Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Survey on Computerized Lung Segmentation and Detection

— Lung cancer is a disease of abnormal cells multiplying and growing into a tumor. Recently, image processing techniques are widely used in several medical areas for image improvement in earlier detection and treatment stages, where the time factor is very important to discover the abnormality issues in target images, especially in various cancer tumors such as lung cancer. The main aim is to detect nodules that overlap with ribs and/or clavicles and to reduce the frequent false positives (FPs) caused by ribs. Thus image quality and accuracy are also the core factors of this research. In CXRs the ribs and clavicles are suppressed with massive-training artificial neural networks (MTANNs). To reduce rib-induced FPs and detect nodules overlapping with ribs, we incorporated the VDE technology. The VDE technology suppressed rib and clavicle opacities in CXRs while maintaining soft-tissue opacity by use of the MTANN technique that had been trained with real dual-energy imaging. Our scheme detected nodule candidates on VDE images by use of a morphologic filtering technique. Therefore, by use of VDE technology, the sensitivity and specificity for detection of nodules, especially subtle nodules, in CXRs were improved substantially.
Archaeal amoA gene diversity points to distinct biogeography of ammonia-oxidizing Crenarchaeota in the ocean

Mesophilic ammonia-oxidizing Archaea (AOA) are abundant in a diverse range of marine environments, including the deep ocean, as revealed by the quantification of the archaeal amoA gene encoding the alpha-subunit of the ammonia monooxygenase. Using two different amoA primer sets, two distinct ecotypes of marine Crenarchaeota Group I (MCGI) were detected in the waters of the tropical Atlantic and the coastal Arctic. The HAC-AOA ecotype (high ammonia concentration AOA) was ≍ 8000 times and 15 times more abundant in the coastal Arctic and the top 300 m layer of the open equatorial Atlantic, respectively, than the LAC-AOA (low ammonia concentration AOA) ecotype. In contrast, the LAC-AOA ecotype dominated the lower meso- and bathypelagic waters of the tropical Atlantic (≍ 50 times more abundant than the HAC-AOA) where ammonia concentrations are well below the detection limit using conventional spectrophotometric or fluorometric methods. Cluster analysis of the sequences from the clone libraries obtained by the two amoA primer sets revealed two phylogenetically distinct clusters. Taken together, our results suggest the presence of two ecotypes of archaeal ammonia oxidizers corresponding to the medium (1.24 µM on average in the coastal Arctic) and low ammonia concentration (< 0.01 µM) in the shallow and the deep waters respectively.
A critical review of patient satisfaction

– This paper aims to review the patient satisfaction literature, specifically meta‐analyses, which critically analyses its theory and use; then to present evidence for perceived service quality as a separate and more advanced construct. , – Papers that judiciously review the development and application of patient satisfaction were identified; along with studies addressing the conceptual and methodological deficiencies associated with the concept; and the current perceived service quality theory. , – Patient satisfaction has been extensively studied and considerable effort has gone into developing survey instruments to measure it. However, most reviews have been critical of its use, since there is rarely any theoretical or conceptual development of the patient satisfaction concept. The construct has little standardisation, low reliability and uncertain validity. It continues to be used interchangeably with, and as a proxy for, perceived service quality, which is a conceptually different and superior construct. , – The persistent use of patient satisfaction to evaluate the client's perception of the quality of a health service is seriously flawed. The key to solving this dilemma may be for the healthcare sector to focus on perceived health service quality by considering the specific concepts and models that can be found in the services marketing literature. This literature offers more advanced consumer theories which are better differentiated and tested than existing healthcare satisfaction models. , – The paper points out that there is an urgent need for differentiation and standardisation of satisfaction and service quality definitions and constructs, and argues for research to focus on measuring perceived health service quality.
Increasing the Sum-Throughput of Cells With a Sectorization Method for Massive MIMO

In massive multiple-input multiple-output time division duplex systems, the number of users simultaneously served by the base station (BS) is heavily limited if uplink orthogonal pilots are used. This difficulty can be alleviated by introducing non-orthogonal pilots through exploiting second-order channel statistics and sectorization. In this paper, we consider the large uniform linear array and propose a novel sectorization method with low complexity, in which multiple users per sector can be simultaneously served as if there were multiple BS antennas with identical directional characteristics in each sector. Numerical results show that the sum-throughput can be greatly increased compared to the typical massive MIMO architecture.
Resource Provision for Services Workloads based on (RPOA)

Fulfilling the requirements of different applications and services in a real Cloud environment is extremely a big challenge. In this challenge the provision policies have to achieve the availability by allocating the appropriate resource to the customer services without any conflict in resource demands and with determining the right amount of required resources for the execution of services. According to the work in this paper, a Resource Provision Optimal Algorithm (RPOA) based on Particle Swarm Optimization PSO has been introduced and implemented to find the near optimal solution of resource allocation with minimizing both time and cost.
Muscle-Ligament Interactions at the Knee during Walking

A two-dimensional mathematical model of the knee is used with gait analysis to calculate muscle, cruciate ligament and tibio-femoral contact forces developed at the knee during normal level walking. Ten normal adult subjects—four females and six males—participated. The knee model is based upon a four-bar linkage comprising the femur, tibia and two cruciate ligaments. It takes account of the rolling and sliding of the femur on the tibia during flexion/extension and the changes in direction of the ligaments and muscle tendons. We considered forces transmitted by six elements: quadriceps, hamstrings, gastrocnemius, anterior and posterior cruciate ligaments, and tibio-femoral contact. The equations of mechanics can be used to determine the absolute values of only three of the knee forces simultaneously, so that twenty limiting solutions of three of the six forces were considered. A limiting solution was rejected if any of the three forces were negative, corresponding to compressive muscle or ligament forces, or tensile contact forces. These constraints always reduced and at times removed the redundancy of the knee structures. The high incidence of predicted single muscle activity, supported by electromyography, suggested that the ligaments play a significant role in load transmission during gait. The temporal patterns of muscle and ligament activity and ligament force magnitudes were sensitive to the choice of model parameters. The analysis showed that each of four possible minimum principles of muscle selection—minimal muscle force, muscle stress, ligament force and contact force—was unlikely to be valid throughout the walking cycle.
Radial basis function network wind tunnel wind speed detection algorithm based on PSO

In common with the method of wind speed measuring, environmental factors is not consideration enough that led the measurement of the accuracy is not high. In order to solve these problems, and put forward the wind measurement based on radial basis function (RBF) network of particle swarm optimization (PSO). This paper is selected RBF neural network constructed corresponding model based on PSO. The PSO-RBF network has simple network structure, fast learning methods, good generalization ability. And it compared with other methods as a distinct advantage. Through simulation of MATLAB shows, it has small error that between the measured value of anemometer and the simulated value of network of based on PSO-RBF, and obvious advantage over other optimization algorithm. To know that wind measurement of based on PSO-RBF has a quick, high precision characteristics.
Searching in a web-based infrastructure for smart things

Given the expected high number of accessible digitally augmented devices and their communication requirements, this paper presents our work on creating a Web-based infrastructure for smart things to facilitate the integration, look-up, and interaction with such devices for human users and machines. To exploit the locality of interactions with and between smart things, the proposed infrastructure treats the location of a smart thing as its main property and is therefore structured hierarchically according to logical place identifiers. We discuss the infrastructure's look-up mechanism that leverages Web patterns to foster scalability and load balancing and features an advanced caching mechanism that greatly reduces the response time and number of exchanged messages. These properties are demonstrated in an evaluation in a simulated smart environment.
Growth in utero and during childhood among women who develop coronary heart disease: longitudinal study

Abstract Objective: To examine whether women who develop coronary heart disease have different patterns of fetal and childhood growth from men in the same cohort who develop the disease. Design: Follow up study of women whose body size at birth was recorded and who had an average of 10 measurements of height and weight during childhood. Setting: Helsinki, Finland. Subjects: 3447 women who were born in Helsinki University Central Hospital during 1924-33 and who went to school in Helsinki. Main outcome measures: Hazard ratios for hospital admission for or death from coronary heart disease. Results Coronary heart disease among women was associated with low birth weight (P=0.08 after adjustment for gestation, P=0.007 after adjustment for placental weight) and was more strongly associated with short body length at birth (P=0.001 and P>0.0001, respectively). The hazard ratio for women developing coronary heart disease increased by 10.2% (95% confidence interval 4.3 to 15.7) for each cm decrease in length at birth. The effect of short length at birth was greatest in women whose height “caught up” after birth so that as girls they were tall. Such girls tended to have tall mothers. In contrast, men in the same cohort who developed the disease were thin at birth rather than short, showed “catch up” growth in weight rather than height, and their mothers tended to be overweight rather than tall. Conclusions: Coronary heart disease among both women and men reflects poor prenatal nutrition and consequent small body size at birth combined with improved postnatal nutrition and “catch up” growth in childhood. The disease is associated with reductions in those aspects of body proportions at birth that distinguish the two sexes—short body length in women and thinness in men. Key messages Coronary heart disease in women is associated with low birth weight but more strongly with short body length at birth Among men in the same cohort coronary heart disease is also associated with low birth weight but more strongly with thinness at birth In the whole cohort body proportions at birth differed in the two sexes: the girls were short and the boys were thin These differences may reflect intrinsic sex differences in rates of fetal growth at similar levels of maternal nutrition The slower fetal growth of females may underlie their lower rates of coronary heart disease
CREATINE METABOLISM AFTER X-IRRADIATION OF RATS. II. DIRECT AND INDIRECT EFFECT OF RADIATION.

Previous investigations in our laboratory (1, 2) have shown that the creatinuria observed in whole-body X-irradiated rats is caused by a defect in the ability of skeletal muscle to take up creatine from blood. Such an abnormality could be the result of direct damage to the muscle caused by the incident radiation or could represent an abscopal effect on the muscle mediated by some indirect mechanism other than the adrenal (3). In the present investigation, the direct and indirect action of radiation on creatine uptake by skeletal muscle has been assessed by comparing the ratio of the specific activity of urinary creatine to muscle creatine in X-irradiated and shielded muscle of rats receiving partial-body exposure prior to injection of creatine-l-C14.
Coco model: A predictive model to explain interaction phenomena in social networks

Online social networks have provided an effective and revolutionary approach to facilitate the information diffusion in recent years. And it is a fundamental process taking place incessantly that individuals are making decisions to retweet or ignore microblog contents exposed from their following friends. Based on the real dataset, our research shows that the adoption probability would decline over time and is influenced by interactions with other topic contents. In this paper, we propose a retweet probabilistic model based on the network structure in both spatial and temporal dimensions, and derive a predictive model, named Coco model. We simplify Coco model in a specific situation where a couple of microblogs show strong interaction mutually and other external factors could be ignored. We evaluate and compare it with several previous models in term of fitting and predicting, on the basis of the real dataset collected from Weibo which includes 1,263,988 microblog contents. Our experiment results show that the Coco model could characterize the diffusion process and explain the interaction phenomenon well, and has outstanding prediction precision. For example, the average prediction accuracy of the Coco model for 30 days is 93.58% based on hotspots from Aug. 2014 to Dec. 2015.
Automated Testing From Z Specifications

This paper considers the problem of automatically generati ng tests from Z specifications based on userdefined testing criteria. Automation is facilitated by form ally specifying heuristics for generating tests that can be applied to a specification using general purpose theor em p oving tools. The formal specification of the heuristics also allows desirable properties to be checked a nd comparative analysis to be carried out between testing criteria. The paper shows how the technique can be ap plied to both partitioning and fault-based testing criteria.
Cloning of the rfb gene cluster of a group C2 Salmonella strain: comparison with the rfb regions of groups B and D

We report the cloning and mapping of the entire rfb gene cluster of a group C2 Salmonella strain. Comparison with the rfb region of group B strain LT2 and group D strain Ty2 reveals an 11.8kb central region of limited similarity flanked by regions of high similarity. The genes from the central region confer a group C2 O‐antigen structure on a Salmonella LT2 partial delete strain. The significance of this region in relation to function and evolutionary origin is discussed. We also report evidence for the existence of an O‐antigen chain‐length determinant in Escherichia coli K12 and propose a model for a possible mechanism by which a preferred chain length is determined.
Clinical Screening Tools for Sarcopenia and Its Management

Sarcopenia, an age-related decline in muscle mass and function, is affecting the older population worldwide. Sarcopenia is associated with poor health outcomes, such as falls, disability, loss of independence, and mortality; however it is potentially treatable if recognized and intervened early. Over the last two decades, there has been significant expansion of research in this area. Currently there is international recognition of a need to identify the condition early for intervention and prevention of the disastrous consequences of sarcopenia if left untreated. There are currently various screening tools proposed. As yet, there is no consensus on the best tool. Effective interventions of sarcopenia include physical exercise and nutrition supplementation. This review paper examined the screening tools and interventions for sarcopenia.
Effect of three decades of screening mammography on breast-cancer incidence.

BACKGROUND To reduce mortality, screening must detect life-threatening disease at an earlier, more curable stage. Effective cancer-screening programs therefore both increase the incidence of cancer detected at an early stage and decrease the incidence of cancer presenting at a late stage. METHODS We used Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results data to examine trends from 1976 through 2008 in the incidence of early-stage breast cancer (ductal carcinoma in situ and localized disease) and late-stage breast cancer (regional and distant disease) among women 40 years of age or older. RESULTS The introduction of screening mammography in the United States has been associated with a doubling in the number of cases of early-stage breast cancer that are detected each year, from 112 to 234 cases per 100,000 women--an absolute increase of 122 cases per 100,000 women. Concomitantly, the rate at which women present with late-stage cancer has decreased by 8%, from 102 to 94 cases per 100,000 women--an absolute decrease of 8 cases per 100,000 women. With the assumption of a constant underlying disease burden, only 8 of the 122 additional early-stage cancers diagnosed were expected to progress to advanced disease. After excluding the transient excess incidence associated with hormone-replacement therapy and adjusting for trends in the incidence of breast cancer among women younger than 40 years of age, we estimated that breast cancer was overdiagnosed (i.e., tumors were detected on screening that would never have led to clinical symptoms) in 1.3 million U.S. women in the past 30 years. We estimated that in 2008, breast cancer was overdiagnosed in more than 70,000 women; this accounted for 31% of all breast cancers diagnosed. CONCLUSIONS Despite substantial increases in the number of cases of early-stage breast cancer detected, screening mammography has only marginally reduced the rate at which women present with advanced cancer. Although it is not certain which women have been affected, the imbalance suggests that there is substantial overdiagnosis, accounting for nearly a third of all newly diagnosed breast cancers, and that screening is having, at best, only a small effect on the rate of death from breast cancer.
Reliability and Validity of a Survey of Cat Caregivers on Their Cats’ Socialization Level in the Cat’s Normal Environment

Simple Summary Many animal welfare organizations accept cats with no known behavioral history. It can be difficult to differentiate between a frightened but well-socialized cat and an unsocialized cat in an animal shelter environment. Making this distinction can save lives, yet currently there is no valid tool. Here we measured the quality of a survey designed to determine socialization level using information from the cat’s caregiver about a cat’s usual behavior around people in the cat’s normal environment. This survey will be used to help develop an effective process that accurately differentiates cats by their socialization levels in animal shelters. Abstract Stray cats routinely enter animal welfare organizations each year and shelters are challenged with determining the level of human socialization these cats may possess as quickly as possible. However, there is currently no standard process to guide this determination. This study describes the development and validation of a caregiver survey designed to be filled out by a cat’s caregiver so it accurately describes a cat’s personality, background, and full range of behavior with people when in its normal environment. The results from this survey provided the basis for a socialization score that ranged from unsocialized to well socialized with people. The quality of the survey was evaluated based on inter-rater and test-retest reliability and internal consistency and estimates of construct and criterion validity. In general, our results showed moderate to high levels of inter-rater (median of 0.803, range 0.211–0.957) and test-retest agreement (median 0.92, range 0.211–0.999). Cronbach’s alpha showed high internal consistency (0.962). Estimates of validity did not highlight any major shortcomings. This survey will be used to develop and validate an effective assessment process that accurately differentiates cats by their socialization levels towards humans based on direct observation of cats’ behavior in an animal shelter.
Pricing versus Admission Control in Multi-class Loss Networks

In this paper, we study the relative roles of optimal pricing and call admission control (CAC) in network revenue performance optimization from a network provider's perspective. We consider a multi-class loss network where each traffic class has a differentiated quality of service (QoS), as characterized by a per connection bandwidth, and an associated static charging price which decides the arrival rate of the service demand. We formulate a framework that views pricing and call admission control (CAC) as two stages of a unified call level resource allocation process, and subsequently study the impact of pricing and CAC both analytically and numerically. We show that both an optimal pricing and an optimal CAC can improve the performance, and the optimal pricing plays a significant role. Moreover, in large networks with many small users, the performance resulting from the greedy CAC and its corresponding optimal pricing approaches the upper bound performance asymptotically, and more complicated joint optimization of pricing and CAC does not provide an additional performance gain.
From Continuation Passing Style to Krivine ’ s Abstract Machine

We describe, for three different extensions of typed lambda calculus, how the rules for a version of Krivine’s abstract machine can be derived fr om those of continuation passing style (CPS) semantics. The three extensions are: Parigot’sλμcalculus, Pym and Ritter’s λμν-calculus, and an extension of the call-by-name lambda calculus with built-in types and primitive function s. We also show how Krivine’s abstract machine can be implemented on realistic hardware by compiling it into an idealized assembly language.
Brown Adipose Tissue as a Regulator of Energy Expenditure and Body Fat in Humans

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) is recognized as the major site of sympathetically activated nonshivering thermogenesis during cold exposure and after spontaneous hyperphagia, thereby controling whole-body energy expenditure and body fat. In adult humans, BAT has long been believed to be absent or negligible, but recent studies using fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography, in combination with computed tomography, demonstrated the existence of metabolically active BAT in healthy adult humans. Human BAT is activated by acute cold exposure, being positively correlated to cold-induced increases in energy expenditure. The metabolic activity of BAT differs among individuals, being lower in older and obese individuals. Thus, BAT is recognized as a regulator of whole-body energy expenditure and body fat in humans as in small rodents, and a hopeful target combating obesity and related disorders. In fact, there are some food ingredients such as capsaicin and capsinoids, which have potential to activate and recruit BAT via activity on the specific receptor, transient receptor potential channels, thereby increasing energy expenditure and decreasing body fat modestly and consistently.