Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Does this patient have a family history of cancer? An evidence-based analysis of the accuracy of family cancer history.

CONTEXT A family history of certain cancers is associated with an increased risk of developing cancer. Both cancer screening and genetic services referral decisions are often based on self-reported pedigree information. OBJECTIVE To determine the accuracy of self-reported family cancer history information. DATA SOURCES English-language articles were retrieved by searching MEDLINE (1966-June 2004) using Medical Subject Headings family, genetic predisposition to disease, medical history taking, neoplasm, and reproducibility of results. Additional articles were identified through bibliography searches. STUDY SELECTION Original studies in which investigators validated self-reported family history by reviewing the identified relatives' medical records, death certificate, or cancer registry information were included, as well as studies that evaluated breast, colon, ovarian, endometrial, and prostate cancers. DATA EXTRACTION Two of the 3 investigators independently reviewed and abstracted data for estimating the likelihood ratios (LRs) of self-reported family cancer history information. Only data from studies that evaluated both positive and negative family cancer histories were included within the analyses. A total of 14 studies met the search criteria and were included in the review. DATA SYNTHESIS For patients without a personal history of cancer, the positive and negative LRs of a family history of the following cancers in a first-degree relative were 23.0 (95% confidence interval [CI], 6.4-81.0) and 0.25 (95% CI, 0.10-0.63) for colon cancer; 8.9 (95% CI, 5.4-15.0) and 0.20 (95% CI, 0.08-0.49) for breast cancer; 14.0 (95% CI, 2.2-83.4) and 0.68 (95% CI, 0.31-1.52) for endometrial cancer; 34.0 (95% CI, 5.7-202.0) and 0.51 (95% CI, 0.13-2.10) for ovarian cancer; and 12.3 (95% CI, 6.5-24.0) and 0.32 (95% CI, 0.18-0.55) for prostate cancer, respectively. Positive predictive values tended to be better in articles concerning first-degree relatives compared with second-degree relatives. CONCLUSIONS Patient-reported family cancer histories for first-degree relatives are accurate and valuable for breast and colon cancer risk assessments. Negative family history reports for ovarian and endometrial cancers are less useful, although the prevalence of these malignancies within families is low.
Dynamic Resource Allocation in Cellular Radio Networks with Downlink Relaying

In this paper, we propose dynamic resource allocation with spatial reuse to improve total system throughput in multi-user system and multi-hop communication. The comparison of optimal and heuristic reuse scheme shows the heuristic reuse scheme is still good enough with low complexity. The simulation result shows that dynamic resource reuse scheme among fixed RSs increases the system throughput.
Distinct Residues in the Carboxyl Tail Mediate Agonist-induced Desensitization and Internalization of the Human Dopamine D1 Receptor*

We have shown in a previous study that desensitization and internalization of the human dopamine D1 receptor following short-term agonist exposure are mediated by temporally and biochemically distinct mechanisms. In the present study, we have used site-directed mutagenesis to remove potential phosphorylation sites in the third intracellular loop and carboxyl tail of the dopamine D1 receptor to study these processes. Mutant D1 receptors were stably transfected into Chinese hamster ovary cells, and kinetic parameters were measured. Mutations of Ser/Thr residues to alanine in the carboxyl tail demonstrated that the single substitution of Thr-360 abolished agonist-induced phosphorylation and desensitization of the receptor. Isolated mutation of the adjacent glutamic acid Glu-359 also abolished agonist-induced phosphorylation and desensitization of the receptor. These data suggest that Thr-360 in conjunction with Glu-359 may comprise a motif necessary for GRK2-mediated phosphorylation and desensitization. Agonist-induced internalization was not affected with mutation of either the Thr-360 or the Glu-359 residues. However, receptors with Ser/Thr residues mutated in the distal carboxyl tail (Thr-446, Thr-439, and Ser-431) failed to internalize in response to agonist activation, but were able to desensitize normally. These results indicate that agonist-induced desensitization and internalization are regulated by separate and distinct serine and threonine residues within the carboxyl tail of the human dopamine D1 receptor.
Mechanistic sediment quality guidelines based on contaminant bioavailability: Equilibrium partitioning sediment benchmarks

Globally, estimated costs to manage (i.e., remediate and monitor) contaminated sediments are in the billions of U.S. dollars. Biologically based approaches for assessing the contaminated sediments which pose the greatest ecological risk range from toxicity testing to benthic community analysis. In addition, chemically based sediment quality guidelines (SQGs) provide a relatively inexpensive line of evidence for supporting these assessments. The present study summarizes a mechanistic SQG based on equilibrium partitioning (EqP), which uses the dissolved concentrations of contaminants in sediment interstitial waters as a surrogate for bioavailable contaminant concentrations. The EqP‐based mechanistic SQGs are called equilibrium partitioning sediment benchmarks (ESBs). Sediment concentrations less than or equal to the ESB values are not expected to result in adverse effects and benthic organisms should be protected, while sediment concentrations above the ESB values may result in adverse effects to benthic organisms. In the present study, ESB values are reported for 34 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, 32 other organic contaminants, and seven metals (cadmium, chromium, copper, nickel, lead, silver, zinc). Also included is an overview of EqP theory, ESB derivation, examples of applying ESB values, and considerations when using ESBs. The ESBs are intended as a complement to existing sediment‐assessment tools, to assist in determining the extent of sediment contamination, to help identify chemicals causing toxicity, and to serve as targets for pollutant loading control measures. Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 2013;32:102–114. © 2012 SETAC
Automatic Extraction of Complex Web Data

A new wrapper induction algorithm WTM for generating rules that describe the general web page layout template is presented. WTM is mainly designed for use in weblog crawling and indexing system. Most weblogs are maintained by content management systems and have similar layout structures in all pages. In addition, they provide RSS feeds to describe the latest entries. These entries appear in the weblog homepage in HTML format as well. WTM is built upon these two observations. It uses RSS feed data to automatically label the corresponding HTML file (weblog homepage) and induces general template rules from the labeled page. The rules can then be used to extract data from other pages of similar layout template. WTM is tested on some selected weblogs and the results are satisfactory.
Identification of alloreactive T-cell epitopes on the Rhesus D protein.

Although considerable effort has been devoted to characterizing alloantibodies specific for the Rhesus D (RhD) blood group antigen, virtually nothing is known about the helper response that drives their production. Therefore, the aim of this study was to map alloreactive T-cell epitopes on the RhD protein. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were obtained from 22 RhD-negative volunteers in whom anti-D alloantibodies had developed after deliberate immunization or RhD-incompatible pregnancy. The PBMCs were stimulated with a panel of up to 68 overlapping synthetic 15-mer peptides spanning the complete sequence of the RhD protein. One or more peptides elicited proliferative responses by PBMCs from all 22 of the alloimmune volunteers but from only 2 of 8 alloantibody-negative control donors. Proliferation of PBMCs from the alloimmune donors was mediated by major histocompatibility complex class II-restricted T cells expressing the CD45RO marker of previous activation or memory. The number of peptides that induced proliferative responses was unrelated to either the frequency of, or time since, exposure to RhD-positive red blood cells, but it correlated strongly (R(s) = 0.75; P <. 003) with the level of anti-D antibodies in deliberately immunized donors. The patterns of stimulatory peptides varied among alloimmune volunteers, but particular sequences were commonly recognized, with 4 peptides each eliciting a response in more than 50% of these donors. Identification of such peptides containing dominant alloreactive helper epitopes is the first step in the development of improved or new approaches to preventing hemolytic disease of the newborn that are based on modulating the T-cell response to the RhD protein.
Cross-lingual speaker adaptation via Gaussian component mapping

This paper is focused on the use of acoustic information from an existing source language (Cantonese) to implement speaker adaptation for a new target language (English). Speaker-independent (SI) model mapping between Cantonese and English is investigated at different levels of acoustic units. Phones, states, and Gaussian mixture components are used as the mapping units respectively. With the model mapping, cross-lingual speaker adaptation can be performed. The performance of the proposed cross-lingual speaker adaptation system is determined by model mapping effectiveness and speaker adaptation effectiveness. Experimental results show that the model mapping effectiveness increased with the reﬁnement of mapping units, and the speaker adaptation effectiveness depends on the model mapping effectiveness. Mapping between Gaussian mixture components is proved effective for various speech recognition tasks. A relative error reduction of 10.12% on English words is achieved by using a small amount of (4 minutes) Cantonese adaptation data, compared with the SI English recognizer.
Investment priorities for the management of hydraulic structures

Maintenance management of the hydraulic structures requires the selection of the most necessary maintenance intervention to ensure their proper operation and structural safety. Given the characteristics of these structures, many types of damage may appear, so it is not easy to take a decision. The purpose of this paper is to present the Prioritisation Index for the Management of Hydraulic Structures (PIMHS), a multi-criteria decision-making system based on the three axioms of sustainability (social, environmental and economic), which orders and prioritises non-similar maintenance investments in hydraulic structures. The results obtained show that PIMHS can be used by decision-makers to prioritise, in hydraulic structures, all kinds of maintenance interventions where the damages cannot lead to dam break.
Soft-clustering technique for training data in Age-and gender-independent speech recognition

In this paper, we propose approaches for the Gaussian mixture model (GMM) based soft clustering of training data and the GMM- or/and hidden Markov model (HMM)-based cluster selection in age and gender-independent speech recognition. Typically, increasing the number of speaker classes leads to more specific models in speaker-class-dependent speech recognition, and thus better recognition performance. However, the amount of data for each class model is reduced by the increase in the number of classes, which leads to unreliable model parameters. To solve the problem of the reduction of training data, we propose a GMM-based soft clustering method that allows overlap, and a selecting method for selecting a speaker model using a GMM or/and HMM. In an experiment, we obtained a 5.0% absolute gain for word error rate (WER), and a 24.9% gain for the relative WER over an age- and gender-dependent baseline.
Smooth dynamic warping

Dynamic time warping is a simple classic method for aligning two sampled functions of time. The sequence of time shifts computed by this method are a globally optimal solution to a non-linear optimization problem with linear inequality constraints that may be directly related to subsurface properties. In applications to seismic traces, the time shifts may increase or decrease rapidly in time (and space). However, when related to integrals of subsurface parameters, such variations in time shifts are often smooth. A new method for smooth dynamic warping exploits this inherent smoothness to increase the accuracy of time shift estimates, especially where differences between seismic traces to be aligned are not limited to time shifts. The new method requires only a few simple modifications to the classic method, and can be easily extended to multidimensional image warping as well. In an application to registration of PP and PS images, we used smooth dynamic warping to compute times shifts that vary smoothly in both time and space, and are significantly more accurate than those computed using the classic method.
Contribution of adverse drug reactions to hospital admission of older patients.

OBJECTIVE To describe the severity of adverse drug reactions as a factor in hospital admission of older patients, and to identify risk indicators for severe adverse drug reactions in these patients. DESIGN Observational cross-sectional study. SETTING Five wards in a university hospital in The Netherlands. SUBJECTS Patients aged 70 and over admitted to general medical wards. METHODS Use of statistical comparison and Kramer's algorithm. RESULTS A severe adverse drug reaction was present in 25 (24%) of 106 patients. Thirteen patients (12%; 95% confidence interval 6.1-18.6%) were admitted probably because of an adverse drug reaction. Risk indicators for a severe adverse drug reaction were a fall before admission (odds ratio 51.3, P = 0.006), gastrointestinal bleeding or haematuria (odds ratio 19.8, P < 0.001) and the use of three or more drugs (odds ratio 9.8, P = 0.04). CONCLUSION Adverse drug reactions are an important cause of hospital admissions in older people. A fall before admission may indicate a severe adverse drug reaction.
Secret key establishment from common randomness represented as complex correlated random processes: Practical algorithms and theoretical limits

Establishing secret common randomness between two or multiple devices in a network resides at the root of communication security. In its most frequent form of key establishment, the problem is traditionally decomposed into a randomness generation stage (randomness purity is subject to employing often costly true random number generators) and an information-exchange agreement stage, which relies either on public-key infrastructure or on symmetric encryption (key wrapping). This dissertation has been divided into two main parts. In the first part, an algorithm called KERMAN is proposed to establish secret-common-randomness for ad-hoc networks, which works by harvesting randomness directly from the network routing metadata, thus achieving both pure randomness generation and (implicitly) secret-key agreement. This algorithm relies on the route discovery phase of an ad-hoc network employing the Dynamic Source Routing protocol, is lightweight, and requires relatively little communication overhead. The algorithm is evaluated for various network parameters, and different levels of complexity, in OPNET network simulator. The results show that, in just ten minutes, thousands of secret random bits can be generated network-wide, between different pairs in a network of fifty users. The proposed algorithm described in this first part of this research study has inspired study of the problem of generating a secret key based on a more practical model to be explored in the second part of this dissertation. Indeed, secret key establishment from common randomness has been traditionally investigated under certain limiting assumptions, of which the most ubiquitous appears to be that the information available to all parties comes
Robustness of SiC MOSFET under avalanche conditions

In high voltage direct current (HVDC) converters, a series connection of semiconductor devices is often used to achieve the desired blocking voltage. In such configuration, an unequal voltage sharing may drive one or more devices into avalanche breakdown, eventually causing the failure of the entire group of devices. This paper presents the experimental evaluation of SiC MOSFETs from different manufacturers operated in avalanche. A setup was developed to test the devices under such condition. The reliability of SiC MOSFETs have been compared. To correlate the experimental results with the failure mechanism, the MOSFETs were decapsulated to identify the failure sites on the SiC dies. Examination results show that for some tested devices, the failure occurs at the metallization source of the die, and results in a short circuit between all three terminals of the MOSFETs. Furthermore, it has been found that the parasitic BJT latch up and the intrinsic temperature limit are the main failure mechanisms for these devices.
Hierarchical map building using visual landmarks and geometric constraints

This paper addresses the problem of automatic construction of a hierarchical map from images. Our approach departs from a large collection of omnidirectional images taken at many locations in a building. First, a low-level map is built that consists of a graph in which relations between images are represented. For this, we use a metric based on visual landmarks (SIFT features) and geometrical constraints. Then, we use a graph partitioning method to cluster nodes and in this way construct the high-level map. Experiments on real data show that meaningful higher and lower level maps are obtained, which can be used for accurate localization and planning.
Alcohol dehydrogenase 1C*1 allele is a genetic marker for alcohol‐associated cancer in heavy drinkers

Chronic alcohol consumption is associated with an increased risk for upper aerodigestive tract cancer and hepatocellular carcinoma. Increased acetaldehyde production via alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) has been implicated in the pathogenesis. The allele ADH1C*1 of ADH1C encodes for an enzyme with a high capacity to generate acetaldehyde. So far, the association between the ADH1C*1 allele and alcohol‐related cancers among heavy drinkers is controversial. ADH1C genotypes were determined by polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragment length polymorphism in a total of 818 patients with alcohol‐associated esophageal (n = 123), head and neck (n = 84) and hepatocellular cancer (n = 86) as well as in patients with alcoholic pancreatitis (n = 117), alcoholic liver cirrhosis (n = 217), combined liver cirrhosis and pancreatitis (n = 17) and in alcoholics without gastrointestinal organ damage (n = 174). The ADH1C*1 allele and genotype ADH1C*1/1 were significantly more frequent in patients with alcohol‐related cancers than that in individuals with nonmalignant alcohol‐related organ damage. Using multivariate analysis, ADH1C*1 allele frequency and rate of homozygosity were significantly associated with an increased risk for alcohol‐related cancers (p<0.001 in all instances). The odds ratio for genotype ADH1C*1/1 regarding the development of esophageal, hepatocellular and head and neck cancer were 2.93 (CI, 1.84–4.67), 3.56 (CI, 1.33–9.53) and 2.2 (CI, 1.11–4.36), respectively. The data identify genotype ADH1C*1/1 as an independent risk factor for the development of alcohol‐associated tumors among heavy drinkers, indicating a genetic predisposition of individuals carrying this genotype. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Identification of a novel gene encoding a flavin-dependent tRNA:m5U methyltransferase in bacteria—evolutionary implications

Formation of 5-methyluridine (ribothymidine) at position 54 of the T-psi loop of tRNA is catalyzed by site-specific tRNA methyltransferases (tRNA:m5U-54 MTase). In all Eukarya and many Gram-negative Bacteria, the methyl donor for this reaction is S-adenosyl-l-methionine (S-AdoMet), while in several Gram-positive Bacteria, the source of carbon is N5, N10-methylenetetrahydrofolate (CH2H4folate). We have identified the gene for Bacillus subtilis tRNA:m5U-54 MTase. The encoded recombinant protein contains tightly bound flavin and is active in Escherichia coli mutant lacking m5U-54 in tRNAs and in vitro using T7 tRNA transcript as substrate. This gene is currently annotated gid in Genome Data Banks and it is here renamed trmFO. TrmFO (Gid) orthologs have also been identified in many other bacterial genomes and comparison of their amino acid sequences reveals that they are phylogenetically distinct from either ThyA or ThyX class of thymidylate synthases, which catalyze folate-dependent formation of deoxyribothymine monophosphate, the universal DNA precursor.
Social Networks as a Support for Event Notiﬁcation Services

Event notiﬁcation based on the publish-subscribe paradigm provides a powerful abstraction for interactions based on a demand-supply pattern. As such, they might become the software backbone for new kinds of end-user services, especially tailored to the needs of people living in and around urban areas. In this report we propose the integration of a publish-subscribe system into popular social networks so that the matching of demand and supply concerning various aspects of individual and social needs can take advantage of the existing infrastructures and user communities characterizing the social networks themselves.
Mobility management in next-generation wireless systems

This paper describes current and proposed protocols for mobility management for public land mobile network (PLMN)-based networks, mobile Internet protocol (IP) wireless asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) and satellite networks. The integration of these networks will be discussed in the context of the next evolutionary step of wireless communication networks. First, a review is provided of location management algorithms for personal communication systems (PCS) implemented over a PLMN network. The latest protocol changes for location registration and handoff are investigated for mobile IP followed by a discussion of proposed protocols for wireless ATM and satellite networks. Finally, an outline of open problems to be addressed by the next generation of wireless network service is discussed.
Measuring Variability in Sentence Ordering for News Summarization

The issue of sentence ordering is an important one for natural language tasks such as multi-document summarization, yet there has not been a quantitative exploration of the range of acceptable sentence orderings for short texts. We present results of a sentence reordering experiment with three experimental conditions. Our findings indicate a very high degree of variability in the orderings that the eighteen subjects produce. In addition, the variability of reorderings is significantly greater when the initial ordering seen by subjects is different from the original summary. We conclude that evaluation of sentence ordering should use multiple reference orderings. Our evaluation presents several metrics that might prove useful in assessing against multiple references. We conclude with a deeper set of questions: (a) what sorts of independent assessments of quality of the different reference orderings could be made and (b) whether a large enough test set would obviate the need for such independent means of quality assessment.