Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Practice patterns in FNA technique: A survey analysis.

AIM To ascertain fine needle aspiration (FNA) techniques by endosonographers with varying levels of experience and environments. METHODS A survey study was performed on United States based endosonographers. The subjects completed an anonymous online electronic survey. The main outcome measurements were differences in needle choice, FNA technique, and clinical decision making among endosonographers and how this relates to years in practice, volume of EUS-FNA procedures, and practice environment. RESULTS A total of 210 (30.8%) endosonographers completed the survey. Just over half (51.4%) identified themselves as academic/university-based practitioners. The vast majority of respondents (77.1%) identified themselves as high-volume endoscopic ultrasound (EUS) (> 150 EUS/year) and high-volume FNA (> 75 FNA/year) performers (73.3). If final cytology is non-diagnostic, high-volume EUS physicians were more likely than low volume physicians to repeat FNA with a core needle (60.5% vs 31.2%; P = 0.0004), and low volume physicians were more likely to refer patients for either surgical or percutaneous biopsy, (33.4% vs 4.9%, P < 0.0001). Academic physicians were more likely to repeat FNA with a core needle (66.7%) compared to community physicians (40.2%, P < 0.001). CONCLUSION There is significant variation in EUS-FNA practices among United States endosonographers. Differences appear to be related to EUS volume and practice environment.
Montgomery Multiplication with Redundancy Check

This paper presents a method of adding redundant code to the Montgomery multiplication algorithm, to ensure that a fault attack during its calculation can be detected. This involves having checksums on the input variables that are then used to calculate a valid checksum for the output variable, in a similar manner to that proposed by Walter. However, it is shown that the proposed method is more secure than the previous work, as all the variables required to calculate Montgomery multiplication are protected.
Process Tracing Analysis of Hurricane Information Displays

To study people's processing of hurricane forecast advisories, we conducted a computer‐based experiment that examined 11 research questions about the information seeking patterns of students assuming the role of a county emergency manager in a sequence of six hurricane forecast advisories for each of four different hurricanes. The results show that participants considered a variety of different sources of information—textual, graphic, and numeric—when tracking hurricanes. Click counts and click durations generally gave the same results but there were some significant differences. Moreover, participants’ information search strategies became more efficient over forecast advisories and with increased experience tracking the four hurricanes. These changes in the search patterns from the first to the fourth hurricane suggest that the presentation of abstract principles in a training manual was not sufficient for them to learn how to track hurricanes efficiently but they were able to significantly improve their search efficiency with a modest amount (roughly an hour) of practice. Overall, these data indicate that information search patterns are complex and deserve greater attention in studies of dynamic decision tasks.
Anatomy of the antigenic structure of a large memberane autoantigen, the muscle‐type nicotinic acetylcholine receptor

Summary: The neuromuscular junction nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (AChR), a pentameric membrane glycoprotein, is the autoantigen involved in the autoimmune disease myasthenia gravis (MG). In animals immunized with intact AChR and in human MG, the anti‐AChR antibody response is polyclonal. However, a small extracellular region of the AChR a‐subunit, the main immunogenic region (MIR), seems to be a major target for anti‐AChR antibodies. A major loop containing overlapping epitopes for several anti‐MIR monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) lies within residues α67–76 at the extreme synaptic end of each a‐subunit; however, anti‐MIR mAbs are functionally and structurally quite heterogeneous. Anti‐MIR mAbs do not affect channel gating, but are very effective in the passive transfer of MG to animals; in contrast, their Fab or Fv fragments protect the AChR from the pathogenic effects of the intact antibodies. Antibodies against the cytoplas‐mic region of the AChR can be elicited by immunization with denatured AChR and the precise epitopes of many such mAbs have been identified; however, it is unlikely that such antibodies are present in significant amounts in human MG. Antibodies to other extracellular epitopes on all AChR subunits are present in both experimental and human MG; these include antibodies to the acetylcholine‐binding site which affect AChR function in various ways and also induce acute experimental MG. Finally, anti‐AChR antibodies cross‐reactive with noti‐AChR antigens exist, suggesting that MG may result from molecular mimicry. Despite extensive studies, many gaps remain in our understanding of the antigenic structure of the AChR, especially in relation to human MG. A thorough understanding of the antigenic structure of the AChR is required for an in‐depth understanding, and for possible specific immunotherapy, of MG.
Two-Time Scale Control of Flexible Joint Robots With an Improved Slow Model

This paper presents a novel multivariable two-time scale control method for flexible joint robots. The fundamental limitations of the conventional two-time scale control are clearly explained based on a singular perturbation analysis with a linearized dynamic model. Unlike the conventional methods, the bandwidth of the slow control can be made high and the derivatives of the rigid control are not required. The closed-form solution of a slow model that is more accurate than the rigid model is presented. It is shown that the modeling error of the proposed two-time scale control can be made arbitrarily small by the control gain only. A real-world experiment with a six degrees-of-freedom commercial industrial robot was performed to validate the presented approach.
A Survey of Autonomic Network Architectures and Evaluation Criteria

Autonomic network management is a promising approach to reduce the cost and the complexity of managing network infrastructures. It attempts to lead the human administrator out of the network control loop, leaving the management tasks to be performed by the network itself. Due to its important implication on automating management systems, this area has attracted a growing attention from both academia and industry. In this paper, we provide a holistic view of autonomic architecture proposals and the evaluation metrics existing so far. Based on this, we identify some new criteria important to the autonomic architectures. Finally, we compare different existing autonomic architectures and describe the pros and cons of each one regarding to the network management and performances.
Exposure of Firefighters to Particulates and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons

Firefighting continues to be among the most hazardous yet least studied occupations in terms of exposures and their relationship to occupational disease. Exposures are complex, involving mixtures of particles and chemicals such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Adverse health effects associated with these agents include elevated incidences of coronary heart disease and several cancers. PAHs have been detected at fire scenes, and in the firehouse rest area and kitchen, routinely adjoining the truck bay, and where firefighters spend a major part of each shift. An academic-community partnership was developed with the Cincinnati Fire Department with the goal of understanding active firefighters’ airborne and dermal PAH exposure. PAHs were measured in air and particulates, and number and mass concentrations, respectively, of submicron (0.02–1 μm) and PM2.5 (2.5 μm diameter and less) particles during overhaul events in two firehouses and a University of Cincinnati administrative facility as a comparison location. During overhaul firefighters evaluate partially combusted materials for re-ignition after fire extinguishment and commonly remove Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBA). Face and neck wipes were also collected at a domestic fire scene. Overhaul air samples had higher mean concentrations of PM2.5 and submicron particles than those collected in the firehouse, principally in the truck bay and kitchen. Among the 17 PAHs analyzed, only naphthalene and acenaphthylene were generally detectable. Naphthalene was present in 7 out of 8 overhaul activities, in 2 out of 3 firehouse (kitchen and truck bay) samples, and in none collected from the control site. In firefighter face and neck wipes a greater number of PAHs were found, several of which have carcinogenic activity, such as benzofluoranthene, an agent also found in overhaul air samples. Although the concentration for naphthalene, and all other individual PAHs, was very low, the potential simultaneous exposure to multiple chemicals even in small quantities in combination with high ultrafine particle exposure deserves further study. It is recommended that personal respiratory and skin protection be worn throughout the overhaul process.
Asymptomatic bacteriuria in pregnant women attending antenatal clinic at komfo anokye teaching hospital, kumasi, ghana.

SUMMARY OBJECTIVE Symptomatic bacteriuria is common in pregnant women and if untreated could lead to serious complications. Although asymptomatic bacteriuria could also lead to such complications, this fact is not so well known. This study was to determine the prevalence of asymptomatic bacteriuria in pregnant women attending antenatal clinic at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) Kumasi. DESIGN A prospective study to screen antenatal attendants for asymptomatic bacteriuria. SETTING The study was undertaken at KATH. PARTICIPANTS All pregnant women attending antenatal clinic at KATH, Kumasi between February and April 2003 and who agreed to enter the study were clinically evaluated to exclude signs and symptoms of urinary tract infection (UTI). METHODS Samples of 10-15ml urine were examined for pus cells, bacteria and parasitic ova. The samples were further cultured on cysteine lactose electrolyte deficient agar and colony counts yielding bacterial growth of 10(5)/ml or more of pure isolates were deemed significant. RESULTS Of the 220 pregnant women, 16 had significant bacteriuria giving a prevalence rate of 7.3%. The highest age-specific prevalence was found in the 35-39 year-olds (13%) and the lowest in the 15-19 year-olds (0.0%). There was no significant difference in prevalence with increasing parity. The dominant bacteria isolates were E. coli (37%) and Staph aureus (31%). CONCLUSION The prevalence of asymptomatic bacteriuria in pregnant women at KATH is 7.3%. The predominant organisms are E.coli and Staph aureus, and most isolates are sensitive to nitrofurantoin, cefuroxime and gentamicin.
System scaling for large-scale Internet-based online services

The rapidly growing Web based online services offered by new and traditional vendors have attracted the interests of massive consumers. These vendors provide or extend their services and products to the clients via the Internet. As the service offers or related activities (e.g., merge) increase, they begin to scale up service infrastructure. For example, the vendors may integrate new information systems with the online service systems. These add-on systems capture statistics of Web activities, deliver customized service offer, and support marketing, planning etc. From the technological perspective, online service scaling up introduces technical challenges to the corporate IT organizations. We propose system models and strategies for integrating or consolidating services into the existing online service infrastructure. We describe a case of loosely coupled integration in detail. We present the approaches for integrating built-in-house and third-party frameworks based on architectural/design patterns and end-to-end system performance for different Web service providers.
MOOC-FRS: A new fusion recommender system for MOOCs

The popularity of MOOCs has broken the limitation on time and space in traditional education. It has become an important source of accessing high quality resources and systematic education for the majority of learners. MOOCs has been greatly developed in recent years, followed by the surge in the number of users and courses, which making the learners exposed to a wild variety of courses and difficult to make the choice. Therefore, building a practical recommender system for MOOCs platforms has become increasing important. In this paper, we summarize the representative characteristics of MOOCs platform and proposed a new fusion recommender system called MOOC-FRS. We design a new metric to measure the relevance between user and courses based on the special user behavior in MOOCs platform. The recommender system is mainly built on course-based collaborative recommendation and we consider plenty of practical problems like the new user and new courses. Besides, we also propose a completely new adaptation to the recommender system called correlated pattern based recommendation which is able to combine the advantage of both user-based clustering and course-based clustering.
Variation in pollinator effectiveness in swamp milkweed, Asclepias incarnata (Apocynaceae).

The contribution of a pollinator toward plant fitness (i.e., its "effectiveness") can determine its importance for the plant's evolutionary ecology. We compared pollinators in a population of Asclepias incarnata (Apocynaceae) for several components of pollinator effectiveness over two flowering seasons to evaluate their importance to plant reproduction. Insects of the order Hymenoptera predominate in A. incarnata pollination, but there appears to be no specialization for pollination within this order. Pollinators varied significantly in nearly every component of effectiveness that we measured, including pollen load, removal and deposition of pollen, pollination efficiency (deposition/removal), flower-handling time, and potential for geitonogamy (fractional pollen deposition). The visitation rate of pollinators also varied significantly between years and through time within years. Pollination success and percentage fruit-set of unmanipulated plants in the population also varied significantly between years, and pollination success varied among sample times within years. Most components of effectiveness were weakly correlated, suggesting that the contributions of visitor species toward pollination varied among effectiveness components. Mean flower-handling time, however, was strongly correlated with several components, including pollen removal and deposition, pollination efficiency, and fractional pollen deposition. These findings highlight the significance of pollination variability for plant reproduction and suggest that time-dependent foraging behaviors may play an important role in determining pollinator effectiveness.
Nonnucleoside Reverse-transcriptase Inhibitor- vs Ritonavir-boosted Protease Inhibitor-based Regimens for Initial Treatment of HIV Infection: A Systematic Review and Metaanalysis of Randomized Trials.

BACKGROUND Previous studies suggest that nonnucleoside reverse-transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs) cause faster virologic suppression, while ritonavir-boosted protease inhibitors (PI/r) recover more CD4 cells. However, individual trials have not been powered to compare clinical outcomes. METHODS We searched databases to identify randomized trials that compared NNRTI- vs PI/r-based initial therapy. A metaanalysis calculated risk ratios (RRs) or mean differences (MDs), as appropriate. Primary outcome was death or progression to AIDS. Secondary outcomes were death, progression to AIDS, and treatment discontinuation. We calculated RR of virologic suppression and MD for an increase in CD4 cells at week 48. RESULTS We included 29 trials with 9047 participants. Death or progression to AIDS occurred in 226 participants in the NNRTI arm and in 221 in the PI/r arm (RR, 1.03; 95% confidence interval, .87-1.22; 12 trials; n = 3825), death in 205 participants in the NNRTI arm vs 198 in the PI/r arm (1.04; 0.86-1.25; 22 trials; n = 8311), and progression to AIDS in 140 participants in the NNRTI arm vs 144 in the PI/r arm (1.00; 0.80-1.25; 13 trials; n = 4740). Overall treatment discontinuation (1.12; 0.93-1.35; 24 trials; n = 8249) and from toxicity (1.21; 0.87-1.68; 21 trials; n = 6195) were comparable, but discontinuation due to virologic failure was more common with NNRTI (1.58; 0.91-2.74; 17 trials; n = 5371). At week 48, there was no difference between NNRTI and PI/r in virologic suppression (RR, 1.03; 0.98-1.09) or CD4(+) recovery (MD, -4.7 cells; -14.2 to 4.8). CONCLUSIONS We found no difference in clinical and viro-immunologic outcomes between NNRTI- and PI/r-based therapy.
Phenotypic variation in constitutional delay of growth and puberty: relationship to specific leptin and leptin receptor gene polymorphisms.

OBJECTIVES Constitutional delay of growth and puberty (CDGP) is a variant of normal pubertal timing and progress, often with dominant inheritance. It is likely that one or more genes will be associated with CDGP. Possible candidates are the leptin (L) and the leptin receptor (LR) genes, as the leptin axis links nutritional status to pubertal development. This study has assessed whether a) L or LR gene polymorphisms were associated with CDGP and b) the CDGP phenotype was influenced by these polymorphisms. DESIGN Case-control and transmission disequilibrium tests were used to test genetic association of L and LR polymorphisms with CDGP. METHODS We genotyped L (3'CTTT repeat) and LR polymorphisms (Gln > Arg substitution, exon 6) in 81 CDGP children and 94 controls in the UK and 88 CDGP children from the US and assessed the effect of genotype on their anthropometric characteristics. RESULTS There was no association of these L or LR gene polymorphisms with CDGP. There was no difference in height or bone age delay within L or LR genotypes. However, UK CDGP children homozygous for the L short allele were heavier than heterozygotes and long allele homozygotes, with a similar trend in the US cohort. UK CDGP children with severe pubertal delay, who were thin, had significantly greater bone age delay and an increased frequency of parental pubertal delay than other groups and were less likely to be L short allele homozygotes. CONCLUSIONS There was no association of specific L or LR polymorphisms with CDGP, but L short allele carriage influenced the phenotype within CDGP.
Genetics of hemolysin of Escherichia coli

The expression of alpha-hemolysin is a property frequently associated with Escherichia coli extraintestinal infections. We have examined the genetic basis for hemolysin expression by an E. coli strain isolated from a human urinary tract infection. The genes necessary for hemolysin synthesis were found to be chromosomal and to map near the ilv gene cluster. Isogenic hly+ and hly derivatives were also prepared and tested for virulence in the chicken embryo model system. Hemolysin was found to be necessary but not in itself sufficient for E. coli virulence in this in vitro model.
Designing secured data using a combination of LZW compression, RSA encryption, and DCT steganography

Information security in mobile phones has become a challenge when large amounts of data exchanged on the Internet. Secure information transfer can be achieved by cryptography and steganography. Cryptography is a tool that provides encryption techniques for secure communication. Steganography is the technique of hiding information by way of the message of the picture, so that in addition to the person addressed, another person will not be aware of the existence of the message. In this study the issues to be discussed is the technique of message encryption with RSA (Rivest Shamir Adleman) method. Messages are encrypted after compressed by LZW (Lempel Ziv Welch) method, so it will reduce the size of the message that will be inserted and increase the capacity of messages that can be inserted. Messages that have been compressed and encrypted, is then hidden by DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) techniques. With the incorporation of encryption techniques, steganography, and compression, the acquired information is more secure and its capacity is larger. For a 512×512 colored image there are 1536 characters enable for hiding. With LZW the amount of characters hiding will be about twice larger in this research.
Development of North American Emission Inventories for Air Quality Modeling under Climate Change

Abstract An assessment of how future climate change will impact regional air quality requires projecting emissions many decades into the future in a consistent manner. An approach that integrates the impact of both the current regulations and the longer-term national and global trends is developed to construct an emissions inventory (EI) for North America for the mid-century in support of a regional modeling study of ozone and particulate matter (PM) less than or equal to 2.5 μm (PM2.5). Because the time horizon of such a distant projection is beyond that of EIs used in typical modeling studies, it is necessary to identify a practical approach that allows the emission projections to account for emission controls and climatic and energy-use changes. However, a technical challenge arises because this requires integration of various different types of information with which emissions from human activities are associated. Often, emission information in global models has less detail and uses coarser spatiotemporal resolution. The method developed here is based on data availability, spatiotemporal coverage and resolution, and future-scenario consistency (i.e., Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Emissions Scenarios [IPCC SRES] A1B), and consists of two major steps: (1) near-future EI projection (to the year 2020), and (2) longer-term EI projection (to mid-century). The first step is based closely on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Clean Air Interstate Rule EI, the Environment Canada EI, as well estimates of Mexico’s EI; whereas the second step follows approaches proposed by the EI from the Integrated Model to Assess the Global Environment (IMAGE), developed by Netherlands’s National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM). For the United States, the year-2050 emissions for nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), PM2.5, anthropogenic volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and ammonia are projected to change by -55, -55, -30, -40, and [H11001]20%, respectively, compared with 2001. NOx and SO2 emission changes are very similar in total amount but different in sectoral contribution. The projected emission trends for Canada and Mexico differ considerably. After taking into account the modeled climate changes, biogenic VOC emission increases from three countries overwhelm the decreases in anthropogenic VOC emissions, leading to a net small increase (~2%) in overall VOC emissions.