Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Endoscopic ultrasound guided biopsy of mediastinal lesions has a major impact on patient management

Background: A study was undertaken to evaluate the clinical impact of endoscopic ultrasound guided fine needle aspiration biopsy (EUS-FNA) in patients with mediastinal masses suspected of malignancy. Methods: From April 1993 to December 1999, 84 patients were referred for EUS-FNA. In all patients CT scanning had shown a lesion of the mediastinum suspected of malignancy located adjacent to the oesophagus. In order to evaluate the clinical impact of EUS-FNA, the history of each patient up to referral for EUS-FNA was reviewed. A board of thoracic specialists was asked to decide the further course of the patient if EUS-FNA had not been available, and this diagnostic strategy was compared with the actual clinical course after EUS-FNA. Results: For the 79 patients in whom sufficient verification was obtained, EUS-FNA had a sensitivity of 92%, specificity of 100%, PPV of 100%, NPV of 80%, and an accuracy of 94% for cancer of the mediastinum. In 18 of 37 patients (49%) a thoracotomy/thoracoscopy was avoided as a result of EUS-FNA, and in 28 of 41 patients (68%) a mediastinoscopy was avoided. The direct result of the cytological diagnosis obtained by EUS-FNA was that a final diagnosis of small cell lung cancer was made in eight patients resulting in referral for chemotherapy, and in another three patients with benign disease specific treatment could be initiated (sarcoidosis, mediastinal abscess, and leiomyoma of the oesophagus). Conclusions: EUS-FNA is a safe and sensitive minimally invasive method for evaluating patients with a solid lesion of the mediastinum suspected by CT scanning. EUS-FNA has a significant impact on patient management and should be considered for diagnosing the spread of cancer to the mediastinum in patients with lung cancer considered for surgery, as well as for the primary diagnosis of solid lesions located in the mediastinum adjacent to the oesophagus.
Natural history of untreated nonsurgical hepatocellular carcinoma: Rationale for the design and evaluation of therapeutic trials

This study analyzed the natural history and prognostic factors of patients with nonsurgical hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Twenty variables from 102 cirrhotic patients with HCC who were not treated within prospective randomized controlled trials (RCT) were investigated through uni‐ and multivariate analyses. None of them was suitable for radical therapies (surgical resection, liver transplantation, or ethanol injection) or presented end‐stage disease as reflected by an Okuda stage 3 or a Performance Status ≥3. Sixty‐five patients were Child‐Pugh A, 34 were B, and 3 were C. Most of them exhibited a preserved Performance Status Test (PST) (0 = 56; 1 = 38; 2 = 8). Tumor was solitary in 26 (≤5 cm in 16) and multinodular/massive in 76. After a median follow‐up of 17 months, 79 patients died, the 1‐, 2‐, and 3‐year survival being 54%, 40%, and 28%. The multivariate study identified PST (P = .01), constitutional syndrome (P = .04), vascular invasion (P = .001), and extrahepatic spread (P = .04) as independent predictors for mortality. The 1‐, 2‐, and 3‐year survival for the 48 patients without adverse factors (Stage 0) was 80%, 65%, and 50%, respectively, and 29%, 16%, and 8% in the 54 patients with at least one adverse parameter (Stage I). Therefore, Stage 0 would correspond to an intermediate stage, while Stage I would represent an advanced status, before reaching an end‐stage phase. In conclusion, the outcome of nonsurgical HCC is not homogeneously grim and may be predicted by assessing the presence of symptoms and of an invasive tumoral pattern. Therapeutic trials should be designed and evaluated considering these characteristics.
A computational model for the formation of grid field based on path integration

Grid cells in the medial entorhinal cortex of rats have special firing characteristics. The cells fire repeatedly and regularly corresponding to a specific spatial location. This is a relatively small space, which is called grid cells' firing fields. Multiple firing fields overlap each other, which finally forms the grid nodes. When the rat reaches any grid nodes in the environment, there exists the corresponding grid cells which discharge maximally. Furthermore, an equilateral triangle is formed by connecting grid nodes and the triangles are covered with the entire environment. Since Hafting et al discovered grid cells in entorhinal cortex of the rat in 2005, researchers have paid more attention to the regular firing structure of grid cells. With the further studying on grid cells, it proved to be that entorhinal cortex plays an important role in path integration. Most importantly, grid cells act as the function of path integrator in the process of path integration. Based on what we have mentioned above, we put forward a computational model for the formation of grid field based on path integration. Our proposed model simulates grid cells' firing fields very well in that the simulation results of our proposed model are in agreement with grid cells' biological experimental electroencephalogram results.
Rab 8 a vesicles regulate Wnt ligand delivery and Paneth cell maturation at the intestinal stem cell niche

Communication between stem and niche supporting cells maintains the homeostasis of adult tissues. Wnt signaling is a crucial regulator of the stem cell niche, but the mechanism that governs Wnt ligand delivery in this compartment has not been fully investigated. We identified that Wnt secretion is partly dependent on Rab8amediated anterograde transport of Gpr177 (wntless), a Wnt-specific transmembrane transporter. Gpr177 binds to Rab8a, depletion of which compromises Gpr177 traffic, thereby weakening the secretion of multiple Wnts. Analyses of generic Wnt/β-catenin targets in Rab8a knockoutmouse intestinal crypts indicate reduced signaling activities; maturation of Paneth cells – a Wnt-dependent cell type – is severely affected. Rab8a knockout crypts show an expansion of Lgr5 and Hopx cells in vivo. However, in vitro, the knockout enteroids exhibit significantly weakened growth that can be partly restored by exogenous Wnts or Gsk3β inhibitors. Immunogold labeling and surface protein isolation identified decreased plasma membrane localization of Gpr177 in Rab8a knockout Paneth cells and fibroblasts. Upon stimulation by exogenous Wnts, Rab8a-deficient cells show ligand-induced Lrp6 phosphorylation and transcriptional reporter activation. Rab8a thus controls Wnt delivery in producing cells and is crucial for Paneth cell maturation. Our data highlight the profound tissue plasticity that occurs in response to stress induced by depletion of a stem cell niche signal.
Tetra-O-methyl nordihydroguaiaretic acid inhibits growth and induces death of leukemia cells independent of Cdc2 and survivin

Tetra-O-methyl nordihydroguaiaretic acid (M4N) was shown to induce G2 arrest and suppress human xenograft tumor growth by inhibiting Cdc2 and survivin. We examined the effect of M4N on leukemia and found that M4N inhibited growth and induced cell death in leukemic cell lines and blasts from AML patients. However, no significant changes in Cdc2 and survivin levels and G2 arrest were observed. Cell death and growth inhibition were dependent neither on XIAP, Bcl-2, and Bcl-XL levels nor on caspase-8. M4N did not promote cell differentiation in HL-60 cells. Interestingly, significant inhibition of AKT phosphorylation was observed in M4N treated OCI-AML3 cells. Collectively, our data showed that M4N inhibited cell growth and induced cell death in both leukemic cell lines and AML patient sample via a mechanism not mediated by Cdc2 and survivin inhibition and suggested that the extrinsic and the mitochondrial apoptotic pathways are not essential.
Cognitive Changes Following Recovery from Depression in a Group Cognitive-Behaviour Therapy Program

Objective: We report on the changes in cognitions as a result of cognitive—behaviour therapy (CBT), in 35 recovered and 32 non-recovered mood disordered patients who had undergone a 12-week group CBT program for depression. Method: An end-of-therapy cut-off score of 10 on the BDI was used to define recovered and non-recovered patients. ANOVA analyses were conducted to explore possible main effects of recovery status and time on various clinical measures, including cognitions and activity levels. Results: Mean mood and activity self-rating measures were significantly higher for the recovered as compared to the non-recovered patients over the course of the program. Similarly, scores on the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire (ATQ) for recovered patients were within the non-clinical range, in contrast to their non-recovered counterparts. In addition, recovered patients improved significantly in their Hopelessness scores, and there was a change in the expected direction in their Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale scores, although this was not significant. Conclusion: These results are consistent with the proposition of cognitive theory (i.e. the remediation of negative cognition plays a significant role in recovery from depression during CBT).
Two-photon induced optical recording in quantumdot-based photorefractive materials

In this paper we report on two-photon-excited bit by bit data storage within a photorefractive polymer composed of 53.9 weight percents of PVK (poly(N-vinylecarbazole)), 30wt% of DMNPAA (2,5-dimethyl-4-(p-nitrophenylazo)anisole), 16wt% of ECZ (N-ethylcarbazole) and 0.1 wt% of CdS quantum dots as a sensitizer. Multi-layer data sets with a layer spacing 20 mu are recorded using a pulsed ultrashort laser at a wavelength of 780 nm
Research on Key Technology for Data Cache Timing Attack on DSA

Gaining the value of k is a key technology for side-channel attack on DSA. In order to recover the private key of a DSA signature, this paper proposes a method based on data-cache timing attack. That is getting side channel information about a random number k used in a signature first and then recover the private key x from this. We mainly introduces the principle of data-cache timing attack and describe the method of gaining said k.
Learning of recurrent convolutional neural networks with applications in pattern recognition

Convolutional neural network (CNN) has been successfully applied in character recognition. To further reduce the error rate of classification, based on traditional CNN, a recurrent-type CNN (RCNN) is presented in this paper. The Elman-Jordan recurrent model is embedded in the full connection layer of the proposed CNN. By optimizing the structure of the traditional CNN and making full use of the better learning ability of recurrent neural network, the proposed RCNN has a better recognition ability for input signals with noises. To verify the performance of the developed RCNN, some experiments are accomplished on the Chinese car plates and MNIST datasets. The experimental results show that, compared with traditional CNN and Elman-type CNN, a much smaller error rate can be guaranteed by our model.
Quantifying the SMT layout overhead-does SMT pull its weight?

Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT) is a hardware technique that increases processor throughput by issuing instructions simultaneously from multiple threads. However, while SMT can be added to an existing microarchitecture with relatively low overhead, this additional chip area could be used for other resources such as more functional units, larger caches or better branch predictors. How large is the SMT overhead, and at what point does SMT no longer pay off compared to adding other architecture features? This paper evaluates the silicon overhead of SMT by performing a transistor/interconnect level analysis of the layout. We discuss micro-architecture issues that impact SMT implementations, and show how the Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) and microarchitecture can have a large effect on the SMT overhead and performance. Results show that SMT yields large performance gains with small to moderate area overhead.
Experimental Methodology for the Evaluation of the 3D Visualization of Quantitative Information: a Case Study Concerning SEEG Information

The visual analysis of Stereoeletroencephalographic (SEEG) signals in their anatomical context is aimed at understanding the spatio-temporal dynamics of epileptic processes. The magnitude of these signals may be encoded by graphical glyphs, having a direct impact on the perception of the values. This problem has motivated an evaluation of the quantitative visualization of these signals, specifically with regard to the influence of the coding scheme of the glyphs on the understanding and analysis of the signals. This work describes an experiment conducted with human observers in order to evaluate three different coding schemes used to visualize the magnitude of SEEG signals in their 3D anatomical context. Before the experiment we had no clue to which of these schemes would provide better performance to the human observers, while the literature offered theories supporting different answers. Through our experiment we intended to find out if any of these coding schemes allows better performance in two aspects: accuracy and speed. A protocol has been developed to measure these aspects. The results presented in this work were obtained from 40 human observers. Comparison between the three coding schemes was first performed through an Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA). Statistical significance of this comparison was then established using nonparametric methods. Influence of some other factors on the observers’ performance was also investigated.
CUDA‐quicksort: an improved GPU‐based implementation of quicksort

Sorting is a very important task in computer science and becomes a critical operation for programs making heavy use of sorting algorithms. General‐purpose computing has been successfully used on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to parallelize some sorting algorithms. Two GPU‐based implementations of the quicksort were presented in literature: the GPU‐quicksort, a compute‐unified device architecture (CUDA) iterative implementation, and the CUDA dynamic parallel (CDP) quicksort, a recursive implementation provided by NVIDIA Corporation. We propose CUDA‐quicksort an iterative GPU‐based implementation of the sorting algorithm. CUDA‐quicksort has been designed starting from GPU‐quicksort. Unlike GPU‐quicksort, it uses atomic primitives to perform inter‐block communications while ensuring an optimized access to the GPU memory. Experiments performed on six sorting benchmark distributions show that CUDA‐quicksort is up to four times faster than GPU‐quicksort and up to three times faster than CDP‐quicksort. An in‐depth analysis of the performance between CUDA‐quicksort and GPU‐quicksort shows that the main improvement is related to the optimized GPU memory access rather than to the use of atomic primitives. Moreover, in order to assess the advantages of using the CUDA dynamic parallelism, we implemented a recursive version of the CUDA‐quicksort. Experimental results show that CUDA‐quicksort is faster than the CDP‐quicksort provided by NVIDIA, with better performance achieved using the iterative implementation. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A Performance Measurement Framework For UK Contact Centres

Contact centres are used in a wide range of contexts by organisations and play a crucial role in shaping customer experience and managing customer relationship. Performance measurement is a crucial practice for contact centres that are committed to delivering superb customer service and keeping competitive advantages. Despite its importance, there are no studies that systematically review the performance measurement practice in the contact centre industry. This paper aims to develop a key performance indicator (KPI) framework for contact centres to evaluate and benchmark performance. A KPI framework consisting of six dimensions was developed from the literature and testedby means of a web based survey with Call Centre Focus magazine (CCF),ant authoritative and well-known call centre magazine in the UK. The survey was sent to 10070 contact centre professionals and had a response rate of 3.9%. The results were analysed with SPSS and factor analysis was used to validate the framework. The analysis showed the ten most important KPIs and exploratory factor analysis extracted ten factors. They confirmed the original framework to a large extent and also revealed new insights amongst the dimensions and variables. The framework has significant managerial implications and could be used as a guideline for contact centres for performance measurement. The framework could also be used to benchmark against other companies.
Cochlear Hearing Loss Detection System Based on Transient Evoked Otoacoustic Emissions

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the application of the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and support vector machines (SVM) to transient evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAE) in order to achieve a detection of frequency-specific hearing loss (HL). We introduce a system to determine detection rates between groups of persons with normal hearing, high frequency hearing loss, and pantonal hearing loss. The validity and use of our approach is verified on a different patient group
Dynamic optimization of a polymerization reactor

This paper presents an approach to dynamic optimization of an emulsion polymerization reactor. The reactor can be described as a strongly non-linear hybrid system with three dynamical modes. We describe a detailed process model described by 7 differential equations. To solve the problem, we apply control vector parametrization (CVP) method and calculate necessary information for non-linear programming (NLP) solvers using theory of optimal control according to Pontryagin's maximum principle.
Effects of sensory sensitivity and intolerance of uncertainty on anxiety in mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder

This study examined the relations between anxiety and individual characteristics of sensory sensitivity (SS) and intolerance of uncertainty (IU) in mothers of children with ASD. The mothers of 50 children completed the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, the Highly Sensitive Person Scale and the IU Scale. Anxiety was associated with both SS and IU and IU was also associated with SS. Mediation analyses showed direct effects between anxiety and both IU and SS but a significant indirect effect was found only in the model in which IU mediated between SS. This is the first study to characterize the nature of the IU and SS interrelation in predicting levels of anxiety.
An Evaluation Framework for Moving Target Defense Based on Analytic Hierarchy Process

A Moving Target Defense (MTD)-enabled system is one which can dynamically and rapidly change its properties and code such that the attackers do not have sufficient time to exploit it. Although a variety of MTD systems have been proposed, fewwork has focused on assessing the relative cost-effectiveness of differentMTD approaches. In this paper, based on a generic MTD theory, we propose five general evaluation metrics and an assessment framework on top of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), which aggregates these five metrics and systematically evaluates/compares security strengths and costs of multiple MTD-based approaches in the same category. This framework could be widely used in different MTD categories under various attacks and it will enable a security specialist to choose the best MTD approach from a set of possible alternatives based on his/her goal and understanding of the problem. A detailed case study on a specific MTD category called software diversification validates the effectiveness of this framework. Our evaluation results rank three software diversity algorithms and choose the best one among three based on problem setting and situation constraints. Received on XXXX; accepted on XXXX; published on XXXX
COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE: Event-related brain potentials elicited by a number discrimination task

To study the number cognition process, we recorded eventrelated potentials (ERPs) in 14 subjects when they were indicating whether a number pair was the same or not. The two numbers given in sequence were either the same (condition 1) or different (condition 2). After 270 ms following the onset of the second stimulus in condition 2, a negative component N270 was recorded on the scalp with the most negative amplitude at the central and occipital areas. Hemispheric asymmetry was not observed in the potential. This negative component is considered to re ̄ect the mismatching process for numbers in the brain. NeuroReport 11:1195±1197 & 2000 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Research of evaluation model of Development Assurance Standards

Development Assurance Standards (DAS), generally developed from Process Management technology are defined according to requirements that evaluate products in specific domains. Similar with Process Management, problems are encored when using those standards in practice. Current researches on Software Process Improvement (SPI) focused on technology, methods and experience of process from a higher level of abstraction, but ignore the impact of different application areas. A lack of effective analysis means to ensure the selection of the process and to ensure the development of the standard limited the use of DAS. This paper analyses DASs used in airborne software, electrical hardware and complex system of Civil Aircraft that generally follow a similar backgrounds, environments in development process. Process Standards Maturity Model is defined and used on different DASs to evaluate projects selection of those standards. Additionally, shortages of current Development Assurance are discussed.
A comparison of the effects of endurance training on alternate days and on consecutive four days each week for eight weeks on the abundance of PGC-1α, CaMKII, NRF-1, mtTFA and COXIV proteins in rat skeletal muscle.

The aim of this study was to compare the effects of two training protocols, training on alternate days (A) or on consecutive four days followed by three days of rest in each week (C) for eight weeks, on selected proteins involved in the biogenesis and function of mitochondria in skeletal muscle. Eighty male SD rats were randomly allocated into 10 groups (n=8 each), including Pre and Post control groups, and A or C training groups with 8, 16, 24 and 32 training sessions, respectively. The vastus lateralis and soleus muscle samples were obtained 24 hours after the last training session, or at rest for the controls. The abundance of the proteins for PGC-1α, CaMKII, NRF-1, mtTFA and COXIV was analysed by Western blotting. Analysis of the results with two-way ANOVA showed no significant effect and interaction (training protocol by duration) in abundance of the proteins by the two protocols. However, fold changes normalized to control showed significant increases COXIV of the soleus muscle at most time points in both A and C training as indicated by Krumkal-Wallis H tests. There were significant correlations found between the abundance of the measured proteins of the vastus lateralis. The findings suggest that the two training protocols with the same intensity and total volume of work would not make a significant difference in respect of the changes in the targeted proteins. Alternative regulatory factors and the responses in different types of muscles to the training programs need to be examined in future research.
Genistein alleviates pressure overload‐induced cardiac dysfunction and interstitial fibrosis in mice

Pressure overload‐induced cardiac interstitial fibrosis is viewed as a major cause of heart failure in patients with hypertension or aorta atherosclerosis. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects and the underlying mechanisms of genistein, a natural phytoestrogen found in soy bean extract, on pressure overload‐induced cardiac fibrosis.