Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A sub-10mW real-time implementation for EMG hand gesture recognition based on a multi-core biomedical SoC

Real-time biosignal classification in power-constrained embedded applications is a key step in designing portable e-healtb devices requiring hardware integration along with concurrent signal processing. This paper presents an application based on a novel biomedical System-On-Chip (SoC) for signal acquisition and processing combining a homogeneous multi-core cluster with a versatile bio-potential front-end. The presented implementation acquires raw EMG signals from 3 passive gel-electrodes and classifies 3 hand gestures using a Support Vector Machine (SVM) pattern recognition algorithm. Performance matches state-of-the-art high-end systems both in terms of recognition accuracy (>S5%) and of real-time execution (gesture recognition time 300 ms). The power consumption of the employed biomedical SoC is below 10 mW, outperforming implementations on conunercial MCUs by a factor of 10, ensuring a battery life of up to 160 hours with a common Li-ion 1600 mAh battery.
Prognostic factors in multiple myeloma: * The M.D. Anderson experience

Patients with multiple myeloma have a heterogeneous clinical course that depends on a variety of tumor and host features. Detailed knowledge of such parameters facilitates the assessment of an individual patient’s prognosis and is crucial to a critical evaluation of therapeutic trials, especially when these claim major advances in response and survival. The first widely utilized staging system was introduced by Durie & Salmon (1). While its clinical utility has been confirmed in many large clinical trials (for review, see 2), its relative imprecision in forecasting patients’ survival prior to therapy has also been appreciated. In a malignancy where responses to initial treatment occur in no more than half of the patients and where cures have not been reported, patients’ outcome depends on the tumor’s initial drug sensitivity, the total body tumor burden, and the regrowth kinetics following incomplete cytoreduction.
Effects of socioeconomic status on colon cancer treatment accessibility and survival in Toronto, Ontario, and San Francisco, California, 1996-2006.

OBJECTIVES We examined the differential effects of socioeconomic status on colon cancer care and survival in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and San Francisco, California. METHODS We analyzed registry data for colon cancer patients from Ontario (n = 930) and California (n = 1014), diagnosed between 1996 and 2000 and followed until 2006, on stage, surgery, adjuvant chemotherapy, and survival. We obtained socioeconomic data for individuals' residences from population censuses. RESULTS Income was directly associated with lymph node evaluation, chemotherapy, and survival in San Francisco but not in Toronto. High-income persons had better survival rates in San Francisco than in Toronto. After adjustment for stage, survival was better for low-income residents of Toronto than for those of San Francisco. Middle- to low-income patients were more likely to receive indicated chemotherapy in Toronto than in San Francisco. CONCLUSIONS Socioeconomic factors appear to mediate colon cancer care in urban areas of the United States but not in Canada. Improvements are needed in screening, diagnostic investigations, and treatment access among low-income Americans.
Restriction endonuclease analysis of virulence plasmids for molecular epidemiology of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis infections

Restriction endonuclease analysis of virulence plasmid DNA was used to study the epidemiology of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis infections. The origin of Y. pseudotuberculosis could be divided into two focus areas: Eastern Asia and Europe. Wild animals were an important reservoir for the Y. pseudotuberculosis seen in infections in humans.
Mycotic aneurysms--a challenge and a clue. Review of ten-year experience.

A review of the records of the past ten years at Temple University Hospital, Philadelphia, yielded 11 mycotic aneurysms in eight patients. Despite antibiotics, mycotic aneurysms remain an infrequent but serious threat to health and often to life. No age, sex, or anatomic part is immune. Bacterial endocarditis and atheromatous disease both increase vulnerability to these lesions. The clinical presentation of mycotic aneurysms may be very subtle, or may give dramatic evidence of hitherto unrecognized underlying disease. Angiography readily demonstrates the aneurysms which confirms the diagnosis and guides the surgeon. Extirpation of the aneurysms is necessary for cure. Placement of a prosthetic into an infected bed is unsatisfactory. Preoperative angiography is prudent in any patient with a mediastinal mass which cannot be radiologically separated from the heart.
NEPTUNE : dc power beyond MARS

The modular power converter designed for the Monterey Accelerated Research System (MARS), and recently successfully tested by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the University of Washington, is a significant milestone in the development of regiona l cabled observatories. The ability to transmit up to 10kW reliably over long distances using 10kV direct curr ent (dc) and convert it to a more usable 400V dc locally wil l open up new possibilities for the science community. For future projects covering several hundreds of kilometers and using multiple power converters, hi gh reliability will be crucial. Some evolution of the design is therefore essential. The intention for the NEPTUNE project is to build on the MARS achievements to the point where the converter is a fully industrialized unit built to submarine telecom standards. The JPL/MARS system includes a redundant converter available via a medium voltage switch. Wi th relatively minor circuit changes the converter reli ability can be increased so that a single converter could b e more reliable than two and a switch.
Study of serum level of Vit . E , Malondialdehyde ( MDA ) and reduced glutathione ( GSH ) in RA patients & Comparison with normal subjects

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic disease with unknown etiology. The aim of this study to estimate the serum Vit. E, Malondialdehyde (MDA) and Reduced glutathione (GSH) in RA patient and comparison with normal healthy subjects. In the study the serum level of vit. E was estimated by method given by Catignani & Bieri. Serum MDA is estimated by a thiobiteric acid assay method and serum GSH were determined by the method of Paglia and Valentine. Serum level of Vit.E and Reduced glutathione were significantly reduced in RA patient as compared to control group (p <0.005 for Vit.E and p< 0.005 for GSH). Serum MDA level in RA patient was significantly higher than control group.
Effective decision-theoretic assistance through relational hierarchical models

Building intelligent computer assistants has been a long-cherished goal of AI. Many intelligent assistant systems were built and fine-tuned to specific application domains. In this work, we develop a general model of assistance that combines three powerful ideas: decision theory, hierarchical task models and probabilistic relational languages. We use the principles of decision theory to model the general problem of intelligent assistance. We use a combination of hierarchical task models and probabilistic relational languages to specify prior knowledge of the computer assistant. The assistant exploits its prior knowledge to infer the user's goals and takes actions to assist the user. We evaluate the decision theoretic assistance model in three different domains including a real-world domain to demonstrate its generality. We show through experiments that both the hierarchical structure of the goals and the parameter sharing facilitated by relational models significantly improve the learning speed of the agent. Finally, we present the results of deploying our relational hierarchical model in a real-world activity recognition task.
A comparison of three methods of face recognition for home photos

This poster presents experimental results of three face recognition methods -- Support Vector Machine (SVM), Local Binary Pattern (LBP)-based, and Sparse Represented-based Classification (SRC). We will show the experimental results based on AR face database and on home photos. The experiments show that the three algorithms can achieve over 85% recognition rate in AR database. However, the recognition rate is extremely reduced in home photos. SVM and SRC-based method encounter challenges of selecting training model while LBP-based method encounters the challenge of merging over scattered clusters. Our goal is to improve the accuracy and efficiency especially in home photos based on the three methods.
Interactive Visualization of DICOM Volumetric Datasets in the Web - Providing VR Experiences within the Web Browser

Recently the possibility to visualize interactively volumetric datasets in the Web has opened new methods of exploration and sharing of 3D images coming from different fields. At the same time, VR technologies are gaining momentum in the society, where several HMD’s are ready to be bought. This paper presents how volumetric datasets represented as DICOM images can be loaded and visualized interactively in a WebVR compatible setup. DICOM images are loaded from local or remote repositories into X3D volume rendering nodes, which are displayed in the VR devices using WebVR technology. The results show that WebVR and X3D are compatible web technologies that can be joined together to provide easy and extensible tools to interact with DICOM datasets. Some enhancements for the interactive VR and non-VR experiences are
A switched-MOSFET filter for application in hearing aid devices

The characteristics of the recently introduced switched-MOSFET (SM) technique make it very useful in applications where programmable low-voltage filters are required, such as in hearing aid circuits. In this paper we present an SM programmable bandpass filter intended for hearing aid devices. We also address a comparison of our bandpass filter with a filter previously described in the literature, which has been implemented with the well-known switched-capacitor (SC) technique.
A Novel Printable Watermarking Method in Dithering Halftone Images

Halftone images are commonly printed on books, newspapers, and magazines. How to protect the copyright of these printed halftone images becomes an important issue. Digital watermarking provides a solution for copyright protection. In this paper, we will propose a novel printable watermarking method for dithering halftone images. Based on downsampling and the property of a dispersed dithering screen, the method can resist cropping, tampering, and print-and-scan process attacks. In addition, comparing to Guo et al.’s method, the experimental results show that the proposed method provides higher robustness for the above-mentioned attacks and better visual quality in the high-frequency regions of halftone images.
The determination of the fetal D status from maternal plasma for decision making on Rh prophylaxis is feasible

BACKGROUND: Noninvasive fetal RHD genotyping might become a valuable tool in decision making on antenatal Rh prophylaxis, which is currently in routine practice for all D− pregnancies in several countries. This study provides a large‐scale validation study of this technology to address questions concerning feasibility and applicability of its introduction into clinical routine.
Titre du Rapport Regularization of Fiber Tractography in Diffusion Tensor Magnetic Resonance Imaging NON CONFIDENTIEL Option

MR diffusion imaging has become a powerful, multi-faceted tool both for very basic clinical needs and for advanced, specialized diagnosis and treatment planning. In particular, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and nerve fiber tractography have opened up new research possibilities in areas that hitherto relied largely on postmortem studies. Diffusion tensor tractography is starting to become a diagnostically helpful tool and new applications are emerging. It uses the principal diffusion direction measured with DTI to compute the pathways of complete nerve fiber tracts. However, as the data acquired has limited resolution and contains noise, the quality of the information extracted from it will be greatly limited by this. This report investigates novel methods for reducing the impact of noise in the original data. We investigate the use of the wavelet transform to analyze the content of the data and then decide for each coefficient if the local variation in the signal should be kept or removed. To obtain a multiresolution filtered estimation of the noisy signal, a recursive thresholding scheme is applied to the remaining scaled signal. We further investigate how to improve the overall filtering scheme by resampling the signal along the flow lines. A method for solving ordinary differential equation is also introduced and applied to the special case of tensor data. We investigate a continuous description of the tensor data and how to introduce a stopping criteria in the tractography. Finally we describe algorithmic implementations and provide results of reconstructing white matter tracts in the human brain in vivo.
Statistical Foundations of Audit Trail Analysis for the Detection of Computer Misuse

We model computer transactions as generated by two stationary stochastic processes, the legitimate (normal) process N and the misuse process M. We define misuse (anomaly) detection to be the identification of transactions most likely to have been generated by M. We formally demonstrate that the accuracy of misuse detectors is bounded by a function of the difference of the densities of the processes N and M over the space of transactions. In practice, detection accuracy can be far below this bound, and generally improves with increasing sample size of historical (training) data. Careful selection of transaction attributes also can improve detection accuracy; we suggest several criteria for attribute selection, including adequate sampling rate and separation between models. We demonstrate that exactly optimizing even the simplest of these criteria is NP-hard, thus motivating a heuristic approach. We further differentiate between modeling (density estimation) and nonmodeling approaches. >
DNA sequence and in vitro mutagenesis of the gene encoding the fructose-1,6-diphosphate-dependent L-(+)-lactate dehydrogenase of Streptococcus mutans

Previously, the fructose-1,6-diphosphate-dependent L-(+)-lactate dehydrogenase gene of Streptococcus mutans JH1000 was cloned into Escherichia coli (J. D. Hillman, M. J. Duncan, and K. P. Stashenko, Infect. Immun. 58:1290-1295, 1990). In the present study, the nucleotide sequence of 1.29 kb of S. mutans DNA which contained the promoter and protein-coding region of the gene was determined. In vitro disruption of the gene was achieved by deletion of the promoter and a major portion of the protein-coding sequence. Subsequently, a tetracycline resistance gene from S. mutans was inserted at the deletion site as a marker for selection. In addition, evidence from Southern hybridization showed that S. mutans JH1000 contained a single copy of the lactate dehydrogenase gene.
Review of Cyber-Physical System in Healthcare

Cyber-physical system (CPS) is an integration of physical processes with computation and communication. It has the ability to add more intelligence to social life. Wireless sensor networks (WSN) can be a vital part of CPS as strong sensing capability is one of the major driving factors for CPS applications. CPS is still considered to be a nascent technology, and there are many challenges yet to be addressed. A few CPS applications in healthcare have been proposed to date, and they lack the flexibility of technology integration, such as integration of computing resources with sensor networks. This paper presents a survey of CPS in healthcare applications that have been proposed to date by academia as well as industry. A comprehensive taxonomy is also provided that characterizes and classifies different components and methods that are required for the application of CPS in healthcare. The taxonomy not only highlights the similarities and differences of the state-of-the-art technologies utilized in CPS for healthcare from the perspective of WSN and Cloud Computing but also identifies the areas that require further research. It is expected that this taxonomy and its mapping to relevant systems will be highly useful for further development of CPS for healthcare.
Parenchymal Transection of the Kidney Inflicted by Endocatch Bag Entrapment During a Laparoscopic Donor Nephrectomy

We present a case of inadvertent decapsulation and grade IV renal parenchyma laceration during laparoscopic donor nephrectomy. The kidney was repaired, used and functioned immediately. There were no complications in the donor. To our knowledge, this type of injury has not been reported previously and the purpose of this report is to focus attention on the potential for this unusual injury, which can occur during delivery of the kidney using the endocatch bag.
A comparison of the esterification of steroids by rat lecithin:cholesterol acyltransferase and acyl coenzyme A:cholesterol acyltransferase.

Although fatty acid esters of several steroids have been found in both blood and tissues, their biosynthetic origins are uncertain. For example, the fatty acid esters of delta 5-3 beta-hydroxysteroids pregnenolone and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) are synthesized in tissues by an acyl coenzyme A:acyltransferase. These esters are not secreted, and the circulating esters are formed in blood by lecithin:cholesterol acyltransferase (LCAT). Fatty acid esters of corticosterone (B) and estradiol (E2) are also present in both blood and tissues, but unlike the delta 5-3 beta-hydroxysteroids, their structures are so different from cholesterol that it would not necessarily follow that they are esterified by the same enzyme. We have examined the esterification of the steroids DHEA, B, and E2 in blood and tissue, in comparison to the esterification of cholesterol, using as a model plasma and hepatic microsomes from the rat. All of the steroids were esterified in plasma, but at very different rates: cholesterol > DHEA >> E2 = B. The LCAT inhibitor, 5.5'-dithiobis-(2-nitrobenzoic acid), inhibited the esterification of all of the substrates. DHEA inhibited the esterification of cholesterol, albeit only at high concentration. The fatty acid compositions of the cholesterol and DHEA esters were analyzed, and they were found to be identical, with arachidonate the predominant ester, greater than 60%. In hepatic microsomes, the rate of esterification was different than plasma: cholesterol > E2 > or = DHEA >> B. Although B was esterified in both plasma and hepatic microsomes, the rate was exceedingly slow in both. The acyl coenzyme A:cholesterol acyltransferase inhibitor, N'-(2,4-difluorophenyl)-N-[[4-(2,2-dimethylpropyl)phenyl]- methyl]-N-heptylurea, blocked the esterification of cholesterol almost completely, but surprisingly, it had no effect on the esterification of the other steroids. The fatty acid esters of cholesterol, E2, and DHEA synthesized in the hepatic microsomes were analyzed. The composition of the cholesterol esters from the microsomes was very different than the esters of DHEA and E2. These results show that all of the steroids tested are esterified by LCAT, and consequently that blood LCAT is the probable source of the circulating steroidal esters. Most interesting are the studies of microsomal esterification. It has been presumed that similar to blood, the esterification of steroids in tissues is carried out by the same enzyme that esterifies cholesterol. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Volume and intensity of Medicare physicians' services: An overview

From 1978 to 1987, Medicare spending for physicians' services increased at annual compound rates of 16 percent, far exceeding increases expected based on inflation and increases in beneficiaries. As a result, Medicare spending for Part B physicians' services has attracted considerable attention. This article contains an overview of expenditure trends for Part B physicians' services, a summary of recent research findings on issues related to volume and intensity of physicians' services, and a discussion of options for controlling volume and intensity. The possible impact of the recently enacted relative-value-based fee schedule on volume and intensity of services is discussed briefly.
The Temporal Structure of Scientific Consensus Formation

This article engages with problems that are usually opaque: What trajectories do scientific debates assume, when does a scientific community consider a proposition to be a fact, and how can we know that? We develop a strategy for evaluating the state of scientific contestation on issues. The analysis builds from Latour’s black box imagery, which we observe in scientific citation networks. We show that as consensus forms, the importance of internal divisions to the overall network structure declines. We consider substantive cases that are now considered facts, such as the carcinogenicity of smoking and the non-carcinogenicity of coffee. We then employ the same analysis to currently contested cases: the suspected carcinogenicity of cellular phones, and the relationship between vaccines and autism. Extracting meaning from the internal structure of scientific knowledge carves a niche for renewed sociological commentary on science, revealing a typology of trajectories that scientific propositions may experience en route to consensus.
Knowledge Bases for Visual Dynamic Scene Understanding

In conventional computer vision the actual 3-D state of objects is of primary interest; it is embedded in a temporal sequence analyzed in consecutive pairs. In contrast, in the 4-D approach to machine vision the primary interest is in temporal processes with objects and subjects (defined as objects with the capability of sensing and acting). All perception of 4-D processes is achieved through feedback of prediction errors according to spatiotemporal dynamical models constraining evolution over time. Early jumps to object/subject-hypotheses including capabilities of acting embed the challenge of dynamic scene understanding into a richer environment, especially when competing alternatives are pursued in parallel from beginning. Typical action sequences (maneuvers) form an essential part of the knowledge base of subjects. Expectation-based Multi-focal Saccadic (EMS-) vision has been developed in the late 1990s to demonstrate the advantages and flexibility of this approach. Based on this experience, the paper advocates knowledge elements integrating action processes of subjects as general elements for perception and control of temporal changes, dubbed ‘maneuvers’ here. − As recently discussed in philosophy, emphasizing individual subjects and temporal processes may avoid the separation into a material and a mental world; EMS-vision quite naturally leads to such a monistic view.
High-Brightness Wavelength Beam Combined Semiconductor Laser Diode Arrays

We report the wavelength beam combining of an array of high-power high-brightness 970-nm slab-coupled optical waveguide lasers. A 50-W peak power under quasi-continuous-wave (CW) operation was measured in an output beam with a beam quality of M<sub>x,y</sub> <sup>2</sup>=1.2, and 30 W under CW operation was measured with a beam quality of M<sub>x,y </sub> <sup>2</sup>=2
Former Substance Users Working as Counselors. A Dual Relationship

All helping professionals risk participation in “dual relationships. ” But in the case of former substance users working as counselors, specific dilemmas and problems are accentuated. A qualitative analysis highlights some of the ethical and personal dilemmas faced by these counselors. The data are derived from an interview study initiated in 2000 in Denmark on former substance users with 4–8 years of abstinence. Through an analysis of interview data from a larger group of former substance users, it became evident that those working as counselors experienced specific dilemmas and problems. The current article is based on individual reports of five counselors with recovery status.