Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stress echocardiography for assessing myocardial ischaemia and viable myocardium

The electrocardiographic (ECG) ST segment response to exercise is perhaps the most commonly used functional test for the assessment of coronary artery disease. ' However, it has important limitations in the evaluation of myocardial ischaemia for two reasons. First, according to the theory of the ischaemic cascade, ECG changes and symptoms are preceded by flow heterogeneity followed by the development of regional myocardial dysftmction.2 Thus, unless the patient exercises to the level at which ECG changes occur, demand driven myocardial ischaemia may not occur. Second, resting ECG abnormalities may render changes occurring during stress uninterpretable. Furthermore, the presence of systemic hypertension, even in absence of any resting ECG abnormalities, may result in a false positive diagnosis of coronary artery disease.3 In a recent study4 only 35% of 1814 consecutive patients referred for stress testing had an interpretable ECG and a successful maximal exercise. Echocardiography is currently the most widely used technique for the assessment of structure and function of the heart. Occurrence of abnormal regional systolic wall thickening during stress is perhaps the most specific sign of myocardial ischaemia. Echocardiography has been used during stress
Neural Functioning in Major Depressive Disorder

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is one of the most prevalent and costly of all psychiatric disorders. MDD has been found to be responsive to a diverse set of brain-based interventions, including antidepressant medications and electroconvulsive therapy, strongly implicating anomalous neural functioning in its pathogenesis. Neuroimaging studies have yielded important information about depression-associated abnormalities both in resting-state brain activation and in neural responsivity to emotional stimuli, findings that promise to lead to a more comprehensive understanding of the development and maintenance of this disorder. Because depression involves a diminished ability to regulate the experience of negative affect, attempts to understand the neural underpinnings of this disorder have focused on neural systems implicated in the experience and regulation of emotion. Although investigators have documented anomalous function of at least a dozen brain structures in MDD (Seminowicz et al., 2004), researchers have focused in particular on the roles of the amygdala and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). It is clear from a decade of research that the amygdala is involved in the perception and experience of negative affect, and in directing attention to personally salient stimuli. Investigators using positron emission tomography (PET) have found elevated baseline amygdala activity in depressed individuals that returns to normal levels following successful
Rationale for targeting VEGF, FGF, and PDGF for the treatment of NSCLC

Lung cancer remains a leading cause of death globally, with the most frequent type, nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC), having a 5-year survival rate of less than 20%. While platinum-based doublet chemotherapy is currently first-line therapy for advanced disease, it is associated with only modest clinical benefits at the cost of significant toxicities. In an effort to overcome these limitations, recent research has focused on targeted therapies, with recently approved agents targeting the epidermal growth factor receptor and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) signaling pathways. However, these agents (gefitinib, erlotinib, and bevacizumab) provide antitumor activity for only a small proportion of patients, and patients whose tumors respond inevitably develop resistance to treatment. As angiogenesis is a crucial step in tumor growth and metastasis, antiangiogenic treatments might be expected to have antitumor activity. Important targets for the development of novel antiangiogenic therapies include VEGF, fibroblast growth factor, platelet-derived growth factor, and their receptors. It is hypothesized that targeting multiple angiogenic pathways may not only improve antitumor activity but also reduce the risk of resistance. Several novel agents, such as BIBF 1120, sorafenib, sunitinib, and cediranib have shown promising preliminary activity and tolerability in Phase II studies, and results of ongoing Phase III randomized studies will be necessary to establish the potential place of these new therapies in the management of individual patients with NSCLC.
The dependence of slow inward current in Purkinje fibres on the extracellular calcium‐concentration

1. In sodium‐free solution electrical constants of short Purkinje fibres were similar to those in Tyrode solution. Alterations in the extracellular calcium concentration ([Ca]o = 0; 1·8; 7·2 m M) had no appreciable effect on these constants, unless the fibres were soaked in calcium‐free solution for more than 40 min.
Web Analysis Visualization Spreadsheet

In this paper, we present methods of information visualization that applies to the discovery of patterns in World-Wide Web sites. We hope to use techniques of information visualization to help in the organization and categorization of Web sites. We present a detailed case study of using the spreadsheet to analyze the content, usage, and structure of a large Web site. We demonstrate how the visualization spreadsheet principles apply in this specific data domain.
Emergence of a highly pathogenic simian/human immunodeficiency virus in a rhesus macaque treated with anti-CD8 mAb during a primary infection with a nonpathogenic virus.

Although simian/human immunodeficiency virus (SHIV) strain DH12 replicates to high titers and causes immunodeficiency in pig-tailed macaques, virus loads measured in SHIV(DH12)-infected rhesus monkeys are consistently 100-fold lower and none of 22 inoculated animals have developed disease. We previously reported that the administration of anti-human CD8 mAb to rhesus macaques at the time of primary SHIV(DH12) infection resulted in marked elevations of virus loads. One of the treated animals experienced rapid and profound depletions of circulating CD4(+) T lymphocytes. Although the CD4(+) T cell number partially recovered, this monkey subsequently suffered significant weight loss and was euthanized. A tissue culture virus stock derived from this animal, designated SHIV(DH12R), induced marked and rapid CD4(+) cell loss after i.v. inoculation of rhesus monkeys. Retrospective analyses of clinical specimens, collected during the emergence of SHIV(DH12R) indicated: (i) the input cloned SHIV remained the predominant virus during the first 5-7 months of infection; (ii) variants bearing only a few of the SHIV(DH12R) consensus changes first appeared 7 months after the administration of anti-CD8 mAb; (iii) high titers of neutralizing antibody directed against the input SHIV were detected by week 10 and persisted throughout the infection; and (iv) no neutralizing antibody against SHIV(DH12R) ever developed.
Performance Modeling of In Situ Rendering

With the push to exascale, in situ visualization and analysis will continue to play an important role in high performance computing. Tightly coupling in situ visualization with simulations constrains resources for both, and these constraints force a complex balance of trade-offs. A performance model that provides an a priori answer for the cost of using an in situ approach for a given task would assist in managing the trade-offs between simulation and visualization resources. In this work, we present new statistical performance models, based on algorithmic complexity, that accurately predict the run-time cost of a set of representative rendering algorithms, an essential in situ visualization task. To train and validate the models, we conduct a performance study of an MPI+X rendering infrastructure used in situ with three HPC simulation applications. We then explore feasibility issues using the model for selected in situ rendering questions.
Evolution of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 in perinatally infected infants with rapid and slow progression to disease

We addressed the relationship between the origin and evolution of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) variants and disease outcome in perinatally infected infants by studying the V3 regions of viral variants in samples obtained from five transmitting mothers at delivery and obtained sequentially over the first year of life from their infected infants, two of whom (rapid progressors) rapidly progressed to having AIDS. Phylogenetic analyses disclosed that the V3 sequences from each mother-infant pair clustered together and were clearly distinct from those of the other pairs. Within each pair, the child's sequences formed a monophyletic group, indicating that a single variant initiated the infection in both rapid and slow progressors. Plasma HIV-1 RNA levels increased in all five infants during their first months of life and then declined within the first semester of life only in the three slow progressors. V3 variability increased over time in all infants, but no differences in the pattern of V3 evolution in terms of potential viral phenotype were observed. The numbers of synonymous and nonsynonymous substitutions varied during the first semester of life regardless of viral load, CD4+-cell count, and disease progression. Conversely, during the second semester of life the rate of nonsynonymous substitutions was higher than that of synonymous substitutions in the slow progressors but not in the rapid progressors, thus suggesting a stronger host selective pressure in the former. In view of the proposal that V3 genetic evolution is driven mainly by host immune constraints, these findings suggest that while the immune response to V3 might contribute to regulating viral levels after the first semester of life, it is unlikely to play a determinant role in the initial viral decline soon after birth.
Diversifying SQL to Prevent Injection Attacks

This paper proposes an idea of diversification to make SQL resistant against injection attacks. Our solution is based on a novel two-layered approach. It allows the SQL server to support several different instruction sets so that the SQL symbols used by every application are different. The internal SQL symbols used by the server are also uniquely diversified. We also tested our approach by applying it to MySQL server. We show that it prevents several injection attacks that earlier proxy-based solutions cannot catch. Because our solution only quickly decodes the randomized SQL symbols in the query when it arrives to the server, it does not cause any significant performance losses contrary to a proxy-based solution. The queries in applications that use the SQL server need to be diversified accordingly, but this could be done automatically to a great extent.
Variance Reduction in Monte-Carlo Tree Search

Monte-Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) has proven to be a powerful, generic planning technique for decision-making in single-agent and adversarial environments. The stochastic nature of the Monte-Carlo simulations introduces errors in the value estimates, both in terms of bias and variance. Whilst reducing bias (typically through the addition of domain knowledge) has been studied in the MCTS literature, comparatively little effort has focused on reducing variance. This is somewhat surprising, since variance reduction techniques are a well-studied area in classical statistics. In this paper, we examine the application of some standard techniques for variance reduction in MCTS, including common random numbers, antithetic variates and control variates. We demonstrate how these techniques can be applied to MCTS and explore their efficacy on three different stochastic, single-agent settings: Pig, Can't Stop and Dominion.
A Practical Toolbox for Calibrating Omnidirectional Cameras

An omnidirectional camera is a vision system providing a 360° panoramic view of the scene. Such an enhanced field of view can be achieved by either using catadioptric systems, which opportunely combine mirrors and conventional cameras, or employing purely dioptric fish-eye lenses. Omnidirectional cameras can be classified into two classes, central and non-central, depending on whether they satisfy the single effective viewpoint property or not (Baker & Nayar, 1998). As noted in (Svoboda & T. Pajdla, 1997), it is highly desirable that such imaging systems have a single effective viewpoint. When this property is verified, there exists a single center of projection, that is, every pixel in the sensed images measures the irradiance of the light passing through the same viewpoint in one particular direction. The reason a single viewpoint is so desirable is that it allows the user to generate geometrically correct perspective images from the pictures captured by an omnidirectional camera. Moreover, it allows applying the known theory of epipolar geometry, which easily allows the user to perform ego-motion estimation and structure from motion from image correspondences only. As shown in (Baker & Nayar, 1998), central catadioptric systems can be built by combining an orthographic camera with a parabolic mirror, or a perspective camera with a hyperbolic or elliptical mirror. Conversely, panoramic cameras using fish-eye lenses cannot in general be considered central systems, but the single viewpoint property holds approximately true for some camera models (Micusik & Pajdla, 2003). In this chapter, we focus on calibration of central omnidirectional cameras, both dioptric and catadioptric. After outlining previous works on omnidirectional camera calibration, we describe our novel procedure and provide a practical Matlab Toolbox, which allows any inexpert user to easily calibrate his own camera. Accurate calibration of a vision system is necessary for any computer vision task requiring extracting metric information of the environment from 2D images, like in ego-motion estimation and structure from motion. While a number of calibration methods has been developed for standard perspective cameras (Zhang, 2000), little work on omnidirectional cameras has been done. The first part of this chapter will present a short overview about previous methods for calibration of omnidirectional cameras. In particular, their limitations will be pointed out. The second part of this chapter will present our calibration technique whose performance is evaluated through calibration experiments. Then, we will present our
An automatic video-object based steganographic system for multi-use message hiding using wavelet transform

An automatic video-object based steganographic system is proposed in this paper for multiuse message hiding. Initially video objects from different images are selected and for each video object a message is embedded into its most significant wavelet coefficients to provide invisibility and resistance against lossy transmission or other distortion. The architecture consists of three modules. In the first module initial messages are enciphered using one or more encryption algorithms. The enciphered messages are imprinted onto white-background images to construct the message-images to be hidden. In the second module each of the cover video objects is decomposed into two levels with seven subbands, using the DWT. Next qualified significant wavelet trees (QSWTs), which are paths of significant wavelet coefficients, are estimated for the highest energy pair of subbands of each video object. During the third module each message-image is redundantly embedded to the coefficients of the best QSWTs of a video object and the IDWT is applied to provide the stego-object. In the last stage stego-objects are combined to provide the final content to be transmitted. Experimental results under various loss rates indicate the robustness and efficiency of the proposed steganographic system.
"The Adaptive Significance of Temperature-Dependent Sex Determination in a Reptile" (2008), by Daniel Warner and Richard Shine

In 2008 researchers Daniel Warner and Richard Shine tested the Charnov-Bull model by conducting experiments on the Jacky dragon, (Amphibolurus muricatus) [5] in Australia. Their results showed that temperature-dependent sex determination [6] (TSD) evolved in this species as an adaptation to fluctuating environmental temperatures. The Charnov-Bull model, proposed by Eric Charnov and James Bull in 1977, described the evolution [7] of TSD, although the model was, for many years, untested. Many reptiles and some fish [8] exhibit non-genetic sex determination [6], in which an embryo's environment can influence the sex of the adult organism. Environmental conditions such as humidity or population density can alter sex in some organisms, and a widespread form of non-genetic sex determination [6] is temperature-dependent sex determination [6]. TSD reveals how embryonic development can contribute to the evolution [7] of physiological processes. Researchers have documented TSD in a wide range of species, and they continue to investigate how such a sex determining system has evolved.
Water intake behavior of broiler chickens exposed to heat stress and drinking from bell or and nipple drinkers

The aspects involved in broiler water intake are not well known, despite the importance of water in animal nutrition and physiology. Water intake behavior should be taken into account when deciding on different types of drinkers. Bell and nipple drinkers are the most commonly used in commercial broiler production. Broilers were housed in cages equipped with two different drinker types and raised at two different environmental temperatures (25 and 34 oC) to evaluate water intake behavior and volume. Broiler water intake behavior was influenced by drinker type. Birds visited bell drinkers less often, but presented higher total water intake per visit to the drinker as compared to those drinking from nipple drinkers. The results of this study suggest that both broilers drinking behavior and water intake volume should be taken into account when deciding on drinker type to equip broiler houses.
To BDNF or Not to BDNF: That Is the Epileptic Hippocampus

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a member of the neurotrophin family, has drawn much attention as a potential therapeutic target for temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). TLE seizures are produced by synchronized hyperactivity of neuron populations due to the disruption of a balance between excitatory and inhibitory synaptic transmissions. In epileptogenesis-related brain areas, including the hippocampus, BDNF is up-regulated in the course of the development of epilepsy and induces a collapse of balanced excitation and inhibition, eventually exerting its epileptogenic effects. On the other hand, several reports demonstrate that intrahippocampal infusion of BDNF can attenuate (or retard) the development of epilepsy. This antiepileptogenic effect seems to be mediated mainly by an increase in the expression of neuropeptide Y. These contrasting effects of BDNF have prevented us from concluding whether inhibition or enhancement of BDNF signaling finally achieves the prevention of TLE. To address this question, it is essential to evaluate how BDNF changes its influences depending on conditions, for example, cell specificity, neural networks, and expression timing and loci. In this article, the authors review BDNF-induced acute and long-lasting changes seen in epileptic circuits from the anatomical and functional points of view.
Quorum decision-making facilitates information transfer in fish shoals

Despite the growing interest in collective phenomena such as “swarm intelligence” and “wisdom of the crowds,” little is known about the mechanisms underlying decision-making in vertebrate animal groups. How do animals use the behavior of others to make more accurate decisions, especially when it is not possible to identify which individuals possess pertinent information? One plausible answer is that individuals respond only when they see a threshold number of individuals perform a particular behavior. Here, we investigate the role of such “quorum responses” in the movement decisions of fish (three-spine stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus). We show that a quorum response to conspecifics can explain how sticklebacks make collective movement decisions, both in the absence and presence of a potential predation risk. Importantly our experimental work shows that a quorum response can reduce the likelihood of amplification of nonadaptive following behavior. Whereas the traveling direction of solitary fish was strongly influenced by a single replica conspecific, the replica was largely ignored by larger groups of four or eight sticklebacks under risk, and the addition of a second replica was required to exert influence on the movement decisions of such groups. Model simulations further predict that quorum responses by fish improve the accuracy and speed of their decision-making over that of independent decision-makers or those using a weak linear response. This study shows that effective and accurate information transfer in groups may be gained only through nonlinear responses of group members to each other, thus highlighting the importance of quorum decision-making.
CDK2-Dependent Phosphorylation of FOXO1 as an Apoptotic Response to DNA Damage

The function of cyclin-dependent kinase 2 (CDK2) is often abolished after DNA damage. The inhibition of CDK2 plays a central role in DNA damage–induced cell cycle arrest and DNA repair. However, whether CDK2 also influences the survival of cells under genotoxic stress is unknown. Forkhead box O (FOXO) transcription factors are emerging as key regulators of cell survival. CDK2 specifically phosphorylated FOXO1 at serine-249 (Ser249) in vitro and in vivo. Phosphorylation of Ser249 resulted in cytoplasmic localization and inhibition of FOXO1. This phosphorylation was abrogated upon DNA damage through the cell cycle checkpoint pathway that is dependent on the protein kinases Chk1 and Chk2. Moreover, silencing of FOXO1 by small interfering RNA diminished DNA damage–induced death in both p53-deficient and p53-proficient cells. This effect was reversed by restored expression of FOXO1 in a manner depending on phosphorylation of Ser249. Functional interaction between CDK2 and FOXO1 provides a mechanism that regulates apoptotic cell death after DNA strand breakage.
Detecting Usability Problems and Offering Lines of Solutions: An Instrument' Proposal for Measuring Usability in Online Services

The growing offer of online public services aims to provide huge benefits to users in terms of time and facilities, and also to governments in terms of cost saving. However, the benefits that both users and providers could extract from the digitalization of transactions are commonly affected by the problems that citizens face while using the facilities. It is at this point where usability appears as a central variable. Although the usability of transactional services is a central variable, there are not clear methodological approaches for measuring the state of the services within Latin-American countries. In order to face this issue, we propose an instrument based upon the heuristic-evaluation technique for assessing the usability of online services in e-government websites. We evaluate the usability of 60 online services offered by the Chilean government in order to validate the instrument, and to show the scope of the instrument and the lines of intervention that such evaluation allows. Results showed three main usability problems of the online services: (1) the system does not provide control to users over their action, (2) the services are structured in a way that produces uncertainty, and (3) there is not guidance to users while they conduct the transactions in the website. We discuss the results appealing to the necessity of having rigorous methodologies for assessing the usability features of transactional services, and showing the main problems reported in the measurement conducted. This demonstrates the relevance of assessing usability in online services when analyzing the slow growing and lack of confidence that online services have among users.