Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ACE and response to pulmonary rehabilitation in COPD: two observational studies

Introduction Skeletal muscle impairment is an important feature of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Renin–angiotensin system activity influences muscle phenotype, so we wished to investigate whether it affects the response to pulmonary rehabilitation. Methods Two studies are described; in the first, the response of 168 COPD patients (mean forced expiratory volume in one second 51.9% predicted) to pulmonary rehabilitation was compared between different ACE insertion/deletion polymorphism genotypes. In a second, independent COPD cohort (n=373), baseline characteristics and response to pulmonary rehabilitation were compared between COPD patients who were or were not taking ACE inhibitors or angiotensin receptor antagonists (ARB). Results In study 1, the incremental shuttle walk distance improved to a similar extent in all three genotypes; DD/ID/II (n=48/91/29) 69(67)m, 61 (76)m and 78 (78)m, respectively, (p>0.05). In study 2, fat free mass index was higher in those on ACE-I/ARB (n=130) than those who were not (n=243), 17.8 (16.0, 19.8) kg m−2 vs 16.5 (14.9, 18.4) kg/m2 (p<0.001). However change in fat free mass, walking distance or quality of life in response to pulmonary rehabilitation did not differ between groups. Conclusions While these data support a positive association of ACE-I/ARB treatment and body composition in COPD, neither treatment to reduce ACE activity nor ACE (I/D) genotype influence response to pulmonary rehabilitation.
Query language support for incomplete information in the MayBMS system

MayBMS [4, 1, 3, 2] is a data management system for incomplete information developed at Saarland University. Its main features are a simple and compact representation system for incomplete information and a language called I-SQL with explicit operations for handling uncertainty. MayBMS is currently an extension of PostgreSQL and manages both complete and incomplete data and evaluates I-SQL queries.
Leaving the neighborhood: molecular mechanisms involved during epithelial‐mesenchymal transition

Several molecular mechanisms contribute directly and mechanically to the loss of epithelial phenotype. During epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT), adherens junctions and desmosomes are at least partially dissociated. At the same time, a massive cytoskeleton reorganization takes place, involving the rho family and the remodeling of the actin microfilament mesh. Numerous pathways have been described in vitro that control phenotype transition in specific cell models. In vivo developmental studies suggest that transcriptional control, activated by a specific pathway involving Ras, Src and potentially the Wnt pathway, is an essential step. Recent functional and localization experiments indicate that the slug/snail family of transcription factors functions overall as an epithelial phenotype repressor and could represent a key EMT contributor. BioEssays 23:912–923, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Reflections on designing networked exertion games

Research in human-computer interaction has begun to acknowledge the benefits of physicality in the way people interact with computers. However, the role of physicality is often understood in terms of the characteristics of physical smart objects and their digital augmentation. We are stressing that the physicality lies within the interaction, not the object, and use a subset of bodily actions, exertion interactions, as an example to demonstrate our point. Emerging game designs have shown that supporting such exertion interactions can enable beneficial experiences between geographically distant participants. Based on several designs from our own work as well as others in this area we articulate reflections for the design of systems that support and facilitate bodily aspects of physicality in networked environments. We believe our work can serve as guidance for designers who are interested in creating future systems that support networked exertion interactions.
Locating Anomalies Using Bayesian Factorizations and Masks

A plethora of methods have been developed to handle anomaly detection in various application domains. This work focuses on locating anomalies inside a categorical data set without assuming any spe- cific domain knowledge. By exploiting the conditional dependence and independence relationships among data attributes, not only can data an- alysts recognize the anomaly, but also locate the potentially anomalous attributes inside an anomalous instance following its masks. Masks are geometrically generated based on the factorization of the joint probability from a Bayesian network automatically learnt from the given data set.
Architecture of metaphase chromosomes and chromosome scaffolds

We have developed procedures for depositing intact mitotic chromosomes and isolated residual scaffolds on electron microscope grids at controlled and reproducible levels of compaction. The chromosomes were isolated using a recently developed aqueous method. Our study has addressed two different aspects of chromosome structure. First, we present a method for improved visualization of radial chromatin loops in undisrupted mitotic chromosomes. Second, we have visualized a nonhistone protein residual scaffold isolated from nuclease-digested chromosomes under conditions of low salt protein extraction. These scaffolds, which have an extremely simple protein composition, are the size of chromosomes, are fibrous in nature, and are found to retain differentiated regions that appear to derive from the kinetochores and the chromatid axis. When our standard preparation conditions were used, the scaffold appearance was found to be very reproducible. If the ionic conditions were varied, however, the scaffold appearance underwent dramatic changes. In the presence of millimolar concentrations of Mg++ or high concentrations of NaCl, the fibrous scaffold protein network was observed to undergo a lateral aggregation or assembly into a coarse meshlike structure. The alteration of scaffold structure was apparently reversible. This observation is consistent with a model in which the scaffolding network plays a dynamic role in chromosome condensation at mitosis.
Worst-Case Response Time Analysis of Real-Time Tasks under Fixed-Priority Scheduling with Deferred Preemption Revisited

Fixed-priority scheduling with deferred preemption (FPDS) has been proposed in the literature as a viable alternative to fixed-priority preemptive scheduling (FPPS), that both reduces the cost of arbitrary preemptions and removes the need for non-trivial resource access protocols. This paper shows that existing worst-case response time analysis of hard real-time tasks under FPDS, arbitrary phasing and relative deadlines at most equal to periods is both pessimistic and optimistic. This paper provides a revised analysis, resolving the problems with the existing approaches. The analysis assumes a continuous scheduling model. It is shown that the critical instant, longest busy period, and worst-case response time for a task are suprema rather than maxima for all tasks, except for the lowest priority task. Moreover, it is shown that the analysis is not uniform for all tasks, i.e. the analysis for the lowest priority task differs from the analysis of the other tasks, because only the lowest priority task cannot be blocked. To build on earlier work, the worst-case response time analysis for FPDS is expressed in terms of known worst-case analysis results for FPPS. The paper includes pessimistic variants of the analysis, which are uniform for all tasks.
Design of a biologically inspired humanoid neck

This paper presents the design of a novel anthropomorphic robotic neck. It mimics the range of movements found in the human neck, actuated by pneumatic artificial muscles. The proposed humanoid neck simulates the anatomical functionality and structure of a human neck. Specifications are made according to biological, anatomical and behavioural data. The preliminary results show that the proposed humanoid neck is able to deliver the range of movements and head velocities comparable to those observed in human necks. These results also demonstrate that biologically inspired musculoskeletal robotic systems represent a reliable and robust platform to investigate motion development.
The role of intracellular pH in ligand internalization

Internalization of EGF and transferrin measured as the rate of uptake of 125l‐labeled ligands was compared in the cell line CCL39 and a mutant derivative, PS120, lacking the Na+/H+ antiport system. No significant alteration was detected between the two cell lines. In contrast, pretreatment of the mutant cells PS‐120 with 20 mM NH4Cl for 30 min to decrease persistently intracellular pH resulted in an increase in 125I‐EGF and 125I‐transferrin uptake by 60% and 25%, respectively. However, similar NH4Cl pretreatment of the parental cell line, CCL‐39, which only affected intracellular pH very transiently did not cause an increase of ligand uptake. The binding of 125I‐EGF to CCL‐39 and PS‐120 cells with or without NH4Cl pretreatment showed that NH4Cl pretreatment did not affect EGF binding in either CCL‐39 or PS‐120 cells. Since cells regulate intracellular pH by ion transport systems, we also examined the role of Na+, K+‐ATPase. Ouabain, an inhibitor of Na+, K+‐ATPases, showed no effect on 125I‐EGF uptake in either of the cell types with or without NH4Cl pretreatment. Taken together, these results suggest that the plasma membrane‐bound Na+/H+ antiport, a major pHi‐regulating system in vertebrates, indirectly plays a role in ligand internalization through regulation of intracellular pH.
Blind adaptive analog nonlinear filters for noise mitigation in powerline communication systems

It has been shown that the performance of power line communication (PLC) systems can be severely limited by non-Gaussian and, in particular, impulsive interference from a variety of sources. The non-Gaussian nature of this interference provides an opportunity for its effective mitigation by nonlinear filtering. In this paper, we introduce blind adaptive analog nonlinear filters, referred to as Adaptive Nonlinear Differential Limiters (ANDLs), that are characterized by several methodological distinctions from the existing digital solutions. When ANDLs are incorporated into a communications receiver, these methodological differences can translate into significant practical advantages, improving the receiver performance in the presence of non-Gaussian interference. A Nonlinear Differential Limiter (NDL) is obtained from a linear analog filter by introducing an appropriately chosen feedback-based nonlinearity into the response of the filter, and the degree of nonlinearity is controlled by a single parameter. ANDLs are similarly controlled by a single parameter, and are suitable for improving quality of non-stationary signals under time-varying noise conditions. ANDLs are designed to be fully compatible with existing linear devices and systems (i.e., ANDLs' behavior is linear in the absence of impulsive interference), and to be used as an enhancement, or as a simple low-cost alternative, to the state-of-art interference mitigation methods. We provide an introduction to the NDLs and illustrate their potential use for noise mitigation in PLC systems.
Measurement‐based admission control for bufferless multiplexers

In this paper we study measurement‐based admission control for bufferless multiplexing, which is very attractive for real‐time traffic. We first discuss a novel large deviations (LD) approach to measurement‐based admission control. We then provide an extensive review of the existing literature on measurement‐based admission control. We conduct simulation studies with traces of MPEG 1 encoded movies to compare the performance of the admission rules in the literature with that of our large deviations approach. We demonstrate that our LD approach achieves higher link utilizations. Finally, we compare the performance of measurement‐based admission control with that of traditional admission control, which relies on a priori traffic descriptors. Our numerical work indicates that measurement‐based admission control achieves significant gains in link utilizations over traditional admission control. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Measurement of Temperament in One to Three Year Old Children

Temperament in the toddler age group has received relatively little attention in the developmental literature, and there is a clear need for well-established, culturally-appropriate measurement instruments. To this end, the Toddler Temperament Scale (TTS) of Fullard, McDevitt and Carey (1984) was administered to a sample of 397, 1 to 3 year old Australian children. Older and younger toddlers showed developmentally related differences on a number of dimensions, emphasising the need for them to be regarded as separate groups in temperament research. Relationships between temperament classification and maternal and day-caretakers' reports of behaviour problems provided some evidence of concurrent validity of the measures. While some dimensions of the TTS were less than satisfactory psychometrically, the content of the questionnaire seemed suitable for Australian use; Australian normative data is provided for the two age groups.
Genes, oxidative stress, and the risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

BACKGROUND: The first-pass metabolism of foreign compounds in the lung is an important protective mechanism against oxidative stress. We investigated whether polymorphisms in the gene for microsomal epoxide hydrolase (mEPHX), an enzyme involved in this protective process, had any bearing on individual susceptibility to the development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and emphysema. METHODS: We designed PCR-based genotyping assays to detect variant forms of mEPHX that confer slow and fast activity. We used these assays to screen 203 blood-donor controls and groups of patients with asthma (n = 57), lung cancer (n = 50), COPD (n = 68), and emphysema (n = 94), who were attending specialised clinics in Edinburgh, UK. FINDINGS: The proportion of individuals with innate slow mEPHX activity (homozygotes) was significantly higher in both the COPD group and the emphysema group than in the control group (COPD 13 [19%] vs control 13 [6%]; emphysema 21 [22%] vs 13 [6%]). The odds ratios for homozygous slow activity versus all other phenotypes were 4.1 (95% CI 1.8-9.7) for COPD and 5.0 (2.3-10.9) for emphysema. INTERPRETATION: Genetic polymorphisms in xenobiotic enzymes may have a role in individual susceptibility to oxidant-related lung disease. Epoxide derivatives of cigarette-smoke components may be the cause of some of the lung damage characteristics of these diseases.
High-accuracy stereo depth maps using structured light

Progress in stereo algorithm performance is quickly outpacing the ability of existing stereo data sets to discriminate among the best-performing algorithms, motivating the need for more challenging scenes with accurate ground truth information. This paper describes a method for acquiring high-complexity stereo image pairs with pixel-accurate correspondence information using structured light. Unlike traditional range-sensing approaches, our method does not require the calibration of the light sources and yields registered disparity maps between all pairs of cameras and illumination projectors. We present new stereo data sets acquired with our method and demonstrate their suitability for stereo algorithm evaluation. Our results are available at http://www.middlebury. edu/stereo/.
INTRAVITREAL INJECTION VERSUS SUBTENON INFUSION OF TRIAMCINOLONE ACETONIDE DURING CATARACT SURGERY IN PATIENTS WITH REFRACTORY DIABETIC MACULAR EDEMA

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of intravitreal injection (IVT) versus posterior subtenon infusion (STI) of triamcinolone acetonide performed during phacoemulsification cataract surgery in eyes with refractory diffuse diabetic macular edema. Methods: Twenty-four eyes of 24 patients with refractory diffuse diabetic macular edema scheduled to undergo phacoemulsification cataract surgery were randomly assigned to receive either a 4-mg IVT (n = 12) or a 40-mg STI (n = 12) of triamcinolone acetonide during cataract surgery. Comprehensive ophthalmic evaluation, including best-corrected visual acuity, intraocular pressure, and central macular thickness measured with optical coherence tomography, was performed at baseline and at 1, 4, 8 ± 1, 12 ± 2, and 24 ± 2 weeks postoperatively. Results: Ten patients from the IVT group and 9 patients from the STI group completed the 24-week study visit. Mean baseline best-corrected visual acuity (logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution) was 20/259 and 20/222 in the IVT and STI groups, respectively (t = 0.41; P = 0.3407). A significant improvement in best-corrected visual acuity was observed only in the IVT group at 4 weeks (mean difference ± standard error, improved to 20/116; P = 0.0437), 8 weeks (20/110; P = 0.0355), and 12 weeks (20/121; P = 0.0471) postoperatively. There was no significant change from baseline in mean intraocular pressure in either group. Mean ± standard error baseline central macular thickness was 474.1 ± 42.4 &mgr;m and 490.8 ± 70.8 &mgr;m in the IVT and STI groups, respectively (t = 0.21; P = 0.5807). The central macular thickness reductions after surgery at all study follow-up visits were significantly greater in the IVT group than in the STI group (P < 0.05). Conclusion: These data suggest that IVT is more effective than STI of triamcinolone acetonide for the management of refractory diffuse diabetic macular edema in eyes undergoing phacoemulsification. Further investigation of a larger number of patients with longer follow-up is necessary to confirm these findings.
Phages in the global fruit and vegetable industry

From recent articles, we have learned that phages can constitute a promising alternative in the food industry to eliminate bacterial pathogens from seedlings in greenhouse and field environments, as well as from fresh‐cut food products. The fruit and vegetable industry requires quite a different approach than the meat or dairy industry. Several factors can inhibit efficacy of phage treatment such as plant watering or washing ready‐to‐eat products (water may dilute therapeutic doses), UV irradiation or extensive spreading of phytopathogens by wind, insects or even humans. Spontaneously occurring anomalous weather conditions in different parts of the world also may have an enormous impact on phage persistence in cultivations and on yields. Despite that, some phage preparations are commercially available and, without doubt, are much safer than chemical treatments. Along with increasing worldwide fruit and vegetable consumption, plant diseases and human foodborne illnesses are becoming a serious economic problem, resulting in a focus on optimization of phage treatment.
The sad state of self-adaptive particle swarm optimizers

The performance of the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm can be greatly improved if the parameters are appropriately tuned. However, tuning the control parameters for PSO algorithms has traditionally been a time-consuming, empirical process. Furthermore, ideal parameters may be time-dependent. To address the issue of parameter tuning, self-adaptive PSO (SAPSO) algorithms adapt the PSO control parameters over time. While many such SAPSO techniques have been proposed, their behaviour is not well understood as no in-depth critical analysis of their adaptation mechanisms has been performed. This study examines the convergence behaviour of eight SAPSO algorithms both analytically and empirically. Evidence clearly indicates that the field of self-adaptive PSO algorithms is in a sad state, given that many techniques either demonstrate divergent behaviour coupled with excessive invalid particles, and thus infeasible solutions, or have prohibitively low particle step sizes caused by rapid convergence.
A receding horizon Kalman FIR filter for linear continuous-time systems

A receding horizon Kalman finite-impulse response (FIR) filter is suggested for continuous-time systems, combining the Kalman filter with the receding horizon strategy. In the suggested filter, the horizon initial state is assumed to be unknown. It can always be obtained irrespective of unknown information on the horizon initial state. The filter may be the first stochastic FIR form for continuous-time systems that may have many good inherent properties. The suggested filter can be represented in an iterative form and also in a standard FIR form. The suggested filter turns out to be a remarkable deadbeat observer. The validity of the suggested filter is illustrated by numerical examples.
Information-content based sentence extraction for text summarization

We propose the FULL-COVERAGE summarizer: an efficient, information retrieval oriented method to extract nonredundant sentences from text for summarization purposes. Our method leverages existing information retrieval technology by extracting key-sentences on the premise that the relevance of a sentence is proportional to its similarity to the whole document. We show that our method can produce sentence-based summaries that are up to 78% smaller than the original text with only 3% loss in retrieval performance.
Pilot decontamination in massive MIMO systems: Exploiting channel sparsity with pilot assignment

This paper deals with the pilot contamination problem for massive MIMO systems. Considering the sparse nature of channel impulse response inherent in wideband systems, the paths of channels of the desired and interference users hardly arrive at the same time, which allows most paths of desired channel to be distinguishable from the paths of interference channels in time-domain. Based on this observation, we first estimate the power delay profile (PDP) of the desired channel with the contaminated channel estimate, from which we acquire the delay of each path of the desired channel. By extracting the corresponding channel components from the contaminated channel estimate, a clean channel estimate can be obtained. To reduce the impact of pilot contamination on the estimated PDP, we propose a pilot assignment method among adjacent cells to randomize the interference over successive uplink frames. Simulation results demonstrate substantial sum rate gain of the proposed approach over existing methods.
Beta-blocker use at discharge in patients hospitalized for heart failure is associated with improved survival.

BACKGROUND Previous studies demonstrated that beta-blocker use at the time of hospital discharge significantly increased postdischarge treatment rates, associated with an early (60- to 90-day) survival benefit in patients with heart failure (HF). However, it is unknown whether this therapeutic approach can also improve the long-term survival. We thus examined the long-term effects of beta-blocker use at discharge on outcomes in patients hospitalized for HF and left ventricular systolic dysfunction (LVSD) (ejection fraction <40%). METHODS AND RESULTS The Japanese Cardiac Registry of Heart Failure in Cardiology (JCARE-CARD) enrolled HF patients hospitalized with worsening symptoms and they were followed during an average of 2.2 years. A total of 947 patients had LVSD, among whom 624 (66%) were eligible to receive a beta-blocker at discharge. After adjustment for covariate and propensity score, discharge use of beta-blocker, when compared to no beta-blocker use, was associated with a significant reduced risk of all-cause mortality (hazard ratio (HR) 0.564, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.358-0.889, P=0.014) and cardiac mortality (HR 0.489, 95%CI 0.279-0.859, P=0.013) after hospital discharge. CONCLUSIONS Beta-blocker use at the time of discharge was associated with a long-term survival benefit in a diverse cohort of patients hospitalized with HF.