Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preliminary Evaluation of Clinical and Angiographic Outcomes with Biodegradable Polymer Coated Sirolimus-Eluting Stent in De Novo Coronary Artery Disease: Results of the MANIPAL-FLEX Study

Objective. The objective of the MANIPAL-FLEX study was to evaluate the feasibility, preliminary safety, and efficacy of the Supraflex sirolimus-eluting stent (SES) implantation, in de novo coronary artery disease, using clinical and quantitative coronary angiography (QCA) follow-ups. Methods. This was a prospective, nonrandomized, multicenter, single-arm study that enrolled 189 patients with de novo coronary artery disease who were treated with the Supraflex SES. Of 189 patients enrolled, the first 61 consecutive patients who consented to a 9-month follow-up evaluation by QCA, irrespective of presence of symptoms, were to be followed up with angiography at 9 months. The primary endpoint of the study was target lesion failure (TLF), including cardiac death, myocardial infarction, and target lesion revascularization during 12-month follow-up after the index procedure. Results. The mean age of the study population was 58 ± 11 years, with 51.3% (97/189) of hypertensive patients. Total of 66 lesions, analyzed by offline QCA, showed good scaffolding of the target vessel with in-stent late lumen loss at 9 months of 0.18 ± 0.23 mm. The observed TLF at 30-day, 6-month, and 12-month follow-up were 2 (1.1%), 6 (3.2%), and 10 (5.3%), respectively. Conclusion. This study provides preliminary evidence for the feasibility, safety, and efficacy of the Supraflex sirolimus-eluting stent.
Response – time analysis of a CAN network used for supervisory control and diagnostic systems

This paper refers to construction methods of Supervisory Control and Diagnostic Systems (SCDS) based on a CAN bus. Emphasis is put on the construction of such systems. Meeting real time constraints has become one of major aspects of this elaboration. The study enumerates possibilities of using various communication mechanisms of CAN, applicable for real-time systems. Proposed solutions are especially suitable for general-purpose SCDS. Principles of real-time analysis for CAN bus based systems are discussed as well. An example of SCDS implementation for a Swiss Light Source (SLS) large scale accelerator project is given. Time analysis is made for the constructed system with real-time conditions met. Experiments performed in the SLS confirm the results of the analysis.
Bifurcation detection in 3D vascular images using novel features and random forest

Bifurcation detection is important in medical image analysis for mainly two reasons: 1) plaques are easy to accumulate at artery bifurcations, which leads to atherosclerosis and strokes; 2) for quantification (e.g. branch length, thickness, tortuosity), visualization, and blood flow simulation, it's necessary to extract all the branches and their connectivity in a vessel tree, which makes bifurcation localization crucial. In this paper, several novel features are designed for classifying bifurcations in 3D vascular images using random forest. Encouraging results with both synthetic and real datasets are obtained.
PICS: Pathway Informed Classification System for cancer analysis using gene expression data

We introduce PICS (Pathway Informed Classification System) for classifying cancers based on tumor sample gene expression levels. PICS is a computational method capable of expeditiously elucidating both known and novel biological pathway involvement specific to various cancers, and uses that learned pathway information to separate patients into distinct classes. The method clearly separates a pan-cancer dataset into their tissue of origin and is also able to sub-classify individual cancer datasets into distinct survival classes. Gene expression values are collapsed into pathway scores that reveal which biological activities are most useful for clustering cancer cohorts into sub-types. Variants of the method allow it to be used on datasets that do and do not contain non-cancerous samples. Activity levels of all types of pathways, broadly grouped into metabolic, cellular processes and signaling, and immune system, are useful for separating the pan-cancer cohort. In the clustering of specific cancer types, certain pathway types become more valuable depending on the site being studied. For lung cancer, signaling pathways dominate, for pancreatic cancer signaling and metabolic pathways, and for melanoma immune system pathways are the most useful. This work suggests the utility of pathway level genomic analysis and points in the direction of using pathway classification for predicting the efficacy and side effects of drugs and radiation.
Formal Verification By Reverse Synthesis 1

In this paper we describe a novel yet practical approach to the formal verification of implementations. Our approach splits verification into two major parts. The first part verifies an implementation against a low-level specification written using source-code annotations. The second extracts a high-level specification from the implementation with the low-level specification, and proves that it implies the original system specification from which the system was built. Semantics-preserving refactorings are applied to the implementation in both parts to reduce the complexity of the verification. Much of the approach is automated. It reduces the verification burden by distributing it over separate tools and techniques, and it addresses both functional correctness and high-level properties at separate levels. As an illustration, we give a detailed example by verifying an optimized implementation of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) against the official specification of
Fault Diagnosis of P-Time Labeled Petri net Systems

This paper focuses on the fault diagnosis problem of systems modeled with P-time labeled Petri nets with partial information. Indeed, the set of transitions is partitioned into those labeled with the empty string ǫ called silent (as their firin cannot be detected) including the faulty transitions and the observable ones. The proposed approach is based on the synthesis of a function called diagnoser allowing to determine the diagnosis state of the system based on the current observation. The novelty of the developed approach resides in the fact that, although the time factor is considered as intervals, the diagnoser is computed thanks to the underlying untimed Petri net structure of the P-time labeled model considered. Furthermore, the method relies on the schedulability analysis of particular firin sequences exhibited by the analysis of the obtained diagnoser and does not require the building of the state class graph.
Tradeoffs in Manufacturing? A Meta‐Analysis and Critique of the Literature

An ongoing, important question in the operations strategy literature pertains to tradeoffs: Can manufacturers focus on multiple priorities simultaneously or achieve strength on multiple capabilities without sacrificing performance of another? In this paper, we accumulate, integrate, and examine the wide spectrum of conclusions reached in the literature concerning tradeoffs using modified meta‐analysis methods. Based on two decades of empirical research in operations strategy, we find that the evidence in the literature indicates manufacturers, on average, do not report experiencing tradeoffs among the competitive dimensions of quality, delivery, flexibility, and cost as suggested by the classical tradeoffs model. Our meta‐analysis also reveals that the way variables are operationalized, whether initiatives are implemented, and the unit of analysis are all related to the degree and nature of the evidence a paper contains with respect to the tradeoffs issue. We interpret our meta‐analysis results in the context of the prevailing model of manufacturing strategy and the theory of performance frontiers. We also discuss how the research designs used in this literature, which are predominantly cross‐sectional, affect the nature of the evidence generated and the conclusions that can be drawn. We go on to suggest research designs that more directly assess the tradeoffs issue.
Overexpression of Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase Is Associated with Lipid Dysregulation and Insulin Resistance in Obesity

ABSTRACT Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) produces cellular NADPH, which is required for the biosynthesis of fatty acids and cholesterol. Although G6PD is required for lipogenesis, it is poorly understood whether G6PD in adipocytes is involved in energy homeostasis, such as lipid and glucose metabolism. We report here that G6PD plays a role in adipogenesis and that its increase is tightly associated with the dysregulation of lipid metabolism and insulin resistance in obesity. We observed that the enzymatic activity and expression levels of G6PD were significantly elevated in white adipose tissues of obese models, including db/db, ob/ob, and diet-induced obesity mice. In 3T3-L1 cells, G6PD overexpression stimulated the expression of most adipocyte marker genes and elevated the levels of cellular free fatty acids, triglyceride, and FFA release. Consistently, G6PD knockdown via small interfering RNA attenuated adipocyte differentiation with less lipid droplet accumulation. Surprisingly, the expression of certain adipocytokines such as tumor necrosis factor alpha and resistin was increased, whereas that of adiponectin was decreased in G6PD overexpressed adipocytes. In accordance with these results, overexpression of G6PD impaired insulin signaling and suppressed insulin-dependent glucose uptake in adipocytes. Taken together, these data strongly suggest that aberrant increase of G6PD in obese and/or diabetic subjects would alter lipid metabolism and adipocytokine expression, thereby resulting in failure of lipid homeostasis and insulin resistance in adipocytes.
Paradigms, politics and pragmatics: psychotherapy in primary care in City and Hackney – a new model for the NHS

The City and Hackney Primary Care Psychotherapy Consultation Service is an innovative, public sector service designed to support GPs in meeting the needs of patients with complex psychological/physical health issues throughout the London Boroughs of Hackney and the City. This paper provides an account of how this new model for the National Health Service (NHS) developed in the context of psychotherapy provision within the NHS, within the national and local context in the UK and gives an overview of some the service's key features and how it differs from other services operating in primary and secondary care. A linked paper, in this journal, explores the reality within which the service functions and describes clinical outcomes, health economic data, the modifications to the original model and prospects for the future.
The anthropomorphic biped robot BIP2000

This paper describes the progress of the BIP2000 project. This project is aimed at the realization of the lower part of an anthropomorphic biped robot. The robot consists of two legs, two feet, a pelvis and a trunk. It has 15 active joints. The mass distribution, the kinematics and the capacities of the robot in terms of joint torques are close to the ones of humans. The transmissions are specific screw/nut-based systems which have good dynamic performances and small size. They are arranged in parallel at the ankles and at the trunk/pelvis linkage. The control schemes are either based on a control of the center of mass associated with suitable task functions, or take dynamically into account the unilateral constraints foot/ground. The robot has been built and tested, the computer control architecture has been realized and connected with the robot, and the basic control schemes have been implemented.
Early Assessment of Colorectal Cancer Patients with Liver Metastases Treated with Antiangiogenic Drugs: The Role of Intravoxel Incoherent Motion in Diffusion-Weighted Imaging

Purpose To assess the feasibility and effectiveness of quantitative intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) of Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) in the assessment of liver metastases treated with targeted chemotherapy agents. Methods 12 patients with unresectable liver metastases from colorectal cancer were enrolled and received neoadjuvant FOLFIRI (5-fluorouracil, leucovorin, irinotecan) plus bevacizumab therapy. DWI was performed for 36 metastases at baseline and after 14 days from starting the treatment. In addition to the basic IVIM metrics, the product between pseudo-diffusivity and perfusion fraction was considered as a descriptor roughly analogous to the flow. Median diffusion parameters of Region of Interest (ROI) were used as representative values for each lesion. Normalized parameters in comparison with the median value of spleen were also collected. The percentual change of the diffusion parameters was calculated. The response to chemotherapy was evaluated according the Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST) as calculated on whole-body CT scan obtained three months after treatment. Mann Whitney test and Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis were performed. Results 24 lesions were categorized as responding and 12 as not responding. There was no statistically significant difference among absolute and normalized diffusion parameters between the pretreatment and the post-treatment findings. Instead, the perfusion fraction (fp) values showed a statistical difference between responder and non-responder lesions: sensitivity and specificity of fp variation was 62% and 93%, respectively. Conclusions IVIM parameters represent a valuable tool in the evaluation of the anti-angiogenic therapy in patients with liver metastases from colorectal cancer. A percentage change of fp represents the most effective DWI marker in the assessment of tumor response.
Feature Extraction Algorithms for Abnormality Quantification from Medical Thermograms

Infrared Thermography can be used as a diagnostic procedure for determining abnormality in human. Thermographs provide the thermal mapping of the area under observation. For normal cases, thermographs show uniform and symmetrical temperature distribution. An abnormality appears as an abrupt temperature variation in thermographs. Quantitative characterization of temperature variation provides information about the nature of the abnormality. However the temperature variations cannot be easily quantified by naked eye. This paper presents two feature extraction algorithms based on region growing and wavelets for detection and quantitative characterization of the abnormality. Index Terms—Thermograms, region growing, Haar, feature vectors
Understanding performance modeling for modular mobile-cloud applications

Mobile devices are becoming the main entry points to the growing number of cloud applications and services. Unlike traditional approaches, we pursue a flexible architectural model where cloud hosted applications are distributed between mobile devices and the cloud in a bid to improve interaction performance. Given the increasing variety of mobile platforms or virtual instances, in this paper we approach the problem of estimating performance for such applications in two steps. First, we identify the factors that impact interaction response times, such as the application distribution schemes, workload sizes and intensities, or the resource variations of the mobile-cloud setup. Second, we attempt to find correlations between these factors and to understand how to build a unified and generic performance estimation model.
Lessons from early Medicaid expansions under health reform: interviews with Medicaid officials.

BACKGROUND The Affordable Care Act (ACA) dramatically expands Medicaid in 2014 in participating states. Meanwhile, six states have already expanded Medicaid since 2010 to some or all of the low-income adults targeted under health reform. We undertook an in-depth exploration of these six "early-expander" states-California, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Washington-through interviews with high-ranking Medicaid officials. METHODS We conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 high-ranking Medicaid officials in six states and analyzed the interviews using qualitative methods. Interviews explored enrollment outreach, stakeholder involvement, impact on beneficiaries, utilization and costs, implementation challenges, and potential lessons for 2014. Two investigators independently analyzed interview transcripts and iteratively refined the codebook until reaching consensus. RESULTS We identified several themes. First, these expansions built upon pre-existing state-funded insurance programs for the poor. Second, predictions about costs and enrollment were challenging, indicating the uncertainty in projections for 2014. Other themes included greater than anticipated need for behavioral health services in the expansion population, administrative challenges of expansions, and persistent barriers to enrollment and access after expanding eligibility-though officials overall felt the expansions increased access for beneficiaries. Finally, political context-support or opposition from stakeholders and voters-plays a critical role in shaping the success of Medicaid expansions. CONCLUSIONS Early Medicaid expansions under the ACA offer important lessons to federal and state policymakers as the 2014 expansions approach. While the context of each state's expansion is unique, key shared experiences were significant implementation challenges and opportunities for expanding access to needed services.
The effect of adrenomedullin and proadrenomedullin N-terminal 20 peptide on angiotensin II induced vascular smooth muscle cell proliferation

Objective(s): The study aimed to investigate the effects of adrenomedullin (ADM) and proadrenomedullin N- terminal 20 peptide (PAMP) on angiotensin (AngII)-stimulated proliferation in vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs). Materials and Methods: Thoracic aorta was obtained from Wistar rats and VSMCs were isolated from aorta tissues and then cultured. In vitro cultured VSMCs were stimulated with Ang II (10-8 mol/l) followed by various doses of PAMP or ADM (10-9, 10-8, or 10-7 mol/l). Cell proliferation as assessed by 3H-TdR incorporation. Protein kinase C (PKC) activity was measured by counting γ-32P radioactivity with liquid scintillation. In a separate cohort, in vitro cultured rat aortic vessels were treated with different doses of Ang II or PAMP (10-9, 10-8, or 10-7 mol/l). Cellular and secreted levels of PAMP, ADM and Ang II were measured using radioimmunoassay in the tissues and intubation mediums, respectively. Results: Ang II (10-8 mol/l) treatment significantly increased both 3H-TdR incorporation and PKC activity in VSMCs (by 2.68 and 1.02-fold, respectively; both P<0.01 vs. the control). However, Ang II-induced elevation of 3H-TdR incorporation, and PKC activity was significantly inhibited by various doses of ADM and PAMP (all P<0.01 vs. the Ang II group). In rat aortic vascular tissues or intubation media, Ang II treatments stimulated the expression and secretion of PAMP and ADM in a dose-dependent manner, while PAMP treatments had no significant effects on Ang II levels. Conclusion: ADM and PAMP inhibit Ang II-induced VSMCs proliferation. The interaction of Ang II, ADM and PAMP may regulate VSMCs and cardiovascular function.
Biaxial Strain in Graphene Adhered to Shallow Depressions Figure 1. (a) Schematics of Confocal Raman Scanning Setup and (b) Cross Section through the Sample. a Single Layer Graphene Sheet Covers a Shallow Square Depression in the Sio 2 /si Substrate

Measurements on graphene exfoliated over a substrate prepatterned with shallow depressions demonstrate that graphene does not remain free-standing but instead adheres to the substrate despite the induced biaxial strain. The strain is homogeneous over the depression bottom as determined by Raman measurements. We find higher Raman shifts and Grü neisen parameters of the phonons underlying the G and 2D bands under biaxial strain than previously reported. Interference modeling is used to determine the vertical position of the graphene and to calculate the optimum dielectric substrate stack for maximum Raman signal. R aman spectroscopy is an important, nondestructive tool to study the properties of carbon. For graphene, Raman spectroscopy has been successfully em-ployedtoinvestigatephononproperties 1 andelectron-phonon coupling, 2,3 to identify the number of graphene layers, 1 and to provide information about the doping and disorder. Graphene has been proposed as a new electronic material because of its tunability with the electric field 6 and high carrier mobility. 7 Yet, because of its single or few atomic thickness, the material properties are subject to local and global deformations 8 and carrier charging and pooling. 9 Thus it is critically important to develop both an understanding of and techniques to measure local strain and deformation of graphene layers. Since local strain can be employed to confine and collimate electrons in graphene, 10 high-resolution strain mapping and control is expected to enable a whole class of graphene electronics. Here, we find graphene spontaneously adhered to the bottom of small aspect ratio depressions, resulting in a biaxial strain of 0.066%. We examine the effect of biaxial strain on the Raman frequency at different temperatures. The Grüneisen parameters for the Raman G and 2D bands are found to be substantially higher than those previously reported, with negligible temperature dependence. We show that spatially resolved spectral re-flectivity combined with micro-Raman spectroscopy that exhibits a large variation in Raman intensity with oxide thickness can be used to optically determine the vertical position of a graphene layer and whether it is suspended or adhered to the bottom of a trench. Mechanical exfoliation of natural graphite was employed to transfer single-layer graphene sheets on a SiO 2 /Si wafer. Silicon wafers with an oxide thickness of 300 nm were used to maximize the optical contrast of graphene on the substrate. 11,12 Prior to graphene exfoliation, the wafer was patterned with 6 µm squares etched to a depth of 20 nm with …
Transparent Fault Tolerance for Job Input Data in HPC Environments

As the number of nodes in high-performance computing environments keeps increasing, faults are becoming common place causing losses in intermediate results of HPC jobs. Furthermore, storage systems providing job input data have been shown to consistently rank as the primary source of system failures leading to data unavailability and job resubmissions. This chapter presents transparent techniques to improve the reliability, availability and performance of HPC I/O systems, for the job input data. In this area, the chapter contributes (1) a mechanism for offline job input data reconstruction to ensure availability of job input data and to improve center-wide performance at no cost to job owners; (2) an approach to automatic recover job input data at run-time during failures by recovering staged data from an original source; and (3) “just in time” replication of job input data so as to maximize the use of supercomputer cycles. Experimental results demonstrate the value of these advanced fault tolerance techniques to increase fault resilience in HPC environments.