Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sonographic Features of Benign Thyroid Nodules

Objective. To prospectively determine the sonographic findings of nodular hyperplasia of the thyroid, to compare these with reported findings associated with malignancy, and to assess interobserver reliability. Methods. Seventy thyroid nodules were scanned, and then biopsies of the nodules were performed under sonographic guidance with fine‐needle cytologic analysis; in all cases images were reviewed by 2 experienced radiologists without knowledge of clinical outcome. Findings reported associated with malignancy were specifically assessed. Interobserver agreement between the expert and secondary readers for each finding was calculated by the κ or weighted κ statistic and the Fisher exact test of independence. Results. There were 68 benign and 2 malignant nodules in a population of 63 female and 7 male patients. The mean benign nodule size was 2.9 cm; 60% were solid; 54% were hypoechoic; 59% were microlobulated or macrolobulated; 47% had central vascularity; 24% contained calcifications; and 82% were elliptical in shape. There was very good interobserver reliability for the presence of calcium (κ = 0.91) and good agreement for the presence and location of vascularity (κ = 0.75) and the amount of cystic components (κ = 0.62; all P < .01). Conclusions. Sixty‐nine percent of benign nodules had at least 1 finding reported previously as associated with malignancy. The interobserver reliability of the sonographic findings was good to very good for 3 of the 5 findings assessed.
A 15-V, 40-kHz class-D gate driver IC with 62% energy recycling rate

This paper presents a new type of gate driver IC that can significantly reduce the gate switching loss by leveraging high-speed and low-power operation of custom integrated circuits. The gate driver itself works as a mini bidirectional buck converter, which charges and discharges the gate terminal of a power device (e.g. IGBT) by feeding a chain of short pulses whose widths gradually increase or decrease into an LC filter. A set of circuit techniques to minimize the energy consumption in generating these pulses at the required frequency of up to 50-MHz and duty-cycle resolution of 5% is presented. A prototype IC fabricated in a 0.25-μm HV CMOS demonstrates 27.8-mW power consumption or equivalently 62% energy recycling while switching a 120-nC IGBT at 40-kHz and 15-V.
DEVELOPMENT OF A SIMPLE, ROBUST AND REAL-TIME IMAGE PROCESSING ALGORITHM FOR TRACKING AND ANALYZING CELLS AND DROPLETS INSIDE MICROCHANNELS

A simple and robust image processing program was built to track and analyze morphology of cells/droplets inside microchannels. The program was built using LabView software, which is accessible to most laboratories, to enable easy access to non-experts. Our program relies on calling the different powerful image processing tools built in LabView, such as local adaptive threshold (LAT) for object detection and tracking, whenever they are needed by the user. Moreover, our program uses the inherit control capabilities of LabView for real-time control of flow parameters (e.g. pressure and flowrate) based on information extracted by image processing.
Production of yellow-green fluorescent pigment by Pseudomonas fluorescens

A medium was prepared from brewery waste yeast with and without mineral salts to study growth and yellow-green fluorescent pigment production (YGFP) by Pseudomonas fluorescens. The King's medium used for detection of siderophore production were expressively weaker inductors of YGFP formation when compared to FYE medium. Although FYE and CYE could be used for growth of P. fluorescens, only FYE was an attractive medium for detection of YGFP strain producers.
Alternatives to voxels for image representation in iterative reconstruction algorithms

Spherically symmetric volume elements are alternatives to the more conventional voxels for the construction of volume images in the computer. The image representation, and the calculation of projections of it, are essential components of iterative algorithms for image reconstruction from projection data. A two-parameter family of spherical volume elements is described that allows control of the smoothness properties of the represented image, whereas conventional voxels are discontinuous. The rotational symmetry of the spherical elements leads to efficient calculation of projections of the represented image, as required in iterative reconstruction algorithms. For volume elements whose shape is ellipsoidal (rather than spherical) it is shown that efficient calculation of the projections is also possible by means of an image space transformation.
Analysis of underwater acoustic and electric noise in the port of Gothenburg

In this paper we study some of the underwater background noise properties in the port of Gothenburg. The analysis includes both electric and acoustic noise. We investigate the dynamic range of the absolute noise power as well as its temporal variations. Furthermore, we study the spectral variations of the low-frequency noise power. Stationarity and normality tests are applied in order to quantify the amount of transients and temporal variations in the data. We find that the properties of the acoustic and electric fields are very different. The temporal variability is larger for the acoustic data. The local shipping noise is the most important acoustic source, while the wind is less important. Shipping also give rise to the highest recorded levels in the electric field noise, but due to the short detection ranges, compared with acoustics, only ships passing nearby the sensors will contribute to the background.
On the time and the number of claims when the surplus drops below a certain level

In this paper, we define to be the first time that the surplus process drops below a certain level from the initial surplus for a risk model with interest. A generalized Gerber–Shiu-type function is then defined based on the first time and the number of claims that the surplus drops below from , and other -related random variables. Explicit expressions for this function, when , and when under exponential claims, are obtained. We then obtain the moments and probability function (with numerical examples) of the number of claims until . We also investigate a joint transform function of the two-sided first exit time and the number of claims until then, and obtain the probability of the surplus hitting an upper level from the initial surplus without having dropped below a lower level with Erlang claims.
Interior Surface Plasma Immersion Ion Implantation of a Small Cylindrical Bore Using a Noncoaxial Parallel Auxiliary Electrode

Plasma immersion ion implantation can be used to process the interior surfaces of oddly shape structures, such as a cylindrical bore. A small cylindrical bore with a grounded noncoaxial parallel auxiliary electrode is modeled using a 2-D particle-in-cell model. Simulation shows that, after the ions initially present in the bore begin to be exhausted, an ion density pulse is formed, which sweeps the interior surface of the bore. Moreover, a corresponding ion dose peak sweeps along the surface from the point nearest to the auxiliary electrode to a point further than the auxiliary electrode if the negative pulse is maintained at the bore. A nonuniform ion implantation on the inner surface of the bore is caused by the deviation of the noncoaxial parallel auxiliary electrode from the axis of the bore after all the ions in the bore have been exhausted.
Cockayne syndrome: Unusual neuropathological findings and review of the literature

Two siblings with Cockayne syndrome (CS) are described and the literature on the subject is briefly reviewed. Of particular interest were the unusual neuropathological findings in 1 of the patients. These included microcephaly, white matter atrophy with patchy loss of myelinated fibers, calcifications of the basal ganglia, occasional ferrugination of cerebral and cerebellar neurons, and severe cerebellar degeneration. Findings not previously reported in CS were proliferation of extremely bizarre astrocytes, neurofibrillary tangles, and pigmentation of the globus pallidus. We conclude that brain involvement in CS is a result of primary degeneration in the central nervous system rather than being secondary to angiopathy or normal pressure hydrocephalus, as previously suggested.
A ribonuclease of group A streptococci.

SUMMARY: A ribonuclease found in preparations of streptolysin S, unlike the strepto-coccal nucleases so far described, does not degrade DNA. It is only produced in significant amounts when RNA is present in the medium and is therefore an inducible enzyme. Unlike the previously described streptococcal enzymes it does not require divalent cations for activity. The molecular weight of the enzyme is about 14,000, its isoelectric point is 9.5 and it is highly heat-stable.
RECOMBINANT‐INBRED STRAINS AN AID TO FINDING IDENTITY, LINKAGE, AND FUNCTION OF HISTOCOMPATIBILITY AND OTHER GENES

The development of seven recombinant-inbred (RI) strains is described. The results of allele typing the seven strains at eight histocompatibility (H) loci are presented, and the use of such information in identifying H loci, searching for H gene function, and assisting linkage testing procedures is described.
Trends in Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Homosexually Active Men in King County, Washington, 1980–1990

Trends in sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in homosexually active men were analyzed in King County, Washington, from 1980 to 1990. New-problem visits to the public STD clinic declined from 4142 in 1980 to 509 in 1988 (-88%), then rose to 937 (+84%) in 1989, and 527 in the first half of 1990. Cases of gonorrhea in homosexually active men treated at the STD clinic plus private sector cases of rectal gonorrhea in men fell from 955 in 1982 to 33 in 1988 (-97%), then rose to 102 in 1989 (+209%). Similar trends were observed for several other STDs. Of 109 Neisseria gonorrhoeae isolates from homosexual or bisexual men in 1988 to 1989, 46 (42%) belonged to 3 auxotype/serovar classes; one of these was a penicillinase-producing strain (PPNG), the first appearance of PPNG in substantial numbers in homosexually active men in King County. The remaining 58% of isolates were distributed among 20 strains. These data imply substantial reductions in the frequency of high-risk sexual behavior in homosexually active men in King County over most of the 1980s, followed by an increased frequency of unsafe behavior after 1988. Maintenance of sexual safety may require increased educational effort and societal support as time passes.
NMR structure of the Bordetella bronchiseptica protein NP_888769.1 establishes a new phage‐related protein family PF13554

The solution structure of the hypothetical phage‐related protein NP_888769. 1 from the Gram‐negative bacterium Bordetella bronchoseptica contains a well‐structured core comprising a five‐stranded, antiparallel β‐sheet packed on one side against two α‐helices and a short β‐hairpin with three flexibly disordered loops extending from the central β‐sheet. A homology search with the software DALI identified two Protein Data Bank deposits with Z‐scores > 8, where both of these proteins have less than 8% sequence identity relative to NP_888769. 1, and one has been functionally annotated as a lambda phage tail terminator protein. A sequence‐homology analysis then confirmed that NP_888769. 1 represents the first three‐dimensional structural representative of a new protein family that was previously predicted by the Joint Center for Structural Genomics, which includes so far about 20 prophage proteins encoded in bacterial genomes.
Control loop interaction in parallel connected high frequency grid converters

Recent progress in power electronic converters has increased the number of distributed energy sources to the grid. These converters act as a source of harmonics which connected with other loads affect the stability of power grid. Parallel operation of converters is common in power grid depends on the power sharing needs and current rating of power semiconductor devices. Though, these connections improves power handling capability of grid, the dynamic interaction between converters can affect stability of system. This paper addresses the stability issues in parallel connected, high frequency voltage controlled converters with an output LC filter. Studies on interactions between control loops verifies that, harmonic instability introduced by parallel converters can't be stabilized by traditional PI controllers in real power control loop. A new damping algorithm is introduced to suppress these harmonic oscillations caused by the interaction of controllers in grid connected converters.
High-fidelity graphics using unconventional distributed rendering approaches

High-fidelity rendering requires a substantial amount of computational resources to accurately simulate lighting in virtual environments. While desktop computing, with the aid of modern graphics hardware, has shown promise in delivering realistic rendering at interactive rates, real-time rendering of moderately complex scenes is still unachievable on the majority of desktop machines and the vast plethora of mobile computing devices that have recently become commonplace. This work provides a wide range of computing devices with high-fidelity rendering capabilities via oft-unused distributed computing paradigms. It speeds up the rendering process on formerly capable devices and provides full functionality to incapable devices. Novel scheduling and rendering algorithms have been designed to best take advantage of the characteristics of these systems and demonstrate the efficacy of such distributed methods. The first is a novel system that provides multiple clients with parallel resources for rendering a single task, and adapts in real-time to the number of concurrent requests. The second is a distributed algorithm for the remote asynchronous computation of the indirect diffuse component, which is merged with locally-computed direct lighting for a full global illumination solution. The third is a method for precomputing indirect lighting information for dynamically-generated multi-user environments by using the aggregated resources of the clients themselves. The fourth is a novel peer-to-peer system for improving the rendering performance in multi-user environments through the sharing of computation results, propagated via a mechanism based on epidemiology. The results demonstrate that the boundaries of the distributed computing typically used for computer graphics can be significantly and successfully expanded by adapting alternative distributed methods.
An Incremental Optimal Weight Learning Machine of Single-Layer Neural Networks

An optimal weight learning machine with growth of hidden nodes and incremental learning (OWLM-GHNIL) is given by adding random hidden nodes to single hidden layer feedforward networks (SLFNs) one by one or group by group. During the growth of the networks, input weights and output weights are updated incrementally, which can implement conventional optimal weight learning machine (OWLM) efficiently. The simulation results and statistical tests also demonstrate that the OWLM-GHNIL has better generalization performance than other incremental type algorithms.
Increased epidermal tumors and increased skin wound healing in transgenic mice overexpressing the catalytic subunit of telomerase, mTERT, in basal keratinocytes

Telomerase transgenics are an important tool to assess the role of telomerase in cancer, as well as to evaluate the potential use of telomerase for gene therapy of age‐associated diseases. Here, we have targeted the expression of the catalytic component of mouse telomerase, mTERT, to basal keratinocytes using the bovine keratin 5 promoter. These telomerase‐transgenic mice are viable and show histologically normal stratified epithelia with high levels of telomerase activity and normal telomere length. Interestingly, the epidermis of these mice is highly responsive to the mitogenic effects of phorbol esters, and it is more susceptible than that of wild‐type littermates to the development skin tumors upon chemical carcinogenesis. The epidermis of telomerase‐transgenic mice also shows an increased wound‐healing rate compared with wild‐type littermates. These results suggest that, contrary to the general assumption, telomerase actively promotes proliferation in cells that have sufficiently long telomeres and unravel potential risks of gene therapy for age‐associated diseases based on telomerase upregulation.
TWO-STAGE FAULT LOCATION

A two-stage procedure for locating VLSI faults is presented. The approach utilizes dynamic fault dictionaries, test set partitioning, and reduced fault lists to achieve a reduction in size and complexity over classic static fault dictionaries. An industrial implementation is reported in which faults were injected and diagnosed in a VLSI chip and the perjiormunce of two-stage fault location was measured.
Identification of a domain of the herpes simplex virus trans-activator Vmw65 required for protein-DNA complex formation through the use of protein A fusion proteins

In order to identify structural domains of the herpes simplex virus trans-activator Vmw65 required for protein-DNA complex formation, subfragments of Vmw65 were expressed in Escherichia coli as fusion polypeptides with protein A of Staphylococcus aureus, and the purified hybrids were used in a band shift assay. The results indicate that a region near the amino terminus of Vmw65 between amino acids 141 and 185 is necessary for complex formation.
Sporadic inclusion body myositis: Pathogenic considerations

Sporadic inclusion body myositis is the commonest acquired disease of skeletal muscles after 50 years of age, and as such it has commanded a great deal of attention of investigators over the past 25 years. As a result, a large amount of information has accumulated concerning its clinical profile, myopathology, and immunopathology. In the myopathology and immunopathology, there is general agreement that the characteristic features could be divided into a degenerative and an inflammatory group. However, there has been controversy about the possible role of these changes in the pathogenesis of muscle fiber damage. In particular, there is no agreement whether a cause‐and‐effect relationship exists between these two groups of changes, and if so, which is the primary one. In this brief overview, we examine the validity of the various controversial observations and critically review the justification for the two major hypotheses for the primary role of inflammation versus degeneration. Ann Neurol 2009;65:7–11
Learning from Instance-level Relationships

A large proportion of research work on supervised learning has been focused on learning from positive and negative examples. In some situations, for example in some bioinformatics applications, there exists some information about the relationships between different objects (data instances) that can be used in learning, but has been under-utilized. In this project we mainly study two such kinds of instance-level relationships: must-links and cannot-links. A must-link specifies that two objects are both in the target concept or are both not in it, and a cannot-link specifies that exactly one of two objects is in the target concept. We assume that the relationships are provided by some active and passive oracles, the former accepts queries about the relationship between two objects and about the target concept, and the latter returns the relationships between random object pairs. We develop a generic algorithm for learning a target concept completely using linear number of oracle calls, time and space. Based on this generic method, we consider special situations in which we are allowed to use only active oracles, only passive oracles, and both. We also consider some practical issues, including the different cost and reward of different oracle calls, learning in a disjoint or non-disjoint multi-concept environment, and oracles that may be unable to answer some queries or may return incorrect relationships.
Risky weight control among university students.

OBJECTIVE The objectives of the current study were to investigate risky weight control measures (vomiting or pills) among university students in Lebanon and to assess their relation to demographic, scholastic, and health risk behavioral characteristics. METHOD The study used a cross-sectional design. A proportionate random sample of 2,013 students was selected from public and private universities in Greater Beirut. Each participant completed a self-administered anonymous questionnaire. RESULTS Among participating students, 123 (6.1%) reported practicing risky weight control measures. Multivariate analysis indicated that younger females, cigarette smokers, engaged/married students, and those with a higher body mass index (BMI) were at increased odds of performing risky weight control measures. CONCLUSION Health awareness measures need to be proposed and, if possible, implemented to better define the motives and methods of weight reduction among Lebanese youth.
Estimation automatique de la distribution des sens de termes

In order to promote the usage of the natural language in information systems, it seems interesting to obtain lexical data allowing a satisfactory lexical disambiguation. The distribution of word senses is one such important type of data, but still is uneasy to obtain. We are currently developing a system for analysing thematics aspects of texts and undertaking word sense disambiguation based on conceptual vectors which aim at handling a set of ideas associated to any textual segment (words, locutions, sentences, texts, . . . ). The WSD is conducted through mutual-information sharing among vectors, however when the semantic context is weak, it becomes necessary to consider the usage frequency. We try to obtain from the Web the sense distribution of lexical items. After presenting the conceptual vector model along with the semantic analysis principles and showed the motivations behind having such sense distribution, we introduce the notion of lexical signature. Signatures allow to build an estimator of these distributions, which is formalized. We indicate some encouraging first results. MOTS-CLES : distribution des sens, vecteurs conceptuels, signature lexicale, Google
A preservation method that allows recovery of intact RNA from tissues dissected by laser capture microdissection.

We report a novel method for preparing samples for laser capture microdissection. The procedure described here permits extraction of intact RNA while preserving morphology, thus being suitable both for identification of specific cells and for analysis of their gene expression. The method is applicable to both mouse embryos and human tumors and may improve the preparation of cDNA libraries from specific cell types without interfering with histological diagnosis.
A 3D parametric tongue model for animated speech

We present a tongue model for use in computer-animated speech. The model is capable of representing tongue shapes during the production of English vowels and consonants as well as general motion of the tongue. Geometrically, the model is composed of a B-spline surface with 60 control points and an 8r13 grid of bi-cubic patches. We also present a parameterization of the model that requires only six parameters for use during speech production. This parameterization can also be used to define the deformation of other tongue models. Copyright # 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.