Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ray-Based 2d Anisotropic Pre-Stack Depth Migration on Synthetic and Real Data

Pre-stack depth migration (PSDM), while costly, is a powerful tool for imaging and velocity analysis. Seismic velocity anisotropy is now thought to be widespread in sedimentary rocks, particularly shales. We have written a 2D pre-stack depth migration code for use in transversely isotropic media with a vertical symmetry axis (TIV). We use it to investigate the effects of anisotropy on isotropic pre-stack migration by means of a simple synthetic example. Results suggest that it is difficult to find plausible isotropic models which give good images of reflectors at all dips. We further apply our PSDM code to a 2D line of real data from offshore West Africa, where there is a thick shale sequence, using isotropic and anisotropic velocity models. A dipping fault plane is imaged more clearly with the anisotropic model, but some of the near horizontal reflectors are less well imaged suggesting that this model could be improved and confirming the sensitivity of pre-stack depth migration to all aspects of the velocity model.
Effect of Employer Access to Criminal History Data on the Labor Market Outcomes of Ex-Offenders and Non-Offenders

Since 1997, states have begun to make criminal history records publicly available over the Internet. This paper exploits this previously unexamined variation to identify the effect of expanded employer access to criminal history data on the labor market outcomes of ex-offenders and non-offenders. Employers express a strong aversion to hiring ex-offenders, but there is likely asymmetric information about criminal records. Wider availability of criminal history records should adversely affect the labor market outcomes of ex-offenders. A model of statistical discrimination also predicts that non-offenders from groups with high rates of criminal offense should have improved labor market outcomes when criminal history records become more accessible. This paper tests these hypotheses with criminal and labor market histories from the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. I find evidence that labor market outcomes are worse for ex-offenders once state criminal history records become available over the Internet. Non-offenders from highly offending groups do not appear, however, to have significantly better labor market outcomes. The sign of the non-offenders estimates are consistent with the predictions of the statistical discrimination model, but the estimates are not significantly different from zero. These estimates may be confounded by a short sample period and ongoing human capital investments, but the research design provides a unique setting for testing theories of statistical discrimination.
Pulse Corticosteroid Therapy for Alopecia Areata: Long-Term Outcome after 10 Years

Background: Few data are available concerning the efficiency of pulse corticosteroids in alopecia areata (AA). Objective: Our purpose was to assess the long-term outcomes of patients treated with methylprednisolone bolus. Methods: This study included 60 patients treated between 1995 and 2000. The short-term outcomes were analyzed in 2000. The long-term assessment of 30 patients was performed in 2010 by phone questionnaire. Results: Significant hair regrowth was observed in 10/30 patients at 6 months after the bolus treatment. Half of the plurifocalis AA patients were responders at 6 months, but less than one quarter of alopecia totalis (AT) and alopecia universalis (AU) patients responded. Long-term outcomes were assessed after a mean duration of 12.3 years; 8/10 initial responders had mild or no disease, and 14/20 initial nonresponders had severe AA. Conclusions: This study confirmed the low efficiency, both short- and long-term, of this treatment for AT and AU.
[123I]β-CIT SPECT is a useful method for monitoring dopaminergic degeneration in early stage Parkinson’s disease

Objectives:To examine the validity of [123I]β-CIT SPECT for monitoring the progression of dopaminergic degeneration in Parkinson’s disease; to investigate the influence of short term treatment with D2receptor agonists on striatal [123I]β-CIT binding; and to determine the sample size and frequency of SPECT imaging required to demonstrate a significant effect of a putative neuroprotective agent. Methods:A group of 50 early stage Parkinson’s disease patients was examined. Two SPECT imaging series were obtained, 12 months apart. The mean annual change in the ratio of specific to non-specific [123I]β-CIT binding to the striatum, putamen, and caudate nucleus was used as the outcome measure. Results:A decrease in [123I]β-CIT binding ratios between the two images was found in all regions of interest. The average decrease in [123I]β-CIT binding ratios was about 8% in the whole striatum, 8% in the putaminal region, and 4% in the caudate region. Comparison of scans done in nine patients under two different conditions—in the off state and while on drug treatment—showed no significant alterations in the expression of striatal dopamine transporters as measured using [123I]β-CIT SPECT. Power analysis indicated that to detect a significant (p < 0.05) effect of a neuroprotective agent with 0.80 power and 30% of predicted protection within two years, 216 patients are required in each group when the effects are measured in the whole putamen. Conclusions:[123I]β-CIT SPECT seems to be a useful tool to investigate the progression of dopaminergic degeneration in Parkinson’s disease and may provide an objective method of measuring the effectiveness of neuroprotective treatments. Short term treatment with a D2agonist does not have a significant influence on [123I]β-CIT binding to dopamine transporters. If the latter finding is replicated in larger groups of patients, it supports the suitability of [123I]β-CIT SPECT for examining the progression of neurodegeneration in patients being treated with D2receptor agonists.
Effect of ibuprofen on bilirubin-albumin binding affinity in premature infants

Abstract Aim: To evaluate the effect of ibuprofen on bilirubin-albumin binding affinity and unbound bilirubin in premature infants. Study design: A prospective study with subjects serving as their own controls was performed on <30 weeks' gestational age infants with unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia and who received ibuprofen for patent ductus arteriosus. Infants with congenital malformation, TORCH infections, and conjugated hyperbilirubinemia were excluded. Total serum bilirubin (TSB) and unbound bilirubin (modified peroxidase test) were measured prior to (baseline) and after (follow-up) initiation of ibuprofen. The bilirubin/albumin equilibrium association binding constant was calculated using albumin, TSB, and unbound bilirubin. Results: Ten infants were studied. The mean TSB between baseline (5.9±1.7 mg/dL) was higher than that at follow-up [4.9±1.7 mg/dL]. Mean unbound bilirubin at baseline (0.75±0.65 μg/dL) was similar to that at follow-up (0.63±0.46 μg/dL). No difference existed between mean baseline binding constant (49±50 L/μmol) and that at follow-up (44±36 L/μmol). The ratio of unbound bilirubin with and without ibuprofen, index of displacing effect, was 0.88 (95% CI 0.63–1.14). Conclusions: Ibuprofen may not be associated with bilirubin displacing effect in relatively stable premature infants with mild to moderate unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia.
Traffic shaping for an FPGA based SDRAM controller with complex QoS requirements

Today high-end video and multimedia processing applications require huge amounts of memory. For cost reasons, the usage of conventional dynamic RAM (SDRAM) is preferred. However, SDRAM access optimization is a complex task, especially if multi-stream access with different QoS requirements is involved. In (Heithecker et al., 2003), a multi-stream DDR-SDRAM controller IP covering combinations of low latency requirements for processor cache access, hard real-time constraints for periodic video signals and hard real-time bursty accesses for video coprocessors was described. To handle these contradictory QoS requirements at high system performance, a combination of a 2-stage scheduling algorithm and static priorities were used. This paper describes an additional flow control which enhances the overall performance. Experiments with an FPGA based high-end video platform demonstrate the superiority of this architecture.
Byzantine-resilient secure software-defined networks with multiple controllers

Software-defined network (SDN) is the next generation of networking architecture that is dynamic, manageable, cost-effective, and adaptable, making it ideal for the high-bandwidth, dynamic nature of today's applications. In SDN, network management is facilitated through software rather than low-level device configurations. However, the centralized control plane introduced by SDN imposes a great challenge for the network security. In this paper, we present a secure SDN structure, in which each device is managed by multiple controllers rather than a single one as in a traditional manner. It can resist Byzantine attacks on controllers and the communication links between controllers and SDN switches. Furthermore, we design a cost-efficient controller assignment algorithm to minimize the number of required controllers for a given set of switches. Extensive simulations have been conducted to show that our proposed algorithm significantly outperforms random algorithms.
Role of three‐dimensional imaging in surgical planning for kidney surgery

Three-phase helical CT is recommended for 3D imaging for surgical planning [12–15] (Fig. 1). When examining the urinary tract, an unenhanced scan is taken to locate the kidneys and assess calcifications, and to provide a baseline with which to characterize renal lesions after the intravenous administration of contrast medium. Next, non-ionic contrast medium is injected at 3–4 mL/s through an 18 G intravenous catheter, and a corticomedullary or vascular phase scan taken to identify renal vasculature, including early and segmental renal artery branches and late vein confluences [16]; this scan phase can also contribute to characterizing the lesion. The delay time is determined either by timing the bolus, or via an automated system, and begins 30–40 s after the start of infusing the contrast medium. For lesion detection and characterization, the nephrographic phase scan remains the most sensitive phase [17–19]. The nephrographic phase begins 120–150 s after the start of infusing the contrast medium. The test bolus or a 20-mL contrast medium pre-load can be used to opacify the collecting system to determine if a tumour involves the calyces.
On the zeros of consensus networks

In this paper, we focus on the signal transfer between any two agents in a consensus network and provide an analysis of the resulting transfer function and transmission zeros. Our contributions include relating the distance between the input and output node to the relative degree of the system and showing that the gain factor of the transfer function is equal to the number of shortest paths between the two nodes. We show that for certain input-output configurations, the zeros interlace with the poles. Bounds on the zero locations and minimum phase properties of certain graph and input-output configurations are provided.
Ozanimod-mediated remission in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis is associated with enhanced activity of CNS CD27low/- NK cell subset

Background Ozanimod (RPC1063) is an immunomodulator that has been recently approved by the FDA (2020) for the treatment of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS). It is a selective agonist of the sphingosine-1-phophate receptors 1 and 5, expressed on naïve and central memory T and B cells, as well as natural killer (NK) cells, and is involved in lymphocyte trafficking. Oral administration of ozanimod was reported to result in rapid and reversible reduction in circulating lymphocytes in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, however, only minimal effect on NK cells was observed. In this study, we sought to investigate the effect of ozanimod on NK cells and assess whether they play any role in ozanimod-induced remission in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), the animal model of MS. Methods Active EAE induction was done in C57BL/6 female mice, followed by daily oral treatment with ozanimod (0.6mg/kg) starting at disease onset (score 1). Flow cytometry of blood and CNS was performed 24 hours after the last oral dose of ozanimod treatment in diseased mice. Histological analysis of lumbar spinal cord was performed for evaluating the level of inflammation and demyelination. Depletion of peripheral NK cells was done using anti-NK1.1 mouse antibody (mAb) at day 5 post-EAE induction. Results Ozanimod was effective in reducing the clinical severity of EAE and reducing the percentage of autoreactive CD4+ and CD8+ T cells along with significant inhibition of lymphocyte infiltration into the spinal cord, accompanied by reversed demyelination. Furthermore, ozanimod treatment resulted in a significant increase in the frequency of total NK cells in the blood and CNS along with upregulation of the activating receptor NKG2D on CD27low/- NK cell subset in the CNS. The effectiveness of ozanimod treatment in inhibiting the progression of the disease was reduced when NK cells were depleted using anti-NK1.1 mAb. Conclusion The current study demonstrated that ozanimod treatment significantly improved clinical symptoms in EAE mice. Ozanimod and anti-NK1.1 mAb appear to function in opposition to one another. Collectively, our data suggest that ozanimod-mediated remission is associated with an increased percentage of total NK cells and CD27low/- NK cells expressing the activating receptor, NKG2D in the CNS.
Measles Virus Fusion Protein: Structure, Function and Inhibition

Measles virus (MeV), a highly contagious member of the Paramyxoviridae family, causes measles in humans. The Paramyxoviridae family of negative single-stranded enveloped viruses includes several important human and animal pathogens, with MeV causing approximately 120,000 deaths annually. MeV and canine distemper virus (CDV)-mediated diseases can be prevented by vaccination. However, sub-optimal vaccine delivery continues to foster MeV outbreaks. Post-exposure prophylaxis with antivirals has been proposed as a novel strategy to complement vaccination programs by filling herd immunity gaps. Recent research has shown that membrane fusion induced by the morbillivirus glycoproteins is the first critical step for viral entry and infection, and determines cell pathology and disease outcome. Our molecular understanding of morbillivirus-associated membrane fusion has greatly progressed towards the feasibility to control this process by treating the fusion glycoprotein with inhibitory molecules. Current approaches to develop anti-membrane fusion drugs and our knowledge on drug resistance mechanisms strongly suggest that combined therapies will be a prerequisite. Thus, discovery of additional anti-fusion and/or anti-attachment protein small-molecule compounds may eventually translate into realistic therapeutic options.
ARB: A Hardware Mechanism for Dynamic Reordering of Memory References

To exploit instruction level parallelism, it is important not only to execute multiple memory references per cycle, but also to reorder memory references-especially to execute loads before stores that precede them in the sequential instruction stream. To guarantee correctness of execution in such situations, memory reference addresses have to be disambiguated. This paper presents a novel hardware mechanism, called an Address Resolution Buffer (ARB), for performing dynamic reordering of memory references. The ARB supports the following features: (1) dynamic memory disambiguation in a decentralized manner, (2) multiple memory references per cycle, (3) out-of-order execution of memory references, (4) unresolved loads and stores, (5) speculative loads and stores, and (6) memory renaming. The paper presents the results of a simulation study that we conducted to verify the efficacy of the ARB for a superscalar processor. The paper also shows the ARB's application in a multiscalar processor.
Segmentation-based 3D artistic rendering

This paper introduces segmentation-based 3D non-photorealistic rendering, in which 3D scenes are rendered as a collection of 2D image segments. Segments abstract out unnecessary detail and provide a basis for defining new rendering styles. These segments are computed by a spectral clustering algorithm that incorporates 3D information, including depth, user-defined importance, and object grouping. Temporally coherent animation is created by biasing adjacent frames to have similar segmentations. We describe algorithms for rendering segments in styles inspired by a number of hand-painted images.
Escaping the Local Minima via Simulated Annealing: Optimization of Approximately Convex Functions

We consider the problem of optimizing an approximately convex function over a bounded convex set in $\mathbb{R}^n$ using only function evaluations. The problem is reduced to sampling from an \emph{approximately} log-concave distribution using the Hit-and-Run method, which is shown to have the same $\mathcal{O}^*$ complexity as sampling from log-concave distributions. In addition to extend the analysis for log-concave distributions to approximate log-concave distributions, the implementation of the 1-dimensional sampler of the Hit-and-Run walk requires new methods and analysis. The algorithm then is based on simulated annealing which does not relies on first order conditions which makes it essentially immune to local minima. We then apply the method to different motivating problems. In the context of zeroth order stochastic convex optimization, the proposed method produces an $\epsilon$-minimizer after $\mathcal{O}^*(n^{7.5}\epsilon^{-2})$ noisy function evaluations by inducing a $\mathcal{O}(\epsilon/n)$-approximately log concave distribution. We also consider in detail the case when the "amount of non-convexity" decays towards the optimum of the function. Other applications of the method discussed in this work include private computation of empirical risk minimizers, two-stage stochastic programming, and approximate dynamic programming for online learning.
Increasing effective IPC by exploiting distant parallelism

The main objective of compiler and processor designers is to effectively exploit the instruction-level parallelism (ILP) available in applications. Although most of the times their research activities have been conducted separately, we believe that a stronger co-operation between them will make effective the increase of potential ILP coming from future architectures. Nowadays, most computer architecture achievements proceed towards the overcoming of the hurdle imposed by dependencies in the code, by means of extracting parallelism from large instruction windows. However, implementation constraints limit the size of this window and therefore the visibility of the program structure at run-time. In this paper we show the existence of distant parallelism that future compilers could detect. By distant parallelism we mean parallelism that can not be captured by the processor instruction window and that can produce threads suitable for parallel execution in a multithreaded processor. Although this parallelism also exists in numerical applications (going far beyond classical loop parallelism and usually known as task parallelism), we focus on non-numerical applications, where the data and computation structures make difficult the detection of concurrent threads of execution. Some preliminary but encouraging results are presented in the paper, reporting speed-ups in the range of 1.2 to 2.65. These results seem promising and want to show a new insight in the detection of threads for current and future multithreaded architectures. It is important to notice at this point that the benefits described herein are totally orthogonal to any other architectural techniques targeting a single thread.
LKB1 and AMPK: central regulators of lymphocyte metabolism and function

When T cells encounter foreign antigen and appropriate costimulatory signals from professional antigen‐presenting cells (APCs), they initiate a coordinated program of rapid proliferation and differentiation, leading to the development of activated T cells with specific effector functions tailored toward pathogen clearance or control. One of the fundamental programs that underpin T‐cell proliferation and function is the regulation of cellular metabolism. Recent efforts to identify the signal transduction pathways that regulate T‐cell metabolism have led to the identification of liver kinase B1 (LKB1) and AMP‐activated protein kinase (AMPK) as key regulators of T‐cell metabolism. LKB1 and AMPK are part of an evolutionarily conserved signal transduction pathway that monitors cellular energy status. AMPK senses bioenergetic fluctuations in cells and works in concert with LKB1 to maintain cellular energy homeostasis by promoting catabolic pathways of ATP production and limiting processes that consume ATP. Recent data indicate that LKB1 and AMPK can influence diverse aspects of T‐cell biology beyond metabolism, including T‐cell development, peripheral T‐cell homeostasis, and T‐cell effector function. In this review, we focus on the regulation of lymphocyte metabolism by this energy‐sensing pathway and discuss its influence on T‐cell function.
Hydra: A hybrid diagnosis and monitoring architecture for diabetes

We present Hydra: a multi-agent hybrid diagnosis and monitoring architecture that is aimed at helping diabetic patients manage their illness. It makes use of model-based diagnosis techniques, where the model can be developed by two different approaches combined in a novel way. In the first approach, we build the model based on the medical guidelines provided for diabetes. A computational logic agent monitors the patient and provides feedback based on the model whenever the current observations regarding the patient are sufficient to draw a conclusion. In the second approach, we assume a function for the model, and learn its parameters through data. The model is consistently updated via incoming observations about the patients, and allows prediction of possible future values. We describe the components of such an architecture, and how it can integrated into the existing COMMODITY12 personal health system. We implement a prototype of Hydra, and present its workings on a case study on hypoglycemia monitoring. We report our prediction results for this scenario.