Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Compressed sensing MRI using double sparsity with additional training images

The compressed sensing using dictionary learning has led to state-of-the-art results for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) reconstruction from highly under-sampled measurements. Dictionary learning had been considered time-consuming especially when the patch size or the number of training patches is large. Recently, double sparsity model and online dictionary learning algorithm were proposed to obtain dictionaries with much less computational time. In this paper, we propose an efficient MRI reconstruction method by adopting the double sparsity model with the online dictionary learning method. Besides, for better reconstruction, we use separately prepared fully-sampled MRI images to train dictionaries. We compare results of the proposed technique to traditional offline methods with and without double sparsity model. Our simulation results show that the proposed technique is approximately twice faster than the traditional methods while maintaining the same reconstruction quality. Furthermore, our technique performed even better for lower sampling rate.
Modelos de democracia liberalrepresentativa: limitaciones y promesas incumplidas

The structure of modern representative democracyis based in two liberal traditions: First, assumes thedemocracy like a counter–majority system whichobjective is to protect the rights and the equalityunder law. Second, conceives democracy like a system of pacific disputefor the power between elites and political parties, without directparticipation of people. The modern representative democracy has beenchallenged by Marxism’s struggle against inequality of classes, feminist’sstruggle against inequality of gender, and the citizen demands for politicalparticipation and equity.
Le développement social au Québec : sortir de politiques curatives pour aller vers des politiques préventives

Cet article decrit les origines et explique les dynamiques du developpement des politiques sociales preventives et des approches d’intervention collective qui se pratiquent au Quebec. Les principales formes de ces politiques varient en fonction de conditions qui les faconnent sans jamais les determiner completement. Les defis et les enjeux auxquels sont confrontes les gestionnaires et les praticiens ont un impact sur le sens meme des politiques sociales preventives.
Reduced Apoptosis of Mouse Macrophages Induced by yscW Mutant of Yersinia pestis Results from the Reduced Secretion of YopJ and Relates to Caspase‐3 Signal Pathway

The virulence of the pathogenic Yersinia species depends on a plasmid‐encoded type III secretion system (T3SS) that injects six Yersinia outer protein (Yop) effector proteins into the cytosol of macrophages, leading to disruption of host defence mechanisms. Here, we report that a T3SS structural protein YscW of Yersinia pestis contributed to the induction of apoptosis of murine macrophages. The apoptotic percentage of macrophages, from both mouse peritoneal cavity and spleen, and of RAW264.7 cell line, caused by the yscW mutant strain was significantly lower than that by wild type (WT) Y. pestis and yscW complemented strain. Meanwhile, detection of caspase‐3 activity in macrophages, a key apoptosis‐inducing protein, showed coincident results with the changes of macrophage apoptosis induced by WT, yscW mutant and complemented strains, indicating that macrophage apoptosis was related to caspase‐3 signal pathways. However, ectopic expression of YscW in RAW264.7 cells cannot increase the macrophage apoptosis and death, suggesting that YscW itself could not induce macrophage apoptosis directly. To get insight into the mechanism of this phenomenon, we investigated the secretion of YopJ, which has been thought to be the only Yop effector related to apoptosis, in WT, mutant and complemented strains, respectively. Results showed that in yscW mutant strain, secretion of YopJ was decreased significantly in the supernatant than that in WT or complemented strain. This means although YscW does not induce apoptosis directly, it can indirectly affect apoptosis through reducing the secretion of YopJ.
Immobile Random Sensor Networks for Surveillance and Rescue

Networks consisting of millions of cheap sensors can be used to watch over areas for intruders, fires and similar threats. In the work presented here, we have used computer simulations to study some possibilities of using random networks. The relative position of the sensors can only be determined by the sensors through contact with nearby sensors. In this study, we performed simulations on very large networks with a variety of homogeneous and inhomogeneous sensor distributions, to determine whether the number of communication steps between non-neighboring sensors can be used to estimate geometric distance between them. Our results indicate that this requires a relatively large sensor density. Also, inhomogeneities in communication range provide a problem. But sensor density need not be constant across the network, as long as the minimum (local) density is sufficient. After correction for the average density, accurate distance estimates were obtained.
Occupational Asthma: Etiologies and Risk Factors

The purpose of this article is to critically review the available evidence pertaining to occupational, environmental, and individual factors that can affect the development of occupational asthma (OA). Increasing evidence suggests that exploration of the intrinsic characteristics of OA-causing agents and associated structure-activity relationships offers promising avenues for quantifying the sensitizing potential of agents that are introduced in the workplace. The intensity of exposure to sensitizing agents has been identified as the most important environmental risk factor for OA and should remain the cornerstone for primary prevention strategies. The role of other environmental co-factors (e.g., non-respiratory routes of exposure and concomitant exposure to cigarette smoke and other pollutants) remains to be further delineated. There is convincing evidence that atopy is an important individual risk factor for OA induced by high-molecular-weight agents. There is some evidence that genetic factors, such as leukocyte antigen class II alleles, are associated with an increased risk of OA; however, the role of genetic susceptibility factors is likely to be obscured by complex gene-environment interactions. OA, as well as asthma in general, is a complex disease that results from multiple interactions between environmental factors and host susceptibilities. Determining these interactions is a crucial step towards implementing optimal prevention policies.
Phosphorylation site-specific inhibition of platelet-derived growth factor beta-receptor autophosphorylation by the receptor blocking tyrphostin AG1296.

The mechanism of action of AG1296, a potent and specific inhibitor of the platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) receptor tyrosine kinase [Kovalenko, M. , Gazit, A. , Böhmer, A. , Rorsman, Ch., Rönnstrand, L. , Heldin, C. -H. , Waltenberger, J., Böhmer, F. D. , & Levitzki, A. (1994) Cancer Res. 54, 6106-6114] was investigated. This quinoxalin-type tyrphostin neither interferes with PDGF-BB binding to the PDGF beta-receptor nor has any effect on receptor dimerization. Kinetic analysis of the inhibition was carried out using a synthetic peptide substrate (KY751) corresponding to the sequence around tyrosine 751 autophosphorylation site of the PDGF receptor. It revealed purely competitive inhibition vis-à-vis ATP, mixed competitive inhibition vis-a-vis the peptide substrate for the non-activated receptor, and mixed competitive inhibition vis-à-vis both substrates for the activated receptor. Thus, the type of inhibition apparently changes upon receptor activation, indicating conformational changes at the ATP-binding site. The high degree of selectivity for the tyrphostin AG1296 might result from the complex type of interaction with the active center of the receptor as revealed by the kinetic analysis. Dose-response curves for inhibition of the phosphorylation of individual autophosphorylation sites of the PDGF beta-receptor by AG1296 were different, phosphorylation of tyrosine 857 being the most susceptible to inhibition. Thus, phosphorylation of tyrosine 857 in the PDGF receptor kinase domain seems dispensable for partial kinase activation. The findings are discussed in relation to current models of receptor tyrosine kinase activation.
Association between pulse pressure and mortality in patients undergoing maintenance hemodialysis.

CONTEXT Although increased blood pressure is associated with adverse outcomes in the general population, elevated blood pressure is associated with decreased mortality in patients with end-stage renal disease undergoing maintenance hemodialysis. Recent investigations in the general population have demonstrated the predictive utility of pulse pressure (systolic minus diastolic blood pressure), a measure reflecting the pulsatile nature of the cardiac cycle. OBJECTIVES To estimate the relationship between pulse pressure and mortality in patients undergoing maintenance hemodialysis and to test our hypothesis that an increasing pulse pressure would be associated with increased risk of death up to 1 year despite the inverse relationship between conventional blood pressure measures and mortality in patients with end-stage renal disease. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS Retrospective cohort investigation of patients with end-stage renal disease undergoing maintenance hemodialysis at 782 hemodialysis facilities throughout the United States. Of 44 069 eligible patients as of January 1, 1998, 37 069 with complete demographic data were included in the analyses of clinical and laboratory data collected from October 1 through December 31, 1997. Patients were followed up through December 31, 1998. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The primary study outcome was death at 1 year. A secondary outcome was the magnitude of the pulse pressure. RESULTS The final patient cohort was similar to national averages with respect to age, sex, race, and diabetic status. Mean (SD) pulse pressures before dialysis were 75.0 (15.0) mm Hg and 66.9 (13.9) mm Hg after dialysis. By the end of the 1-year follow-up, 5731 patients (18.4%) died. After adjusting for level of systolic blood pressure, multivariable Cox proportional hazards modeling showed a direct and consistent relationship between increasing pulse pressure and increasing death risk. Each incremental elevation of 10 mm Hg in postdialysis pulse pressure was associated with a 12% increase in the hazard for death (hazard ratio, 1.12; 95% confidence interval, 1.06-1.18). Postdialysis systolic blood pressure was inversely related to mortality with a 13% decreased hazard for death for each incremental elevation of 10 mm Hg (hazard ratio, 0.87; 95% confidence interval, 0.84-0.90). In a multivariable linear regression model, important variables directly associated with elevated pulse pressure included age, diabetes, white race, female sex, and number of years receiving dialysis (all P<.001). CONCLUSIONS Pulse pressure is associated with risk of death in a large, nationally representative sample of patients undergoing maintenance hemodialysis. The recognition of pulse pressure as an important correlate of mortality in patients receiving dialysis highlights the need to investigate the relationship between potential therapeutic implications of conduit vessel function and clinical outcomes in patients with end-stage renal disease.
BPTree: An ℓ2 Heavy Hitters Algorithm Using Constant Memory

The task of finding heavy hitters is one of the best known and well studied problems in the area of data streams. One is given a list i1,i2,. ,im∈[n] and the goal is to identify the items among [n] that appear frequently in the list. In sub-polynomial space, the strongest guarantee available is the l2 guarantee, which requires finding all items that occur at least ε||ƒ||2 times in the stream, where the vector ƒ∈Rn is the count histogram of the stream with ith coordinate equal to the number of times i appears ƒi:=#{jε[m]:ij=i. The first algorithm to achieve the l2 guarantee was the CountSketch of [11], which requires O(ε-2log n) words of memory and O(log n) update time and is known to be space-optimal if the stream allows for deletions. The recent work of [7] gave an improved algorithm for insertion-only streams, using only O(ε-2logε-1log log n) words of memory. In this work, we give an algorithm BPTree for l2 heavy hitters in insertion-only streams that achieves O(ε-2logε-1) words of memory and O(logε-1) update time, which is the optimal dependence on n and m. In addition, we describe an algorithm for tracking ||ƒ||2 at all times with O(ε-2) memory and update time. Our analyses rely on bounding the expected supremum of a Bernoulli process involving Rademachers with limited independence, which we accomplish via a Dudley-like chaining argument that may have applications elsewhere.
Congenital stationary night blindness with negative electroretinogram. A new classification.

• An analysis of 64 patients with congenital stationary night blindness showed that all had essentially normal fundi. Electroretinography (ERG) showed a normal a wave with extremely reduced b wave (negative type) when recorded with a single bright white stimulus in the dark. We classified these patients into two groups based on the evaluation of rod ERG and/ or psychophysical dark adaptation measured with an 11° test target at 15° in the upper part of the retina. One group (35 patients) lacked rod function (complete type) and the other group (20 patients) showed some rod function (incomplete type). Nine patients could not be classified. No pedigree showed a complete and incomplete type in one family. Differences between the two groups in refractive error, photopic function, and oscillatory potentials in the ERG suggest a different pathogenesis. Our analysis may provide a new classification of congenital stationary night blindness with a negative ERG.
Finger Vein Recognition by Combining Global and Local Features based on SVM

Recently, biometrics such as fingerprints, faces and irises recognition have been widely used in many applications including door access control, personal authentication for computers, internet banking, automatic teller machines and border-crossing controls. Finger vein recognition uses the unique patterns of finger veins to identify individuals at a high level of accuracy. This paper proposes new algorithms for finger vein recognition. This research presents the following three advantages and contributions compared to previous works. First, we extracted local information of the finger veins based on a LBP (Local Binary Pattern) without segmenting accurate finger vein regions. Second, the global information of the finger veins based on Wavelet transform was extracted. Third, two score values by the LBP and Wavelet transform were combined by the SVM (Support Vector Machine). As experimental results, the EER (Equal Error Rate) was 0.011 % and the total processing time was 98.2ms.
Experimental study on stability of a high-porosity expanded polytetrafluoroethylene graft in dogs.

PURPOSE The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the stability of a high-porosity expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE) graft, which has been shown to possess excellent biocompatibility and tissue integration. METHODS The graft used in the present study was a high-porosity ePTFE graft , which had an average internodal distance of approximately 60 microm and a random node architecture with tortuous path channels extending from the outer to the inner surface. Eleven beagle dogs (each group n = 3 or 4) weighing 10-12 kg were used. The graft, with a 6 mm inside diameter and a 30-40 mm length, was implanted into the canine abdominal aorta and retrieved after 2-80 weeks. The deformation of the graft was evaluated by conventional computed tomography (CT). The radial tensile strength, longitudinal tensile strength, and suture retention strength of the graft were measured after 2-80 weeks. RESULTS CT studies showed no anastomotic aneurysm or deformation of the graft. Physical tests demonstrated no significant deterioration in suture retention strength, radial tensile strength or longitudinal tensile strength for periods ranging from 2-80 weeks compared to pre-implantation grafts. CONCLUSION The graft possesses adequate stability that ensures safe and effective clinical use.
The Role of Coconut and Coconut Oil in Coronary Heart Disease in Kerala, South India

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is common in India and, recently, an increase in the incidence of CHD was reported from the South Indian state of Kerala. The traditional Indian diet is low in fat content. The high incidence of CHD in Indians is, therefore, in contrast to western studies that have correlated high fat, saturated fat and cholesterol intake to CHD. Consumption of coconut and coconut oil that contain high amounts of saturated fat and are thought to be strongly atherogenic, are believed to be one of the main reasons for the high incidence of CHD in Kerala. To explore this presumed link, we studied 32 CHD patients and 16 age and sex matched healthy controls. Consumption of coconut and coconut oil was found to be similar in both groups. The groups did not differ in the fat, saturated fat and cholesterol consumption. The results imply no specific role for coconut or coconut oil in the causation of CHD in the present set of Indian patients from Kerala. The exact reason for the high and increasing incidence of CHD among Indians is still unknown.
Secured energy harvesting networks with multiple power-constrained information sources

The transfer of energy via radio frequency (RF) is the new solution for prolonging the lifetime of wireless networks. This paper investigates the secrecy performance of RF energy harvesting system that consists of one power transfer station, multiple power-constrained information sources and one destination in the presence of one eavesdropper over Rayleigh fading channels. To do so, the exact closed-form expressions of existence probability of secrecy capacity and secrecy outage probability are derived by using statistical characteristics of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The numerical results show a quite agreement between numerical analysis and equivalent Monte-Carlo simulations.
Object Detection with Geometrical Context Feedback Loop

We propose a new coherent framework for joint object detection, 3D layout estimation, and object supporting region segmentation from a single image. Our approach is based on the mutual interactions among three novel modules: i) object detector; ii) scene 3D layout estimator; iii) object supporting region segmenter. The interactions between such modules capture the contextual geometrical relationship between objects, the physical space including these objects, and the observer. An important property of our algorithm is that the object detector module is capable of adaptively changing its confidence in establishing whether a certain region of interest contains an object (or not) as new evidence is gathered about the scene layout. This enables an iterative estimation procedure where the detector becomes more and more accurate as additional evidence about a specific scene becomes available. Extensive quantitative and qualitative experiments are conducted on a new in-house dataset [27] and two publicly available datasets [17, 25], and demonstrate competitive object detection, 3D layout estimation, and object supporting region segmentation results.
When Play Presents Problems--Resources for Managing Common Play Challenges.

It’s easy for play to feel challenging or even threatening to kids in our classrooms. The very nature of play, and why it is so important for healthy child development, makes it a complex physical, cognitive, and social process that is experienced by each child in a highly personal and individual way. Consider the classic criteria offered by Rubin, Fein, and Vandenberg (1983) to describe play activities:
Child Care Subsidy Use and Child Development: Potential Causal Mechanisms.

REFERENCES 1. Griffen, A.S, Hawkinson, L.H. , Maynard, R.A. , & Dong, N. (2010). Child care quality and child outcomes: An exploratory threshold analysis plus a causal validation using propensity score matching method. Paper presented by Andrew Griffen and Laura Hawkinson at the 2010 Fall Research Conference of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, Boston, MA. 2. Hawkinson, L.H. , Griffen, A.S. , Maynard, R.A. , & Dong, N. (manuscript in preparation for publication). Child care subsidies and children’s cognitive development. 3. Herbst, C.M. , & Tekin, E. (2010). Child care subsidies and child development. Economics of Education Review, 29, 618-38. 4. Chase-Lansdale, P.L. , & Pittman, L.D. (2002). Welfare Reform and Parenting: Reasonable Expectations. The Future of Children, 12(1), 167-185. 5. Bradley, R.H. , Corwyn, R.F. , Burchinal, M. , McAdoo, H.P., & Coll, C.G. (2001). The home environments of children in the United States, Part II: Relations with behavioral development through age thirteen. Child Development, 72, 1868-86. ; Brooks-Gunn, J., Klebanov, P.K. , & Liaw, F. (1995). The learning, physical, and emotional environment of the home in the context of poverty: The Infant Health and Development Program. Children and Youth Services Review, 17, 251-76. ; Lugo-Gil, J., & Tamis-Lemonda, C.T. (2008). Family resources and parenting quality: Links to children’s cognitive development across the first 3 years. Child Development, 27, 1065-85. 6. Najarian, M. , Snow, K. , Lennon, J., & Kinsey, S. (2010). Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth cohort (ECLS-B), preschool–kindergarten 2007 psychometric report (NCES 2010-009). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Further investigation of potential mediators: Parenting behaviors and home environment Child care utilization, characteristics, and quality Modeling theoretical model in SEM framework The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305B090015 to the University of Pennsylvania. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the U.S. Department of Education.
A Trend Analysis of the Prevalence, Awareness, Treatment, and Control of Hypertension by Age Group

Objectives We examined the trends in prevalence, awareness, treatment, and control of hypertension in Korea as a basis for improving hypertension control programs. Methods 12 598 participants of the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey were included in this study. Weighted linear regression to test time trends from 2007 to 2011 was performed. Results The prevalence of hypertension was 20.7% in 2007, 29.4% in 2009, and 26.2% in 2011. Awareness of hypertension was 64.8% in 2007 and 61.1% in 2011. Awareness in those aged 65 and over was greater than in younger groups (age 19 to 44 and 45 to 64; p<0.001). The treatment rates were 58.4% in 2007 and 56.8% in 2011. The treatment rate was greater for those 65 and over than for younger age groups (p<0.001). The percentage of controlled hypertension was 37.6% in 2011. The percentage of controlled hypertension in those 65 and over was higher than in younger age groups (p<0.001). The treatment-control rates were 65.9% in 2007 and 67.7% in 2011. The prevalence of hypertension was higher in the males (p<0.001), while the awareness (p<0.001), treatment (p<0.001), and control (p<0.001) rates were higher in the females. Conclusions The prevalence of hypertension was increasing and the hypertension awareness, treatment, and control rates were low in younger age groups and males.