Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Unintentional Pediatric Exposures to Marijuana in Colorado, 2009-2015.

IMPORTANCE As of 2015, almost half of US states allow medical marijuana, and 4 states allow recreational marijuana. To our knowledge, the effect of recreational marijuana on the pediatric population has not been evaluated. OBJECTIVE To compare the incidence of pediatric marijuana exposures evaluated at a children's hospital and regional poison center (RPC) in Colorado before and after recreational marijuana legalization and to compare population rate trends of RPC cases for marijuana exposures with the rest of the United States. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Retrospective cohort study of hospital admissions and RPC cases between January 1, 2009, and December 31, 2015, at Children's Hospital Colorado, Aurora, a tertiary care children's hospital. Participants included patients 0 to 9 years of age evaluated at the hospital's emergency department, urgent care centers, or inpatient unit and RPC cases from Colorado for single-substance marijuana exposures. EXPOSURE Marijuana. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Marijuana exposure visits and RPC cases, marijuana source and type, clinical effects, scenarios, disposition, and length of stay. RESULTS Eighty-one patients were evaluated at the children's hospital, and Colorado's RPC received 163 marijuana exposure cases between January 1, 2009, and December 31, 2015, for children younger than 10 years of age. The median age of children's hospital visits was 2.4 years (IQR, 1.4-3.4); 25 were girls (40%) . The median age of RPC marijuana exposures was 2 years (IQR, 1.3-4.0), and 85 patients were girls (52%). The mean rate of marijuana-related visits to the children's hospital increased from 1.2 per 100 000 population 2 years prior to legalization to 2.3 per 100,000 population 2 years after legalization (P = .02). Known marijuana products involved in the exposure included 30 infused edibles (48%). Median length of stay was 11 hours (interquartile range [IQR], 6-19) and 26 hours (IQR, 19-38) for admitted patients. Annual RPC pediatric marijuana cases increased more than 5-fold from 2009 (9) to 2015 (47). Colorado had an average increase in RPC cases of 34% (P < .001) per year while the remainder of the United States had an increase of 19% (P < .001). For 10 exposure scenarios (9%), the product was not in a child-resistant container; for an additional 40 scenarios (34%), poor child supervision or product storage was reported. Edible products were responsible for 51 exposures (52%). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE Colorado RPC cases for pediatric marijuana increased significantly and at a higher rate than the rest of the United States. The number of children's hospital visits and RPC case rates for marijuana exposures increased between the 2 years prior to and the 2 years after legalization. Almost half of the patients seen in the children's hospital in the 2 years after legalization had exposures from recreational marijuana, suggesting that legalization did affect the incidence of exposures.
Implementation of a Mandatory Rheumatology Osteoporosis Consultation in Patients With Low-Impact Hip Fracture

Background:Osteoporosis remains an underdiagnosed and undertreated major health problem. The current treatment rate for patients who have experienced at least 1 osteoporotic fracture is 20%–25%. Therefore, the Rheumatology and Internal Medicine Departments of Ochsner Clinic Foundation New Orleans implemented a mandatory rheumatology osteoporosis consult as part of preprinted admission orders for all patients after hip fracture surgery on the Internal Medicine service. Methods:We conducted a retrospective study of 78 patients admitted with a low-impact hip fracture between June 2004 and July 2005. These patients were seen by the rheumatology service in the hospital after hip fracture repair (exposed group). Osteoporosis evaluation was performed based on an interview questionnaire. Seventy-eight age-matched patients previously admitted for low-intensity or low-impact hip fracture in 2002–2003 but not exposed to the mandatory rheumatology consult served as our comparison group. Pearson χ2 test was used for statistical analysis. Results:Mean patient age was 80 years. Of the 78 unexposed patients, 17 (22%) were on treatment (calcium, vitamin D, hormones or antiresorptive agents) before the hip fracture, and 18 (23%) were on treatment after fracture repair. Of the 78 patients exposed to the compulsory rheumatology consultation, 34 (44%) patients were receiving osteoporosis treatment before hip fracture and 75 (96%) patients were receiving treatment after fracture repair. Of the patients not treated before hip fracture repair, there was a significant increase in the percent treated for those patients exposed to the rheumatology consult versus those not exposed (97.6% vs. 2.4%, respectively, P < 0.0001). Conclusions:In our institution, we were successful in identifying and initiating appropriate therapy for osteoporosis patients through an automatic rheumatology osteoporosis consultation after hip fracture. The implementation of a mandatory osteoporosis consult resulted in a statistically significant increase in treatment of the exposed group compared with the unexposed group.
Security-Reliability Tradeoff for Friendly Jammer Assisted User-Pair Selection in the Face of Multiple Eavesdroppers

In this paper, we explore the physical-layer security in a wireless network consisting of multiple user pairs in the face of multiple eavesdroppers, which are deployed by an adversary for tapping the confidential transmissions of the user pairs deliberately. We propose a friendly jammer-assisted user-pair selection (FJaUPS) scheme to improve the security-reliability tradeoff (SRT). Conventionally, a friendly jammer is used to transmit the artificial noise that is specially designed onto the null space of the main channel (spanning from the source to legitimate destination) for the sake of not interfering with the destination. However, due to the presence of the channel state information estimation error, it is impossible to guarantee that the artificial noise perfectly lies in the null space of the main channel, resulting in a certain interference received at the legitimate destination caused by the friendly jammer. Hence, the impacts of the friendly jammer on the legitimate user transmissions and eavesdroppers are taken into account for evaluating the wireless SRT performance, which are quantified by the so-called self-interfering factor and jamming factor, respectively. Moreover, we derive the SRT of the proposed FJaUPS, as well as the traditional round-robin schemes over Rayleigh fading channels. For comparison purposes, we also provide the SRT result of the conventional pure user-pair selection (PUPS) in computer simulations. In addition, it is shown that the proposed FJaUPS schemes outperform both the traditional round-robin and PUPS methods in terms of their SRT.
Optimally Fast Incremental Manhattan Plane Embedding and Planar Tight Span Construction

We describe a data structure, a rectangular complex, that can be used represent hyperconvex metric spaces that have the same topology (although not necessarily the same distance function) as subsets of the plane. We show how to use this data structure to construct the tight span of a metric space given as an n × n distance matrix, when the tight span is homeomorphic to a subset of the plane, in time O ( n 2 ), and to add a single point to a planar tight span in time O ( n ). As an application of this construction, we show how to test whether a given ﬁnite metric space embeds isometrically into the Manhattan plane in time O( n 2 ), and add a single point to the space and re-test whether it has such an embedding in time O ( n ).
Conversational Robots: Building Blocks for Grounding Word Meaning

How can we build robots that engage in fluid spoken conversations with people, moving beyond canned responses to words and towards actually understanding? As a step towards addressing this question, we introduce a robotic architecture that provides a basis for grounding word meanings. The architecture provides perceptual, procedural, and affordance representations for grounding words. A perceptually-coupled on-line simulator enables sensory-motor representations that can shift points of view. Held together, we show that this architecture provides a rich set of data structures and procedures that provide the foundations for grounding the meaning of certain classes of words.
The Hybrid Minimum Principle in the presence of switching costs

Hybrid optimal control problems are studied for systems where, in addition to running costs, switching between discrete states incurs costs. A key aspect of the analysis is the relationship between the Hamiltonian and the adjoint process before and after the switching instants. In this paper, the analysis is performed for systems for which autonomous and controlled state jumps are not permitted. First the results are established in the hybrid Mayer optimal control problem setup using the needle variation technique, and then the results for the hybrid Bolza optimal control problem are established via the calculus of variations methodology.
Commutativity of Immersion and Linearization

A given nonlinear system can be represented via an immersion as rational or polynomial functions, thus leading to a simplified model structure. An immersion is a mapping of the initial state from the original state space to another state space, while exactly preserving the input-output map. In this note we show that the linearization of the system after immersion has an identical input-output map to the linearization of the original system before immersion. In other words, immersion and linearization commute. This is potentially useful for applications such as linear control design and sensitivity analysis after nonlinear identification, and has important implications for system approximation by linearization.
Understanding the Melanocyte Distribution in Human Epidermis: An Agent-Based Computational Model Approach

The strikingly even color of human skin is maintained by the uniform distribution of melanocytes among keratinocytes in the basal layer of the human epidermis. In this work, we investigated three possible hypotheses on the mechanism by which the melanocytes and keratinocytes organize themselves to generate this pattern. We let the melanocyte migration be aided by (1) negative chemotaxis due to a substance produced by the melanocytes themselves, or (2) positive chemotaxis due to a substance produced by keratinocytes lacking direct physical contact with a melanocyte, or (3) positive chemotaxis due to a substance produced by keratinocytes in a distance-to-melanocytes dependent manner. The three hypotheses were implemented in an agent-based computational model of cellular interactions in the basal layer of the human epidermis. We found that they generate mutually exclusive predictions that can be tested by existing experimental protocols. This model forms a basis for further understanding of the communication between melanocytes and other skin cells in skin homeostasis.
Deformable models for 3-D medical images using finite elements and balloons

A 3-D generalization of the balloon model as a 3-D deformable surface, which evolves in 3-D images, is presented. It is deformed under the action of internal and external forces attracting the surface toward detected edge elements by means of an attraction potential. To solve the minimization problem for a surface, two simplified approaches are shown, defining a 3-D surface as a series of 2-D planar curves. Then the 3-D model is solved using the finite-element method, yielding greater stability and faster convergence. This model has been used to segment magnetic resonance images. <<ETX>>
Regulation of OsmiR156h through Alternative Polyadenylation Improves Grain Yield in Rice

Substantial increases in grain yield of cereal crops are required to feed a growing human population. Here we show that a natural variant of SEMIDWARF AND HIGH-TILLERING (SDT) increases harvest index and grain productivity in rice. Gain-of-function sdt mutation has a shortened polyadenylation tail on the OsmiR156h microRNA precursor, which cause the up-regulation of OsmiR156h. The plants carrying the semidominant sdt allele exhibit reduced plant height, enhanced lodging resistance, increased tiller numbers per plant, and resulting in an increased grain yield. We also show that combining the sdt allele with the OsSPL14WFP allele can be effective in simultaneously improving tillering capacity and panicle branching, thereby leading to higher harvest index and grain yield. Most importantly, pyramiding of the sdt allele and the green revolution gene sd1 enhances grain yield by about 20% in hybrid rice breeding. Our results suggest that the manipulation of the polyadenylation status of OsmiR156 represents a novel strategy for improving the yield potential of rice over what is currently achievable.
Evolution and Development of a Multicellular Organism: Scalability, Resilience, and Neutral Complexification

To increase the evolvability of larger search spaces, several indirect encoding strategies have been proposed. Among these, multicellular developmental systems are believed to offer great potential for the evolution of general, scalable, and self-repairing organisms. We reinforce this view, presenting the results achieved by such a model and comparing it against direct encoding. Extra effort has been made to make this comparison both general and meaningful. Embryonal stages, a generic method showing increased evolvability and applicable to any developmental model, are introduced. Development with embryonal stages implements what we refer to as direct neutral complexification: direct genotype complexification by neutral duplication of expressed genes. The results show that, even for high-complexity evolutionary targets, the developmental model proves more scalable. The model also shows emergent self-repair, which is used to produce highly resilient organisms.
Challenges in Building a Multilingual Alpine Heritage Corpus

This paper describes our efforts to build a multilingual heritage corpus of alpine texts. Currently we digitize the yearbooks of the Swiss Alpine Club which contain articles in French, German, Italian and Romansch. Articles comprise mountaineering reports from all corners of the earth, but also scientific topics such as topography, geology or glacierology as well as occasional poetry and lyrics. We have already scanned close to 70,000 pages which has resulted in a corpus of 25 million words, 10% of which is a parallel French-German corpus. We have solved a number of challenges in automatic language identification and text structure recognition. Our next goal is to identify the great variety of toponyms (e.g. names of mountains and valleys, glaciers and rivers, trails and cabins) in this corpus, and we sketch how a large gazetteer of Swiss topographical names can be exploited for this purpose. Despite the size of the resource, exact matching leads to a low recall because of spelling variations, language mixtures and partial repetitions.
HIV Incidence and Risk Factors for Acquisition in HIV Discordant Couples in Masaka, Uganda: An HIV Vaccine Preparedness Study

Objectives To determine the incidence of and risk factors for HIV acquisition in a cohort of HIV-uninfected partners from HIV discordant couples in Masaka, Uganda, and to establish its suitability for HIV vaccine trials. Methods HIV-uninfected adults living in HIV discordant couple relationships were enrolled and followed for 2 years. Interviews, medical investigations, HIV counseling and testing, syphilis and urine pregnancy (women) tests were performed at quarterly visits. Sexual risk behaviour data were collected every 6 months. Results 495 participants were enrolled, of whom 34 seroconverted during 786.6 person-years of observation (PYO). The overall HIV incidence rate [95% confidence interval (CI)] was 4.3 [3.1–6]; and 4.3 [2.8–6.4] and 4.4 [2.5–8] per 100 PYO in men and women respectively. Independent baseline predictors for HIV acquisition were young age [18–24 (aRR = 4.1, 95% CI 1.6–10.8) and 25–34 (aRR = 2.7, 95% CI 1.2–5.8) years]; alcohol use (aRR = 2.6, 95% CI 1.1–6); and reported genital discharge (aRR = 3.4, 95% CI 1.6–7.2) in the past year. Condom use frequency in the year preceding enrolment was predictive of a reduced risk of HIV acquisition [sometimes (aRR = 0.4, 95% CI 0.2–0.8); always (aRR = 0.1, 95% CI 0.02–0.9)]. In the follow-up risk analysis, young age [18–24 (aRR = 6.2, 95% CI 2.2–17.3) and 25-34 (aRR = 2.3, 95% CI 1.1–5.0) years], reported genital discharge (aRR = 2.5, 95% CI 1.1–5.5), serological syphilis (aRR 3.2, 95% CI 1.3–7.7) and the partner being ART naïve (aRR = 4.8, 95% CI 1.4–16.0) were independently associated with HIV acquisition. There were no seroconversions among participants who reported consistent condom use during the study. Conclusions The study has identified important risk factors for HIV acquisition among HIV discordant couples. HIV-uninfected partners in discordant couples may be a suitable population for HIV vaccine efficacy trials. However, recent confirmation that ART reduces heterosexual HIV transmission may make it unfeasible to conduct HIV prevention trials in this population.
Efficient remote block-level I/O over an RDMA-capable NIC

Modern storage systems are required to scale to large storage capacities and I/O throughput in a cost effective manner. For this reason, they are increasingly being built out of commodity components, mainly PCs equipped with large numbers of disks and interconnected of high-performance system area networks. A main issue in these efforts is to achieve high I/O throughput over commodity, low-cost system area networks and commodity operating systems.In this work, we examine in detail the performance of remote block-level storage I/O over commodity, RDMA-capable network interfaces and networks. We examine the support that is required from the network interface for achieving high throughput. We also examine in detail the overheads associated in kernel-level protocols for networked storage access. We find that base system performance is limited by (a) interrupt cost, (b) request size, and (c) protocol message size. We examine the impact of techniques to alleviate these factors and find that our techniques combined can improve throughput by up to 100% over a simpler unoptimized configuration. Our current prototype is able to achieve a throughput of about 200 MBytes/s over a network that is capable of delivering about 500 MBytes/s. We identify major limiting factors, mostly at the I/O target-side.
Stochastic stability and stabilization of discrete-time Markovian jump systems in the presence of incomplete knowledge of transition probabilities

This paper is concerned with the stability analysis and controller design for a class of discrete-time Markovian jump systems subject to incomplete knowledge of transition probabilities. Different from the previous results, some free-weighting matrices are introduced to obtain some new criteria with less conservatism. It is theoretically shown that the previous results are special cases if the free-weighting matrices are chosen to be some special forms. This brings much less conservatism compared with the previous ones. A numerical example is provided to show the effectiveness the proposed method.
Constructing Large Proposition Databases

With the advent of massive online encyclopedic corpora such as Wikipedia, it has become possible to apply a systematic analysis to a wide range of documents covering a significant part of human knowledge. Using semantic parsers, it has become possible to extract such knowledge in the form of propositions (predicate―argument structures) and build large proposition databases from these documents. This paper describes the creation of multilingual proposition databases using generic semantic dependency parsing. Using Wikipedia, we extracted, processed, clustered, and evaluated a large number of propositions. We built an architecture to provide a complete pipeline dealing with the input of text, extraction of knowledge, storage, and presentation of the resulting propositions (Less)
The mediterranean diet, hepatic steatosis and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease

Purpose of reviewThe purpose of this review is to present the pathophysiological mechanisms and most recent clinical evidence regarding the role of the Mediterranean diet in preventing and treating nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Recent findingsSeveral components of the Mediterranean diet have proven benefits in controlling the pathophysiological mechanisms involved in NAFLD. However, the few clinical studies that have assessed the diet have involved low numbers of patients and lacked methodological rigor. The results of these studies suggest that the Mediterranean diet attenuates the progression of NAFLD once it is established, but does not contribute to preventing the disease in patients at risk. SummaryAlthough there is a lack of clinical evidence derived from studies with high-quality methodology, the pathophysiological mechanisms of NAFLD shared with other associated pathologies suggest that there is a role for the Mediterranean diet in managing NAFLD. Studies with better methodology are needed to confirm the impact of the diet.
Relevance of brain imaging studies for social psychiatry

Computerised tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have dramatically changed diagnostic work-up in neurology. Clinical psychiatry has profited from the potential of both diagnostic tools in ruling out focal intracranial pathology (Becker et al., 1995). Also, a multitude of research studies covering the whole range of psychiatric disorders using CT, MRI, magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) have been published in recent years. MRI, in comparison with CT, has enhanced diagnostic accuracy, particularly in the middle and posterior cranial fossa. Its advantages include an increase in diagnostic sensitivity, free choice of imaging plane, better differentiation of grey and white matter as well as basal ganglia morphology. However, specificity of findings is limited, e.g. where white matter hyperintense lesions are concerned (Becker et al., 1995). SPECT and PET permit the study of cerebral blood flow, regional brain metabolism and neurotransmitter receptor or transporter densities. Both methods require the administration of radioactive tracers, and functional images are produced on the basis of photon or positron emission. PET imaging requires on-site availability of a cyclotron unit to produce adequate tracer substances (with short half-lives) which makes the method inherently expensive. Brain MRS in psychiatry is still in its infancy, and most studies have been performed using H and P, while some have used Li and F. The first generation of MRS studies, in schizophrenia, have illuminated some pathophysiological aspects. Noteworthy findings include reduction in N-acetyl aspartate (a
Field Testing of Software Applications

When interacting with their software systems, users may have to deal with problems like crashes, failures, and program instability. Faulty software running in the field is not only the consequence of ineffective in-house verification and validation techniques, but it is also due to the complexity and diversity of the interactions between an application and its environment. Many of these interactions can be hardly predicted at testing time, and even when they could be predicted, often there are so many cases to be tested that they cannot be all feasibly addressed before the software is released. This Ph.D. thesis investigates the idea of addressing the faults that cannot be effectively addressed in house directly in the field, exploiting the field itself as testbed for running the test cases. An enormous number of diverse environments would then be available for testing, giving the possibility to run many test cases in many different situations, timely revealing the many failures that would be hard to detect otherwise.