Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dynamically adaptive MRI with encoding by singular value decomposition

A new MRI spatial encoding method based upon the singular value decomposition (SVD) and using spatially selective RF excitation is described. This encoding technique is particularly; applicable to dynamic adaptive MRI, because it provides a near minimal set of spatial encoding profiles computed using an image estimate that is determined from a previously obtained image. Experimental results are presented for two cases, which exemplify its potential use in different dynamic imaging tasks. SVD‐encoded MRI has demonstrated to be a highly efficient encoding scheme.
Physical Activity and Quality of Life Improvements of Patients With Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis Completing a Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program

INTRODUCTION: Pulmonary rehabilitation is effective for patients with COPD, but its benefit is less clearly established in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), especially in regard to levels of physical activity and health-related quality of life. The objectives were to determine whether pulmonary rehabilitation increased physical activity as assessed by the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ), and improved quality of life and symptoms as assessed by the St George respiratory questionnaire for IPF (SGRQ-I) and the Borg dyspnea index (BDI). METHODS: Subjects who met current criteria for IPF were randomized to a 3-month pulmonary rehabilitation program (n = 11) or to a control group (n = 10). The rehabilitation group participated in twice-weekly, 90-min exercise sessions (24 total sessions). The control group maintained its preceding, normal physical activity. All subjects underwent 6-min walk tests to assess the postexertion BDI. The SGRQ-I and a 5-point self-assessment of health were completed at baseline, after 3 months of intervention or observation, and after 3-month follow-up. All subjects completed the IPAQ weekly. RESULTS: Subjects in the rehabilitation group maintained significantly higher levels of physical activity throughout the 3-month rehabilitation program (rehabilitation: 51,364 ± 57,713 [mean ± SD] metabolic equivalent of task-minutes; control: 20,832 ± 37,155, P = .027 by 2-tailed Mann-Whitney test). SGRQ-I symptom domain scores improved considerably by −9 ± 22 in the rehabilitation group, whereas in the control group they worsened (16 ± 12 rehabilitation compared with control, P = .013 by 2-tailed Mann-Whitney test). During the 3-month follow-up, self-reported physical activity levels in the rehabilitation group were 14,428 ± 8,884 metabolic equivalent of task-minutes and in the control group 16,923 ± 32,620 (P = .17 by 2-tailed Mann-Whitney test), demonstrating substantial reversal of activity in the rehabilitation group. BDI scores after 6-min walk tests did not change significantly. CONCLUSIONS: A 3-month rehabilitation program significantly improved symptoms (SGRQ-I) and physical activity levels (IPAQ) in subjects with IPF while they participated actively in the program. (ClinicalTrials.gov registration NCT01118221.)
Toward optimal legalization for mixed-cell-height circuit designs

Modern circuits often contain standard cells of different row heights to meet various design requirements. Higher cells give larger drive strengths at the costs of larger areas and power. Multi-row-height standard cells incur challenging issues to layout designs, especially the mixed-cell-height legalization problem due to the heterogeneous cell structures. Honoring the good cell positions from global placement, we present in this paper a fast and near-optimal algorithm to solve the legalization problem. Fixing the cell ordering from global placement and relaxing the right boundary constraints, we first convert the problem into a linear complementarity problem (LCP). With the converted LCP, we split its matrices to meet the convergence requirement of a modulus-based matrix splitting iteration method (MMSIM), and then apply the MMSIM to solve the LCP. This MMSIM method guarantees the optimality if no cells are placed beyond the right boundary of a chip. Finally, a Tetris-like allocation approach is used to align cells to placement sites on rows and fix the placement of out-of-right-boundary cells, if any. Experimental results show that our proposed algorithm can achieve the best cell displacement and wirelength among all published methods in reasonable runtimes. The MMSIM optimality is theoretically proven and empirically validated. In particular, our formulation provides new generic solutions and research directions for various optimization problems that require solving large-scale quadratic programs efficiently.
Nonparametric Bayesian Modeling for Automated Database Schema Matching

The problem of merging databases arises in many government and commercial applications. Schema matching, a common first step, identifies equivalent fields between databases. We introduce a schema matching framework that builds nonparametric Bayesian models for each field and compares them by computing the probability that a single model could have generated both fields. Our experiments show that our method is more accurate and faster than the existing instance-based matching algorithms in part because of the use of nonparametric Bayesian models.
Comparative evaluation of the seegene seeplex RV15 and real‐time PCR for respiratory virus detection

Respiratory virus infections contribute substantially both to hospitalizations of young children, and to morbidity in immunocompromised patients such as those with hematological malignancies. Their rapid and accurate diagnosis is essential to patient management. To evaluate the prospective utility of Seeplex® DPO technology in respiratory virus diagnosis, a panel of 99 respiratory samples positive by real‐time RT‐PCR for one or more viruses was assayed by the Seegene Seeplex® RV12 system. As well as being able to detect all 10 viruses in the real‐time RT‐PCR system with the exception of enteroviruses, RV12 can also distinguish between the two subgroups of RSV and detect two subgroups of coronaviruses. Seven of the nine viruses in common with the RT‐PCR were detected reliably by RV12. Eleven samples RT‐PCR‐positive for Metapneumovirus and five samples positive for influenza B were not detected by RV12. Seegene developed a second‐generation system, RV15, which not only allowed detection of three additional viruses, but also addressed the potential problems with RV12 specificity. To address these concerns, 84 respiratory samples positive for a range of viruses by real‐time PCR were assayed with RV15. The results of this evaluation improved significantly upon those seen with RV12. The high throughput capabilities and potential lower technical requirements afforded by the Seeplex® system may offer an alternative to real‐time RT‐PCR systems. J. Med. Virol. 83:1469–1475, 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma and Occupation in Denmark

An analysis was made of the occurrence in Denmark of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma among men and women by socioeconomic group and detailed occupation, using a linkage between cancer registry data on incidence (1970–1980) and census data on industry and occupation (1970). No socioeconomic gradient in the risk for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma was found. Significantly increased relative risks were found in a number of detailed occupational groups including female physicians, female family workers in retail trade and transport; and male fitters, and gold, silver, and electroplate workers in metal industry. Also male cowmen experienced a significantly increased risk, whereas the risk was not increased for farming in general. Tabulations of clusters of detailed occupational groups suggested that groups with potential exposure to infections and chemical agents may experience an increased risk for NHL.
A Multimodal Deep Regression Bayesian Network for Affective Video Content Analyses

The inherent dependencies between visual elements and aural elements are crucial for affective video content analyses, yet have not been successfully exploited. Therefore, we propose a multimodal deep regression Bayesian network (MMDRBN) to capture the dependencies between visual elements and aural elements for affective video content analyses. The regression Bayesian network (RBN) is a directed graphical model consisting of one latent layer and one visible layer. Due to the explaining away effect in Bayesian networks (BN), RBN is able to capture both the dependencies among the latent variables given the observation and the dependencies among visible variables. We propose a fast learning algorithm to learn the RBN. For the MMDRB-N, first, we learn several RBNs layer-wisely from visual modality and audio modality respectively. Then we stack these RBNs and obtain two deep networks. After that, a joint representation is extracted from the top layers of the two deep networks, and thus captures the high order dependencies between visual modality and audio modality. In order to predict the valence or arousal score of video contents, we initialize a feed-forward inference network from the MMDRBN whose inference is intractable by minimizing the KullbackCLeibler (KL)divergence between the two networks. The back propagation algorithm is adopted for finetuning the inference network. Experimental results on the LIRIS-ACCEDE database demonstrate that the proposed MMDRBN successfully captures the dependencies between visual and audio elements, and thus achieves better performance compared with state-of-the-art work.
Computational studies of the structure, dynamics and native content of amyloid‐like fibrils of ribonuclease A

The characterization at atomic resolution of amyloid‐like protein aggregates is one of the fundamental problems of modern biology. In particular, the question whether native‐like domains are retained or completely refolded in the amyloid state and the identification of possible mechanisms for macromolecular ordered aggregation represent major unresolved puzzles. To address these issues, in this article we examine the stability, dynamics, and conservation of native‐like properties of several models of a previously designed amyloid‐like fibril of RNase A (Sambashivan et al., Nature 2005; 437:266–269). Through the use of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, we have provided molecular‐level insights into the role of different parts of the sequence on the stability of fibrils, the collective properties of supramolecular complexes, and the presence of native‐like conformations and dynamics in supramolecular aggregates. We have been able to show that within the fibrils the three‐dimensional globular domain‐swapped units preserve the conformational, dynamical, and hydration properties typical of the monomeric state, providing a rationalization for the experimentally observed catalytic activity of fibrils. The nativeness of the globular domains is not affected by the amyloidogenic stretches, which determine the molecular recognition process underlying aggregation through the formation of a stable steric zipper motif. Moreover, through the study of the hydration features of a single sheet model, we have been able to show that polyglutamine stretches of the domain‐swapped ribonuclease tend to minimize the interaction with water in favor of sidechain–sidechain interactions, shedding light on the factors leading to the supramolecular assembly of β‐sheet layers into dry steric zippers. Proteins 2008. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Relationship between N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide and renal function: the effects on predicting early outcome after off-pump coronary artery bypass surgery

Background Plasma levels of N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) provide useful prognostic predictors in patients after cardiac surgery. However, predictive accuracy of NT-proBNP levels has varied significantly according to renal dysfunction. The purpose of this study was to assess whether preoperative NT-proBNP levels could be used as predictors of early postoperative outcomes on the basis of renal function in patients undergoing off-pump coronary artery bypass surgery (OPCAB). Methods In 219 patients undergoing elective OPCAB, NT-proBNP and an estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) were assessed preoperatively. All patients were divided into 3 groups according to tertiles of eGFR: the first (eGFR ≥ 90 ml/min/1.73 m2), the second (90 ml/min/1.73 m2 > eGFR ≥ 72 ml/min/1.73 m2) and the third tertile group (eGFR < 72 ml/min/1.73 m2). End point was the composite of early postoperative complications defined as myocardial infarction, new onset atrial fibrillation, ventricular dysfunction, prolonged mechanical ventilator care (> 48 hr), prolonged ICU stay (≥ 3 days), and in hospital mortality. Results There was no difference in early postoperative complications among groups. A preoperative NT-proBNP level of 228 pg/ml and 302 pg/ml (sensitivity 70%, specificity 67%, P < 0.001 and sensitivity 73%, specificity 63%, P = 0.001, respectively) were optimal cut-off values predicting complicated early postoperative course in second and third tertile group, respectively. Conclusions Preoperative NT-proBNP levels seem to be predictive of early postoperative complications in patients with eGFR < 90 ml/min/1.73 m2 undergoing OPCAB.
Design of optimal switching surfaces for switched autonomous systems

This paper presents a novel, computationally feasible procedure for computing optimal switching surfaces, i.e. optimal feedback controllers for switched autonomous nonlinear systems. Such systems are regulated by appropriately scheduling their operation modes over time. Given a finite mode sequence, the control task is to determine switching surfaces, which implicitly encode locally optimal switching times for a family of trajectories emerging from a pre-specified initial state set. Optimality of the switching times is assessed according to a nonlinear performance criterion.
Time-Delay Estimation From Low-Rate Samples: A Union of Subspaces Approach

Time-delay estimation arises in many applications in which a multipath medium has to be identified from pulses transmitted through the channel. Previous methods for time delay recovery either operate on the analog received signal, or require sampling at the Nyquist rate of the transmitted pulse. In this paper, we develop a unified approach to time delay estimation from low-rate samples. This problem can be formulated in the broader context of sampling over an infinite union of subspaces. Although sampling over unions of subspaces has been receiving growing interest, previous results either focus on unions of finite-dimensional subspaces, or finite unions. The framework we develop here leads to perfect recovery of the multipath delays from samples of the channel output at the lowest possible rate, even in the presence of overlapping transmitted pulses, and allows for a variety of different sampling methods. The sampling rate depends only on the number of multipath components and the transmission rate, but not on the bandwidth of the probing signal. This result can be viewed as a sampling theorem over an infinite union of infinite dimensional subspaces. By properly manipulating the low-rate samples, we show that the time delays can be recovered using the well-known ESPRIT algorithm. Combining results from sampling theory with those obtained in the context of direction of arrival estimation, we develop sufficient conditions on the transmitted pulse and the sampling functions in order to ensure perfect recovery of the channel parameters at the minimal possible rate.
Global phylogeography and seascape genetics of the lemon sharks (genus Negaprion)

Seascapes are complex environments, and populations are often isolated by factors other than distance. Here we investigate the role of coastal habitat preference and philopatry in shaping the distribution and population structure of lemon sharks. The genus Negaprion comprises the amphiatlantic lemon shark (N. brevirostris), with a relict population in the eastern Pacific, and its Indo‐West Pacific sister species, the sicklefin lemon shark (N. acutidens). Analyzing 138 individuals throughout the range of N. brevirostris (N = 80) and N. acutidens (N = 58) at microsatellite loci (nine and six loci, respectively) and the mitochondrial control region, we find evidence of allopatric speciation corresponding to the Tethys Sea closure (10–14 million years ago) and isolation of the eastern Pacific N. brevirostris population via the emergence of the Isthmus of Panama (~3.5 million years ago). There is significant isolation by oceanic distance (R2 = 0.89, P = 0.005), defined as the maximum distance travelled at depths greater than 200 m. We find no evidence for contemporary transatlantic gene flow (m, M = 0.00) across an oceanic distance of ~2400 km. Negaprion acutidens populations in Australia and French Polynesia, separated by oceanic distances of at least 750 km, are moderately differentiated (FST = 0.070–0.087, P≤ 0.001; ΦST = 0.00, P = 0.99), with South Pacific archipelagos probably serving as stepping stones for rare dispersal events. Migration between coastally linked N. brevirostris populations is indicated by nuclear (m = 0.31) but not mitochondrial (m < 0.001) analyses, possibly indicating female natal site fidelity. However, philopatry is equivocal in N. acutidens, which has the lowest control region diversity (h = 0.28) of any shark yet studied. Restricted oceanic dispersal and high coastal connectivity stress the importance of both local and international conservation efforts for these threatened sharks.
Active and efficient motor skill learning method used in a haptic teleoperated system

This paper presents a new haptic training method for motor skill acquisition working in a teleoperated system. The method promotes a visuo-motor learning process base on the active attention and participation of the apprentice during training. Using a robot end-effector, the master describes a desired path which is followed by the apprentice using a haptic device. The master aids the apprentice by restricting his motion within upper and lower boundaries parallel to the path being created in real time. The boundaries are located at a given distance established by the master base on the apprentice learning improvement. Using this method, the master does not disturb or control the position and velocity of the apprentice directly which avoids apprentice dependence on the master. A training handdrawing scheme was designed and implemented to evaluate the visuo-haptic method; experimental results show faster and better apprentice's motor performance than using only visual information. These results suggest a possible implementation of the method in complex motors tasks such as calligraphy or surgery, to name a few.
Glass-(nAg, nCu) Biocide Coatings on Ceramic Oxide Substrates

The present work was focused on obtaining biocide coatings constituted by a glassy soda-lime matrix containing silver or copper nanoparticles on ceramic (alumina and zirconia based) substrates. Both glassy coatings showed a high biocide activity against Gram−, Gram+ bacteria and yeast, reducing cell numbers more than three logarithms. Silver nanoparticles had a significantly higher biocide activity than copper nanoparticles, since the lixiviation levels required to reduce cell numbers more than 3 logarithms was of almost 1–2 µg/cm2 in the case of silver nanoparticles, and 10–15 µg/cm2 for the copper nanoparticles.
Binary Quadratic Forms , Genus Theory , and Primes of the Form p = x 2 + ny 2

In this paper, we will develop the theory of binary quadratic forms and elementary genus theory, which together give an interesting and surprisingly powerful elementary technique in algebraic number theory. This is all motivated by a problem in number theory that dates back at least to Fermat: for a given positive integer n, characterizing all the primes which can be written p = x + ny for some integers x, y. Euler studied the problem extensively, and was able to solve it for n = 1, 2, 3, 4, giving the first rigorous proofs of the following four theorems of Fermat: p = x + y for some x, y ∈ Z ⇐⇒ p = 2 or p ≡ 1 mod 4, p = x + 2y for some x, y ∈ Z ⇐⇒ p = 2 or p ≡ 1, 3 mod 8, p = x + 3y for some x, y ∈ Z ⇐⇒ p = 3 or p ≡ 1 mod 3, p = x + 4y for some x, y ∈ Z ⇐⇒ p ≡ 1 mod 4. For n > 4, however, Euler was unsuccessful in giving a proof. He did manage conjectures, though, for many values of n, such as: p = x + 6y for some x, y ∈ Z ⇐⇒ p ≡ 1, 7 mod 24.
Thyrotropin-releasing hormone controls mitochondrial biology in human epidermis.

CONTEXT Mitochondrial capacity and metabolic potential are under the control of hormones, such as thyroid hormones. The most proximal regulator of the hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) axis, TRH, is the key hypothalamic integrator of energy metabolism via its impact on thyroid hormone secretion. OBJECTIVE Here, we asked whether TRH directly modulates mitochondrial functions in normal, TRH-receptor-positive human epidermis. METHODS Organ-cultured human skin was treated with TRH (5-100 ng/ml) for 12-48 h. RESULTS TRH significantly increased epidermal immunoreactivity for the mitochondria-selective subunit I of respiratory chain complex IV (MTCO1). This resulted from an increased MTCO1 transcription and protein synthesis and a stimulation of mitochondrial biogenesis as demonstrated by transmission electron microscopy and TRH-enhanced mitochondrial DNA synthesis. TRH also significantly stimulated the transcription of several other mitochondrial key genes (TFAM, HSP60, and BMAL1), including the master regulator of mitochondrial biogenesis (PGC-1α). TRH significantly enhanced mitochondrial complex I and IV enzyme activity and enhanced the oxygen consumption of human skin samples, which shows that the stimulated mitochondria are fully vital because the main source for cellular oxygen consumption is mitochondrial endoxidation. CONCLUSIONS These findings identify TRH as a potent, novel neuroendocrine stimulator of mitochondrial activity and biogenesis in human epidermal keratinocytes in situ. Thus, human epidermis offers an excellent model for dissecting neuroendocrine controls of human mitochondrial biology under physiologically relevant conditions and for exploring corresponding clinical applications.
Filling-enforced quantum band insulators in spin-orbit coupled crystals

Quantum effects produce a band insulator with fewer electrons than permitted in any classical picture. An early triumph of quantum mechanics was the explanation of metallic and insulating behavior based on the filling of electronic bands. A complementary, classical picture of insulators depicts electrons as occupying localized and symmetric Wannier orbitals that resemble atomic orbitals. We report the theoretical discovery of band insulators for which electron filling forbids such an atomic description. We refer to them as filling-enforced quantum band insulators (feQBIs) because their wave functions are associated with an essential degree of quantum entanglement. Like topological insulators, which also do not admit an atomic description, feQBIs need spin-orbit coupling for their realization. However, they do not necessarily support gapless surface states. Instead, the band topology is reflected in the insulating behavior at an unconventional filling. We present tight binding models of feQBIs and show that they only occur in certain nonsymmorphic, body-centered cubic crystals.