Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Surveys of patient satisfaction: II--Designing a questionnaire and conducting a survey.

from undergraduate teaching hospitals than from other hospitals. The retrieval rate was lower from one region than from the other, independent ofthe proportion ofpatients treated at teaching hospitals. ->/ For deceased patients the retrieval of case notes varied with district of residence but no association was found with the region of residence, the year of death, or the teaching status of the hospital. Of 223 patients recorded as having had radiotherapy, 184 were deceased. Records were retrieved from 11 centres treating 216 patients. The overall response rate was 172/216 (80%), but response ranged from 50% to 100% for the individual centres. The retrieval rate was lower from one region than from the other, but retrieval of records was similar for surviving and deceased patients and did not vary by year of death, district of residence, or the teaching status of the hospital.
Robust design of slow-light tapers in periodic waveguides

This article concerns the design of tapers for coupling power between uniform and slow-light periodic waveguides. New optimization methods are described for designing robust tapers, which not only perform well under nominal conditions, but also over a given set of parameter variations. When the set of parameter variations models the inevitable variations typical in the manufacture or operation of the coupler, a robust design is one that will have a high yield, despite these parameter variations. The ideas of successive refinement, and robust optimization based on multi-scenario optimization with iterative sampling of uncertain parameters, using a fast method for approximately evaluating the reflection coefficient, are introduced. Robust design results are compared to a linear taper, and to optimized tapers that do not take parameter variation into account. Finally, robust performance of the resulting designs is verified using an accurate, but much more expensive, method for evaluating the reflection coefficient.
Flying Insects and Robots. Dario Floreano, Jean-Christophe Zufferey, Mandyam V. Srinivasan, and Charlie Elington (Eds.). (2009, Springer.) $119, 328 pages.

Flying insects have attracted a number of scientists for many years, and their contributions to biological sciences should never be underestimated: Research on flying insects has spread out into almost all fields, including sociology, genetics, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and the other behavioral sciences. What I have found most fascinating about flying insects is their remarkable intelligence despite their small sizes of body and nervous structures. Flying insects live and survive almost everywhere on the planet; they are capable of wide-ranging behavioral capabilities, including basic behaviors such as takeoff, landing, escaping, chasing, and mating, as well as foraging and learning; and some species can even communicate to form social structures. While human beings exhibit similar behaviors, flying insects achieve these functions by using typically very different mechanisms from those of humans, and they are often very elegant. I donʼt remember howmany times I was surprised by the clever solutions by which animals achieve these functionalities. Owing to the enormous amount of accumulated knowledge and the many investigations of them in biology, flying insects have also become one of the most representative model animals in engineering sciences. Previously, the visual systems of flying insects were studied intensively and incorporated into the important literature on computer vision [1, 2]. Also, flying insects were investigated as interesting case studies of mechanics, in which they revealed a number of mechanical design principles of nature [3, 4]. In robotics research, a number of interdisciplinary collaborations between engineers and biologists have successfully identified mechanisms of adaptive behaviors by sensory-motor pathways of insects [5]. From what I have observed in its recent development, the research field of flying insects seems to be entering a new era based on the availability of new technologies. For behavioral studies of animals, we now have easier access to various imaging and computational devices, which facilitate more comprehensive experiments and analysis to uncover the mysteries of physiological processes and aerodynamic interactions in animalsʼ adaptive behaviors. The rapid progress of tool availability is more prominent in robotics research: Micromanufacturing techniques as well as small-sized sensors, motors, processors, and batteries, for example, make it possible to realize remarkable robotic systems that are as small and agile as biological systems. The book Flying Insects and Robots was published at the very time when the new era of this research field had just started.
Expression of EpCAM and prognosis in early‐stage glottic cancer treated by radiotherapy

Treatment of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) often requires radiotherapy, but relapse can occur. There is, therefore, an urgent need for the identification of a predictive novel biomarker for radiosensitivity. The epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) has been shown to promote the transformation of malignant tumors, and EpCAM may have prognostic significance, but it is not known if EpCAM determines prognosis, especially with respect to radiotherapy. Therefore, we determined the incidence of the expression of EpCAM in HNSCC and analyzed the prognostic value in patients with early‐stage glottic cancer treated with radiotherapy.
Hybrid Measure of Agreement and Expertise for Ontology Matching in Lieu of a Reference Ontology

Ontologies have been widely used as a knowledge representation framework, and numerous methods have been put forth to match ontologies. It is well known that ontology matchers behave differently in various domains, and it is a challenge to predict or characterize their behavior. Herein, a hybrid expertise‐agreement aggregation strategy is proposed. Although others rely on the existence of a reference ontology, this typically does not exist in the real world. In this article, the fuzzy integral (FI) is used to aggregate multiple ontology matchers in lieu of a reference ontology. Specifically, we present a measure of expertise and fuse it with our previous agreement measure that is motivated by crowd sourcing to improve recall. This way, any available domain knowledge, in terms of partial ordering of a subset of inputs, can be included in the decision‐making process. By adding the domain knowledge to the agreement model, we are able to reach the upmost performance. Preliminary results demonstrate the robustness of our approach across domains. Sensitivity analysis is also provided, which shows the limits to which extreme destructive expertise affects system performance.
Fluorescence Microscopy and Flow Cytometric Analysis of Peyer's Patches and Intestinal Immune Cells

In recent years researchers have become more aware of the importance of the gut‐associated immune system since it is in direct interaction with the entry site for virus, bacteria, and all type of food contaminants, including numerous toxins that can alter mucosal immunity. Peyer's patches (PP) are considered the inductive site for protein antigen presentation in the gut as well as the starting point for IgA B‐cell differentiation. The IgA found in feces comes from IgA secreted by IgA lamina propria lymphocytes (LPL), and its presence is a sign of normal physiology, in that IgA plays a role in absorption and immune defense against gut‐associated pathogens. Methods presented in this unit are intended to analyze PP and intestinal intraepithelial and LPL to determine whether the complexity of the mucosal‐associated lymphoid tissue and its components have been altered by any form of external damage. The protocols explain how to isolate and culture isolated cells; how to stain and analyze; and also how to cryopreserve the gut. Curr. Protoc. Toxicol. 33:18.13. 1‐18.13. 20. © 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Long Non-Coding RNAs: The Key Players in Glioma Pathogenesis

Long non-coding RNAs (LncRNAs) represent a novel class of RNAs with no functional protein-coding ability, yet it has become increasingly clear that interactions between lncRNAs with other molecules are responsible for important gene regulatory functions in various contexts. Given their relatively high expressions in the brain, lncRNAs are now thought to play important roles in normal brain development as well as diverse disease processes including gliomagenesis. Intriguingly, certain lncRNAs are closely associated with the initiation, differentiation, progression, recurrence and stem-like characteristics in glioma, and may therefore be exploited for the purposes of sub-classification, diagnosis and prognosis. LncRNAs may also serve as potential therapeutic targets as well as a novel biomarkers in the treatment of glioma. In this article, the functional aspects of lncRNAs, particularly within the central nervous system (CNS), will be briefly discussed, followed by highlights of the important roles of lncRNAs in mediating critical steps during glioma development. In addition, the key lncRNA players and their possible mechanistic pathways associated with gliomagenesis will be addressed.
Graphene-based ultrasonic detector for photoacoustic imaging

Taking advantage of optical absorption imaging contrast, photoacoustic imaging technology is able to map the volumetric distribution of the optical absorption properties within biological tissues. Unfortunately, traditional piezoceramics-based transducers used in most photoacoustic imaging setups have inadequate frequency response, resulting in both poor depth resolution and inaccurate quantification of the optical absorption information. Instead of the piezoelectric ultrasonic transducer, we develop a graphene-based optical sensor for detecting photoacoustic pressure. The refractive index in the coupling medium is modulated due to photoacoustic pressure perturbation, which creates the variation of the polarization-sensitive optical absorption property of the graphene. As a result, the photoacoustic detection is realized through recording the reflectance intensity difference of polarization light. The graphene-based detector process an estimated noise-equivalentpressure (NEP) sensitivity of ~ 550 Pa over 20-MHz bandwidth with a nearby linear pressure response from 11.0 kPa to 53.0 kPa. Further, a graphene-based photoacoustic microscopy is built, and non-invasively reveals the microvascular anatomy in mouse ears label-freely.
Motion games in real sports environments

I N T E R A C T I O N S . A C M . O R G The past decade has brought about interesting developments in combining video games, sports, and exercise. Motion games, also known as exergames or active video games, have become mainstream thanks to technologies like Microsoft Kinect, PlayStation Move, and Nintendo Wii. Unfortunately, commercial games are often optimized for an average customer facing a television in an average living room, which limits the variety and intensity of movements. This is a constraint for effective exercise and hinders the learning of real sports skills while playing motion games. We argue that a way to support vigorous physical exercise and learning sports-related skills is to move motion games away from the T living room to places where sports are actually practiced. This gives the player more space, allows increased movement diversity, and reduces the risk of colliding with furniture. A pleasurable exercise experience also requires appropriate ventilation, which indoor sports centers typically have. However, motion games are not always more entertaining than real practice, and a skill learned in a game might not transfer to a real sport. More research is needed on how to design and implement motion games that are both fun and effective as exercise and motorlearning environments. We have investigated how practicing real skills can be made more motivating in real sports settings. Here, we introduce two approaches: a game played by jumping on a trampoline and an augmented climbing wall that enables getting feedback and playing games on a real climbing wall.
Sentiment Analysis of Name Entity for Text

Recent years, big data has attracted increasing interest. Sentiment analysis from microblog as one kind of big data also receive great attention. Some recent research works are not suitable for sentiment analysis as the result that users prefer to express their feelings in individual ways. In this paper, a framework is proposed to calculate sentiment for aspects of event. Based on some state of art technologies, we build up one flowchart to get sentiment for aspects of event. During the process, name entities with the same meaning are clustered and sentiment carrier are filtered. In this way sentiment can be got even user express feeling for the same object with different words.
Rho, nuclear actin, and actin-binding proteins in the regulation of transcription and gene expression

Actin cytoskeleton is one of the main targets of Rho GTPases, which act as molecular switches on many signaling pathways. During the past decade, actin has emerged as an important regulator of gene expression. Nuclear actin plays a key role in transcription, chromatin remodeling, and pre-mRNA processing. In addition, the “status” of the actin cytoskeleton is used as a signaling intermediate by at least the MKL1-SRF and Hippo-pathways, which culminate in the transcriptional regulation of cytoskeletal and growth-promoting genes, respectively. Rho GTPases may therefore regulate gene expression by controlling either cytoplasmic or nuclear actin dynamics. Although the regulation of nuclear actin polymerization is still poorly understood, many actin-binding proteins, which are downstream effectors of Rho, are found in the nuclear compartment. In this review, we discuss the possible mechanisms and key proteins that may mediate the transcriptional regulation by Rho GTPases through actin.
LYSIS OF STREPTOCOCCUS FAECALIS

Previous studies have demonstrated that cell wall synthesis may continue after exponential growth of Streptococcus faecalis has stopped. This can occur when an otherwise complete culture medium is depleted of the available supply of one or more nutritionally indispensable amino acids which are major components of protoplasmic proteins but not of the cell wall (Shockman, Kolb, and Toennies, 1958; Shockman, 1959). On the other hand, rapid lysis tends to occur when an indispensable amino acid that is a major component of the cell wall, such as L-lysine or D-alanine (in a vitamin B6-deficient medium) is exhausted from the growth medium (Toennies and Gallant, 1949a; Shockman et al., 1958). These studies suggested that a) in the absence of the continued synthesis of cell wall substance the cells of this organism are subject to autolysis and that b) cell wall synthesis may be, at least in part, independent of the synthesis of cytoplasmic proteins. The results presented here and in the following paper (Shockman et al., 1961) provide additional evidence supporting these hypotheses.
Predicting site-specific human selective pressure using evolutionary signatures

Motivation: The identification of non-coding functional regions of the human genome remains one of the main challenges of genomics. By observing how a given region evolved over time, one can detect signs of negative or positive selection hinting that the region may be functional. With the quickly increasing number of vertebrate genomes to compare with our own, this type of approach is set to become extremely powerful, provided the right analytical tools are available. Results: A large number of approaches have been proposed to measure signs of past selective pressure, usually in the form of reduced mutation rate. Here, we propose a radically different approach to the detection of non-coding functional region: instead of measuring past evolutionary rates, we build a machine learning classifier to predict current substitution rates in human based on the inferred evolutionary events that affected the region during vertebrate evolution. We show that different types of evolutionary events, occurring along different branches of the phylogenetic tree, bring very different amounts of information. We propose a number of simple machine learning classifiers and show that a Support-Vector Machine (SVM) predictor clearly outperforms existing tools at predicting human non-coding functional sites. Comparison to external evidences of selection and regulatory function confirms that these SVM predictions are more accurate than those of other approaches. Availability: The predictor and predictions made are available at http://www.mcb.mcgill.ca/~blanchem/sadri. Contact: blanchem@mcb.mcgill.ca
Nonvirion Protein of Novirhabdovirus Suppresses Apoptosis at the Early Stage of Virus Infection

ABSTRACT Viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSV) and infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV) are members of the genus Novirhabdovirus within the Rhabdoviridae family, which can cause severe hemorrhagic disease in fresh- and saltwater fish worldwide. These viruses carry an additional nonvirion (NV) gene, which codes for the nonstructural NV protein that has been implicated to play a role in viral pathogenesis. To determine the precise biological function of this NV gene and its gene product, we generated NV-deficient and NV knockout recombinant VHSVs, using reverse genetics. Comparisons of the replication kinetics and markers for virus-induced apoptosis indicated that the NV-deficient and NV knockout mutant viruses induce apoptosis earlier in cell culture than the wild-type recombinant VHSV. These results suggest that the NV protein has an antiapoptotic function at the early stage of virus infection. Furthermore, we created a chimeric VHSV, in which the NV gene of VHSV was replaced by the IHNV NV gene, which was capable of suppressing apoptosis in cell culture. These results show that the NV protein of other members of Novirhabdovirus can restore the NV protein function. In this study, we also investigated the kinetics of VHSV replication during a single round of viral replication and examined the mechanism of VHSV-induced apoptosis. Our results show that VHSV infection induced caspases 3, 8 and 9 in cell culture.
Storage challenges at Los Alamos National Lab

There yet exist no truly parallel file systems. Those that make the claim fall short when it comes to providing adequate concurrent write performance at large scale. This limitation causes large usability headaches in HPC. Users need two major capabilities missing from current parallel file systems. One, they need low latency interactivity. Two, they need high bandwidth for large parallel IO; this capability must be resistant to IO patterns and should not require tuning. There are no existing parallel file systems which provide these features. Frighteningly, exascale renders these features even less attainable from currently available parallel file systems. Fortunately, there is a path forward.
Emergency Preparedness of Persons Over 50 Years Old: Further Results From the Health and Retirement Study

Abstract Objective This article conceptualized emergency preparedness as a complex, multidimensional construct and empirically examined an array of sociodemographic, motivation, and barrier variables as predictors of levels of emergency preparedness. Methods The authors used the 2010 wave of the Health and Retirement Study’s emergency preparedness module to focus on persons 50 years old and older in the United States by use of logistic regression models and reconsidered a previous analysis. Results The models demonstrated 3 key findings: (1) a lack of preparedness is widespread across virtually all sociodemographic variables and regions of the country; (2) an authoritative voice, in the role of health care personnel, was a strong predictor of preparedness; and (3) previous experience in helping others in a disaster predisposes individuals to be better prepared. Analyses also suggest the need for caution in creating simple summative indexes and the need for further research into appropriate measures of preparedness. Conclusion This population of older persons was generally not well prepared for emergencies, and this lack of preparedness was widespread across social, demographic, and economic groups in the United States. Findings with implications for policy and outreach include the importance of health care providers discussing preparedness and the use of experienced peers for outreach. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2017;11:80–89)
HPA axis activity in patients with panic disorder: review and synthesis of four studies

Dysregulation of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis may play a role in panic disorder. HPA studies in patients with panic disorder, however, have produced inconsistent results. Seeking to understand the inconsistencies, we reexamined endocrine data from four studies of patients with panic disorder, in light of animal data highlighting the salience of novelty, control, and social support to HPA axis activity. Patients with panic disorder were studied (1) at rest over a full circadian cycle, (2) before and after activation by a panicogenic respiratory stimulant (doxapram) that does not directly stimulate the HPA axis, and (3) before and after a cholecystokinin B (CCK‐B) agonist that is panicogenic and does directly stimulate the HPA axis. Patients with panic disorder had elevated overnight cortisol levels, which correlated with sleep disruption. ACTH and cortisol levels were higher in a challenge paradigm (doxapram) than in a resting state study, and paradigm‐related ACTH secretion was exaggerated in patients with panic disorder. Panic itself could be elicited without HPA axis activation. Patients with panic disorder showed an exaggerated ACTH response to pentagastrin stimulation, but this response was normalized by prior exposure to the experimental context or psychological preparation to reduce novelty and enhance sense of control. Novelty is one of a number of contextual cues known from animal work to activate the HPA axis. The HPA axis abnormalities seen in patients with panic disorder in the four experiments reviewed here might all be due to exaggerated HPA axis reactivity to novelty cues. Most of the published panic/HPA literature is consistent with the hypothesis that HPA axis dysregulation in panic is due to hypersensitivity to contextual cues. This hypothesis requires experimental testing. Depression and Anxiety 24:66–76, 2007. Published 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Domain evolution in ferroelectric thin films: a phase-field approach

We implement a phase field method for the analysis of ferroelectric thin films with the aim of investigating the effect of grain orientation. We present some benchmarks with literature examples and finally discuss a preliminary investigation of a multigrain structure highlighting its impact on the size and shape of the hysteresis cycle. P. Fedeli and A. Frangi