Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Talc mediates angiostasis in malignant pleural effusions via endostatin induction

Talc remains the most effective sclerosing agent for pleurodesis. However, its mechanism of action in resolving pleural malignant disease remains unclear. The present study evaluated the angiogenic balance in the pleural space in patients with malignant pleural effusions (MPE) following talc insufflation. Patient pleural fluid samples were collected both before and after talc insufflation. The ability of pleural mesothelial cells (PMC) and malignant mesothelioma cells (MMC) to produce endostatin in vitro was compared. The biological effects of pleural fluids and conditioned media from talc-activated PMC on endothelial cells were evaluated by performing proliferation, invasion, tube formation and apoptosis assays. Pleural fluids from patients with MPE who received thoracoscopic talc insufflation contained significantly higher levels of endostatin (median 16.75 ng·mL−1) compared with pre-talc instillation (1.06 ng·mL−1). Talc-activated PMC released significantly greater amounts of endostatin (mean±sem 1052.39±38.66 pg·mL−1) when compared with a MMC line (134.73±8.72 pg·mL−1). In conlusion, talc alters the angiogenic balance in the pleural space from a biologically active and angiogenic environment to an angiostatic milieu. Functional improvement following talc poudrage in patients with malignant pleural effusions may, in part, reflect these alterations in the pleural space.
A framework for evaluation of telemedicine

Telemedicine is now made more feasible with the advent of modern information and telecommunication technologies. Telemedicine is used in a variety of medical situations in several countries. Its use is widespread. However these systems need to be evaluated so as to know how they are performing in comparison to the traditional ways of offering health care services. Health care providers and policy makers need to know the efficiency and effectiveness of these systems so that the available resources are used in efficient and cost effective alternatives of health services. People around the globe have been using different frameworks to evaluate telemedicine systems. Most people are evaluating telemedicine on ad hoc basis. Not one methodology or framework is popular or is widely used for evaluations. Hence the results are not comparable. There is clearly a need for standard methodology or a framework. Lack of evaluation standards can impact the costs, effectiveness, access and efficiency of care provided to patients. As a result this paper proposes a unified framework by synthesising existing methodological frameworks. The proposed framework provides various measures and criteria for evaluating various telemedicine applications. The framework also provides key indicators at a base level for each criterion. The most important measures in this framework are access, cost, effectiveness and acceptability of care. It is expected that this framework will be a step towards standardisation of frameworks and it will help new and experienced evaluators, health care providers and policy makers. The proposed framework is broad so that it can be applied to any application of telemedicine and depending on the setting in a given organisation; application specific base indicators may be added or deleted for each criterion.
Fusion of conformal interfaces

We study the fusion of conformal interfaces in the c = 1 conformal field theory. We uncover an elegant structure reminiscent of that of black holes in supersymmetric theories. The role of the BPS black holes is played by topological interfaces, which (a) minimize the entropy function, (b) fix through an attractor mechanism one or both of the bulk radii, and (c) are (marginally) stable under splitting. One significant difference is that the conserved charges are logarithms of natural numbers, rather than vectors in a charge lattice, as for BPS states. Besides potential applications to condensed-matter physics and number theory, these results point to the existence of large solution-generating algebras in string theory.
Implementation of speech feature extraction for low-resource devices

Feature extraction is an important function in the speech recognition system. Employing a speech recognition system in low-resource devices (LRDs) have increased significantly in recent years. Implementing feature extraction, which involves complex computations, in LRD is very challenging because LRD has limited energy, storage, and processing power. The optimum design must carefully balance performance metrics, including speed, area, and energy. The objective of this research is to implement and model speech feature extraction design in a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) platform, and to identify the optimum implementation for low-resource devices (LRDs). The novelty of this research is optimising feature extraction implementations using design options such as word size; and developing accurate performance models to enhance future designs. The authors study extensively examines the effect of fixed-point n -bit word size on the design of Mel frequency cepstral coefficients feature extraction in the FPGA implementation. The results show that the performance metrics (area, power, and energy) increase at a slower pace compared with n because the dependency of some blocks (e.g. logarithm) on n is non-linear. For example, increasing n by 50% increases the resource utilisation by 38%, power by 41% and energy by 41%. Models for resources, power, and energy are developed with accuracies of 5.1, 4.5, and 4.3%, respectively. Furthermore, n has a weak impact on timing results and therefore speed is almost similar across implementations. Each bit (in n ) costs 690 logical elements in the area, 2.35 mW in power and 0. 55μJ in energy. For LRD, the 32-bit design demonstrates the most optimum design, followed by 48-bit and 24-bit designs.
Mathematical logic Universal Turing Machine

In recent years, much research has been devoted to the improvement of link-level acknowledgements ; unfortunately, few have investigated the evaluation of the Ethernet. After years of extensive research into thin clients, we argue the development of symmetric encryption We prove that the much-tauted virtual algorithm for the simulation of link-level acknowledgements by Isaac Newton et al.
Molecular basis and genetic predisposition to intracranial aneurysm

Abstract Intracranial aneurysms, also called cerebral aneurysms, are dilatations in the arteries that supply blood to the brain. Rupture of an intracranial aneurysm leads to a subarachnoid hemorrhage, which is fatal in about 50% of the cases. Intracranial aneurysms can be repaired surgically or endovascularly, or by combining these two treatment modalities. They are relatively common with an estimated prevalence of unruptured aneurysms of 2%–6% in the adult population, and are considered a complex disease with both genetic and environmental risk factors. Known risk factors include smoking, hypertension, increasing age, and positive family history for intracranial aneurysms. Identifying the molecular mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis of intracranial aneurysms is complex. Genome-wide approaches such as DNA linkage and genetic association studies, as well as microarray-based mRNA expression studies, provide unbiased approaches to identify genetic risk factors and dissecting the molecular pathobiology of intracranial aneurysms. The ultimate goal of these studies is to use the information in clinical practice to predict an individual's risk for developing an aneurysm or monitor its growth or rupture risk. Another important goal is to design new therapies based on the information on mechanisms of disease processes to prevent the development or halt the progression of intracranial aneurysms.
Cerebral blood flow during induced hypotension.

Induced hypotension has been used in anaesthetic practice since the 1940s [1]. It has been argued that it should not be used to make a difficult operation easy but is justified to make the impossible possible. It would seem reasonable to take this argument a stage further by stating that induced hypotension is justified if it reduces the overall morbidity of an operation. The fact that moderate hypotension has been used for many years with minimal morbidity [2, 3] lends further support to the continued use of this technique. The relative safety of the technique in healthy individuals is well documented [2,3] and the anaesthetic technique does not appear to affect outcome significantly after hypotensive anaesthesia. However, there are several contraindications to the technique, including respiratory, and in particular, cardiovascular disease. It is now generally accepted that, except during surgery for cerebral arterio-venous malformations, cerebral perfusion pressure should not be allowed to decrease during cerebro-vascular surgery. The best method of cerebral protection is maintenance of an adequate mean arterial pressure and cerebral perfusion pressure. This is particularly important when cerebral vasospasm occurs after a subarachnoid haemorrhage or the cerebral arteries are occluded by atheroma, thrombus, or both. In these situations mean arterial pressure needs to be well maintained to optimize collateral circulation [4]. It is likely that induced hypotension will continue to be used during many surgical procedures. This will usually be at the request of the surgeon, and the anaesthetist must establish that it is necessary before complying. If it is accepted that there is a role for induced hypotension in modern anaesthetic and surgical practice, it is important that the effects of different techniques of hypotensive anaesthesia on blood flow to essential organs are elucidated. Cer-ebral blood flow is maintained at a lower mean arterial pressure when hypotension is induced with vasodilators than when it is induced by haemorrhage, because the latter causes increased sympathetic activity and constriction of the major vessels supplying the brain. Cerebral vasodilators effectively shift the limits of autoregulation of cerebral blood flow to the left [5]. In this issue, Tsutsui and colleagues [6] report the effects of profound hypotension, to a mean arterial pressure of 30 mm Hg for 30 min, using haemorrhage , trimetaphan or nitroprusside on local cerebral blood flow (CBF) in rats. A mean arterial pressure of 30 mm Hg was chosen because maintenance of local CBF and survival are …
Laguerre–Hahn orthogonal polynomials on the real line

A survey is given on sequences of orthogonal polynomials related to Stieltjes functions satisfying a Riccati type differential equation with polynomial coefficients — the so-called Laguerre–Hahn class. The main goal is to describe analytical aspects, focusing on differential equations for those orthogonal polynomials, difference and differential equations for the recurrence coefficients, and distributional equations for the corresponding linear functionals.
DESIGN ILLUSTRATION OF AN EKG ANALOG INTERFACE USING GENETIC ALGORITHMS

Electrocardiography (EKG) systems provide a solution for the recording of the heart activity and are indispensable in patient monitoring. Interfacing the EKG system with the human body is done with analog signal processing and operates towards proper signal conditioning. The EKG analog interface consists of an instrumentation amplifier, a notch filter and a highpass filter. This paper proposes an approach to design the EKG interface using genetic algorithms. Two design strategies are used: coefficient equation for amplifier and notch filter design, and curve fitting for highpass filter design. The validity of the evolutionary design results is demonstrated with transistor-level simulation.
Spatial Competition among Heterogeneous Firms : Evidence from the Chinese Satellite TV Industry

Firms compete against rivals having abilities and resources that are different from their own. I present a simple model of spatial competition that predicts two rivals will be (1) more likely to differentiate their products when the gap between their abilities is large, and (2) less likely to differentiate when the market size ratio between product segments is large. I test the predictions in the Chinese national television industry which is occupied by a dominant incumbent and thirty-one newly entered satellite channels. My identification strategy exploits a natural experiment induced by a government policy change that led the incumbent to shift its product location. I find the entrants position themselves on average 12 to 15 percent further away from the incumbent than from peers. Moreover, I find the entrants dynamically adjust their positions to differentiate from the incumbent. The weakest entrants exhibit greatest responsiveness to the incumbent’s actions. Finally, I find the entrants locate closer to the incumbent in timeslots where the market size ratio between product segments is large. This study contributes to a richer understanding of spatial competition strategy by examining a set of conditions under which rivals exhibit different degrees of differentiation. † Ph.D. Candidate, Business & Public Policy Group, Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley. I thank Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Wilbur Chung, Waverly Ding, David Mowery, Rob Seamans, and seminar participants at the Haas School of Business for helpful comments. I am especially grateful to Paul Gertler, John Morgan, and Yingyi Qian for their guidance. I am also indebted to L. Bai, Matthew Brosenne, Cedric Lam, Z. Liu, X.F. Lu, Louise Wang, and B. Zhang for sharing with me their industry knowledge. The ratings dataset was generously provided by CSM Media Research. All errors are my own. Spatial Competition among Heterogeneous Firms 2
Alpha-thujone (the active component of absinthe): gamma-aminobutyric acid type A receptor modulation and metabolic detoxification.

Alpha-thujone is the toxic agent in absinthe, a liqueur popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries that has adverse health effects. It is also the active ingredient of wormwood oil and some other herbal medicines and is reported to have antinociceptive, insecticidal, and anthelmintic activity. This study elucidates the mechanism of alpha-thujone neurotoxicity and identifies its major metabolites and their role in the poisoning process. Four observations establish that alpha-thujone is a modulator of the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) type A receptor. First, the poisoning signs (and their alleviation by diazepam and phenobarbital) in mice are similar to those of the classical antagonist picrotoxinin. Second, a strain of Drosophila specifically resistant to chloride channel blockers is also tolerant to alpha-thujone. Third, alpha-thujone is a competitive inhibitor of [(3)H]ethynylbicycloorthobenzoate binding to mouse brain membranes. Most definitively, GABA-induced peak currents in rat dorsal root ganglion neurons are suppressed by alpha-thujone with complete reversal after washout. alpha-Thujone is quickly metabolized in vitro by mouse liver microsomes with NADPH (cytochrome P450) forming 7-hydroxy-alpha-thujone as the major product plus five minor ones (4-hydroxy-alpha-thujone, 4-hydroxy-beta-thujone, two other hydroxythujones, and 7,8-dehydro-alpha-thujone), several of which also are detected in the brain of mice treated i.p. with alpha-thujone. The major 7-hydroxy metabolite attains much higher brain levels than alpha-thujone but is less toxic to mice and Drosophila and less potent in the binding assay. The other metabolites assayed are also detoxification products. Thus, alpha-thujone in absinthe and herbal medicines is a rapid-acting and readily detoxified modulator of the GABA-gated chloride channel.
Field Theory and the Contraction of the Imperial Repertoire of Power

This essay asks why colonialism ended in the mid-twentieth century, effectively excising formal imperialism from the repertoire of global power. Most studies related to this question address why older empires fell and nation-states emerged. This essay instead asks: why did great powers not colonize or recolonize territory in the mid-twentieth century and afterwards? Using the Anglo-French assault on the Suez Canal in 1956, including the reactions of the United States to it, as an exemplary event, the essay argues that the relational approach embedded in the field theory of Pierre Bourdieu offers a useful lens for arriving at an explanation. It shows that as colonialism generated anticolonial responses in the colonial world – or what Bourdieu would call the " challengers " offering a new " heterodoxy " , the global political field was altered, changing the " rules of the game " by turning anticolonial nationalism into a potentially new form of capital. This in turn constrained the European empires and the United States. As part of their struggle to maintain their dominant positions in the field, they were forced to reconsider their strategies of rule and so adopted a stance of promoting anticolonial nationalism. With the new changed field brought on by the agency of anticolonial nationalists, colonialism had become a liability rather than a source of strength. 2 In 1881, the revolt of Arabi Pasha in Egypt against the Khedive struck fear into the officials of the European empires. Both the British and French had maintained a presence in the region; a presence that, for the British especially, was vital for controlling the Suez Canal. Ahmed Arabi resented this foreign influence over the Suez, and so led an uprising of some 60,000 strong. Prime Minister Gladstone in London had to act: not only was control over the Suez vital for Britain, his colleagues and friends had significant financial investments in the region. No surprise he declared the Egyptian " crisis " to be " the great question of British interest. " 1 The result was a British-led assault that subdued the revolt and, ultimately, paved the way for a sustained colonial occupation, as Britain declared Egypt to be a formal protectorate. According to Robinson and Gallagher's classic interpretation, this marked the beginnings of Britain's further colonial annexations in plans to nationalize the Suez Canal Company, a British-French enterprise that had been initially founded to operate the Canal …
Domain Adaptive Information Extraction Using Link Grammar and WordNet

Nowadays, people want to extract variety of information from on line texts. As more and more text becomes available on-line, there is emergent need for systems that extract information automatically from text corpus. One of the principle challenges of information extraction is the efficient customization of a system to a new domain. Adapting an information extraction system to a new domain entails the construction of a new set of extraction rules. Many recent information extraction systems have ignored the tedious and time-consuming nature of that process. This paper proposes an alternative approach, which generate candidate extraction rules from untagged text corpus using Link Grammar Parser and filter the final extraction rules using Wordnet and linguistic patterns. The proposed method not only reduces the amount of time and effort required to create an appropriate training corpus but also obviates the need to examine many candidate extraction rules so that the system can easily port well to different domain.
Emergence of a non-scaling degree distribution in bipartite networks: A numerical and analytical study

We study the growth of bipartite networks in which the number of nodes in one of the partitions is kept fixed while the other partition is allowed to grow. We study random and preferential attachment as well as combination of both. We derive the exact analytical expression for the degree-distribution of all these different types of attachments while assuming that edges are incorporated sequentially, i.e., a single edge is added to the growing network in a time step. We also provide an approximate expression for the case when more than one edges are added in a time step. We show that depending on the relative weight between random and preferential attachments, the degree-distribution of this type of network falls into one of the four possible regimes, which range from a binomial distribution for pure random attachment to an u-shaped distribution for dominant preferential attachment.
Towards improved theoretical problems for autonomous discovery

Active learning and experimental data acquisition address the same problems, understanding a system under investigation with as few resources as possible. However there are few instances where the theoretically principled techniques in active learning or sequential experimental design have been applied to managing data acquisition in physical experimentation. Partly this is due to fundamental differences between the problems investigated within active learning and the issues faced in much physical experimentation. From a previous study we conducted into autonomous experimentation, where we developed a system capable of automatically designing experiments and proposing potential hypotheses, we aim to investigate and highlight the differences between theoretical active learning and the requirements of experimentalists. We also propose an update of the multi-armed bandit problem that provides a theoretical problem more closely aligned to that found in physical experimentation. We believe that for active learning techniques to be used more widely as tools within physical experimentation, a greater focus of research has to be placed on theoretical problems that have assumptions more closely aligned to those found commonly within physical experimentation. Assumptions such as extremely limited resources, more so than typically considered in active learning problems, along with erroneous observations or noisy oracles, should become standard features of active learning problems, as in experimentation there are rarely enough resources available to be certain about the validity of the data obtained and the quality of the hypotheses produced.
Graph-based codes and iterative decoding

The field of error correcting codes was revolutionized by the introduction of turbo codes [7] in 1993. These codes demonstrated dramatic performance improvements over any previously known codes, with significantly lower complexity. Since then, much progress has been made towards understanding the performance of these codes, as well as in using this understanding to design even better codes. This thesis takes a few more steps in both these directions. We develop a new technique, called the typical set bound, for analyzing the asymptotic performance of code ensembles based on their weight enumerators. This technique yields very tight bounds on the maximum-likelihood decoding threshold of code ensembles, and is powerful enough to reproduce Shannon's noisy coding theorem for the class of binary-input symmetric channels. We also introduce a new class of codes called irregular repeat-accumulate~(IRA) codes, which are adapted from the previously known class of repeat-accumulate~(RA) codes. These codes are competitive in terms of decoding performance with the class of irregular low-density parity-check~(LDPC) codes, which are arguably the best class of codes known today, at least for long block lengths. In addition, IRA codes have a significant advantage over irregular LDPC codes in terms of encoding complexity. We also derive an analytical bound regarding iterative decoding thresholds of code ensembles on general binary-input symmetric channels, an area in which theoretical results are currently lacking