unilateral policy measures will be further undermined by multilateral attempts to harmonise restrictive policies and that current efforts such as those by the European Union will consolidate, rather than effectively address, existing disparities in the distribution of asylum burdens.
Image Denoising with a Low-Rank Preprocessing before BM3D

In this paper, we attempted to improve the denoising performance of BM3D. As one of the most efficient denoising algorithms, BM3D is the fastest method while achieving remarkable denoising performance. However, since it employs fixed and separable 3D transformation, it is not adaptive enough to represent structural image areas which results in poor performance on this areas. In addition, it is greatly influenced by noise levels. To overcome these problems, in this paper, we introduced an adaptive low-rank preprocessing and backtracking procedure before BM3D. The experimental results prove that the proposed method has a great improvement on BM3D. The proposed algorithm not only produces better denoising results than BM3D in most cases, but also adapts to a variety of noise levels.
Centralized and distributed robust state fusion estimation

The study of robust state estimation for uncertain multisensor system is an important field of multisensor fusion estimation theory. Based on robust filtering theory, this paper develops polytopic models and centralized robust fusion estimation of uncertain multisensor system by linear matrix inequality (LMI) method, and proves the exact transforming condition, by which robust centralized estimate can be transformed to the distributed fusion method with the same fusion estimate performance. Finally, an example is given to illustrate the estimation approach for the uncertain multisensor system.
Early intervention in acute renal failure: Evidence of inadequate intravenous fluid treatment in UK hospitals

EDITOR—Bennett-Jones emphasises the importance of prompt administration of intravenous fluids for early intervention in acute renal failure.1 Determining the appropriate rate of fluid administration must include an estimate of the degree of intravascular volume depletion at the start of treatment, with most aggressive volume expansion targeted at patients with the greatest deficits. To determine whether this simple principle is followed in practice, we audited intravenous fluid prescriptions …