Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Realistic tissue dosimetry models using Monte Carlo simulations. Applications for radionuclide therapies

Radionuclide therapy (RNT) is a generic term for treatment modalities that use a radionuclide labeled to a target-specific molecule. This so-called radiopharmaceutical accumulates in the target, where the ionizing radiation damages the cells. At sufficient levels of radiation, the cells cannot repair themselves. The quantity of the energy deposited in a target region is referred to as the absorbed dose [Gy]. Absorbed dose calculations in RNTs are associated with large uncertainties, originating from determination of the activity as well as uncertainties in absorbed dose conversion factors (S factors). S factors are derived for mathematical described source-target combinations (so called phantoms) using Monte Carlo techniques to simulate the particle transport from various radionuclides. The accuracy of the S factor depends on how well the phantom reflects the patient anatomy. The phantoms most used in conventional dosimetry models rely on crude anatomic descriptions; therefore, calculated absorbed doses and radiation-induced biological effects are rarely well correlated. The aim of this thesis was to develop more realistic phantoms to create more accurate dosimetry models. Most preclinical evaluations of new radiopharmaceuticals or treatment strategies are performed on small animals, and the efficacy should be evaluated with the absorbed dose. In practice, dosimetry calculations are not a standard procedure; instead, activity levels below those reported to produce severe side effects are used. Papers I, II, and III present dosimetry models based on Monte Carlo simulations using realistic phantoms of mice and rats that produce reliable S factors, which could be useful in dosimetry studies. In Paper III, we used our rat dosimetry model with data from an activity-escalating study of 90Y- and 177Lu-BR96 monoclonal antibodies. Two novel parameters that can be used to quantify decreases in peripheral blood cells were derived. We showed that the data derived with these parameters correlated well with the absorbed dose in red bone marrow. In Papers IV and V, we propose two small-scale anatomic models for the small intestine and the testis, respectively. The large difference from conventional models is that different tissue structures are incorporated, allowing for the calculation of absorbed doses to the most radiosensitive cells in the tissue while considering heterogeneous uptake therein. Differences in order of magnitude are possible when calculating absorbed doses using these new dosimetry models. These dosimetry models will be important when making correlations with biological effects.
Corporate Social Responsibility Practices and Private Commercial Banks : A Case Study on Bangladesh

This paper attempts to represent the present scenario of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) practices in private commercial banks of Bangladesh. It also examines the banking personnel’s perception regarding the importance of CSR. The researchers used a structured questionnaire, which aims to collect the respondent’s opinion. For analyzing the data authors used statistical tools like hypotheses testing (Z-test) and descriptive analysis. The study reveals that CSR is important as a tool to gain competitive advantages and has positive impact on employees’ behavior, customers’ behavior and establishing a bank’s image but CSR practices is not diversified rather than banks are only concerned with some specific areas of CSR.
Lithium-induced Nephrogenic Diabetes Insipidus–A Case Report and Discussion on the Pathophysiological Mechanism

Lithium is a useful treatment for bipolar disorder; it attenuates the recurrence of affective episodes and reduces the risk of suicide among bipolar patients. Nevertheless, lithium has a plethora of side effects some of which are serious and may be irreversible. Among the most troubling side effects of lithium is its nephrotoxicity. Herein we report a case of a bipolar patient who developed signs of lithium-induced nephrotoxicity including overt polyuria after 18 years of lithium treatment. Due to concerns that his renal function will continue to deteriorate, two trials to switch him to other psychotropic drugs were done following which he committed two aggressive suicidal attempts. As a result, a joint decision was reached between the patient, his family, psychiatrist and nephrologist that lithium is a “life-saving” treatment for him and lithium was never stopped again. To date, at 68 years old and after nearly 40 years of lithium treatment the patient is mentally stable and reasonably functional. His kidney function continued to deteriorate slowly through the years and he is now a candidate for hemodialysis. This case report emphasizes the need to balance between concerns regarding the damage to the kidney which is a result of long-term lithium treatment to the significant therapeutic benefit of lithium as a mood stabilizer and anti-suicidal drug.
Actions & Imagined Actions in Cognitive robots

Natural/Artificial systems that are capable of utilizing thoughts at the service of their actions are gifted with the profound opportunity to mentally manipulate the causal structure of their physical interactions with the environment. A cognitive robot can in this way virtually reason about how an unstructured world should ‘change’, such that it becomes a little bit more conducive towards realization of its internal goals. In this article, we describe the various internal models for real/mental action generation developed in the GNOSYS Cognitive architecture and demonstrate how their coupled interactions can endow the GNOSYS robot with a preliminary ability to virtually manipulate neural activity in its mental space in order to initiate flexible goal directed behavior in its physical space. Making things more interesting (and computationally challenging) is the fact that the environment in which the robot seeks to achieve its goals consists of specially crafted ‘stick and ball’ versions of real experimental scenarios from animal reasoning (like tool use in chimps, novel tool construction in Caledonian crows, the classic trap tube paradigm and their possible combinations). We specifically focus on the progressive creation of the following internal models in the behavioral repertoire of the robot a) a passive motion paradigm based forward inverse model for mental simulation / real execution of goal directed arm (and arm+tool) movements; b) a spatial mental map of the playground; c) an internal model representing the causality of pushing objects and further learning to push intelligently in order to avoid randomly placed traps in the trapping groove. After presenting the computational architecture for the internal models, we demonstrate how the robot can use them to mentally compose a sequence of ‘Push-MoveReach’ in order to Grasp (an otherwise unreachable) ball in its playground.
Plant genome and transcriptome annotations: from misconceptions to simple solutions

Abstract Next-generation sequencing has triggered an explosion of available genomic and transcriptomic resources in the plant sciences. Although genome and transcriptome sequencing has become orders of magnitudes cheaper and more efficient, often the functional annotation process is lagging behind. This might be hampered by the lack of a comprehensive enumeration of simple-to-use tools available to the plant researcher. In this comprehensive review, we present (i) typical ontologies to be used in the plant sciences, (ii) useful databases and resources used for functional annotation, (iii) what to expect from an annotated plant genome, (iv) an automated annotation pipeline and (v) a recipe and reference chart outlining typical steps used to annotate plant genomes/transcriptomes using publicly available resources.
Image Co-segmentation via Multi-scale Local Shape Transfer

Image co-segmentation is a challenging task in computer vision that aims to segment all pixels of the objects from a predefined semantic category. In real-world cases, however, common foreground objects often vary greatly in appearance, making their global shapes highly inconsistent across images and difficult to be segmented. To address this problem, this paper proposes a novel co-segmentation approach that transfers patch-level local object shapes which appear more consistent across different images. In our framework, a multi-scale patch neighbourhood system is first generated using proposal flow on arbitrary image-pair, which is further refined by Locally Linear Embedding. Based on the patch relationships, we propose an efficient algorithm to jointly segment the objects in each image while transferring their local shapes across different images. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed method can robustly and effectively segment common objects from an image set. On iCoseg, MSRC and Coseg-Rep dataset, the proposed approach performs comparable or better than the state-of-thearts, while on a more challenging benchmark Fashionista dataset, our method achieves significant improvements.
A novel multi-port bidirectional converter for interfacing distributed DC micro-grid

A novel multi-port bidirectional DC-DC converter (MPBDC) is proposed for a stand-alone renewable power system which is composed of multiple distributed DC sub-systems. With the proposed MPBDC, the DC buses of these sub-systems can be interconnected with single stage and step-up/-down power conversion. The MPBDC is derived by interconnect multiple bidirectional buck/boost switching cells via DC-link inductors. The equivalent circuit between any two of the DC buses is a H-Bridge step-up/-down converter, which achieves single stage conversion. Compared with the conventional common DC-bus-based solution, the bulky DC-link capacitors have been eliminated with the MPBDC, which benefits reduced size, lower cost and better reliability. The operational principles, power management and pulse width modulation scheme are presented in detail. A prototype is built with experimental results given to verify the topology and control.
An achievable rate region and a capacity outer bound for 3‐user Gaussian multiple access channel with feedback

Extension of the Ozarow capacity theorem for 2‐transmitter Gaussian multiple access channel (MAC) with feedback to the channels with more than 2 transmitters is a widely studied and long standing problem (for example, see the Kramer sum‐capacity region). In this paper, we investigate and analyze this possible extension. Specifically, exploiting a class of Schalkwijk‐Kailath linear feedback codes, we obtain an achievable rate region for 3‐user Gaussian MAC with full feedback and also a capacity outer bound. Then the results are extended for a case where there is no feedback link for one user, and the corresponding achievable rate region and capacity outer bound are computed. Furthermore, the gap between the derived rates and the sum capacity of 3‐user Gaussian MAC with full and partial feedback is computed under special assumptions.
Analysis of babA, cagE and cagA genes in Helicobacter pylori from upper gastric patients in the north of Iran.

OBJECTIVE Helicobacter pylori is a Gram-negative bacterium which has a serious effect on the up to half of the world's population and has been related to different gastric diseases. The goal of this study was to assess the frequency of babA, cagE and cagA genotypes among H. pylori strains isolated from gastric biopsies of endoscopic patients in the north of Iran. METHODS The present study was performed on 90 strains of H. pylori isolated from patients with gastric diseases (Gastric ulcer (GU), Duodenal ulcer (DU), Gastritis (G), Non-ulcer dyspepsia (NUD) and Gastric adenocarcinoma (GC)). DNA was extracted from all isolated strains and PCR method was performed to detect the prevalence of babA, cagE and cagA genes using specific primers. RESULTS Among 90 samples of H. pylori, babA, cagE, and cagA genes were detected in 42.2%, 30% and 82.2% of strains respectively. The statistical analysis showed that the prevalence of cagA gene in GU, G, DU, and NUD was significantly higher than other genes. Moreover, cagA, and babA2 genes was significantly more prevalent in GC patients compared to cagE gene. Our isolates exhibited 8 distinct arrangements of virulence patterns. The occurrence of cagA (35.6%) was the most prevalent pattern followed by cagA/babA2 (20%), and cagA/babA2/cagE (14.4%). CONCLUSION In summary, as first report from Guilan province in the north of Iran, we showed significant association between the presence of babA2, cagE, and cagA genes in different types of gastric disorders.
Agent Based Rumor Spreading in a scale-free network

In the last years, the study of rumor spreading on social networks produced a lot of interest among the scientific community, expecially due to the role of social networks in the last political events. The goal of this work is to reproduce real-like diffusions of information and misinformation in a scale-free network using a multi-agent-based model. The data concerning the virtual spreading are easily obtainable, in particular the diffusion of information during the announcement for the discovery of the Higgs Boson on Twitter was recorded and investigated in detail. We made some assumptions on the micro behavior of our agents and registered the effects in a statistical analysis replying the real data diffusion. Then, we studied an hypotetical response to a misinformation diffusion adding debunking agents and trying to model a critic response from the agents using real data from a hoax regarding the Occupy Wall Street movement. After tuning our model to reproduce these results, we measured some network properties and proved the emergence of substantially separated structures like echochambers, independently from the network size scale, i.e. with one hundred, one thousand and ten thousand agents.
On the nature of shocks driving exchange rates in emerging economies

The paper analyzes the sources of exchange rate movements in emerging economies in the context of monetary tapering by the Federal Reserve. A structural vector autoregression framework with a long-run restriction is used to decompose the movements of nominal ex-change rates into two components: one component driven solely by the adjustment of the real exchange rate to permanent shocks and one resulting from transitory shocks such as monetary policy measures. Imposing the restriction that temporary shocks should not affect the real exchange rate in the long run, the analysis shows that the recent depreciation of the Russian ruble and the Turkish lira is largely driven by transitory shocks, like for instance monetary policy measures. Furthermore, the response of the lira to transitory shocks is sluggish and further depreciation is possible in the next months. In Brazil and India, on the contrary, nominal exchange rate behavior is mainly driven by permanent shocks. The recent depreciation is not caused by short-lived shocks but rather by changing long-term macroeconomic fundamentals. The foreign exchange interventions of the central bank to avoid large depreciation are therefore largely misplaced, especially in Brazil. They aggravate the use of nominal exchange rate flexibility as an efficient adjustment mechanism for real exchange rate changes, i.e. changes in relative prices across borders, and efficient allocation of resources.
Predicting factors for resumption of spontaneous voiding following nerve-sparing radical hysterectomy

Objective To determine factors affecting voiding recovery on the day of Foley catheter removal (postoperative day 7, POD7) after nerve-sparing radical hysterectomy (NSRH) for early-stage cervical cancer. Methods Early-stage cervical cancer patients, who underwent type C1 radical hysterectomy between January 2006 and June 2016 were included. Clinical and pathological data were reviewed. Association between inability to attain adequate voiding function on POD7 and potential predicting factors were evaluated in univariate and multivariate analysis. Results Of 755 patients, 383 (50.7%) resumed adequate voiding function on POD7 while 372 (49.3%) did not. Tumor size was larger in patients whose voiding function was inadequate (2.5 vs. 2.0 cm, p=0.001). Lengths of resected parametria and adjacent vagina were more extensive in patients with inadequate voiding function (p<0.001). In univariate analysis, factors significantly associated with inability to attain adequate voiding function included tumor size >4 cm (p<0.001), primary surgeon (p<0.001), postoperative urinary tract infection (p<0.01), grossly visible tumor (p<0.01), and not having prior conization (p<0.01). In multivariate analysis, tumor size >4 cm, postoperative urinary tract infection, and primary surgeon were significantly associated with inability to attain adequate voiding function on POD7. Conclusion Extent of disease represented by tumor size, urinary tract infection as well as individual surgeon's technique independently predict resumption of adequate voiding function on POD7 following NSRH.
IOC consensus statement on relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S): 2018 update

In 2014, the IOC published a consensus statement entitled ‘Beyond the Female Athlete Triad: Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S)’. The syndrome of RED-S refers to ‘impaired physiological functioning caused by relative energy deficiency and includes, but is not limited to, impairments of metabolic rate, menstrual function, bone health, immunity, protein synthesis and cardiovascular health’. The aetiological factor of this syndrome is low energy availability (LEA). 1 The publication of the RED-S consensus statement stimulated activity in the field of Female Athlete Triad science, including some initial controversy2 3 followed by numerous scientific publications addressing: 1. The health parameters identified in the RED-S conceptual model (figure 1). 1 4 2. Relative energy deficiency in male athletes. 3. The measurement of LEA. 4. The performance parameters identified in the RED-S conceptual model (figure 2). 1 4 The IOC RED-S consensus authors have reconvened to provide an update summary of the interim scientific progress in the field of relative energy deficiency with the ultimate goal of stimulating advances in RED-S awareness, clinical application and scientific research to address current gaps in knowledge. Figure 1 Health consequences of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) showing an expanded concept of the Female Athlete Triad to acknowledge a wider range of outcomes and the application to male athletes (*Psychological consequences can either precede RED-S or be the result of RED-S). 1 4 Figure 2 Potential Performance consequences of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (*Aerobic and anerobic performance). 1 4 ### Low energy availability LEA, which underpins the concept of RED-S, is a mismatch between an athlete’s energy intake (diet) and the energy expended in exercise, leaving inadequate energy to support the functions required by the body to maintain optimal health and performance. Operationally, energy availability (EA) is defined as: ! [Formula][1] where exercise energy expenditure (EEE) is calculated as the additional energy expended above that of … [1]: /embed/mml-math-1.gif
Chinese text sentiment analysis using LSTM network based on L2 and Nadam

The convenience of the network has led to the emergence of more and more commentary texts, most of which have user's opinion and experience, so mining opinions from these texts has become more and more important for many APPs and websites. However, such task is very challenging, in particular for Chinese review text. In this paper, we propose a text sentiment analysis method based on LSTM with L2 and Nadam optimizer to evaluate the accuracy of text sentiment analysis. The experiment results prove that the new optimization function and loss function improve the accuracy of the model and generalization ability and our LSTM based on L2 and Nadam model can get higher accuracy with fewer epochs.
Algorithms for Monitoring Heart Rate and Respiratory Rate From the Video of a User’s Face

Smartphone cameras can measure heart rate (HR) by detecting pulsatile photoplethysmographic (iPPG) signals from post-processing the video of a subject’s face. The iPPG signal is often derived from variations in the intensity of the green channel as shown by Poh <italic>et. al.</italic> and Verkruysse <italic>et. al.</italic>. In this pilot study, we have introduced a novel iPPG method where by measuring variations in color of reflected light, i.e., Hue, and can therefore measure both HR and respiratory rate (RR) from the video of a subject’s face. This paper was performed on 25 healthy individuals (Ages 20–30, 15 males and 10 females, and skin color was Fitzpatrick scale 1–6). For each subject we took two 20 second video of the subject’s face with minimal movement, one with flash ON and one with flash OFF. While recording the videos we simultaneously measuring HR using a Biosync B-50DL Finger Heart Rate Monitor, and RR using self-reporting. This paper shows that our proposed approach of measuring iPPG using Hue (range 0–0.1) gives more accurate readings than the Green channel. HR/Hue (range 0–0.1) (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$r=0.9201$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$p$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-value = 4.1617, and RMSE = 0.8887) is more accurate compared with HR/Green (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$r=0.4916$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$p$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-value = 11.60172, and RMSE = 0.9068). RR/Hue (range 0–0.1) (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$r=0.6575$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$p$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-value = 0.2885, and RMSE = 3.8884) is more accurate compared with RR/Green (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$r=0.3352$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$p$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-value = 0.5608, and RMSE = 5.6885). We hope that this hardware agnostic approach for detection of vital signals will have a huge potential impact in telemedicine, and can be used to tackle challenges, such as continuous non-contact monitoring of neo-natal and elderly patients. An implementation of the algorithm can be found at <uri>https://pulser.thinkbiosolution. com</uri>
Personal Attributes of Legislators and Parliamentary Behavior: An Analysis of Parliamentary Activities among Japanese Legislators*

Abstract This study explores the individual-level activities of legislators in parliament, which have been largely ignored in the literature on parliamentary democracies. Individual legislators are extensively involved in parliamentary activities such as drafting private members’ bills and posing questions, even though these activities have only been considered to play marginal roles in parliamentary democracies. Moreover, their engagement varies significantly. By using unique data from Japan, this study demonstrates that the personal attributes of legislators affect their choice of parliamentary activities. Under electoral systems with intra-party competition, legislators use parliamentary activities as an important means to inform their constituents about what they can do for them and how they differ from other legislators. In elections, candidates cultivate personal votes by exploiting the image drawn from their personal attributes and, once elected, they behave in accordance with their attributes in order to maintain their electoral ground. Thus, they devote themselves to different activities in parliament. The data analyzed here support this argument. The results of empirical analyses show that legislators with local-level political experience engage in particularistic pork-barrel activities that will benefit their local interests, while legislators with legal-work experience allocate their time and energy to general policy-making activities that will enhance their public image and visibility as legal experts.