Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inflammation, Immunity, and Hypertension

Aprominent pathology textbook used in the United States includes an image illustrating the renal histopathology caused by malignant hypertension. The legend describes striking “onion skin” changes of a renal arteriole. Curiously, a sea of mononuclear inflammatory cells surrounding this arteriole is overlooked both in the legend and in the related text. Moreover, nothing regarding inflammation or immune reactions is discussed. This lack of attention to inflammatory cells is, however, not surprising. Although many experimental studies have implicated inflammation in hypertension, these have largely been performed in experimental animals; there is no proof that inflammation contributes to human hypertension. In fact, some anti-inflammatory or immune-suppressing drugs (eg, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and cyclosporine) paradoxically cause hypertension in humans, likely via off-target effects. Often the term “inflammation” is used in the context of cardiovascular disease as a catchall referring to nonspecific phenomena, such as elevation of C-reactive protein or the presence of macrophages in a tissue. Most clinicians and investigators find this vague and difficult to understand. Even more puzzling is that many studies now implicate the adaptive immune response, and in particular, lymphocytes, in hypertension and vascular disease. Traditionally, bacterial, viral, or tumor antigens activate this arm of immune defense. As such, it has been hard to imagine how adaptive immunity could be involved in a disease such as hypertension. In this article, we will attempt to address some of these puzzling questions. We will briefly review components of the innate and adaptive immune response, discuss data from many groups, including our own, that suggest that common forms of hypertension are immune mediated, and provide a working hypothesis of how signals from the central nervous system trigger an immune response that causes hypertension. ### General Concepts Regarding Inflammation and Immunity #### Innate Immunity The first line of defense against pathogens is the innate immune response. Important components of this system include epithelial …
Experiments in Idiom Recognition

Some expressions can be ambiguous between idiomatic and literal interpretations depending on the context they occur in, e.g., ‘sales hit the roof’ vs. ‘hit the roof of the car’. We present a novel method of classifying whether a given instance is literal or idiomatic, focusing on verb-noun constructions. We report state-of-the-art results on this task using an approach based on the hypothesis that the distributions of the contexts of the idiomatic phrases will be different from the contexts of the literal usages. We measure contexts by using projections of the words into vector space. For comparison, we implement Fazly et al. (2009)’s, Sporleder and Li (2009)’s, and Li and Sporleder (2010b)’s methods and apply them to our data. We provide experimental results validating the proposed techniques.
Characteristics Estimation of Information Sources by Information Diffusion Analysis

This paper presents a novel method to estimate characteristics of information sources about a topic by analyzing their information diffusion subnetworks in blogspace. In an information diffusion network, each influential information source has an affected subnetwork whose nodes are reachable from it. We define three information diffusion properties of the subnetwork using the numbers of three types of directed 2-edge connected subgraphs, which are basic structures in a directed acyclic graph such as an information diffusion network. Each type of basic structure is related to information scattering, information gathering, or information transmission. We visualized and analyzed the structure of information diffusion networks extracted for other topics. Furthermore, we characterize the information diffusion properties by using the rank correlation coefficient, precision, and mean reciprocal rank (MRR) and mean average precision (MAP) of three types of information sources: official sites, news sites, and CGMs. We found that the three information diffusion properties have different characteristics and give priority to different types of information sources.
The Association of Complication Type with Mortality and Prolonged Stay After Cardiac Surgery with Cardiopulmonary Bypass

Outcome after cardiac surgery varies depending on complication type. We therefore sought to determine the association between complication type, mortality, and length of stay in a large series of patients undergoing cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB). Multivariate logistic regression was used to test for differences between complication types in mortality and prolonged length of stay (>10 days) while controlling for preoperative and intraoperative risk factors. In 2609 consecutive cardiac surgical patients requiring CPB, the mortality rate was 3.6%; 36.5% had one or more complications, and 15.7% experienced an adverse outcome (death or prolonged length of stay). Multivariate logistic regression demonstrated that complication type was significantly associated with adverse outcome (P < 0.001) independent of Parsonnet score and CPB time (c-index = 0.80). The development of noncardiac complications only (Group NC) and cardiac complications with other organ involvement (Group B) significantly increased mortality and hospital and intensive care unit length of stay (P < 0.001) when compared with cardiac complications only (Group C). The incidences of adverse outcome in Groups C, NC, and B were 15%, 43%, and 67%, respectively; the mortality rates were 3%, 7%, and 20%, respectively. All these intergroup comparisons were significantly different (adjusted P < 0.05). Complications involving organs other than the heart appear to be more deleterious than cardiac complications alone, underscoring the need for strategies to reduce noncardiac complications.
TCP performance and its improvement over wireless links

TCP performs reasonably well over the Internet where packet losses are mainly due to network congestion. However, TCP suffers significant throughput degradation over hybrid wireless/IP networks where packet losses are also due to transmission errors in wireless segments and during end-host handovers. In this paper, the micro-scale behavior and packet-level performance of four popular TCP variants over wireless links are assessed, and a modified TCP sender which incorporates a heuristic segment-in-flight estimation algorithm to improve the TCP throughput is proposed. Extensive simulations show that the modified TCP achieves better end-to-end performance, and still keeps the fairness and the compatibility with ordinary TCP variants.
Joking the Cosmos Into the Right Shape in North Asia

every now and then, there are isolated attempts at reintroducing the concept, most recently in an edited volume on Holistic Anthropology, which aims at integrating the “human sciences” into a “new holism of evolving life forms” (Parkin and Ulijaszek 2007). Yet, such attempts tend to be curiously apologetic – certainly, one does not detect much enthusiasm about the concept of holism in Parkin and Ulijaszek’s book, where it is reduced to a purely heuristic tool with no theoretical purchase. As they put it, as long it is merely taken to be “no more than an odd-job word, [holism] can enjoy a short moment of interrogation and revelation before it is returned to the banality of meaning too many things” (2007: xiii). But perhaps it is possible to convey a more upbeat message about the future of holism as an analytical concept. Based on fieldwork among two indigenous peoples in northern Asia, this chapter introduces the concept of proportional holism, understood as the ongoing apportioning of different assemblages of humans and nonhumans into the right shape. Rather than being a heuristic tool anthropologists use to make sense of their data, holism emerges as a particular social practice that can be identified in different settings around the world, and that can be made the object of ethnographic description, analysis, and comparison like all other practices. To study holism anthropologically is to explore the culturally specific work actors do for their cosmos to retain its proportions. Studying holism as an empirical phenomenon requires sensitivity to the different conceptualizations of wholes held by different people, as well as to the sometimes surprising practices by which such wholes are perceived to hold together. As we show in what follows, joking is one such holistic practice in the context of North Asian indigenous societies. More precisely, we argue, joking relationships with the spirits of dead ancestors and wild animals serve to actualize these entities in ritual and everyday situations, while at the same time providing them with an irreducible virtual dimension. In that sense, the work of joking as a holistic practice is to balance between otherwise singular wholes. Acts of 15
Design of robust superdirective beamformer for circular sensor arrays

Two approaches to design robust superdirective beamformer for circular sensor arrays are presented in this paper. The first one is directly based on the eigen-decomposition of the circulant noise covariance matrix. Since the optimal solution can be accurately decomposed into sub-solutions denoted as eigenbeams and their robustness decreases with increasing of order number, a reduced-rank technique can be applied to obtain robust superdirectivity by truncating some error-intolerable high order eigenbeams. The results are all expressed in closed-form. The second approach is to formulate the beamformer as an optimization problem which can give an appropriate trade-off among directivity factor, sidelobe level and robustness. The robustness constraint parameter can be estimated from the performance of eigenbeams. Although it needs to be computed numerically, the computation efficiency can be improved using the properties of circular arrays. Experimental results show these two beamformers will provide good convenience to the practical implementation of robust high-order superdirectivity.
A hand-held augmented reality projection system using trifocal tensors and Kalman filter

In this paper, we proposed a tensor-based hand-held projection system that makes use of pure computer vision techniques. Using a projector and two cameras, the system is able to spatially augment content on movable rigid surfaces, such as a map or a book. The advantage of our system is that neither attachment of sensors to the projection surface nor the prior reconstruction of the surface structure is required. Application examples include projecting information on a map to provide travel plan guidance or additional information on interesting sites such as hospitals, banks etc. To achieve this, a calibrated stereo camera pair is used as the tracking system for the projected surface and a non-calibrated projector is used for the projection. Our main contribution is on using trifocal tensors to lock the positions of the cameras, the projection surface and the projector. Augmented content is then generated and projected to the required surface accurately. Experimental results show that our system can project the augmented content onto the projection surface in high precision in real-time.
Error catastrophe and antiviral strategy

The term “error catastrophe,” originally introduced in the theory of molecular evolution (1), has become fashionable among virologists. In a recent paper in PNAS (2), it was suggested, on the basis of quantitative sequence studies, that ribavirin, a common antiviral drug, by its mutagenic action drives poliovirus into an error catastrophe of replication, thereby turning a productive infection into an abortive one. Previous studies by Loeb and his group (3, 4) on the AIDS virus (HIV) and by Domingo, Holland, and coworkers (5, 6) on foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) have led to similar conclusions, suggesting a paradigm shift in antiviral strategies (7). A recent issue of PNAS presents a paper by Grande-Perez et al. (8), which deals with the “molecular indetermination in the transition to error catastrophe,” shedding light on the complexity of the mechanisms involved in virus infection and stressing the need for a careful molecular analysis of the detail, which may differ greatly from one virus to another. Because of its practical relevance for developing potent antiviral drugs and, beyond that, its general importance for an understanding of molecular evolution, this commentary will highlight the theoretical basis and point out the kind of conclusions that can be drawn in discussing experimental results. The term error catastrophe is of a descriptive nature and lacks a clear-cut definition. A catastrophe is usually triggered if certain tolerances are exceeded. For replication, there is indeed such a limiting value of error or mutation rate that must not be surpassed if the wild type is to be kept stable. We call this limit the “error threshold. ” Why is it a sharply defined limit? Why does the efficiency of replication not vary monotonically with the error rate? The information stored in the genomic sequence melts like ice at 0°C. This comparison is …
Analytic Stability Theory for Faraday Waves and the Observation of the Harmonic Surface Response

We present an analytic expression for the onset of the Faraday instability, which is applicable to a wide frequency range covering both shallow gravity and deep capillary waves. For sufficiently thin fluid layers, the surface oscillates in harmonic rather than subharmonic resonance with the forcing. An experimental confirmation of this result is reported.
Adaptive Range Parameter Control

All existing stochastic optimisers such as Evolutionary Algorithms require parameterisation which has a significant influence on the algorithm's performance. In most cases, practitioners assign static values to variables after an initial tuning phase. This parameter tuning method requires experience the practitioner may not have and, when done conscientiously, is rather time-consuming. Also, the use of parameter values that remain constant over the optimisation process has been observed to achieve suboptimal results. This work presents a parameter control method which redefines variables repeatedly based on a separate optimisation process which receives its feedback from the primary optimisation algorithm. The feedback is used for a projection of the value performing well in the future. The parameter values are sampled from intervals which are adapted dynamically, a method which has proved particularly effective and outperforms all existing adaptive parameter controls significantly.
On providing a Dynamic QoS Management system for IP networks

This paper discusses the design of a network management system that supports QoS in IP networks. The proposed architecture, namely QMTool, uses the evolving Differentiated Services paradigm and provides end-to-end QoS for IP based applications. The novel aspects of the proposed approach rely on the integration of a collection of mechanisms including QoS provisioning for different types of traffic, flow level admission control and resource management mechanisms that interact with the routers of a network. We focus our attention on the dynamic aspects of QoS management, which is achieved by introducing a set of new technologies. The concept of the proposed management system is described in detail followed by notes of implementation issues.
Continuous distributed counting for non-monotonic streams

We consider the continual count tracking problem in a distributed environment where the input is an aggregate stream that originates from k distinct sites and the updates are allowed to be non-monotonic, i.e. both increments and decrements are allowed. The goal is to continually track the count within a prescribed relative accuracy ε at the lowest possible communication cost. Specifically, we consider an adversarial setting where the input values are selected and assigned to sites by an adversary but the order is according to a random permutation or is a random i.i. d process. The input stream of values is allowed to be non-monotonic with an unknown drift -1≤μ=1 where the case μ = 1 corresponds to the special case of a monotonic stream of only non-negative updates. We show that a randomized algorithm guarantees to track the count accurately with high probability and has the expected communication cost Õ(min√k/(|#956;|ε), √k n/ε, n}), for an input stream of length n, and establish matching lower bounds. This improves upon previously best known algorithm whose expected communication cost is Θ(min√k/ε,n]) that applies only to an important but more restrictive class of monotonic input streams, and our results are substantially more positive than the communication complexity of Ω(n) under fully adversarial input. We also show how our framework can also accommodate other types of random input streams, including fractional Brownian motion that has been widely used to model temporal long-range dependencies observed in many natural phenomena. Last but not least, we show how our non-monotonic counter can be applied to track the second frequency moment and to a Bayesian linear regression problem.
Estimation of number of endmembers in a Hyperspectral image using Eigen thresholding

Unmixing of Hyperspectral images is essentially a blind or semi-blind source separation problem that tries to extract object (endmember) spectra and abundance from the image which is considered as a linear or non-linear mixture of spectrally distinct objects (endmembers) weighted by fractional abundance. An accurate and efficient method for estimation of number of endmembers present in the image scene is the starting point in spectral unmixing. Various unmixing and endmember determination methods have assumed that the number of endmembers is known from prior knowledge about the image scene. This paper presents an Eigen analysis based method to determine number of endmember present in an image by separating signal subspace and noise subspace. Signal components and noise components in a linear noisy mixture are characterized by the dominant Eigen values of covariance matrix and the low Eigen values of covariance matrix respectively. In this paper number of endmembers is estimated by separation of signal and noise components by thresholding. Results obtained in synthetic and real images shows that this scheme gives accurate estimation in low noise levels.
A product of their environment: Do megakaryocytes rely on extracellular cues for proplatelet formation?

Megakaryocytes have long been observed to form abundant filamentous extensions called proplatelets. A strong body of evidence strongly suggests these proplatelets are the mechanism by which platelets are released into the vasculature. Despite the recent advances in understanding proplatelet architecture, surprisingly little attention has been paid to identifying the ways in which the bone marrow environment regulates proplatelet formation. This review summarises this field and how these findings suggest a spatial and temporal regulation to ensure that platelets are produced in the correct location.
Pediatric pain: prevalence, assessment, and management in a teaching hospital

The goal of this study was to examine the prevalence, assessment and management of pediatric pain in a public teaching hospital. The study sample consisted of 121 inpatients (70 infants, 36 children, and 15 adolescents), their families, 40 physicians, and 43 nurses. All participants were interviewed except infants and children who could not communicate due to their clinical status. The interview included open-ended questions concerning the inpatients' pain symptoms during the 24 h preceding data collection, as well as pain assessment and pharmacological/non-pharmacological management of pain. The data were obtained from 100% of the eligible inpatients. Thirty-four children/adolescents (28%) answered the questionnaire and for the other 72% (unable to communicate), the family/health professional caregivers reported pain. Among these 34 persons, 20 children/adolescents reported pain, 68% of whom reported that they received pharmacological intervention for pain relief. Eighty-two family caregivers were available on the day of data collection. Of these, 40 family caregivers (49%) had observed their child's pain response. In addition, 74% reported that the inpatients received pharmacological management. Physicians reported that only 38% of the inpatients exhibited pain signs, which were predominantly acute pain detected during clinical procedures. They reported that 66% of patients received pharmacological intervention. The nurses reported pain signs in 50% of the inpatients, which were detected during clinical procedures. The nurses reported that pain was managed in 78% of inpatients by using pharmacological and/or non-pharmacological interventions. The findings provide evidence of the high prevalence of pain in pediatric inpatients and the under-recognition of pain by health professionals.
Treatment of type 2 diabetes in childhood using a very-low-calorie diet.

OBJECTIVE Pharmacologic agents currently approved for use in children with type 2 diabetes (metformin and insulin) are less than optimal for some patients. We evaluated the use of a ketogenic, very-low-calorie diet (VLCD) in the treatment of type 2 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We conducted a chart review of 20 children (mean age 14.5 +/- 0.4 years) who consumed a ketogenic VLCD in the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Several response variables (BMI, blood pressure, HbA(1c), blood glucose, and treatment regimens) were examined before, during, and up to 2 years after the diet and compared with a matched diabetic control group. RESULTS Before starting the diet, 11 of 20 patients were treated with insulin and 6 with metformin. Mean daily blood glucose values fell from 8.9 +/- 1.1 to 5.5 +/- 0.38 mmol/l (P < 0.0001) in the first 3 days of the VLCD, allowing insulin and oral agents to be discontinued in all but one subject. BMI fell from 43.5 +/- 1.8 to 39.3 +/- 1.8 kg/m(2) (P < 0.0001) and HbA(1c) dropped from 8.8 +/- 0.6 to 7.4 +/- 0.6% (P < 0.005) as the diet was continued for a mean of 60 +/- 8 days (range 4-130 days), and none required resumption of antidiabetic medications. Sustained decreases in BMI and insulin requirements were observed in patients remaining on the VLCD for at least 6 weeks when compared with those of the control group. CONCLUSIONS The ketogenic VLCD is an effective short-term, and possibly long-term, therapy for pediatric patients with type 2 diabetes. Blood glucose control and BMI improve, allowing the discontinuation of exogenous insulin and other antidiabetic agents. This diet, although strict, has potential as an alternative to pharmacologic therapies for this emerging subset of diabetic individuals.
Genetics-based machine learning and behavior-based robotics: a new synthesis

Intelligent robots should be able to use sensor information to learn how to behave in a changing environment. As environmental complexity grows, the learning task becomes more and more difficult. This problem is faced using an architecture based on learning classifier systems and on the structural properties of animal behavioral organization, as proposed by ethologists. After a description of the learning technique used and of the organizational structure proposed, experiments that show how behavior acquisition can be achieved are presented. The simulated robot learns to follow a light and to avoid hot dangerous objects. While these two simple behavioral patterns are independently learned, coordination is attained by means of a learning coordination mechanism. >