Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Left Atrial Size and Function in Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Patients and Risk of New-Onset Atrial Fibrillation

Background— The value of left atrial (LA) diameter, volume, and strain to risk stratify hypertrophic cardiomyopathy patients for new-onset atrial fibrillation (AF) was explored. Methods and Results— A total of 242 hypertrophic cardiomyopathy patients without AF history were evaluated by (speckle-tracking) echocardiography. During mean follow-up of 4.8±3.7 years, 41 patients (17%) developed new-onset AF. Multivariable analysis showed LA volume (≥37 mL/m2; hazard ratio, 2.68; 95% confidence interval, 1.30–5.54; P=0.008) and LA strain (⩽23.4%; hazard ratio, 3.22; 95% confidence interval, 1.50–6.88; P=0.003), but not LA diameter (≥45 mm; hazard ratio, 1.67; 95% confidence interval, 0.84–3.32; P=0.145), as independent AF correlates. Importantly, 59% (n=24) of AF events occurred despite a baseline LA diameter <45 mm, observed in 185 patients. In this patient subset, LA strain (area under the curve 0.73) and LA volume (area under the curve 0.83) showed good predictive value for new-onset AF. Furthermore, patients with LA volume <37 versus ≥37 mL/m2 and LA strain >23.4% versus ⩽23.4% had superior 5-year AF-free survival of 93% versus 80% (P=0.003) and 98% versus 74% (P=0.002), respectively. Importantly, LA volume <37 mL/m2 and strain >23.4% yielded high negative predictive value (93% and 98%, respectively) for new-onset AF. Likelihood ratio test indicated incremental value of LA volume assessment (P=0.011) on top of LA diameter to predict new-onset AF in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy patients with LA diameter <45 mm, which tended to increase further by addition of LA strain (P=0.126). Conclusions— LA diameter, volume, and strain all relate to new-onset AF in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy patients. In patients with normal LA size, however, both LA volume and strain further refine risk stratification for new-onset AF.
Expression and distribution of dendritic cells in nasal polyps

The aim of the present study was to investigate the expression, distribution and function of dendritic cells (DCs) and to study their role in nasal polyps. The study involved 55 participants, 45 of whom had nasal polyps and were the study group and 10 who had normal inferior turbinates and were the control group. Immunohistochemical staining was used to visualize the expression and distribution of the S-100 protein. A double immunostaining method was used to visualize the CD1a and CD40 expression and the images were analyzed with Axioplan 2 microscopy. The expression level of the S-100 protein in the nasal polyps was higher than that in the normal inferior turbinates with a significant difference (P<0.01). The distribution area, number and density of the double stained cells in the nasal polyps were all greater than in the normal inferior turbinates (P<0.01). The S-100 protein and double stained cells were mainly located in the lamina propria below the mucous membrane. The present study demonstrates that DCs are involved in the pathogenesis of nasal polyps and the presence of CD40-positive DCs suggests that this was related to the reciprocal interaction between the DCs and T lymphocytes.
A Good Reason to Die: How Avatar Death and High Challenges Enable Positive Experiences

Appropriate challenges and challenge-skill balance are usually key to positive player experiences. However, some games such as the successful series Dark Souls are notorious for their excessive difficulty. Yet, there has been little empirical investigation of why players enjoy games they constantly struggle and fail with. We surveyed 95 participants right after the release of Dark Souls III about their experiences with the game, employing both open questions and different player experience measures. Players generally enjoyed challenging play sessions and mostly reported positive experiences, with achievement and learning moments strongly contributing to positive experiences. However, these factors themselves were enabled by negative events such as difficulties and avatar death. Our findings showcase that negative events bear a potential for forming positive and meaningful experiences, thus expanding previous knowledge about the role of challenge and failing in games. Moreover, the significance of hard-earned achievements extends present design conventions.
Theoretical aspects of microscale acoustofluidics

Henrik Bruus is professor of lab-chip systems and theoretical physics at the Technical University of Denmark. In this contribution, he summarizes some of the recent results within theory and simulation of microscale acoustofluidic systems that he has obtained in collaboration with his students and international colleagues. The main emphasis is on three dynamical effects induced by external ultrasound fields acting on aqueous solutions and particle suspensions: The acoustic radiation force acting on suspended micro- and nanoparticles, the acoustic streaming appearing in the fluid, and the newly discovered acoustic body force acting on inhomogeneous solutions.
Accounting for Shared Regenerators in GMPLS-Controlled Translucent Optical Networks

In translucent optical networks, the usage of sparse opto-electronic regenerators permits to overcome optical signal quality degradations. In dynamic translucent optical networks, where lightpaths are established upon request, regenerators can be effectively time shared. However, the current generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS) protocol suite does not consider how to dynamically reserve and release shared regenerators and how to distribute regenerator availability information to network nodes. In this paper, four Translucent Lightpath Dynamic Provisioning (TLDP) schemes are proposed to establish lightpaths in dynamic distributed translucent optical networks. TLDP schemes differently combine the utilization of specific open shortest path first-traffic engineering (OSPF-TE) or resource reservation protocol-traffic engineering (RSVP-TE) extensions and shared regenerator availability information. Simulation results show that TLDP scheme based on OSPF-TE extensions obtains lower lightpath setup time, but higher control plane load than TLDP schemes based on RSVP-TE extensions. Moreover, schemes based on RSVP-TE extensions or on OSPF-TE extensions obtain the same lowest blocking probability.
Design of Quasi-resonant flyback converter control IC with DCM and CCM operation

A Quasi-resonant (QR) flyback converter control IC is design and implemented. Flyback converter is applied in small to medium power rating applications mostly, due to low cost and simple circuit topology. The conventional fix frequency operated flyback converter is the most adapted power converter, but the switching losses cause lower conversion efficiency. The flyback converter can be operated in BCM and DCM by quasi-resonant control. The quasi-resonant control utilizes the resonant action between magnetize inductor of transformer and parasitic capacitor of power MOSFET to achieve valley voltage turn-on and reduce the turn on losses increasing the conversion efficiency. The switching frequency increases with reducing load, and the switching losses will cause poor efficiency. Flyback converter operated in BCM and DCM in heavy load condition will lead to higher conduction losses. To improve the conversion efficiency at light load and heavy load condition, the proposed control circuit is integrated with frequency clamp and maximum off-time limit functions.
Holding on to Normalcy and Overshadowed Needs: Family Caregiving at End of Life

Background. Caregivers in end-of-life care are at risk for health deterioration and decreased quality of life because of the many stressing factors involved in the caregiving role. Purpose. The purpose of this analysis is to come to understand the nature of occupation as experienced by family caregivers of dying patients at a residential hospice. Methods. Data from hospice residents, their family members, and the hospice staff was collected over a period of six months via participant observation, interviews, and document review. Findings. The themes “holding on to normalcy” and “overshadowed needs of caregivers” describe the complex and uncertain nature of family caregivers' occupation. Implications. Occupations of family caregivers reflected experiences of doing, being, belonging, and becoming. By looking through the lens of the caregiver, the findings of this study will help occupational therapists address the unique needs of the caregiver in end-of-life care.
Meiotic Telomere Protein Ndj1p Is Required for Meiosis-Specific Telomere Distribution, Bouquet Formation and Efficient Homologue Pairing

We have investigated the requirements for NDJ1 in meiotic telomere redistribution and clustering in synchronized cultures of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. On induction of wild-type meiosis, telomeres disperse from premeiotic aggregates over the nuclear periphery, and then cluster near the spindle pole body (bouquet arrangement) before dispersing again. In ndj1Δ meiocytes, telomeres are scattered throughout the nucleus and fail to form perinuclear meiosis-specific distribution patterns, suggesting that Ndj1p may function to tether meiotic telomeres to the nuclear periphery. Since ndj1Δ meiocytes fail to cluster their telomeres at any prophase stage, Ndj1p is the first protein shown to be required for bouquet formation in a synaptic organism. Analysis of homologue pairing by two-color fluorescence in situ hybridization with cosmid probes to regions on III, IX, and XI revealed that disruption of bouquet formation is associated with a significant delay (>2 h) of homologue pairing. An increased and persistent fraction of ndj1Δ meiocytes with Zip1p polycomplexes suggests that chromosome polarization is important for synapsis progression. Thus, our observations support the hypothesis that meiotic telomere clustering contributes to efficient homologue alignment and synaptic pairing. Under naturally occurring conditions, bouquet formation may allow for rapid sporulation and confer a selective advantage.
How good is the Shapley value-based approach to the influence maximization problem?

The Shapley value has been recently advocated as a method to choose the seed nodes for the process of information diffusion. Intuitively, since the Shapley value evaluates the average marginal contribution of a player to the coalitional game, it can be used in the network context to evaluate the marginal contribution of a node in the process of information diffusion given various groups of already 'infected' nodes. Although the above direction of research seems promising, the current liter- ature is missing a throughout assessment of its performance. The aim of this work is to provide such an assessment of the existing Shapley value-based approaches to information diffusion.
Low-Density Lipoproteins Induce Heat Shock Protein 27 Dephosphorylation, Oligomerization, and Subcellular Relocalization in Human Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells

Objective—High levels of circulating low-density lipoproteins (LDL) are a major atherosclerotic risk factor. The effects of intimal LDL on vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) phenotype and function during plaque remodeling and vascular repair are not fully understood. We have investigated whether exposure of VSMC to LDL induces changes on the proteomic profile of the heat shock protein (HSP) family–molecular chaperones involved in atherosclerosis. Methods & Results—2D electrophoresis demonstrates that LDL modifies the proteomic profile of HSP27 (HSPB1). Western blot analysis evidenced a significant HSP27 dephosphorylation after exposure of cells to native LDL (nLDL) and aggregated-LDL (agLDL) for 24 hours (P<0.05). Dephosphorylation of HSP27 was not related to changes in p38MAPK phosphorylation. Both nLDL and agLDL induced relocalization of unphosphorylated HSP27 to the tip of actin stress fibers and focal adhesion structures in VSMC. During cell adhesion, phospho-HSP27 was located at the cell surface contact region in LDL-treated cells, whereas it remained cytosolic in control cells. Immunohistochemistry studies showed that phosphorylated HSP27 is rarely found in lipid-rich areas of atherosclerotic plaques in human coronary arteries. Conclusion—Our results indicate that in VSMC, LDL modulate HSP27 phosphorylation and subcellular localization, affecting actin polymerization and cytoskeleton dynamics.
Design analysis and development of low cost underactuated Robotic hand

This paper represents the control and driving mechanism of IVLABS Robotic hand, which aims to grab different objects performing various types of grasps while retaining the resemblance of a human hand; thus it is able to function as a Prosthetic hand. Meanwhile, it is vital that such hands be highly functional, light weight, provide ease of attachment and control for people and have minimum wear and tear. But their cost generally makes them unaffordable to a larger section of people. Hence, this paper focuses on the design of hand, that is cost-effective yet imparts maximum functionality by using simple actuation and using proximity sensors on fingers; replacing generally used Electromyography (EMG) sensors for user controlled grabbing. Being these the objectives we designed the tendon-driven under-actuated fingers and 3D-printed the hand model and carried out various grabbing experiments.
Force-based stiffness estimation for robotic tasks

The performance of direct force control approaches for robotic tasks depends on the accuracy of environment model parameters. A mismatch between real and nominal environment parameters degrades the system response, being a critical problem for precise contact tasks. Adaptive control can tackle this problem based on online contact parameters estimation. In this paper, we develop an algorithm for online stiffness estimation relying on force data, only. No position information is necessary. Our algorithm - the Candidate OBserver Algorithm (COBA) - uses two observers with different candidate stiffnesses to infer the correct system stiffness. Theoretical analysis and experimental results are presented.
Sparse Regression Algorithm for Activity Estimation in $\gamma$ Spectrometry

We consider the counting rate estimation of an unknown radioactive source, which emits photons at times modeled by an homogeneous Poisson process. A spectrometer converts the energy of incoming photons into electrical pulses, whose number provides a rough estimate of the intensity of the Poisson process. When the activity of the source is high, a physical phenomenon known as pileup effect distorts direct measurements, resulting in a significant bias to the standard estimators of the source activities used so far in the field. We show in this paper that the problem of counting rate estimation can be interpreted as a sparse regression problem. We suggest a post-processed, non-negative, version of the Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) to estimate the photon arrival times. The main difficulty in this problem is that no theoretical conditions can guarantee consistency in sparsity of LASSO, because the dictionary is not ideal and the signal is sampled. We therefore derive theoretical conditions and bounds which illustrate that the proposed method can none the less provide a good, close to the best attainable, estimate of the counting rate activity. The good performances of the proposed approach are studied on simulations and real datasets.
A Topological Method for Three-Dimensional Symmetry Detection in Images

Recent work in computational topology has made it possible to compute the homology of geometric objects given only a description in the form of point cloud data–a finite collection of sample points lying on or near the space being sampled. The main technique is that of persistent homology developed in [8]. Additionally, a program for the computation of persistent homology known as PLEX has been developed by the computational topology research group at Stanford. A portion of the previous applications of persistent homology to data analysis have been in the domain of image and shape processing. In [4], persistent homology techniques were used to determine that the set of highcontrast patches in natural images has the topology of a klein bottle. Other applications have focused on using persistent homology as an invariant or signature to distinguish shapes. In [5] the authors develop a hybrid method using techniques from differential geometry and persistent homology to classify shapes. In this paper, we present a new application of persistent homology to approximate symmetry detection in sets of images. The motivation for our work is the desire to identify the symmetries of a three-dimensional object given a collection of two-dimensional images (e.g. photographs) of the object under different rotations. In this situation if two images of an object under two different rotations appear the same, then it seems likely that the object has some rotational symmetry. The question then is how to extract the symmetry information encoded by a set of images of an object. To answer this question, we define the symmetrized rotation space of an object to be the set of all possible three-dimensional rotations of the object.
Effects of muscarinic stimulation on intracellular calcium in the rabbit bladder: comparison with metabolic response.

Urinary bladder emptying is mediated primarily by a co-ordinated contraction of the bladder body in response to parasympathetic stimulation and muscarinic receptor activation. In a previous study using surface spectrophotometry to monitor the nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (oxidized form)/nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (reduced form) (NADH/NAD) ratio, we demonstrated that muscarinic stimulation results in a rapid decrease in this ratio which precedes the contractile response, and that the ED50 for the NADH response is significantly lower than the ED50 for contraction. The current study was designed to correlate changes in intracellular free calcium using FURA-2 fluorescence with both the contractile and metabolic response to muscarinic stimulation. Isolated strips of urinary bladder body were monitored in vitro for changes in intracellular free calcium, NADH/NAD ratio, and contraction. Intracellular free calcium was monitored by preincubation with FURA-2 AM and continuously measuring the fluorescence with an MB2 surface spectrofluorometer using excitation wavelengths of 340 and 380 nm, and an emission wavelength of 510 nm. The NADH/NAD ratio was monitored with the MB2 surface spectrophotometer using an excitation wavelength of 366 nm and an emission wavelength of 450 nm. Contraction was monitored using an isometric force transducer connected to a Grass model D polygraph. The results can be summarized as follows: (1) Bethanechol stimulates a sharp decrease in the NADH/NAD ratio, a rapid increase in intracellular free calcium, and a slower increase in contractile force. (2) The ED50 for NADH fluorescence was significantly less than the ED50 for either contraction or calcium fluorescence which were equal to each other. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Intimate Partner Violence in Southwestern Nigeria: Are There Rural-Urban Differences?

The researchers in this study assessed the prevalence of different types and experience of intimate partner violence among 600 women aged 15 to 49 years in selected rural and urban communities in southwestern Nigeria between October and December, 2007. Lifetime prevalence of intimate partner violence was 64% in the rural and 70% in the urban areas. Controlling behavior was the most frequently reported type of intimate partner violence experienced by both groups of women, and sexual violence was reported least. More urban women reported sexual violence and controlling behaviors than rural women (16.4% versus 11.6% and 57.7% versus 42.0%, respectively). More rural women had experienced physical violence (28% versus 14%). More urban women experienced controlling behaviors, while more rural women experienced physical violence. In both locations, history of partners' involvement in physical fights was significantly associated with reporting sexual violence (rural: odds ratio [OR] = 3.9; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.2–12.3; urban: OR = 8.4; 95% CI 1.4–51.8). History of alcohol consumption by partners was significantly associated with reporting physical violence (rural: OR = 2.3; 95% CI 1.2–4.4; urban: OR = 3.2; 95% CI 1.4–7.2). However, among rural respondents, younger partners were more likely to perpetuate controlling behavior (OR = 5.1; 95% CI 1.7–15.6) and being in a relationship for ≥10 years was related to psychological and physical violence. Among urban respondents, history of partners' involvement in physical fights was associated with controlling behavior (OR = 8.2; 95% CI 1.1–65.4) and physical violence (OR = 4.5; 95% CI 1.2–17.3). These results suggest that intimate partner violence is a frequent experience in women in both communities, although the types of intimate partner violence experienced differed, and multidisciplinary strategies are required to reduce intimate partner violence.
High-intensity-focused-ultrasound (HIFU) induced homeostasis and tissue ablation

At high intensity levels, ultrasound energy focused into remote tissue targets in human body has shown to produce thermal necrosis in circumscribed regions with sub-millimeter accuracy. The non-invasive modality known as HIFU has enormous potential for thermal ablation of cancers/tumors of the human body without any adverse effects in the surrounding normal tissue. In this paper, empirical results for parametric assessment and interdependence of several exposure variables are presented for producing thermal necrosis as well as hemostasis. Multiple HIFU transducers in selective spatial configuration have been deployed using a suitably designed experiemntal harness, with and without motorized jig scanning. The pre-planning and on-line procedure for treatment and specified instrumentation is described. Custom designed 25mm aperture HIFU probes resonating at 2 MHz focused at 64 and 80 mm are used. Results have been obtained in ex-vivo animal tissue and in vitro biological phantoms for hemostasis.
Alternatives to Variable Duration HMM in Handwriting Recognition

A successful handwritten word recognition (HWR) system using a variable duration hidden Markov model (VDHMM) and the path discriminant-HMM (PD-HMM) strategy is easy to implement. The central theme of the paper is to show that if the duration statistics are computed, it could be utilized to implement a model-discriminant-HMM (MD-HMM) approach for better experimental results. The paper also describes a PD-HMM based HWR system where the duration statistics are not explicitly computed, but results are still comparable to VDHMM based HWR scheme.