Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Multispectral and Hyperspectral Image Fusion Based on Group Spectral Embedding and Low-Rank Factorization

Fusing low spatial resolution hyperspectral (LRHS) images and high spatial resolution multispectral (HRMS) images to obtain high spatial resolution hyperspectral images (HRHS) has received increasing interests in recent years. In this paper, a new group spectral embedding (GSE)-based LRHS and HRMS image fusion method is proposed by exploring the multiple manifold structures of spectral bands and the low-rank structure of HRHS data. First, a low-rank factorization fusion (LRFF)-based robust recovery model is developed for HRHS images, by regarding HRMS images as the spectral degradation of HRHS images and exploring the group sparse prior of difference images. Then, an assumption that grouped spectral bands share the similar local geometry is cast on LRHS and HRHS images, to formulate a GSE regularizer in the LRFF model. Finally, an iterative optimization algorithm based on augmented Lagrangian multiplier is advanced to recover HRHS images. Experimental results on several data sets show the effectiveness of the proposed method on visual and numerical comparison.
Reducing CMSO Model Checking to Highly Connected Graphs

Given a Counting Monadic Second Order (CMSO) sentence $\psi$, the CMSO$[\psi]$ problem is defined as follows. The input to CMSO$[\psi]$ is a graph $G$, and the objective is to determine whether $G\models \psi$. Our main theorem states that for every CMSO sentence $\psi$, if CMSO$[\psi]$ is solvable in polynomial time on "globally highly connected graphs", then CMSO$[\psi]$ is solvable in polynomial time (on general graphs). We demonstrate the utility of our theorem in the design of parameterized algorithms. Specifically we show that technical problem-specific ingredients of a powerful method for designing parameterized algorithms, recursive understanding, can be replaced by a black-box invocation of our main theorem. We also show that our theorem can be easily deployed to show fixed parameterized tractability of a wide range of problems, where the input is a graph $G$ and the task is to find a connected induced subgraph of $G$ such that "few" vertices in this subgraph have neighbors outside the subgraph, and additionally the subgraph has a CMSO-definable property.
Before the Flood: Impact of Coordination of Care and Direct Admissions on Emergency Department Volumes

Background Transfers of pediatric patients occur to access specialty and subspecialty care, but incur risk, and consume resources. Direct admissions to medical and surgical wards may improve patient experience and mitigate resource utilization. Objective We sought to identify common elements for direct admissions, as well as the pattern of disposition for patients referred to our emergency department (ED). Design A retrospective qualitative analysis of patients transferred to our pediatric hospital for 12 months was performed. Different physician groups were evaluated for use of direct admissions or evaluation in the ED. Patients referred to the ED were additionally tracked to evaluate their eventual disposition. Results A total of 3982 transfers occurred during the 12-month analysis period. Of those, 3463 resulted in admission, accounting for 32.55% of all admissions. Transfers accepted by nonsurgical services accounted for 82% of the transfers, whereas 18% were facilitated by one of the surgical services. Direct admissions accounted for 1707 (44.8%) of all referrals and were used more often by nonsurgical services. Of patients referred to the ED (2101 or 55.2% of all referrals), most patients were admitted and 343 (16% of those referred to the ED) were discharged home. Conclusions The direct admission process helped avoid ED assessments for some patients; however, some patients referred to the ED were able to be evaluated, treated, and discharged. Consistent triage of the patients being transferred as direct admissions may improve ED throughput and potentially improve the patient's experience, reduce redundant services, and expedite care.
Clinical and Experimental Gastroenterology Dovepress Open Access to Scientific and Medical Research Open Access Full Text Article Dovepress the Impact of Biologics on Health-related Quality of Life in Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Background: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is characterized by a chronic relapsing inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. Adult IBD patients suffer from a disabling disease which greatly affects health-related quality of life (HRQoL). A worse HRQoL in these patients may result in a defensive and ineffective use of medical attention and thus higher medical costs. Because of its chronic nature, IBD may also cause psychological problems in many patients which may also influence HRQoL and care-seeking behavior. An important factor reducing HRQoL is disease activity. Induction of remission and long-term remission are important goals for improving HRQoL. Furthermore, remission is associated with a decreased need for hospitalization and surgery and increased employment, which in turn improve HRQoL. Treatment strategies available for many years are corticosteroids, 5-aminosalicylates and immunnosup-pressants, but these treatments did not show significant long-term improvement on HRQoL. The biologics, which induce rapid and sustained remission, may improve HRQoL. Objective: To review and evaluate the current literature on the effect of biologics on HRQoL of IBD patients. Methods: We performed a MEDLINE search and reviewed the effect of different biologics on HRQoL. The following subjects and synonyms of these terms were used: inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, quality of life, health-related quality of life, fatigue, different anti-TNF medication, and biologicals/biologics (MESH). Studies included were limited to English-language, adult population, full-text, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled in which HRQoL was measured. Results: Out of 202 identified articles, 8 randomized controlled trials (RCT) met the inclusion criteria. Two RCTs on infliximab showed significant improvement of HRQoL compared to placebo which was sustained over the long term. One RCT on adalimumab showed a significant and sustained improvement of HRQoL compared to placebo. This study showed also significant decrease of fatigue in the adalimumab-treated patients. Three RCTs on certolizumab showed a significant improvement of HRQoL in the intervention group compared to placebo. Two RCTs of natalizumab treatment were found. One study showed significant and sustained improvement compared to placebo, and also scores of HRQoL comparable to that in the general population, but in the other no significant results were found.strated significant improvement of HRQoL of IBD patients compared with placebo. However, we found differences in improvement of HRQoL between the different biologics.
Inverse general Chebyshev bandpass filters

In this paper, the synthesis of inverse general Chebyshev bandpass filters is discussed. Unlike general Chebyshev filters that flexibly place transmission zeros to mainly control the performance of the filters in the stopband and keep constant ripple in the passband, inverse general Chebyshev filters are featured by flexible placement of reflection zeros in the passband and keep constant ripple in the stopband. Two approaches to directly derive filtering polynomials of inverse general Chebyshev bandpass filters in the bandpass domain are discussed in detail. By applying the zero‐extraction method, these filtering polynomials could be realized through appropriate networks. Finally, two examples are presented for demonstration.
Effects of population size and cage area on agonistic activity and social structure of White Leghorn layers.

Four caging environments consisting of two population sizes (4 vs. 6 birds/cage) and two cage area allocations (316 vs. 406 cm2/bird) were evaluated for their effects on agonistic activity, social structure, and egg production of Single Comb White Leghorn layers. Wire battery laying cages were designed and constructed to study these effects in a nonconfounded approach while maintaining feed trough space constant. Agonistic activities and dominance structure for the treatment groups were assessed during Weeks 23 to 26 and 37 to 40; egg production was obtained for Weeks 20 to 40. Cage groups demonstrated a high degree of linearity (K) for dominance hiearchies during both observational periods. Values for K ranged from a low of . 69 during Period 1 to as high as . 91 during Period 2. Cage groups were also very stable over observation periods; correlation coefficients for dominance ranks between Periods 1 and 2 averaged . 95 and . 89 for the four and six-bird groups, respectively. Greater cage area and population size resulted in more agonistic activity during Period 1, but only in the 6/406 cm2 treatment during Period 2. The alpha individual was responsible for the most aggressive acts committed in all cage groups (40 to 50%). Aggressive activity was observed to decline in a linear manner with declining dominance rank. Egg production was significantly affected by population and density treatments during Period 2; however, correlations between aggressive acts per cage and egg production were not generally significant.
Thermal interaction of biological tissue with nanoparticles heated by laser radiation

We explore the problem of thermal interaction of nanoparticles heated by laser radiation with a biological tissue after particle flow entering the cell. The solution of the model equations is obtained numerically under the following assumptions: a single particle is located in a neighborhood exceeding the particle size; the environment surrounding the particle is water with the conventional thermal characteristics. The model equations are deduced from the particle and the environment energy conditions taking into account the heat transfer in the particle and in its environment by conduction. We also assume that at the boundary between the particle and the surrounding water the perfect thermal contact takes place. The numerical solution of the problem is carried out with the use of an implicit difference scheme and the sweep method. Two cases of the laser pulse action on a particle are considered: a single pulse and a series of pulses. The dynamics of the temperature isoline propagation is obtained at which protein denaturation occurs in the space around the metal nanoparticle in the cases when the particles are heated by a single pulse and a series of pulses. The dependence of the heating rate and the heating depth of the medium on the laser pulse repetition frequency is found.
The influence of flock uniformity on the reproductive performance of broiler breeder hens housed in cages and floor pens.

Two flocks of broiler breeder hens, differing in uniformity of body weight, were evaluated under cage and floor management systems over a 28-week period. Hens were housed singly in cages (N = 280) or in litter floor pens (N = 304). Caged hens were artificially inseminated with . 05 ml of pooled semen once weekly. Floor birds were mated naturally. During the first 10 weeks of production, the more uniform flock exhibited significantly higher egg production than the less uniform flock. Uniformity did not influence cumulative egg production, egg weight, fertility, or mortality. Initial egg production was similar for caged and floor housed hens, but the caged birds attained significantly higher egg production during peak production. Caged females showed higher egg weights and body weights than did the floor females throughout the study. Naturally mated birds attained significantly higher fertility than artificially inseminated birds (94.9 vs. 90.6). Correlation coefficients for the weights of caged hens at 20 and 24 weeks with 24, 32, 40, and 50 week weights, total eggs per bird, and age at first egg indicated that body weight at 24 weeks was a better indicator of subsequent flock performance than was body weight at 20 weeks.
Observations on several factors influencing the incidence of tibial dyschondroplasia in broiler chickens.

The effects of age vs. diet, potassium level, tetramethylthiuram disulfide (thiuram), and ionophores in the diet on the development of tibial dyschondroplasia in broilers was investigated. Changing broiler chicks from a diet that induced tibial dyschondroplasia to one that reduced the disease or vice versa caused a change in the incidence in the direction of the last-fed diet; however, in most cases the chicks did not develop as low or high an incidence of tibial dyschondroplasia as the birds fed the reducing or inducing diet, respectively, for the entire experimental period. Potassium supplementation of a corn-soybean meal diet that contained . 88% potassium had no effect on the incidence of tibial dyschondroplasia. However, supplementation of a low potassium (.3%) corn-corn gluten meal-animal protein diet with potassium increased the incidence of tibial dyschondroplasia. The addition of thiuram to the diet caused an increase in tibial dyschondroplasia. When thiuram was added to the tibial dyschondroplasia-inducing diet, it also caused a decrease in bone ash and in the total and ultrafilterable plasma calcium. A significant negative correlation was obtained between incidence and score of tibial dyschondroplasia and bone ash of the ends and middles of the tibia when thiuram was fed. No consistent effects of the ionophores monensin and lasalocid on the development of tibial dyschondroplasia in broilers was noted in three experiments, although significant effects of the ionophores on the incidence or score of the disease was observed in two experiments.
Centrality Analysis, Role-Based Clustering, and Egocentric Abstraction for Heterogeneous Social Networks

The social network is a powerful data structure allowing the depiction of relationship information between entities. Recent researchers have proposed many successful methods on analyzing homogeneous social networks assuming only a single type of node and relation. Nevertheless, real-world complex networks are usually heterogeneous, which presumes a network can be composed of different types of nodes and relations. In this paper, we propose an unsupervised tensor-based mechanism considering higher-order relational information to model the complex semantics of a heterogeneous social network. Based on the model we present solutions to three critical issues in heterogeneous networks. The first concerns identifying central nodes in the heterogeneous network. Second, we propose a role-based clustering method to identify nodes which play similar roles in the network. Finally, we propose an egocentric abstraction mechanism to facilitate further explorations in a complex social network. The evaluations are conducted on a real-world movie dataset and an artificial crime dataset with promising results.
Fully Dynamic Spanners with Worst-Case Update Time

An alpha-spanner of a graph G is a subgraph H such that H preserves all distances of G within a factor of alpha. In this paper, we give fully dynamic algorithms for maintaining a spanner H of a graph G undergoing edge insertions and deletions with worst-case guarantees on the running time after each update. In particular, our algorithms maintain: - a 3-spanner with ~O(n^{1+1/2}) edges with worst-case update time ~O(n^{3/4}), or - a 5-spanner with ~O(n^{1+1/3}) edges with worst-case update time ~O (n^{5/9}). These size/stretch tradeoffs are best possible (up to logarithmic factors). They can be extended to the weighted setting at very minor cost. Our algorithms are randomized and correct with high probability against an oblivious adversary. We also further extend our techniques to construct a 5-spanner with suboptimal size/stretch tradeoff, but improved worst-case update time. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first dynamic spanner algorithms with sublinear worst-case update time guarantees. Since it is known how to maintain a spanner using small amortized}but large worst-case update time [Baswana et al. SODA'08], obtaining algorithms with strong worst-case bounds, as presented in this paper, seems to be the next natural step for this problem.
Understanding the impact of a clinical care pathway for major head and neck cancer resection on postdischarge healthcare utilization

The purposes of this study were to explore the association of a postoperative clinical care pathway for patients undergoing major head and neck surgery with microvascular reconstruction on postdischarge health care utilization and cost and to compares a nonpathway group (n = 60) to a prospective, pathway‐managed group (n = 54). Our primary purpose was to understand whether pathway‐managed patients used postdischarge health care resources differently than patients managed without a care pathway.
Altitude and temperature effects on the energetic cost of hover-feeding in migratory rufous hummingbirds, Selasphorus rufus

During migratory stopovers, rufous hummingbirds (Selasphorus rufus (Gmelin, 1788)) can achieve high daily rates of net energy intake and mass gain while foraging at a range of elevations and ambient temperatures, despite the high energetic costs of hovering flight and thermoregulation. To gain insights into the factors affecting the energetic costs incurred during foraging, we captured migratory hummingbirds and measured their oxygen consumption rates during hover-feeding. Measurements were performed in situ where rufous hummingbirds forage as they migrate at several locations along a gradient in elevation and over the range of ambient temperatures normally experienced. Oxygen consumption rates during hover-feeding varied between the sexes and between juveniles and adults. These differences appeared to reflect differences in the power requirements for hovering flight in relation to variation in wing morphology. Decreasing ambient temperature and increasing elevation both significantly increased oxygen con.
Intermittent Hypoxia Enhances Functional Connectivity of Midcervical Spinal Interneurons

Brief, intermittent oxygen reductions [acute intermittent hypoxia (AIH)] evokes spinal plasticity. Models of AIH-induced neuroplasticity have focused on motoneurons; however, most midcervical interneurons (C-INs) also respond to hypoxia. We hypothesized that AIH would alter the functional connectivity between C-INs and induce persistent changes in discharge. Bilateral phrenic nerve activity was recorded in anesthetized and ventilated adult male rats and a multielectrode array was used to record C4/5 spinal discharge before [baseline (BL)], during, and 15 min after three 5 min hypoxic episodes (11% O2, H1–H3). Most C-INs (94%) responded to hypoxia by either increasing or decreasing firing rate. Functional connectivity was examined by cross-correlating C-IN discharge. Correlograms with a peak or trough were taken as evidence for excitatory or inhibitory connectivity between C-IN pairs. A subset of C-IN pairs had increased excitatory cross-correlations during hypoxic episodes (34%) compared with BL (19%; p < 0.0001). Another subset had a similar response following each episode (40%) compared with BL (19%; p < 0.0001). In the latter group, connectivity remained elevated 15 min post-AIH (30%; p = 0.0002). Inhibitory C-IN connectivity increased during H1–H3 (4.5%; p = 0.0160), but was reduced 15 min post-AIH (0.5%; p = 0.0439). Spike-triggered averaging indicated that a subset of C-INs is synaptically coupled to phrenic motoneurons and excitatory inputs to these “pre-phrenic” cells increased during AIH. We conclude that AIH alters connectivity of the midcervical spinal network. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration that AIH induces plasticity within the propriospinal network. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Acute intermittent hypoxia (AIH) can trigger spinal plasticity associated with sustained increases in respiratory, somatic, and/or autonomic motor output. The impact of AIH on cervical spinal interneuron (C-IN) discharge and connectivity is unknown. Our results demonstrate that AIH recruits excitatory C-INs into the spinal respiratory (phrenic) network. AIH also enhances excitatory and reduces inhibitory connections among the C-IN network. We conclude that C-INs are part of the respiratory, somatic, and/or autonomic response to AIH, and that propriospinal plasticity may contribute to sustained increases in motor output after AIH.
Discrepancy-based evolutionary diversity optimization

Diversity plays a crucial role in evolutionary computation. While diversity has been mainly used to prevent the population of an evolutionary algorithm from premature convergence, the use of evolutionary algorithms to obtain a diverse set of solutions has gained increasing attention in recent years. Diversity optimization in terms of features on the underlying problem allows to obtain a better understanding of possible solutions to the problem at hand and can be used for algorithm selection when dealing with combinatorial optimization problems such as the Traveling Salesperson Problem. We consider discrepancy-based diversity optimization approaches for evolving diverse sets of images as well as instances of the Traveling Salesperson problem where a local search is not able to find near optimal solutions. Our experimental investigations comparing three diversity optimization approaches show that a discrepancy-based diversity optimization approach using a tie-breaking rule based on weighted differences to surrounding feature points provides the best results in terms of the star discrepancy measure.
Bronchodilator, oxygen level, and temperature effects on ascites incidence in broiler chickens.

Oxygen level, ambient temperature, and bronchodilator (metaproterenol) effects on performance, ascites incidence, and hematology were investigated using commercial broilers. In Experiment 1, two atmospheric oxygen concentrations (17.6, 20.6%) and two ambient temperatures (26.7, 32.2 C) were examined in a factorial arrangement. The low-oxygen (17.6%), ambient temperature combination (26.7 C) reduced (P < .01) weight gain whereas the high-oxygen ambient temperature combination enhanced (P < .05) such performance. Ascites incidence for chicks housed at 32.2 C was higher (P < .01) for birds maintained at 17.6% oxygen but oxygen concentration did not impact ascites incidence at 26.7 C. White blood cell counts were elevated in the low-oxygen (17.6%) group at both 26.7 and 32.2 C, and hematocrit was positively (R = .84; P < .05) correlated with ascites incidence. In Experiment 2, two oxygen levels (17.6, 20.6%) at constant 26.7 C were examined with and without metaproterenol, a bronchodilator. Metaproterenol reduced (P < .01) ascites incidence at 17.6% oxygen and completely prevented ascites at 20.6% oxygen. The data suggest that therapeutic development may be enhanced by using hematocrit as an indices of ascites and further that studies directed at bronchodilation have potential to alleviate ascites.