Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Estimating effectiveness of cardiac arrest interventions: a logistic regression survival model.

BACKGROUND The study objective was to develop a simple, generalizable predictive model for survival after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest due to ventricular fibrillation. METHODS AND RESULTS Logistic regression analysis of two retrospective series (n=205 and n=1667, respectively) of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests was performed on data sets from a Southwestern city (population, 415,000; area, 406 km2) and a Northwestern county (population, 1,038,000; area, 1399 km2). Both are served by similar two-tiered emergency response systems. All arrests were witnessed and occurred before the arrival of emergency responders, and the initial cardiac rhythm observed was ventricular fibrillation. The main outcome measure was survival to hospital discharge. Patient age, initiation of CPR by bystanders, interval from collapse to CPR, interval from collapse to defibrillation, bystander CPR/collapse-to-CPR interval interaction, and collapse-to-CPR/collapse-to-defibrillation interval interaction were significantly associated with survival. There was not a significant difference between observed survival rates at the two sites after control for significant predictors. A simplified predictive model retaining only collapse to CPR and collapse to defibrillation intervals performed comparably to the more complicated explanatory model. CONCLUSIONS The effectiveness of prehospital interventions for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest may be estimated from their influence on collapse to CPR and collapse to defibrillation intervals. A model derived from combined data from two geographically distinct populations did not identify site as a predictor of survival if clinically relevant predictor variables were controlled for. This model can be generalized to other US populations and used to project the local effectiveness of interventions to improve cardiac arrest survival.
Clinical Effects of Calcium Channel Blocker and Angiotensin Converting Enzyme Inhibitor on Endothelial Function and Arterial Stiffness in Patients with Angina Pectoris

To evaluate the effects of calcium channel blocker (CCB) and angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor (ACEI) on endothelial function and arterial stiffness in stable angina pectoris (SAP), 87 patients with SAP (57.6±10.0 yr, 52 males) were divided into two groups; CCB group (group I: n=44, 57.9±9.7 yr, 23 males) vs. CCB plus ACEI group (group II: n=43, 57.2±10.5 yr, 29 males). Flow mediated vasodilation (FMD) of the brachial artery, pulse wave velocity (PWV), urinary albumin excretion (UAE), and high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) were compared. FMD, PWV, UAE, and hsCRP were not different between the groups at baseline. After 6 months of treatment, FMD were significantly improved in group II (7.5±3.7 to 8.8±2.7%, p<0.001), but not in group I (7.9±2.7 to 8.2±2.8%, p=0.535). Brachial-ankle PWV were significantly improved in both groups (1,621.3±279.4 to 1,512.1±225.0 cm/sec in group I, p<0.001, 1,586.8±278.5 to 1,434.5±200.5 cm/sec in group II, p<0.001). However, heart-femoral PWV were significantly improved (1,025.7±145.1 to 946.2±112.2 cm/sec, p<0.001) and UAE were significantly decreased (20.19±29.92 to 13.03±16.42 mg/g Cr, p=0.019) in group II only. In conclusion, combination therapy with CCB and ACEI improves endothelial function, arterial stiffness, and UAE than CCB mono-therapy more effectively in patients with SAP.
Self-initiated object-location memory in young and older adults

ABSTRACT The present study explored self-initiated object-location memory in ecological contexts, as aspect of memory that is largely absent from the research literature. Young and older adults memorized objects-location associations they selected themselves or object-location associations provided to them, and elaborated on the strategy they used when selecting the locations themselves. Retrieval took place 30 min and 1 month after encoding. The results showed an age-related decline in self-initiated and provided object-location memory. Older adults benefited from self-initiation more than young adults when tested after 30 min, while the benefit was equal when tested after 1 month. Furthermore, elaboration enhanced memory only in older adults, and only after 30 min. Both age groups used deep encoding strategies on the majority of the trials, but their percentage was lower in older adults. Overall, the study demonstrated the processes involved in self-initiated object-location memory, which is an essential part of everyday functioning.
Prevalence of Self-reported Allergic and Non-allergic Rhinitis Symptoms in Stockholm: Relation to Age, Gender, Olfactory Sense and Smoking

Objective--To estimate the prevalence of isolated self-reported allergic and non-allergic rhinitis symptoms in an adult population and to explore the relations to age, gender, olfaction and smoking habits. Material and methods--Self-judged health and environmental exposures were investigated by means of a questionnaire survey administered to a stratified random sample of 15,000 adults in Stockholm County. Results--A total of 10,670 individuals were included in the analysis, corresponding to a response rate of 73%. The results revealed a high prevalence of self-reported non-allergic rhinitis, 19%, almost as high as the prevalence of self-reported allergic rhinoconjunctivitis, 24%. In contrast to current clinical opinion, we did not find a significant increase in the prevalence of non-allergic symptoms with increased age. There were no statistically significant gender differences in the prevalence of either allergic or non-allergic symptoms. A reduced sense of smell was twice as common in the non-allergic group, 23%, as in the healthy population. The prevalence of rhinitis symptoms differed according to smoking habits. Conclusion--Both self-reported allergic rhinitis symptoms and non-allergic nasal symptoms are frequent in the population sample. Self-reported non-allergic nasal symptoms seem to occur independent of age and reduced olfactory sense is a common complaint among these subjects. The prevalence of self-reported allergic and non-allergic nasal symptoms did not differ much between men and women or between individuals with different smoking habits.
Pneumonic Tularemia on Martha's Vineyard

Abstract: Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, is the site of the only two recognized outbreaks of primary pneumonic tularemia in the United States. Beginning in 2000 and continuing through 2006, 59 presumed or confirmed tularemia cases have been reported from Martha's Vineyard, with more than 60% of these presumed to be due to inhalation of the agent. A joint CDC/Massachusetts Department of Public Health case–control study identified landscaping activities such as lawnmowing or brush cutting to be important risk factors. The fomites that serve as the basis for risk for landscapers, however, remain unidentified. Clinically, cases generally have a pneumonic component, but the development of pulmonary signs can be greatly delayed. The spectrum of illness ranges from relatively mild disease, in which cases may be treated on an outpatient basis, to severe illness requiring hospitalization. In each scenario, gentamicin therapy tends to rapidly induce defervescence, although exceptions have been noted. Even with heightened awareness during the current outbreak, physicians may easily miss a diagnosis of tularemia, usually by attributing illness to the more common Febrile illnesses. Dog ticks appear to maintain the agent on this island, with as many as 5% infected by the agent of tularemia. The main hosts for dog ticks, skunks and raccoons, are very frequently seroreactive, suggesting the possibility for their involvement in environmental contamination due to their peridomestic habits. Why tularemia is prevalent on Martha's Vineyard and why it commonly presents as a pneumonic disease there remain undescribed.
Course of Carotid Artery Occlusions With Impaired Cerebrovascular Reactivity

Retrospective studies have found a close correlation between an impaired cerebrovascular reserve capacity and the incidence of hemodynamic stroke. The present study evaluates this relation prospectively. Methods We measured the CO2 reactivity in 85 patients with internal carotid artery occlusions by transcranial Doppler sonography (Doppler CO2 test). All patients were prospectively followed for 38±15 (mean±SD) months. Results In the group with sufficient CO2 reactivity, four of 48 (8%) developed ipsilateral transient symptoms, none a stroke. In cases with diminished or exhausted cerebrovascular reserve capacity, 12 of 37 (32%) suffered an ipsilateral event (four transient ischemic attacks, eight strokes) (p<0.01). Conclusions The Doppler CO2 test seems to be a valuable method of estimating the risk of stroke in patients with carotid artery occlusions.
Myeloid‐derived suppressor cell heterogeneity in human cancers

The dynamic interplay between cancer and host immune system often affects the process of myelopoiesis. As a consequence, tumor‐derived factors sustain the accumulation and functional differentiation of myeloid cells, including myeloid‐derived suppressor cells (MDSCs), which can interfere with T cell–mediated responses. Since both the phenotype and mechanisms of action of MDSCs appear to be tumor‐dependent, it is important not only to determine the presence of all MDSC subsets in each cancer patient, but also which MDSC subsets have clinical relevance in each tumor environment. In this review, we describe the differences between MDSC populations expanded within different tumor contexts and evaluate the prognostic significance of MDSC expansion in peripheral blood and within tumor masses of neoplastic patients.
Learning on a budget: posted price mechanisms for online procurement

We study online procurement markets where agents arrive in a sequential order and a mechanism must make an irrevocable decision whether or not to procure the service as the agent arrives. Our mechanisms are subject to a budget constraint and are designed for stochastic settings in which the bidders are either identically distributed or, more generally, permuted in random order. Thus, the problems we study contribute to the literature on budget-feasible mechanisms as well as the literature on secretary problems and online learning in auctions. Our main positive results are as follows. We present a constant-competitive posted price mechanism when agents are identically distributed and the buyer has a symmetric submodular utility function. For nonsymmetric submodular utilities, under the random ordering assumption we give a posted price mechanism that is O(log n)-competitive and a truthful mechanism that is O(1)-competitive but uses bidding rather than posted pricing.
Low temperature sinter technology die attachment for power electronic applications

New fields of high power inverter systems such like windmills, hybrid cars, hybrid trucks, and off road vehicles require new ways of power electronics integration and packaging. The requirements in size, weight, reliability, durability, ambient temperature, and environment are driving the operation temperatures of power electronics beyond the limits of today's industrial applications. In industrial power modules solder and bond wires are still the standard joining technologies of power dies. These technologies are reaching their reliability limits if die temperatures are pushed above 135°C. In this paper the authors will discuss how the environmental conditions of applications drive silicon power device selection and packaging technologies. Extreme cooling conditions and ultra high power densities require a package design that needs to work on the thermal and electrical limits of the components without making any compromise in reliability and durability. The low temperature sinter technology can extend the power and thermal cycling capabilities of modern power modules to the values that are required for industrial and automotive applications. Next to the reliability data also a proposal for a high volume manufacturing process of the low temperature sinter technology of multi chip modules will be presented.
Determinants of quality of life in Brazilian patients with myasthenia gravis

OBJECTIVES: The aims of the current study were 1) to evaluate the reliability and validity of the Brazilian version of the 15-item Myasthenia Gravis Quality of Life Scale and 2) to investigate the quality of life of Brazilian patients with myasthenia gravis and its determinants. METHODS: This cross-sectional study included 69 patients with myasthenia gravis who underwent neurological evaluation and completed questionnaires regarding quality of life (the 36-item Short Form of the Medical Outcomes Study and the 15-item Myasthenia Gravis Quality of Life Scale), anxiety and depressive symptoms. RESULTS: The Brazilian version of the 15-item Myasthenia Gravis Quality of Life Scale showed high internal consistency and good concurrent validity with the 36-item Short Form of the Medical Outcomes Study and its subscales. Determinants of quality of life in Brazilian patients with myasthenia gravis included the current status of myasthenia gravis as assessed by the Myasthenia Gravis Composite, the current prednisone dose and the levels of anxiety and depression. CONCLUSION: The Brazilian version of the 15-item Myasthenia Gravis Quality of Life Scale is a valid instrument. Symptom severity, prednisone dosage and anxiety and depression levels impact the quality of life of patients with myasthenia gravis.
Up‐regulation of microRNA‐491‐5p suppresses cell proliferation and promotes apoptosis by targeting FOXP4 in human osteosarcoma

MicroRNAs are small non‐coding RNAs involved in pathogenesis and progression of human malignancies. MicroRNA‐491‐5p (miR‐491‐5p) is down‐regulated in many human cancers where it would serve as a tumour suppressor. However, the role played by miR‐491‐5p in pathogenesis of human osteosarcoma has remained largely unknown. This study has been conducted to examine effects of miR‐491‐5p on migration and proliferation of cells of the SAOS‐2 and MG63 osteosarcoma lines, and mechanisms of those effects.
The changing relation between mortality and level of economic development.

The influence of economic conditions on mortality has been recognized at least since biblical times. Empiricism of the most casual sort was sufficient to establish the link between food supply and mortality. Other components of living standards such as shelter and living space awaited a revolution in scientific method before their influence was finally acknowledged. But recent years have witnessed a movement away from economic determinism in mortality analysis. It is widely believed that mortality has become increasingly dissociated from economic level because of a diffusion of medical and health technologies facilities and personnel that occurred in large part independently of economic level yet this position has its critics who have gained a sympathetic audience! This paper utilizes readily available evidence in a new but obvious way to estimate the relative contribution of economic factors to increases in life expectancy during the twentieth century. The evidence consists of cross-sectional relationships between national life expectancies and national income per head evaluated during three different decades of the twentieth century. These relationships are further used to assess the realism of certain economic-demographic models and to re-examine what have become classical distinctions regarding sources of mortality declines in Western and non-Western areas. (excerpt)
Simultaneous monitoring of transcutaneous blood gases and heart‐rate variability in neonates

Instantaneous heart rate, indices of long-term and short-term heart-rate variability (HRV), and transcutaneous O2 (PtcO2) and CO2 (PtcCO2) tensions were recorded simultaneously on 164 occasions in 16 neonates. There was significant inverse correlation between PtcCO2 and both HRV indices, while no linear correlation was detected between HRV and PtcO2. The heart rate was positively related to PtcO2 and inversely correlated with PO2. It is suggested that increasing PCO2 decreases medullary pH, thus increasing heart rate and decreasing HRV. We conclude that each of these monitoring variables is unique: the transcutaneous measurements display the efficiency of respiration, whereas the heart-rate patterns reflect the dynamic condition of the autonomic nervous system.
Abductive understanding of dialogues about joint activities

This paper examines the task of understanding dialogues in terms of the mental states of the participating agents. We present a motivating example that clarifies the challenges this problem involves and then outline a theory of dialogue interpretation based on abductive inference of these unobserved beliefs and goals, incremental construction of explanations, and reliance on domain-independent knowledge. After this, we describe UMBRA, an implementation of the theory that embodies these assumptions. We report experiments with the system that demonstrate its ability to accurately infer the conversants’ mental states even when some speech acts are unavailable. We conclude by reviewing related research on dialogue and discussing avenues for future study.
Multi-functional autopilot design and experiments for rotorcraft-based unmanned aerial vehicles

In this paper, we present a hierarchical guidance and control system designed for rotorcraft-based unmanned aerial vehicles (RUAVs) for cooperative multi-agent scenarios. The issues of a multi-agent system is resolved with a distributed hierarchical structure, which gradually transforms abstract mission commands into realtime control signals for multiple numbers of agents. The cooperative operations of multiple agents are realized by the centralized strategic planner, which interacts with other agents through a high-bandwidth wireless communication system. The proposed design is implemented on a Berkeley UAV, Ursa Magna 2, and four other unmanned ground vehicles and validated thoroughly in a variety of tests from way-point navigation to pursuit-evasion games.
Replaying the Evolutionary Tape: Biomimetic Reverse Engineering of Gene Networks

In this paper, we suggest a new approach for reverse engineering gene regulatory networks, which consists of using a reconstruction process that is similar to the evolutionary process that created these networks. The aim is to integrate prior knowledge into the reverse‐engineering procedure, thus biasing the search toward biologically plausible solutions. To this end, we propose an evolutionary method that abstracts and mimics the natural evolution of gene regulatory networks. Our method can be used with a wide range of nonlinear dynamical models. This allows us to explore novel model types such as the log‐sigmoid model introduced here. We apply the biomimetic method to a gold‐standard dataset from an in vivo gene network. The obtained results won a reverse engineering competition of the second DREAM conference (Dialogue on Reverse Engineering Assessments and Methods 2007, New York, NY).
Efficient Dynamic Updates of Distributed Components Through Version Consistency

Modern component-based distributed software systems are increasingly required to offer non-stop service and thus their updates must be carried out at runtime. Different authors have already proposed solutions for the safe management of dynamic updates. Our contribution aims at improving their efficiency without compromising safety. We propose a new criterion, called version consistency, which defines when a dynamic update can be safely and efficiently applied to the components that execute distributed transactions. Version consistency ensures that distributed transactions be served as if they were operated on a single coherent version of the system despite possible concurrent updates. The paper presents a distributed algorithm for checking version consistency efficiently, formalizes the proposed approach by means of a graph transformation system, and verifies its correctness through model checking. The paper also presents ConUp, a novel prototype framework that supports the approach and offers a viable, concrete solution for the use of version consistency. Both the approach and ConUp are evaluated on a significant third-party application. Obtained results witness the benefits of the proposed solution with respect to both timeliness and disruption.
Real-Time Seismic Event Detection Using Voice Activity Detection Techniques

Seismic event detection is a key element for volcano monitoring systems. Real-time event detection is required by early warning monitoring systems in order to minimize the possible impact of natural disasters of geophysical nature. In this paper, we propose to implement a real-time long period (LP) and a volcano-tectonic (VT) event detector based on voice activity detection algorithms. The main advantage of such detector is that it can also locate the endpoints of the seismic event. In order to determine the efficiency of the proposed detector, a database containing 436 seismic events (LP and VT) acquired from the Cotopaxi volcano in Ecuador was used for testing. Main performance parameters such as accuracy (A), precision, sensitivity or recall, specificity, and the balanced error rate (BER) were then calculated, finally the processing time required by the algorithm was also considered. The results obtained suggest comparable performance when compared to previously developed event detection algorithms for the same dataset but with much less computational complexity, achieving an A of 95.2% and a BER of 0.005. With further refinements the algorithm may provide a useful tool for real-time volcanic research.
A Fingertip Gestural User Interface Without Depth Data for Mixed Reality Applications

Hand gestures are widely used in Human-Computer and Human Robotic Interfaces. Head mounted devices use gestures to communicate as evident on HoloLens, Meta, and ARCore/ARKit platform enabled smartphones. However, these devices are expensive mainly due to onboard powerful processors and sensors such as multiple cameras, depth and IR sensors that process hand gestures. To enable mass market reach via inexpensive MR headsets without built-in depth or IR sensors, we propose a real-time, in-air gestural framework that works on monocular RGB input alone. We use fingertip for writing in air analogous to a pen on paper. The major challenge in training egocentric gesture recognition models is in obtaining sufficient labeled data for end-to-end learning. Thus, we design a cascade of networks, consisting of a CNN with differentiable spatial to numerical transform (DSNT) layer, for fingertip regression, followed by a Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (Bi-LSTM), for a real-time pointing hand gesture classification. The framework takes 1.73s to run end-to-end and has a low memory footprint of 14MB facilitating easy portability on a smart-phone while achieving an accuracy of 88.0% on egocentric video dataset.
Teaching some issues of problem solving and decision making in the social science

Decision is universal phenomenon that accomplishes life of individuals, groups as well as institutions and organizations. Eash of us have to make decisions during whole period of our life. We make ordinary, prosaic decisions like what to eat for dinner or very important or strategic decisions about choice of our professional career or decisions which have global implications. Decision Making (DM) is a sense of personal, family, economic, political and social life. Maybe that is why DM is a subject complicated and hard for analysis. It is problem which concerns represents of numerous and different branch of science and humanity, i.e. economists, political scientists, sociologists etc.