Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of patient characteristics on the yield of prolonged baseline head-up tilt testing and the additional yield of drug provocation.

OBJECTIVE: To define the value of tilt testing and hte additional yield of drug provocation over prolonged baseline tilt in different patient subgroups. (Many different protocols are in use for head-up tilt testing in heterogeneous groups of patients. Not all patients in reported series have recurrent syncope, and there is often a wide age range and a variable incidence of structural heart disease.) DESIGN: In a prospective study, baseline 60 degrees head-up tilt testing was undertaken for 45 minutes, initially without drug provocation. Patients who remained symptom free were given intravenous isoprenaline (isoproterenol) and further tilting or edrophonium (10 mg bolus) during tilt, in an order determined randomly before the start of the test. If they were symptom free after the first drug, they were given the other drug. A positive test was recorded when syncope or pre-syncope occurred with a rapid fall (> 30%) in blood pressure. The impact on tilt result of the type of symptoms, presence of significant structural heart disease (SHD), presence of a non-cardiovascular cause of sudden diminished consciousness (SDC), and age was then assessed by subgroup analysis. PATIENTS: 145 patients (73 female, mean age 51 (25), range 8-94) with one or more episodes of pre-syncope or syncope. RESULTS: 39 patients (27%, 21 female, age 49 (25) years) had positive tests and 106 (73%, 52 female, age 52 (25) years) negative tests. 27 (69%) had a positive test during baseline tilt at 20.5 (10.8) minutes, five (13%) with isoprenaline infusion, and seven (18%) with edrophonium bolus. Patients with recurrent syncope rather than single syncopal episodes or single or recurrent pre-syncope were more likely to have a positive tilt test (41% v 17%, P < 0.005) and patients with SHD or SDC (69/14 patients) were much less likely than patients without (16% v 42%, P < 0.0001). The yield of positive tests was similar if patients were below (26%) or above (27%) the mean age (50 years). When multiple factors were combined, the yield ranged from 0% for 21 patients under 50 years with SHD or SDC and without recurrent syncope to 73% in 11 patients over 50 years with recurrent syncope and no SHD or SDC. The additional yield in subgroups over 45 minute baseline tilt (70 (11)%) of isoprenaline (13 (10)%) was similar to that of edrophonium (17 (8)%, P = NS), but six (50% of those who were drug positive) patients required a second drug to produce a positive result (two with isoprenaline second, four with edrophonium second). CONCLUSIONS: Head-up tilt testing in a heterogeneous population has a low yield. Simple clinical characteristics define the type of patient who is likely to have a positive tilt test and the patient who is not and in whom other investigations should receive priority. The great majority of positive tests will occur during prolonged baseline testing if this is used. Isoprenaline and edrophonium produced similar additional yields of positive tests.
Broad H I absorption in the candidate binary black hole 4C37.11 (B2 0402+379)

We report the discovery of extremely broad 21-cm Hi absorption (FWZI similar to 1600 km s(-1)) detected with the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope in the radio source 4C37.11 (B2 0402+379). This object has been claimed to host a supermassive binary black hole (Rodriguez et al. 2006). The main features in the absorption profile are two components, separated by similar to 1100 km s(-1). The H I absorption in 4C37.11 is unusual because it is the first case where broad absorption is found to be centred on the systemic velocity of the host galaxy and not asymmetric and blueshifted as seen in all other galaxies with broad Hi absorption. Given the large width of the absorption, we suggest that a possible explanation for the extreme properties of the Hi absorption is that it is the kinematical signature of a binary black hole. If this interpretation is correct, the combined black-hole mass derived from the absorption profile is consistent with that derived from the luminosity of the spheroid. If the broad absorption is indeed due to a binary black hole, this finding confirms the importance of the gaseous component in the merging process of supermassive black holes.
Identification and characterization of families with aggregation of lung cancer.

BACKGROUND To clarify genetic factors involved in the susceptibility to lung cancer, it is essential to identify families with lung cancer clustering and to characterize the mode of clustering. Since somatic mutations of the p53, RB and p16 genes occur frequently in lung cancer and the replication error phenotype is seen in a subset of lung cancer, it is possible that germ-line mutations of the p53, RB, p16 and mismatch repair genes influence the susceptibility to lung cancer. METHODS In this work, cases with familial clustering of lung cancer were selected from 1068 families with primary lung cancer cases in analogy with the criteria for hereditary non-polyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC). Cases with Li-Fraumeni syndrome, familial retinoblastoma, familial melanoma and HNPCC were also searched among these 1068 families. RESULTS There were only four families (0.4%) in which more than three relatives were affected by lung cancer. Two successive generations were affected in 36 families (3.4%). Patients with lung cancer before the age of 50 were present in 165 families (15.5%). However, no family conformed to all three criteria. There was only one family with Li-Fraumeni syndrome and no family with familial retinoblastoma, familial melanoma and HNPCC. CONCLUSION Familial aggregation of lung cancer is rare and germ-line mutations of the p53, RB, p16 and mismatch repair genes may not contribute greatly to susceptibility to lung cancer.
Patient Care Technology and Safety

Research on the quality of care reveals a health care system that frequently falls short in its ability to apply new technology safely and appropriately. Workplaces, instruments, and equipment can be developed according to human factors design criteria, but as an end-user, nurses can maximize safety through the selection process, ongoing surveillance of equipment, and proactive risk-assessment methods.The approach offered for nurses is consistent with the following four-pronged strategy developed by the World Health Organization Medical Devices and Equipment team: Policy: Nurses providing direct patient care should be involved in setting and evaluating institutional, organizational, and public policy related to technologies. Quality and Safety: Nurses providing direct patient care can ensure that the technologies they use meet international quality and safety standards and technical specifications needed to perform in the clinical environment in which they are used. Access: Nurses providing direct patient care can ensure that institutional decisions are made with their input and the input of other critical stakeholders. Use: Nurses providing direct patient care should be involved in their intuitional policies and processes related to maintenance, training, monitoring, and reporting adverse events related to technology.
BER Performance Analysis of a Real Data Communication through WiMAX-PHY Layer over an AWGN and Fading Channels

the emergence of WiMAX has attracted significant interests from all the fields of wireless communications including students, researchers, systems engineers and operators. The WiMAX can also be considered to be the main technology in the implementation of other networks like wireless sensor networks. Developing an understanding of the WiMAX system can be best achieved by looking at a model of the WiMAX system. This paper discusses the model building of the WiMAX Physical layer using computer Matlab 7.5 version. This model is a useful tool for BER performance evaluation for the real audio data communication by the WiMAX Physical layer under different channel encoding rates, digital modulation schemes and channel conditions. With the performance investigation of the system, the modulation schemes BPSK, QPSK, 8PSK, 16PSK, 4QAM and 16QAM are introduced besides 1⁄2 and 2/3-rated convolutional encoder under AWGN, Rayleigh and Rician fading channels. The model presented in this paper built with the Physical Layer using Convolutional Encoding Rate of 1⁄2 and 2/3 and transmitted with 256 carrier OFDM symbols. Computer simulation results on BER over an Additative White Gaussian Noise(AWGN) and other fading (Raleigh and Rician) channels demonstrate that the proposed system outperform with BPSK modulation technique as compared to other digital modulation schemes and the system is highly effective to combat inherent interferences under Rayleigh and Rician fading channels. It has been anticipated from the simulation study with real audio data that the performance of the communication system degrades with the increasing of noise power. Index Term-Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave access (WiMAX). Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), Bit error rate (BER), Additative White Gaussian Noise (AWGN), and Physical layers (PHY).
Evaluating virtual channels for cache-coherent shared-memory multiprocessors

Multiprocessors * Akhilesh Kumar and Laxmi N. Bhuyan Department of Computer Science Texas A&M University College Station, TX 77843-3112, USA. E-mail: {akhil,bhuyan}( . lcs.t amu.edu In this paper, performance of wormhole routed 2-D torus network with virtual channels has been evaluated for cachecoherent shared-memory multiprocessors with execution-driven simulation. The traffic in such systems is very different from the traffic in message-passing environment. We show the imDact of number of virtual channels. flit buffers Der virtual-channel, and internal links. The study shows t~at 4 virtual channels per link is most efficient for 2-D torus networks. The number of flit buffers per virtual channel has a considerable impact and 2 to 4 flit buffers are usually enough. The number of internal links makes a difference on the performance for applications, such as MP3D, that generate large contention for shared variables.
A Parallel Algorithm for Advanced Video Motion Estimation on Multicore Architectures

The new advanced video coding (AVC) standards further exploit temporal correlation between images on a sequence by considering multiple reference frames and variable block sizes. It improves the compression efficiency at the cost of a significant computational load increasing. Specialized hardware processors have been proposed to perform real time motion estimation on AVC, but the non-recurring engineering cost of these solutions is too high. This paper describes a parallel algorithm that exploits the capacity of the current multi-core processors to implement real time motion estimation for AVC. In particular, by using the computational capacity and the fast memory system of the heterogeneous multicore CELL processor, synergistic processors can be used to speedup motion estimation while the main processor execute in parallel the other parts of the AVC system. Experimental results show that motion estimation can be performed in less than 40 ms per frame, for CIF video format, up to 5 reference frames, and variable block size, by programming the proposed parallel algorithm to the CELL processor.
Differential sRNA Regulation in Leaves and Roots of Sugarcane under Water Depletion

Plants have developed multiple regulatory mechanisms to respond and adapt to stress. Drought stress is one of the major constraints to agricultural productivity worldwide and recent reports have highlighted the importance of plant sRNA in the response and adaptation to water availability. In order to increase our understanding of the roles of sRNA in response to water depletion, cultivars of sugarcane were submitted to treatment of ceasing drip irrigation for 24 hours. Deep sequencing analysis was carried out to identify the sRNA regulated in leaves and roots of sugarcane cultivars with different drought sensitivities. The pool of sRNA selected allowed the analysis of different sRNA classes (miRNA and siRNA). Twenty-eight and 36 families of conserved miRNA were identified in leaf and root libraries, respectively. Dynamic regulation of miRNA was observed and the expression profiles of eight miRNA were verified in leaf samples from three biological replicates by stem-loop qRT-PCR assay using the cultivars: SP90–1638 - sensitive cultivar- and; SP83–2847 and SP83–5073 - tolerant cultivars. Altered miRNA regulation was correlated with changes in mRNA levels of specific targets. Two leaf libraries from individual sugarcane cultivars with contrasting drought-tolerance properties were also analyzed. An enrichment of 22-nt sRNA species was observed in leaf libraries. 22-nt miRNA triggered siRNA production by cleavage of their targets in response to water depletion. A number of genes of the sRNA biogenesis pathway were down-regulated in tolerant genotypes and up-regulated in sensitive in response to water depletion treatment. Our analysis contributes to increase the knowledge on the roles of sRNA in sugarcane submitted to water depletion.
ATLAS: A generic software platform for speech technology based applications

ATLAS is a Java software library that provides a framework for building multilingual and multi-modal applications, especially dialogue systems, on top of speech technology components. The design is based on a layered system model, where ATLAS sits as a middleware between an application-dependent layer and the speech technology components and implements much of application-independent functionality in the system. ATLAS is itself layered with interfaces to speech technology components at the bottom and self-contained dialogue components at the top. The layered design is both efficient and flexible and is suitable for a research environment. The framework also provides support for applicationdependent layers through a structure of an application with sessions interacting with users through terminals. The terminal concept supports creating audio deviceindependent applications that run transparently in both telephone and desktop environments. Several speech technology components are available for use with the ATLAS framework, including text-to-speech, speech recognition and speaker verification systems. Four applications that use ATLAS have so far been developed within student and research projects at the Centre for Speech Technology (CTT), including a speech controlled telephone banking system (CTT-bank) and an automated entrance receptionist (PER).
Modeling Variants of Automotive Systems using Views

This paper presents an approach of modeling variability of automotive sys- tem architectures using function nets, views and feature diagrams. A function net models an architecture hierarchically and views are used to omit parts of such a model to focus on certain functionalities. In combination with feature diagrams that describe valid variants, the concepts of feature and variant views are introduced to model archi- tectural variants. The relationship between views, variants and the underlying com- plete architectural model is discussed. Methodological aspects that come along with this approach are considered.
Quality Evaluation of Compressed Panoramic Images Constructed using MPEG-7-Based Image Registration

This paper describes an innovative compression method of panoramic images based on MPEG-7 descriptors. The proposed solution employs a detection of a series of individual video frame overlaps in order to produce concatenated panoramic images. The presented method is easy to implement even in simple devices such as low power consuming chipsets installed in remote cameras having limited power supplies. Under subjective tests it has been proved that the concatenation method allows for achieving lower transmission rates while sustaining picture quality.
Unarmed Prophets Have Come to Grief: KM and the Problem of Systematizing Trust Relationships

Knowledge management (KM) is extending its grip beyond the territory of a single organization to now include customers and other entities with which the organization does business. In order to compete successfully, organizations now need to move beyond the basic technological capabilities of customer relationship management systems (CRM), such as frequently-asked questions (FAQ), online ordering, logistics management, customer profiling and the like, and implement customer-centric knowledge management (CCKM). Like KM, CCKM relies not only on technology but also the internal processes and organizational relationships that are bound up with organizational KM. While the technological aspects of CCKM are important and interesting, the chapter deals with a particularly human aspect of CCKM that is necessary for its success – trust. The combination of technological systems and human interactions do not necessarily produce the hopedfor successful outcomes. Implicit in successful CCKM are conceptions of trust. The building of trust relationships through individual interactions is crucial for successful KM and that means building trust between and among intraand inter-organizational members. The goal of the chapter is to understand how trust relationships are instrumental in sharing knowledge, a pivotal element of successful CCKM. The chapter also examines the literature on the managerial conception of trust in organizations. It shows that management is more concerned with developing structured trust systems to facilitate command and control and is less concerned with individuals working towards developing trustworthy relationships with others for their own benefit and ultimately for the success of their organization. DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61350-089-7.ch003
Hierarchical image registration with an active contour-based atlas registration model

This paper proposes to apply the non parametric atlas registration framework we have recently developed in [6]. This technique derived from the optical flow model and the active contour framework allows to base the registration of an anatomical atlas on selected structures. A well-suited application of our model is the non rigid registration of medical images based on a hierarchical atlas. This hierarchical registration approach that we have previously introduced in [7], aims to better exploit the spatial dependencies that exist between anatomical structures in an image matching process. Its basic idea is to first register the structures the most relevant to estimate the deformation in order to help the registration of secondary structures. This aims to reduce the risks of mismatching. Here, we propose to test our novel simultaneous registration and segmentation model on different types of medical image registration problems. Results show the advantages to combine our active contour-based registration framework with the structure-based hierarchical approach and highlight the importance of the registration order of the anatomical structures.
! Clusty-Adding real-time clustering functionality to the Yahoo ! web search engine

Yahoo! Clusty1 is a Clustering Meta-search Engine (MSE) that allows users to send queries to Yahoo! The returned snippets are grouped into homogeneous groups by topic. The objective of this project has been to create a flexible MSE for the Yahoo! web search engine. The purpose is to present the results returned to a query in a more structured format which will allow the user to easily explore them by category. The basic idea, which is has been recently become a focus of attention in the information retrieval community [6, 7], is to consider only the snippets of the returned web pages as a consistent representation of each page and grouping them in homogeneous clusters by means of clustering and categorization algorithms. The processing must be done on the fly at run-time, so it requires efficient implementation and design of technologies and algorithms in order to minimize the latency between the issuing of the query and the presentation of the results. Many different approaches have been presented in the last 10 years (Copernic, Dogpile, iBoogie, Kartoo, Mooter, Vivisimo, etc.) and many academic prototypes have been explored as well. A recent example is given by the Armil2 [1] meta-search engine. Given the limited amount of time and the complexity of the project, the goal is not to develop a sophisticated MSE that can outperform all the previous MSEs but to create a flexible platform for testing various clustering algorithms and labeling techniques on snippets and show that all this can be achieved in a one semester project. Moreover the system has been developed in such a way that it can be easily extended with more functionalities.
ConsAD: a real-time consistency anomalies detector

In this demonstration, we present ConsAD, a tool that detects consistency anomalies for arbitrary multi-tier applications that use lower levels of isolation than serializability. As the application is running, ConsAD detects and quantifies anomalies indicating exactly the transactions and data items involved. Furthermore, it classifies the detected anomalies into patterns showing the business methods involved as well as their occurrence frequency. ConsAD can guide designers to either choose an isolation level for which their application shows few anomalies or change their transaction design to avoid the anomalies. Its graphical interface shows detailed information about detected anomalies as they occur and analyzes their patterns as well as their distribution.
A Review of Information Dissemination Protocols for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

With the fast development in ad hoc wireless communications and vehicular technology, it is foreseeable that, in the near future, traffic information will be collected and disseminated in real-time by mobile sensors instead of fixed sensors used in the current infrastructure-based traffic information systems. A distributed network of vehicles such as a vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) can easily turn into an infrastructure-less self-organizing traffic information system, where any vehicle can participate in collecting and reporting useful traffic information such as section travel time, flow rate, and density. Disseminating traffic information relies on broadcasting protocols. Recently, there have been a significant number of broadcasting protocols for VANETs reported in the literature. In this paper, we classify and provide an in-depth review of these protocols.