Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development and Characterization of Modular Readout Design for Two-Panel Head-and-Neck Dedicated PET System Based on CZT Detectors

Cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) detectors are suitable for various applications due to the good energy resolution and the simple pixilation to achieve high spatial resolution. Our group is developing a two-panel head-and-neck dedicated positron emission tomography system based on CZT detectors. Each panel will consist of 150 CZT crystals (4 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> 4 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> 0.5 cm<sup>3</sup>) covering an area of 20 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> 15 cm<sup>2</sup> in an edge-on configuration to achieve high detector efficiency at 511 keV. In this work, we present the design and development of a full data acquisition (DAQ) chain that enables a low noise and compact readout for each panel. The initial results of the readout circuit were quantified using a 1-kHz square wave test pulse. The pulse amplitude was chosen to generate approximately the same amount of charges as a 511-keV photon would provide in CZT. The best-case full width at half maximum (FWHM) electronic noise at 511 keV was measured to be 0.69% ± 0.16% (3.52 ± 0.81 in keV units after conversion). The FWHM electronic noise at 511 keV for a complete DAQ chain was 4.33% ± 0.30% (22.13 ± 1.53 in keV units).
An Intervention to Overcome Locomotion Difficulties in a Patient with Oculomotor Nerve Palsy: A Case Study

: Introduction: Diplopia due to restricted eye movements makes it difficult to locomote. There are no re ported therapies that overcome the locomotion difficulties of patients with oculomotor nerve palsy after a stroke. We outline a therapy process conducted by an occupational therapist (OT) that combines ptosis therapy and the treatment of impaired eye movements with exploratory activities for locomotion that enabled the patient, a Japanese woman in her 70s, to improve her engagement in daily activities. Methods: The OT therapy consisted of two phases. Phase I: Ptosis and eye movement interventions were performed. Phase II: Interventions supported locomotion that linked visual exploration and the somatosensory system, and the ex perienced locomotion was adapted to the environmental structure. The outcomes for the intervention effects were the degree of ptosis, eye movement and diplopia, gait functions, and a functional independence measure for activities of daily living. Results: The patient's ptosis and eye movement disorder improved, and the difficulty of locomotion due to diplopia was overcome. She was thus able to become independent in all daily activities. Conclusion: Therapy that combines interventions for ptosis and eye movement with exploratory activities supporting locomotion have overcome locomotion difficulties and improved the outcomes of patients with oculomotor nerve palsy. Current interventions may improve locomotion in post-stroke patients with oculomotor nerve palsy. Our findings led us to hypothesize that locomotion difficulties in patients with diplopia due to oculomotor nerve palsy can be overcome by combined therapy for ptosis and eye movements with support for exploratory action in locomotion.
Analysis and Differences of the Neurosurgical Complications During COVID-19 Pandemic

Objectives: The objective of the study was to analyze the complications of neurosurgical operations during the COVID-19 pandemic by comparing them with the complications observed in the pre-pandemic period. Methods: Two groups were formed: (1) Patients who were operated in the 5-month period of the pandemic (March–July 2020) and (2) those who were operated the same operations in the same period 1 year before (March–July 2019). Demographics, characteristics, medical follow-up data, complications, and outcome compared between the groups. Results: Similar demographics were observed between the groups. The number of all neurosurgical cases and neurotrauma cases decreased by 79% and 68% in pandemic period, respectively. The rate of emergency surgeries was significantly higher in pandemic group (p<0.001). The operation time was significantly longer in pandemic group (p=0.014). Total complication rate was significantly higher in pandemic group (p=0.002). Specifically, the rate of pulmonary complications was significantly higher during pandemic period (p<0.001). The infection rate (p<0.001), antibiotic use (p<0.001), and intensive care unit stay (p=0.023) were significantly higher in pandemic group. Conclusion: During pandemic period complication rates increased and a higher risk than expected was encountered. Treatment should be performed by taking the precautions and informing the patients about additional risks.
Magnetic Polymer Colloids for Ultrasensitive Molecular Imaging

Magnetic resonance imaging for in vivo diagnosis has been widely used based on numerous contrast agents ranging from molecular size to nanoparticles. This non-invasive technique has been used for various instantaneous in vivo diagnosis via direct imaging of the body to evaluate the state of different organs including spleen, liver, kidneys, pancreas, blood vessels, all possible tumors of chest and abdomen, inflammatory bowel disease and vessel, malformations of the blood vessels and fetus in the womb, etc. Then the aim of this chapter is not only to report the fundamentals and the basis of magnetic resonance imaging, but also the recent developments and utilization in life sciences. In addition, ultrasensitive molecular imaging through the development of combinatorial thin film gradients containing magnetic nanoparticles is reported and described.
The Global Heat Flow Database: Release 2021

This data publication contains the compilation of global heat-flow data by the International Heat Flow Commission (IHFC; http://www.ihfc-iugg.org/) of the International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth's Interior (IASPEI). The presented data release 2021 contains data generated between 1939 and 2021 and constitutes an updated and extended version of the 2012 IHFC database release (IHFC 2012; later re-published as PANGAEA release: Global Heat Flow Compilation Group, 2013). The 2021 release contains 74,548 heat-flow data from 1,403 publications. 55% of the reported heat-flow values are from the continental domain (n ~ 40,870), while the remaining 45% are located in the oceanic domain (n ~ 33,678). The data are provided in csv and Excel formats. Compared to earlier compilations, which followed the structure defined by Jessop et al. (1976), the new data release was transformed to the recently redefined structure for reporting and storing heat-flow data in the Global Heat Flow Database (Fuchs et al., 2021). Therefore, the notation and structure of the database was adopted, transforming the database field entries defined after Jessop et al. (1976) to the new field structure. Old code notations are not continued and the dataset was cleaned for entries without reporting any heat-flow value. Although successfully transformed, this release marks an intermediate step as the majority of the newly defined database fields have not been filled yet. Filling these fields, checking the existing entries and assessing the quality of each entry are the aim of the upcoming Global Heat Flow Data Assessment Project, for which this data set provides the basis. Consequently, we kindly ask the user to take notice that the current release still suffers similar problems as previously published compilations in terms of data heterogeneity, documentation and quality.
Performance Analysis on Federated Learning with Differential Privacy

—Federated learning (FL), as a manner of distributed machine learning, is capable of signiﬁcantly preserving clients’ private training data from being exposed to external adversaries. Nevertheless, private information can still be divulged from adversaries’ analyzing on the differences of related parameters trained and uploaded by the clients, e.g., weights trained in deep neural networks. In this paper, to effectively prevent the differential attack, we propose a novel framework based on the concept of differential privacy (DP), in which artiﬁcial noises are added to the parameters at the clients side before being uploaded for aggregating, namely, noising before model aggregation FL (NbAFL). First, we prove that the NbAFL can satisfy DP under distinct protection levels by properly adapting the variances of artiﬁcial noises. Then we develop a theoretical convergence bound of the loss function of the trained FL model in the NbAFL. Our developed bound reveals the following three key properties: 1) There is a tradeoff between the convergence performance and privacy protection levels, i.e., a better convergence performance leads to a lower protection level; 2) Increasing the number N of overall clients participating in FL can improve the convergence performance, given a ﬁxed privacy protection level; 3) There is an optimal number of maximum aggregation times in terms of convergence performance for a given protection level. Furthermore, we propose a K -random scheduling strategy, where K ( 1 < K < N ) clients are randomly selected from the N overall clients to participate in each aggregation. We also develop the corresponding convergence bound of the loss function in this case. From our analysis, the K -random scheduling strategy can retain the above three properties. More interestingly, we ﬁnd that there is an optimal K that achieves the best convergence performance at a ﬁxed privacy level. Evaluations demonstrate that our theoretical results are consistent with simulations, thereby facilitating the designs on various privacy-preserving FL algorithms with different tradeoff requirements on convergence performance and privacy levels
The Axial Skeleton of Rinconsaurus caudamirus (Sauropoda: Titanosauria) from the Late Cretaceous of Patagonia, Argentina

Abstract. Titanosaurs were the predominant herbivores during the Late Cretaceous, inhabiting all continents. This clade was especially diverse in South America with some of the largest and smallest sauropod species known to date. Despite its diversity, the evolution of this clade is far from being well-known, although some recent analyses have begun to find some consensus in their results. Rinconsauria (defined as the least inclusive clade containing Rinconsaurus and Muyelensaurus) includes small titanosaurs and is considered as closely related to the lineage of giant titanosaurs, Lognkosauria (defined as the least inclusive clade containing Futalognkosaurus and Mendozasaurus), both being part of the recently named clade Colossosauria. The titanosaur Rinconsaurus caudamirus, from the Bajo de la Carpa Formation (Santonian), Río Negro, Argentina, is represented by several axial and appendicular elements from at least four specimens. This taxon was only briefly described when it was named and most of its originally proposed autapomorphies are now recognized as having a more widespread distribution amongst titanosaurs. Herein we present a detailed osteological description of the axial skeleton and a revised diagnosis for this taxon that firmly establishes its validity. Based on comparisons with other titanosaurs, we found three new possible autapomorphies for the axial skeleton of Rinconsaurus, which added to its original combination of characters, endorsing this taxon as a valid genus. Besides, this revision of Rinconsaurus provides additional osteological data that will contribute to a better resolution of titanosaur phylogeny, contributing at the same time to our understanding of the clade Rinconsauria.
Human amniotic epithelial cells improve kidney repair in ischemia-reperfusion mouse model of acute kidney injury

Background: Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a common clinical disease with complex pathophysiology and very limited therapeutic choices. This prompts the need for novel therapy targeting multiple aspects of this disease. Human amnion epithelial cells (hAECs) are ideal alternative stem cell source for regenerative medicine. Increasing evidence suggests that hAEC-derived exosomes (hAECs-EXO) may act as novel cell–cell communicators. Accordingly, we assessed the therapeutic potential of hAECs in ischemia reperfusion mouse model of AKI and explored the underlying mechanisms.Methods: The hAECs were primary cultured and hAECs-EXO were isolated and characterized. An ischemic renal injury mouse model was established to mimic different severity of the kidney injury. Mouse blood creatinine level was used to assess renal function and kidney specimens were processed to detect cell proliferation, apoptosis and angiogenesis. Immune cells infiltration was analyzed by flow cytometry. hAECs-EXO was used to treat hypoxia-reoxygenation (H/R) injured HK2 cells and mouse bone marrow-derived macrophages to evaluate their protective effect in vitro. Furthermore, hAEC exosomes were subjected to liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry for proteomic profiling. Results: We found that systematically administered hAECs could improve mortality and renal function in IRI mice; decrease the number of apoptotic cells; promote peritubular capillary regeneration and modulate kidney local immune response. However, hAECs showed very low kidney tissue integration. Exosomes isolated from hAECs recapitulated the renal protective effects of their parent cells. In vitro, hAECs-EXO protected HK-2 cells from H/R injury-induced apoptosis and promoted bone marrow-derived macrophage polarization toward M2 phenotype. Proteomic analysis on hAECs-EXO revealed proteins involved in extracellular matrix organization, growth factor signaling pathways, cytokine production and immunomodulation. These findings demonstrated that paracrine of exosomes might be a key mechanism by hAECs mediating kidney functional recovery in AKI.Conclusions: We first reported hAECs could improve mortality and renal repair in mice with ischemia-reperfusion injury. The anti-apoptotic, pro-angiogenetic, and immunomodulatory capabilities of hAECs at least partially, through paracrine pathways. The renoprotective effects of hAECs-EXO might be a promising clinical therapeutic tool, overcoming the weaknesses and risks associated with the use of native stem cells for patients with AKI.
De novo Assembly and Transcriptome Analysis of Polygonatum odoratum (Mill.) Druce : Detection of Potential Genes Involved in Polysaccharide Synthesis

Background: Polygonatum odoratum (Mill.) Druceis a well-known traditional Chinese herb. Polysaccharide is one of the main bioactive components from Polygonatum odoratum, with broad pharmacological effects, including improving immunity, and is used in the treatment of rheumatic heart disease, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. Results: This study identifies potential genes and transcription factors (TFs) that regulate polysaccharide synthesis in Polygonatum odoratum by using RNA sequencing data from leaf, stem and rhizome tissues. A total of 112,443 unigenes were de novo assembled, and 76,714 were annotated in public databases. Differentially expressed gene analysis showed that most upregulated and uniquely expressed unigenes were enriched in rhizome tissue compared with leaf or stem tissue. UV-spectrophotometry results showed that polysaccharide content was the greatest in the rhizome tissue. Additionally, 2,865 unigenes relevant to TF families were predicted, including 73 involved in polysaccharide synthesis. A few key enzyme genes were also verified by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). Seven β-fructofuranosidases with different amino acid sequences showed similar spatial structures and all had well-conserved catalytic triads. Conclusion: This study substantially enlarges the public transcriptome datasets of this species, and provides insight into the detection of novel genes involed polysaccharide and other secondary metabolite synthesis. Keywords: Polygonatum odoratum, transcriptome , polysaccharide synthesis, Differentially expressed gene, key enzyme genes
Hobbes and “A Discourse of Laws”: Response to Fortier

En reponse a l'article precedent intitule «Hobbes and A Discourse of Laws: the perils of wordprint analysis» (in «The review of politics», 59, 4, 1997, pp. 861-87), l'A. rejette la critique de J. C. Fortier en termes de fausse assurance et reaffirme l'attribution du «Discours des lois» a Hobbes. Comparant le texte, le contexte et la traduction des «Aphorismes» de Bacon et de «Horae subsecivae» de Hobbes, l'A. souligne la pertinence de l'analyse des caracteres d'imprimerie dans l'identification d'un auteur
Interactive shallow Clifford circuits: Quantum advantage against NC¹ and beyond

Recent work of Bravyi et al. and follow-up work by Bene Watts et al. demonstrates a quantum advantage for shallow circuits: constant-depth quantum circuits can perform a task which constant-depth classical (i.e., 0) circuits cannot. Their results have the advantage that the quantum circuit is fairly practical, and their proofs are free of hardness assumptions (e.g., factoring is classically hard, etc.). Unfortunately, constant-depth classical circuits are too weak to yield a convincing real-world demonstration of quantum advantage. We attempt to hold on to the advantages of the above results, while increasing the power of the classical model. Our main result is a two-round interactive task which is solved by a constant-depth quantum circuit (using only Clifford gates, between neighboring qubits of a 2D grid, with Pauli measurements), but such that any classical solution would necessarily solve -hard problems. This implies a more powerful class of constant-depth classical circuits (e.g., 0[p] for any prime p) unconditionally cannot perform the task. Furthermore, under standard complexity-theoretic conjectures, log-depth circuits and log-space Turing machines cannot perform the task either. Using the same techniques, we prove hardness results for weaker complexity classes under more restrictive circuit topologies. Specifically, we give 0 interactive tasks on 2 × n and 1 × n grids which require classical simulations of power 1 and 0[6], respectively. Moreover, these hardness results are robust to a small constant fraction of error in the classical simulation. We use ideas and techniques from the theory of branching programs, quantum contextuality, measurement-based quantum computation, and Kilian randomization.
Variety Membership Testing, Algebraic Natural Proofs, and Geometric Complexity Theory

We study the variety membership testing problem in the case when the variety is given as an orbit closure and the ambient space is the set of all 3-tensors. The first variety that we consider is the slice rank variety, which consists of all 3-tensors of slice rank at most $r$. We show that the membership testing problem for the slice rank variety is $\NP$-hard. While the slice rank variety is a union of orbit closures, we define another variety, the minrank variety, expressible as a single orbit closure. Our next result is the $\NP$-hardness of membership testing in the minrank variety, hence we establish the $\NP$-hardness of the orbit closure containment problem for 3-tensors. Algebraic natural proofs were recently introduced by Forbes, Shpilka and Volk and independently by Grochow, Kumar, Saks and Saraf. Blaser et al. gave a version of an algebraic natural proof barrier for the matrix completion problem which relies on $\coNP \subseteq \exists \BPP$. It implied that constructing equations for the corresponding variety should be hard. We generalize their approach to work with any family of varieties for which the membership problem is $\NP$-hard and for which we can efficiently generate a dense subset. Therefore, a similar barrier holds for the slice rank and the minrank varieties, too. This allows us to set up the slice rank and the minrank varieties as a test-bed for geometric complexity theory (GCT). We determine the stabilizers of the tensors that generate the orbit closures of the two varieties and prove that these tensors are almost characterized by their symmetries. We prove several nontrivial equations for both the varieties using different GCT methods. Many equations also work in the regime where membership testing in the slice rank or minrank varieties is $\NP$-hard. We view this as a promising sign that the GCT approach might indeed be successful.
Peripheral vascular disorders Diabetes , uncomplicated Diabetes , complicated Chronic pulmonary disease Pulmonary circulatory disorders Paralysis Other neurologic disorders Renal failure Hepatic disease Solid tumor without metastasis Metastatic cancer Lymphoma Hypothyroidism Peptic ulcer disease exc

RESULTS: There were 887 major colorectal procedures assessed. Independent risk factors for mortality were American Society of Anesthesiologists’ physical status Grades III to V, age, high comorbidity count, and low surgeon case volume. For major morbidity, risk factors were American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Grades III to V, urgent operation, and operation to excise the rectum. Overall, mortality was 4.51%, and major morbidity was 19.6%. The estimated risk of mortality was stratified by risk factor profile from 0.12% (95% CI, 0.02– 0.93) to 42.4% (95% CI, 23.5– 63.9). The risk of major morbidity was stratified from 7.22% (95% CI, 4.82–10.7) to 49.2% (95% CI, 34.2– 64.4). Model discrimination was favorable to the existing risk adjustment models applied to our cohort. The Physiological and Operative Severity Score for the enumeration of Mortality and Morbidity (including Portsmouth and ColoRectal modifications), and Association of ColoProctology of Great Britain and Ireland Colorectal Cancer models (mortality: area under receiver operating characteristic (AU ROC) curves 0.87 compare 0.70 – 0.81, major morbidity: 0.69 compare 0.66)).
Nonverbal Robot Feedback for Human Teachers

Robots can learn preferences from human demonstrations, but their success depends on how informative these demonstrations are. Being informative is unfortunately very challenging, because during teaching, people typically get no transparency into what the robot already knows or has learned so far. In contrast, human students naturally provide a wealth of nonverbal feedback that reveals their level of understanding and engagement. In this work, we study how a robot can similarly provide feedback that is minimally disruptive, yet gives human teachers a better mental model of the robot learner, and thus enables them to teach more effectively. Our idea is that at any point, the robot can indicate what it thinks the correct next action is, shedding light on its current estimate of the human's preferences. We analyze how useful this feedback is, both in theory and with two user studies---one with a virtual character that tests the feedback itself, and one with a PR2 robot that uses gaze as the feedback mechanism. We find that feedback can be useful for improving both the quality of teaching and teachers' understanding of the robot's capability.