Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Predictors of Long-Term Outcomes in Patients With Significant Myxomatous Mitral Regurgitation Undergoing Exercise Echocardiography

Background— Significant myxomatous mitral regurgitation leads to progressive left ventricular (LV) decline, resulting in congestive heart failure and death. Such patients benefit from mitral valve surgery. Exercise echocardiography aids in risk stratification and helps decide surgical timing. We sought to assess predictors of outcomes in such patients undergoing exercise echocardiography. Methods and Results— This is an observational study of 884 consecutive patients (age, 58±14 years; 67% men) with grade III+ or greater myxomatous mitral regurgitation who underwent exercise echocardiography between January 2000 and December 2011 (excluding functional mitral regurgitation, prior valvular surgery, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, rheumatic valvular disease, or greater than mild mitral stenosis). Clinical and echocardiographic data (mitral regurgitation, LV ejection fraction, LV dimensions, right ventricular systolic pressure) and exercise variables (metabolic equivalents, heart rate recovery at 1 minute after exercise) were recorded. Composite events of death, myocardial infarction, stroke, and progression to congestive heart failure were recorded. Mean LV ejection fraction, indexed LV end-systolic dimension, resting right ventricular systolic pressure, peak stress right ventricular systolic pressure, metabolic equivalents achieved, and heart rate recovery were 58±5%, 1.6±0.4 mm/m2, 31±12 mm Hg, 46±17 mm Hg, 9.6±3, and 33±14 beats, respectively. During 6.4±4 years of follow-up, there were 87 events. On stepwise multivariable Cox analysis, percent of age/sex-predicted metabolic equivalents (hazard ratio, 0.99; 95% confidence interval, 0.98–0.99; P=0.005), heart rate recovery (hazard ratio, 0.29; 95% confidence interval, 0.17–0.50; P<0.001), resting right ventricular systolic pressure (hazard ratio, 1.03; 95% confidence interval, 1.004–1.05; P=0.02), atrial fibrillation (hazard ratio, 1.91; 95% confidence interval, 1.07–3.41; P=0.03), and LV ejection fraction (hazard ratio, 0.96; 95% confidence interval, 0.92–0.99; P=0.04) predicted outcomes. Conclusions— In patients with grade III+ or greater myxomatous mitral regurgitation undergoing exercise echocardiography, lower percent of age/sex-predicted metabolic equivalents, lower heart rate recovery, atrial fibrillation, lower LV ejection fraction, and high resting right ventricular systolic pressure predicted worse outcomes.
Exposure to Secondhand Smoke in Terraces and Other Outdoor Areas of Hospitality Venues in Eight European Countries

Background Outdoor secondhand smoke (SHS) concentrations are usually lower than indoor concentrations, yet some studies have shown that outdoor SHS levels could be comparable to indoor levels under specific conditions. The main objectives of this study were to assess levels of SHS exposure in terraces and other outdoor areas of hospitality venues and to evaluate their potential displacement to adjacent indoor areas. Methods Nicotine and respirable particles (PM2.5) were measured in outdoor and indoor areas of hospitality venues of 8 European countries. Hospitality venues of the study included night bars, restaurants and bars. The fieldwork was carried out between March 2009 and March 2011. Results We gathered 170 nicotine and 142 PM2.5 measurements during the study. The median indoor SHS concentration was significantly higher in venues where smoking was allowed (nicotine 3.69 µg/m3, PM2.5: 120.51 µg/m3) than in those where smoking was banned (nicotine: 0.48 µg/m3, PM2.5: 36.90 µg/m3). The median outdoor nicotine concentration was higher in places where indoor smoking was banned (1.56 µg/m3) than in venues where smoking was allowed (0.31 µg/m3). Among the different types of outdoor areas, the highest median outdoor SHS levels (nicotine: 4.23 µg/m3, PM2.5: 43.64 µg/m3) were found in the semi-closed outdoor areas of venues where indoor smoking was banned. Conclusions Banning indoor smoking seems to displace SHS exposure to adjacent outdoor areas. Furthermore, indoor settings where smoking is banned but which have a semi-closed outdoor area have higher levels of SHS than those with open outdoor areas, possibly indicating that SHS also drifts from outdoors to indoors. Current legislation restricting indoor SHS levels seems to be insufficient to protect hospitality workers – and patrons – from SHS exposure. Tobacco-free legislation should take these results into account and consider restrictions in the terraces of some hospitality venues to ensure effective protection.
Inhibition of proteoglycan synthesis alters extracellular matrix deposition, proliferation, and cytoskeletal organization of rat aortic smooth muscle cells in culture

Arterial proteoglycans have been implicated in several important physiological processes ranging from lipid metabolism to regulation of smooth muscle cell growth. Vascular smooth muscle (VSM) cells are the major producers of proteoglycans in the medial layer of blood vessels. To study functional consequences of alterations in VSM proteoglycan metabolism we used 4-methylumbelliferyl-beta-D-xyloside to inhibit proteoglycan synthesis in primary and early passage cultures of rat aortic smooth muscle cells. Biochemical analysis of cultures labeled with 35SO4 showed the drug inhibited synthesis of different classes of proteoglycans by 50 to 62%. Inhibition of proteoglycan synthesis resulted in reduced accumulation of extracellular matrix, as shown by immunofluorescent staining with antibodies to chondroitin sulfate, fibronectin, thrombospondin, and laminin. There was also an inhibition of postconfluent (multilayered) growth of the smooth muscle cells, and a change in the morphology of the cells, with no apparent effect on subconfluent growth. In addition, in drug-treated cells there was a reduction in the number of cytoskeletal filaments that contained alpha- actin, the actin subtype synthesized by differentiated VSM cells. This occurred even though the total content of alpha-actin in the cells was not reduced. The effects of the inhibitor on growth and morphology could be reversed by switching the cultures to normal medium and could be prevented by growing the cells on preformed VSM extracellular matrix. These observations suggest the vascular extracellular matrix may play a role in regulating the growth and differentiation of smooth muscle cells.
Collaborative Filtering with User-Item Co-Autoregressive Models

Deep neural networks have shown promise in collaborative filtering (CF). However, existing neural approaches are either user-based or item-based, which cannot leverage all the underlying information explicitly. We propose CF-UIcA, a neural co-autoregressive model for CF tasks, which exploits the structural correlation in the domains of both users and items. The co-autoregression allows extra desired properties to be incorporated for different tasks. Furthermore, we develop an efficient stochastic learning algorithm to handle large scale datasets. We evaluate CF-UIcA on two popular benchmarks: MovieLens 1M and Netflix, and achieve state-of-the-art performance in both rating prediction and top-N recommendation tasks, which demonstrates the effectiveness of CF-UIcA.
Improved lithium insertion/extraction properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes by high-energy ball milling

The effects of ball milling on lithium (Li) insertion/extraction properties into/from single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) were investigated. The SWNTs were synthesized on supported catalysts by thermal chemical-vapor deposition method, purified, and mechanically ball-milled by high-energy ball milling. The purified SWNTs and the ball-milled SWNTs were electrochemically inserted/extracted with Li. The structural and chemical modifications in the ball-milled SWNTs change the insertion/extraction properties of Li ions into/from the ball-milled SWNTs. The reversible capacity ( C _rev) increases with increase in the ball milling time, from 616 mAh/g (Li_1.7C_6) for the purified SWNTs to 988 mAh/g (Li_2.7C_6) for the ball-milled SWNTs. The undesirable irreversible capacity ( C _irr) decreases continuously with increase in the ball milling time, from 1573 mAh/g (Li_4.2C_6) for the purified SWNTs to 845 mAh/g (Li_2.3C_6) for the ball-milled SWNTs. The enhanced C _rev of the ball-milled SWNTs is presumably due to a continuous decrease in the C _irr because the SWNTs develop a densely packed structure on the ball milling process. The insertion of Li ions into the ball-milled SWNTs is facilitated by various Li insertion sites formed during the ball milling process in spite of small surface area than the purified SWNTs. Lithium ions inserted into various insertion sites enhance the C _rev in the ball-milled SWNTs with the large voltage hysteresis by hindrance of the extraction of Li ions from the ball-milled SWNTs. In addition, the ball-milled samples exhibit more stable cycle capacities than the purified samples during the charge/discharge cycling.
ANALYSIS OF SERUM MICRO-RNAs AS POTENTIAL BIOMARKER IN CHRONIC OBSTRUCTIVE PULMONARY DISEASE

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) as a complex disease with genetic and environmental compound is one of the leading causes of death in worldwide. This disease is characterized by lower airway inflammation, and increases risk of lung cancer in smokers. Micro-RNA (miRNA) molecules are key regulators in gene expression that have been widely associated with a several diseases. Differential expression of miRNAs is involved in lung tissue of COPD, but there is no information about biomarker potential of circulating miRNAs in patients. To analyze the miRNA expression profile in COPD, levels of serum miRNAs were profiled by quantitative reverse transcriptase–polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) array system. The authors examined 72 miRNAs by qRT-PCR array, in 20 COPD patients and 12 control subjects. U6snRNA was used for normalization of the expression of miRNAs for each sample. According to the results, 5 miRNAs were found to be significantly dysregulated. There was down-regulation of miR-20a, miR-28–3p, miR-34c-5p, and miR-100, and up-regulation of miR-7, compared with the controls. This was the first study in COPD for screening of serum miRNAs for searching for biomarker. These results are preliminary screening data and should be confirmed with large patient groups. If so, these miRNAs are likely being involved in pathogenesis of COPD and may give clues for designing therapeutic strategy.
A Radial Structure Tensor and Its Use for Shape-Encoding Medical Visualization of Tubular and Nodular Structures

The concept of curvature and shape-based rendering is beneficial for medical visualization of CT and MRI image volumes. Color-coding of local shape properties derived from the analysis of the local Hessian can implicitly highlight tubular structures such as vessels and airways, and guide the attention to potentially malignant nodular structures such as tumors, enlarged lymph nodes, or aneurysms. For some clinical applications, however, the evaluation of the Hessian matrix does not yield satisfactory renderings, in particular for hollow structures such as airways, and densely embedded low contrast structures such as lymph nodes. Therefore, as a complement to Hessian-based shape-encoding rendering, this paper introduces a combination of an efficient sparse radial gradient sampling scheme in conjunction with a novel representation, the radial structure tensor (RST). As an extension of the well-known general structure tensor, which has only positive definite eigenvalues, the radial structure tensor correlates position and direction of the gradient vectors in a local neighborhood, and thus yields positive and negative eigenvalues which can be used to discriminate between different shapes. As Hessian-based rendering, also RST-based rendering is ideally suited for GPU implementation. Feedback from clinicians indicates that shape-encoding rendering can be an effective image navigation tool to aid diagnostic workflow and quality assurance.
Impact of inserting a stochastic noise on the visual information in a bitmap

This paper explains reasons for choosing a bitmap (BMP) as the basic format for inserting large amounts of additional information into the image. Structure of the BMP format is explained and shown on examples. Formula for calculating the difference of two images is proposed. Experiments were conducted on adding information to the bits of different weights in the bitmap. From the test results, conclusions were derived about the impact of adding information on the quality of original bitmap image.
Distributed assessment of the closeness centrality ranking in complex networks

We propose a method for the Distributed Assessment of the Closeness CEntrality Ranking (DACCER) in complex networks. DACCER computes centrality based only on localized information restricted to a given neighborhood around each node, thus not requiring full knowledge of the network topology. We show that the node centrality ranking computed by DACCER is highly correlated with the node ranking based on the traditional closeness centrality, which requires high computational costs and full knowledge of the network topology. This outcome is quite useful given the vast potential applicability of closeness centrality, which is seldom applied to large-scale networks due to its high computational costs. Results indicate that DACCER is simple, yet efficient, in assessing node centrality while allowing a distributed implementation that contributes to its performance. This also contributes to the practical applicability of DACCER in the analysis of large-scale complex networks, as we show using in our experimental evaluation both synthetically generated networks and traces of real-world networks of different kinds and scales.
T Helper Cell Type 1–associated and Cytotoxic T Lymphocyte–mediated Tumor Immunity Is Impaired in Interleukin 4–deficient Mice

It is widely accepted that cellular immune responses are induced by CD4+ T helper 1 (Th1) cells secreting interleukin (IL)-2 and interferon (IFN)-γ. Tumor immunity is often mediated by cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) whose activation is supported by Th1 cytokines. Since IL-4 directs Th2 development and has been shown to inhibit Th1-dominated responses, we assumed that IL-4–deficient (IL-4−/−) mice would develop vigorous CTL-mediated tumor immunity compared with IL-4–competent (IL-4+/+) mice. Surprisingly, IL-4−/− mice were severely impaired to develop tumor immunity to both a mammary adenocarcinoma line and a colon carcinoma line. The lack of tumor immunity in IL-4−/− mice was associated with reduced IFN-γ production, diminished levels of tumor-reactive serum IgG2a, and undetectable CTL activity, indicating a defective Th1 response in the absence of endogenous IL-4. Anti–IL-4 monoclonal antibody blocked tumor immunity in IL-4+/+ mice when administered at the time of immunization but not at the time of challenge. Additionally, tumor immunity could be induced in IL-4−/− mice, if IL-4 was provided by gene-modified cells together with immunizing tumor cells. These results demonstrate that tumor immunity requires IL-4 in the priming phase for the generation of effector cells rather than for their maintenance and exclude secondary, developmental defects in the “knockout” strain. Together, our results demonstrate a novel and previously unanticipated role of IL-4 for the generation of Th1-associated, CTL-mediated tumor immunity.
Modern Orthopedic Inpatient Care of the Orthopedic Patient With Diabetic Foot Disease

In this article, we describe emergency and elective pathways within our orthopedic multidisciplinary inpatient care of patients with diabetic foot problems. We performed a retrospective cohort review of 19 complex patients requiring orthopedic surgical treatment of infected ulceration or Charcot feet or deformity at our institution. A total of 30 admissions (19 emergency, 11 elective) were included. The pathways were coordinated by a multidisciplinary team and comprised initial assessment and investigation and a series of key events, which consisted of emergency and elective surgery together with the introduction, and change of intravenous antibiotics when indicated. Patients had rigorous microbiological assessment, in the form of deep ulcer swabs, operative tissue specimens, joint aspirates, and blood cultures according to their clinical presentation as well as close clinical and biochemical surveillance, which expedited the prompt institution of key events. Outcomes were assessed using amputation rates and patient satisfaction. In the emergency group, there were 5.6 ± 3.0 (mean ± SD) key events per admission, including 4.2 ± 2.1 antibiotic changes. In the elective group, there were 4.8 ± 1.4 key events per inpatient episode, with 3.7 ± 1.3 antibiotic changes. Overall, there were 3 minor amputations, and no major amputations. The podiatric and surgical tissue specimens showed a wide array of Gram-positive, Gram-negative, aerobic and anaerobic isolates and 15% of blood cultures showed bacteremia. When 9 podiatric specimens were compared with 9 contemporaneous surgical samples, there was concordance in 2 out of 9 pairs. We have described the successful modern care of the orthopedic diabetic foot patient, which involves close clinical, microbiological, and biochemical surveillance by the multidisciplinary team directing patients through emergency and elective pathways. This has enabled successful surgical intervention involving debridement, pressure relief, and stabilization, with low rates of amputation.
EU-project medCERTAIN: Certification and Rating of Trustworthy and Assessed Health Information on the Net.

Med-CERTAIN (MedPICS Certification and Rating of Trustworthy Health Information on the Net, http://www.medpics.org/medcertain/) is a recently launched project funded under the EU Action Plan for safer use of the Internet. It will provide the technical infrastructure for an international system of "quality seals" for Internet health information. Digital "quality seals" may be evaluative metainformation (using standards such as PICS = Platform for Internet Content Selection, now being replaced by RDF/XML) assigned by trusted third-party raters. The project will also enable and encourage self-labelling with descriptive metainformation by web authors. Together these measures will help consumers to identify high-quality information on the Internet. Med-CERTAIN will establish a fully functional demonstrator for a self- and third-party rating system enabling patients and consumers to filter harmful health information and to positively identify and select high quality information. We aim to provide a system allow European citizens to place greater trust in networked information, exemplified in the domain of health information, whilst also making a significant contribution for similar projects with different target domains. The project will demonstrate how PICS-based content rating and filtering technologies can automate and exploit value-adding resource description services. The proposed technology strategy combines a pragmatic use of simple existing technologies for data acquisition with a future-oriented standards policy intended to lead rather than follow the evolution of definitions for information-mediation services.
Systematically fragmented genes in a multipartite mitochondrial genome

Arguably, the most bizarre mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is that of the euglenozoan eukaryote Diplonema papillatum. The genome consists of numerous small circular chromosomes none of which appears to encode a complete gene. For instance, the cox1 coding sequence is spread out over nine different chromosomes in non-overlapping pieces (modules), which are transcribed separately and joined to a contiguous mRNA by trans-splicing. Here, we examine how many genes are encoded by Diplonema mtDNA and whether all are fragmented and their transcripts trans-spliced. Module identification is challenging due to the sequence divergence of Diplonema mitochondrial genes. By employing most sensitive protein profile search algorithms and comparing genomic with cDNA sequence, we recognize a total of 11 typical mitochondrial genes. The 10 protein-coding genes are systematically chopped up into three to 12 modules of 60–350 bp length. The corresponding mRNAs are all trans-spliced. Identification of ribosomal RNAs is most difficult. So far, we only detect the 3′-module of the large subunit ribosomal RNA (rRNA); it does not trans-splice with other pieces. The small subunit rRNA gene remains elusive. Our results open new intriguing questions about the biochemistry and evolution of mitochondrial trans-splicing in Diplonema.
Practical and Secure Multidimensional Query Framework in Tiered Sensor Networks

The two-tier architecture consisting of a small number of resource-abundant storage nodes in the upper tier and a large number of sensors in the lower tier could be promising for large-scale sensor networks in terms of resource efficiency, network capacity, network management complexity, etc. In this architecture, each sensor having multiple sensing capabilities periodically forwards the multidimensional sensed data to the storage node, which responds to the queries, such as range query, top-k query, and skyline query. Unfortunately, node compromises pose the great challenge of securing the data collection; the sensed data could be leaked to or could be manipulated by the compromised nodes. Furthermore, chunks of the sensed data could be dropped maliciously, resulting in an incomplete query result, which is the most difficult security breach. Here, we propose a simple yet effective hash tree-based framework, under which data confidentiality, query result authenticity, and query result completeness can be guaranteed simultaneously. In addition, the subtree sampling technique, which could be of independent interest to the other applications, is proposed to efficiently identify the compromised nodes. Last, analytical and extensive simulation studies are conducted to evaluate the performance and security of our methods. Prototype implementation on TelosB mote demonstrates the practicality of our proposed methods.
Approaches to IT Security in Small and Medium Enterprises

Organisations of all sizes are now significantly reliant upon information technology and networks for the operation of their business activities. All therefore have a consequent requirement to ensure that their systems and data are appropriately protected against security breaches. Unfortunately, however, there is evidence to suggest that security practices are not strongly upheld within small and medium enterprise environments. The paper presents a survey of specific security practices within such organisations in Europe and the USA, with particular focus upon whether adequate attention is given to the issue of risk assessment. The survey reveals that SMEs are characterised by lack of adequate attention to IT security, with related responsibility frequently unassigned, or allocated to someone without appropriate qualification. This is shown to have consequences in terms of adherence to good practice, with the significant majority of organisations not having developed a security policy or undertaken a risk assessment.