Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Scar burden is an independent and incremental predictor of cardiac resynchronisation therapy response

Objective Determine the prognostic impact of scar quantification (scar %) by cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) in predicting heart failure admission, death and left ventricular (LV) function improvement following cardiac resynchronisation therapy (CRT), after controlling for the presence of left bundle branch block (LBBB), QRS duration (QRSd) and LV lead tip location and polarity. Methods Consecutive patients who underwent CMR between 2002 and 2014 followed by CRT were included. The primary endpoint was death or heart failure admission. The secondary endpoint was change in ejection fraction (EF) ≥3 months after CRT. Cox proportional hazards, linear regression models and change in the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) were used. Results A total of 84 patients were included (63% male, 51% with ischaemic cardiomyopathy). After adjusting for clinical factors, presence of LBBB and QRSd and LV lead tip location and polarity, greater scar % remained associated with a higher risk for clinical events (HR=1.06; 95% CI 1.02 to 1.10; p<0.001) and a smaller improvement in EF (slope: −0.61%; 95% CI −0.93% to 0.29%; p<0.001). When adding scar % to QRSd and LBBB, there was significant improvement in predicting clinical events at 3 years (AUC increased to 0.831 from 0.638; p=0.027) and EF increase ≥10% (AUC 0.869 from 0.662; p=0.007). Conclusion Scar quantification by CMR has an incremental value in predicting response to CRT, in terms of heart failure admission, death and EF improvement, independent of the presence of LBBB, QRSd, LV lead tip location and polarity.
Virtual Screening of IL-6 Inhibitors for Idiopathic Arthritis

Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) is a heterogeneous disease characterized by the arthritis of unknown origin and IL6 is a known target for JIA. 20 known inhibitors towards IL-6 were screened and Methotrexate (MTX) having PubChem ID: 126941 showed high binding capacity with the receptor IL-6. The similarity searching with this compound gave 269 virtual screened compounds. The said screening presented 269 possible drugs having structural similarity to Methotrexate. The docking studies of the screened drugs separated the compound having PubChem CID: 122677576 (re-rank value of -140.262). Toxicity and interaction profile validated this compound for having a better affinity with the target protein. Conclusively, this study shows that according to ADMET profile and BOILED-Egg plot, the compound (PubChem CID: 122677576) obtained from Virtual Screen could be the best drug in future during the prevention of juvenile idiopathic arthritis. In the current study, the drug CID: 122677576 is a potent candidate for treating JIA. The pharmacophore study revealed that the drug CID: 122677576 is a non-inhibitor of CYP450 microsomal enzymes and was found to be non-toxic, similar to the established drug Methotrexate (CID: 126941). It has a lower LD50 value of 2.6698mol/kg as compared to the established compound having LD50 value as 23.4955mol/kg. Moreover, the compound was found to be non-carcinogenic.
Stable and widespread structural heteroplasmy in chloroplast genomes revealed by a new long-read quantification method

The chloroplast genome usually has a quadripartite structure consisting of a large single copy region and a small single copy region separated by two long inverted repeats. It has been known for some time that a single cell may contain at least two structural haplotypes of this structure, which differ in the relative orientation of the single copy regions. However, the methods required to detect and measure the abundance of the structural haplotypes are labour-intensive, and this phenomenon remains understudied. Here we develop a new method, Cp-hap, to detect all possible structural haplotypes of chloroplast genomes of quadripartite structure using long-read sequencing data. We use this method to conduct a systematic analysis and quantification of chloroplast structural haplotypes in 61 land plant species across 19 orders of Angiosperms, Gymnosperms and Pteridophytes. Our results show that there are two chloroplast structural haplotypes which occur with equal frequency in most land plant individuals. Nevertheless, species whose chloroplast genomes lack inverted repeats or have short inverted repeats have just a single structural haplotype. We also show that the relative abundance of the two structural haplotypes remains constant across multiple samples from a single individual plant, suggesting that the process which maintains equal frequency of the two haplotypes operates rapidly, consistent with the hypothesis that flip-flop recombination mediates chloroplast structural heteroplasmy. Our results suggest that previous claims of differences in chloroplast genome structure between species may need to be revisited. Significance Statement Chloroplast genome consists of a large single copy region, a small single copy region, and two inverted repeats. Some decades ago, a discovery showed that there are two types chloroplast genome in some plants, which differ the way that the four regions are put together. However, this phenomenon has been shown in just a small number of species, and many open questions remain. Here, we develop a fast method to measure the chloroplast genome structures, based on long-reads. We show that almost all plants we analysed contain two possible genome structures, while a few plants contain only one structure. Our findings hint at the causes of the phenomenon, and provide a convenient new method with which to make rapid progress.
Analysis of 3-D coordinate vision measuring methods with feature points on workpiece

D coordinate vision measuring methods with feature points on workpiece are demonstrated, such as structured light method, laser auto focusing method, binocular vision method, trinocular vision method, monocular vision method, etc. The characteristics and measuring precision of each method are analyzed in detial, meanwhile the present development and application status are also introduced.
Impact of the Withdrawal of Palivizumab Immunoprophylaxis on the Incidence of Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) Hospitalizations Among Infants Born at 33 to 35 Weeks’ Gestational Age in the Province of Quebec, Canada: The RSV-Quebec Study

Abstract Background Infants born at 33–35 completed weeks’ gestational age (wGA) aged <6 months at the start of or born during respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) season and classified as moderate/high risk of severe RSV disease were included in a palivizumab RSV prophylaxis program in the province of Quebec, Canada, until 2014–2015. We assessed the impact of withdrawal of this indication on lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI)/RSV hospitalizations (H) in this population. Methods We conducted a 4-year, retrospective, cohort study in 25 Quebec hospitals (2 seasons with and 2 without palivizumab prophylaxis for moderate- to high-risk infants). Our primary outcome was LRTI/RSV-H incidence. We compared LRTI/RSV-H incidence before (2013–2015; seasons 1 + 2 [S1/2]) and after (2015–2017; S3/4) the change in indication. Results We identified 6457 33–35 wGA births. LRTI/RSV-H occurred in 105/3353 infants (3.13%) in S1/2 and 130/3104 (4.19%) in S3/4. Among LRTI/RSV-H, 86.4% were laboratory-confirmed RSV-H. Adjusting for sex, wGA, and birth month, S3/4 was significantly associated with increased LRTI/RSV-H incidence (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 1.36; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.04–1.76) but not with laboratory-confirmed RSV-H (aOR, 1.19; 95% CI, 0.90–1.58). Mean duration of LRTI/RSV-H was 5.6 days; 22.6% required intensive care unit admission. Comparing S3/4 with S1/2, infant percentage with LRTI/RSV-H classified as moderate/high risk increased from 27.8% to 41.9% (P = .11). Conclusions In a province-wide study, we observed a significant increase in LRTI/RSV-H incidence among infants born at 33–35 wGA in the 2 years after withdrawal of RSV prophylaxis.
Normal mode computations and applications

xiii CHAPTER 1. OVERVIEW AND OBJECTIVES . 1 1.
A Programming Environment for Heterogeneous Multi-Core Computer Systems

As part of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF)-3 project, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is working with several vendors and engaged in research to develop a Programming Environment (PE) for mixed CPU/GPU based ultra-scale computer systems. The environment provides a toolset to port or develop CPU/GPU systems while reducing development time to improve the performance and portability of the codes while minimizing sources of errors. Our toolset consists of compilers for high-level GPU directives, libraries, performance tools, and a debugger with synergistic interfaces among them. In this paper we show how these tools work together and how they support the different stages of the program development and porting cycle. We describe how we successfully used the tools to port Department of Energy codes to a CPU/GPU system.
Information literacy in food and activity tracking among three communities: parkrunners, people with type 2 diabetes and people with IBS (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Tracking and logging food intake and activity are increasing and there is evidence of links to improvement in health and well-being as a result of these activities. Crucial to the effective and safe use of logging is users’ information literacy. OBJECTIVE To analyse food and activity tracking from an information literacy perspective. METHODS An online survey was distributed to three communities via parkrun, diabetes.co.uk and the IBS Network. RESULTS The data showed that there were clear differences in the logging practices that members of the three communities engaged with, and differences in motivations for tracking and extent of sharing of tracked data. Respondents showed a good understanding of the importance of information accuracy, and were confident in their abilities to understand tracked data. There were differences in the extent to which food and diet data was shared, and a lack of understanding of the potential re-use and sharing of data by third parties. CONCLUSIONS Information literacy in this context involves developing awareness of the issues of accurate information recording, and how tracked information can be applied to support specific health goals. Developing awareness of how and when to share data, and of data ownership and privacy are important aspects of information literacy.
Energy and QoS trade-off analysis of S-MAC protocol in wireless sensor networks

In this paper, we present a new analytical model to study the trade-off between energy consumption and quality of service (QoS) requirement (e.g., service delay and throughput) in S-MAC protocol. Our model takes into account the impact of several factors together, including periodic listen and sleep cycle, various incoming traffic loads, the backoff mechanism in S-MAC, the queuing behavior at the MAC layer, the dependency of service delay distributions among the nodes, and the imperfect wireless channels. Simulations show that our analytical results are highly accurate in evaluating the performance of S-MAC under different traffic and channel conditions.
An improved protocol for AdHoc network routing protocol based on geographic location

Wiress AdHoc geographic routing has been extensively studied over the last several years.Each intermediate node independently selects the next hop using the given location of destination.Geographic routing,which eliminates the overhead of route request packet flooding,is scalable and suitable for large scale AdHoc networks.However,geographic routing may select the long detour paths when faces the problem of what to do at local minimum node where greedy forwarding fails.This paper proposes an improved protocol of AGAR,which solves the triangular routing problem and the problem of the shortest path.The simulation results that the improved algorithm will have great packet delivery success rate and decreases the overhead.
Cortical Representation of Touch: from Whole Cell Recordings to Network Simulations in silico

“What does a sensory neuron in the brain know about the world” is one of the most fundamental questions in systems neurosciences. Using single cell electrophysiological recordings, neural network simulations (after having reconstructed the somatosensory cortical columns in silico) and information theory calculations, we show that the sensory information is transferred from one locus to another with high fidelity even though there is a significant amount of information loss when a single neuron converts the information it received (i.e. the information in PSPs) to the information it transmits (i.e. the information in spikes). Furthermore, different sub-circuits in the somatosensory neural network carry different but complementary information about the sensory feature space, thus could differentially contribute to the sensory processing depending on which behavior task the animal is currently engaging. Our results could potentially be used to guide the development of new prosthetic devices. “Wat weet een sensorische neuron in het brein over de buitenwereld? ” is een van de meest fundamentele vragen binnen de neurobiologie. Doormiddel van elektrofysiologische celmetingen, computersimulaties van breinnetwerken en wiskundige berekeningen tonen we aan dat neuronen in de somatosensorische cortex met hoge betrouwbaarheid informatie kunnen doorgeven van de ene naar de andere breinregio, ondanks dat er tijdens dit proces een groot deel van de sensorische informatie verloren gaat. Bovendien bevinden zich afzonderlijke sub-circuits in het breinnetwerk van de somatosensorische cortex, die elk een ander deel van de verwerking van de sensorische informatie voor hun rekening nemen en elkaar zodoende aanvullen. Afhankelijk van het gedrag dat het dier vertoont kunnen deze sub-circuits op verschillende wijzen bijdragen aan de informatieverwerking. Onze bevindingen kunnen worden toegepast om de ontwikkeling van nieuwe protheses te bevorderen.
Gross, Histomorphological, Histochemical And Ultrastructural Studies Of Pecten Oculi In Guinea Fowl (Numida Meleagris)

Gross, Histomorphological, Histochemi- cal and Ultrastructural Studies of Pecten Oculi in Guinea Fowl ( Numida Meleagris ). Archiv Zool Stud 2: 009. Abstract Pecten Oculi of Guinea fowl ( Numida meleagris ) was studied on their 18 eyes for gross, histological, histochemical and ultrastructural observations. The pecten oculi has 13 to 17 number of accordion (pectineal) folds. These accordion folds were initiated from cauda of optic nerve and travelled via fundus distally into the vitreous hu- mour as an undulated pathway as snake. The shape of pecten oculi was not different than the water floating sail board. The maximum average length and height of pecten oculi was found on the tune of 3.378±0.061 mm and 5.913±0.074 mm respectively. Microscopically the pecten oculi showed an organization as the festoon of blood capillaries with their elastic, collagen and reticular fibers that were corresponding with the structure of spring diving board, which works after the Hook’s law. Melanocytes, melanosomes and melanin granules were observed in and around blood capillaries of pecten oculi. It has divided into three parts apex, middle one third and base. The highest concentration of melanin was observed in the apex. Histo chemically the pecten oculi was shown very weak activity of acid and alkaline phosphatase. It had shown a strong activity of glycogen at optic nerve and collagen fibers of pectineal capillaries. Ultrastructur - ally, the nucleated erythrocytes were witnessed at luminal area of pectineal blood capillary with the tight intercellular endothelial junc- tion. The primary and secondary lamellae were observed in the luminal region of pectineal capillary with pigment depositing globules. Pecten oculi of Guinea fowl has shown various anatomical features thereby it performs various functions as the organ of haemostatic utility, phagocytosis, providing source of energy to vitreous after the diffusion, protecting eye from ultraviolet sunlight radiation, supple- mentation of nutrition and provide oxygen to the retina to have visual acuity.
Heamatology, Serum Biochemistry, Relative Organ Weight and Bacteria Count of Broiler Chicken Given Different Levels of Luffa Aegyptiaca Leaf Extracts

The objective of this study was to evaluate the heamato-biochemical, relative organ weight and bacteria count of broiler chicken given different levels of Luffa aegyptiaca leaf extract (LUF). A total of 250 day old Ross 308 broiler chicks of mixed sex were divided into five treatments, each group was further divided into five replicates each of ten (10) birds in a completely randomized design. Birds in treatment A were given 1.20g/litre of Neomycin in water, treatment B, C, D and E were given 5, 10, 15 and 20 ml/litre of LUF. Clean feed and water was given ad libitum and the experiment lasted for 3 weeks. The data obtained was used to evaluate the haematological parameters (PCV, RBC, Hb, WBC, MCV, MCH and MCHC), serum biochemical indices (Albumin, globulin, calcium, phosphorus, SGPT and SGOT), organ weight (liver, kidney, spleen, heart, lungs, pancreas and small intestine) and bacteria count (E.coli and Lactobacillus). Result obtained revealed that there was no significant differences (p>0.05) in the haematological, relative organ weight, serum biochemical parameters and E.coli count obtained. However, there was a significant difference (p
FAST RELIABILITY-BASED OPTIMIZATION USING PARALLEL GENETIC ALGORITHM, DEVELOPED FORCE METHOD AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

The aim of this paper is to present four strategies to increase the accuracy and speed of optimization of truss structures under the constraint of Structural System Failure Probability (SSFP). In the first strategy based on the probability rules, a criterion is defined to avoid producing many correlated paths and obtain more accurate upper bound of SSFP. In the second strategy, the force method formulation is improved and employed to analyze trusses with different topologies. In the third strategy two intelligent agents are utilized to identify the repeated paths and determine the fitness of the best chromosomes in each generation. Using the fourth strategy, the chromosomes, whose SSFP is much larger or smaller than the allowable value, are identified during the analysis and the analysis is terminated at that stage.
TF-IDF Based Association Rule Analysis System for Medical Data

Because of the recent interest in the u-Health and development of IT technology, a need of utilizing a medical information data has been increased. Among previous studies that utilize various data mining algorithms for processing medical information data, there are studies of association rule analysis. In the studies, an association between the symptoms with specified diseases is the target to discover, however, infrequent terms which can be important information for a disease diagnosis are not considered in most cases. In this paper, we proposed a new association rule mining system considering the importance of each term using TF-IDF weight to consider infrequent but important items. In addition, the proposed system can predict candidate diagnoses from medical text records using term similarity analysis based on medical ontology.
Long Thrice Weekly Hemodialysis: The Tassin Experience

By long dialysis we intend thrice weekly dialysis sessions of 7 or 8 hours. This has been the standard treatment used in Tassin since 1968. Since 1998 a proportion of patients have been using shorter dialysis sessions (three times 5 or 6 hours) with higher blood flow (300 ml/min) and large area dialyzers. They represent in 2004 more than one third of the total treatments realized in Tassin. It is too early to draw significant conclusions from this part of our experience.
Privacy-Preserving Smart Similarity Search Based on Simhash over Encrypted Data in Cloud Computing

In recent years, due to the appealing features of cloud computing, more and more sensitive or private information has been outsourced onto the cloud. Although cloud computing provides convenience, privacy and security of data becomes a big concern. For protecting data privacy, it is desirable for the data owner to outsource sensitive data in encrypted form rather than in plain text. However, encrypted storage will hinder our legal access, e.g., searching function. To deal with this dilemma, a considerable number of searchable encryption schemes have been proposed in this field. However, almost all of existing schemes focus on keyword-based query rather than document-based query, which is a crucial requirement for real world application. In this paper, we propose a similarity search method for encrypted document based on simhash. Through our scheme, data users can find similar encrypted documents stored in cloud by submitting a query document. In order to scale well for large data sources, we build a triebased index to improve search efficiency in our solution. Through rigorous privacy analysis and experiment on realworld dataset, our scheme is secure and efficient.
A new Multi-Bug Path Planning algorithm for robot navigation in known environments

This paper presents a new methodology for path planning of mobile robots in known environments with static obstacles, concept of which is similar to bug-algorithms, but uses multiple bugs. Multi Bug Path Planning (MBPP) works by assuming a virtual bug move towards the goal from the start state. If in case it meets an obstacle, then, that bug generates a new bug. The two bugs now move along walls of the obstacle in either direction until specific conditions are met. Bug generation continues whenever any of the current bugs hit a new obstacle, until target is reached by all live bugs. This algorithm thus evaluates best possible paths for a given environment and chooses the best route, supposed to be optimal. Simulation results shows that MBPP finds paths in lesser run-times, that are shorter and comparable with Post-Smoothed A*. Proposed work is an attempt to combine the features of offline and online methods, so that, the same algorithm could be used for both cases. Current work demonstrates the applicability of MBPP algorithm to offline path planning. Adaptation of this algorithm to online planning is left for future research.
Computing brains: learning algorithms and neurocomputation in the smart city

ABSTRACT This article examines IBM’s ‘Smarter Education’ program, part of its wider ‘Smarter Cities’ agenda, focusing specifically on its learning analytics applications (based on machine learning algorithms) and cognitive computing developments for education (which take inspiration from neuroscience for the design of brain-like neural networks algorithms and neurocomputational devices). The article conceptualizes the relationship between learning algorithms, neuroscience, and the new learning spaces of the city by combining the notion of programmable ‘code/space’ with ideas about the ‘social life of the brain’ to suggest that new kinds of ‘brain/code/spaces’ are being developed where the environment itself is imagined to possess brain-like functions of learning and ‘human qualities’ of cognition performed by algorithmic processes. IBM’s ambitions for education constitute a sociotechnical imaginary of a ‘cognitive classroom’ where the practices associated with data analytics and cognitive computing in the smart city are being translated into the neuropedagogic brain/code/spaces of the school, with significant consequences for how learners are to be addressed and acted upon. The IBM imaginary of Smarter Education is one significant instantiation of emerging smart cities that are to be governed by neurocomputational processes modelled on neuroscientific insights into the brain’s plasticity for learning, and part of a ‘neurofuture’ in-the-making where nonconscious algorithmic ‘computing brains’ embedded in urban space are intended to interact with human cognition and brain functioning.