Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Laparoscopic hepatectomy for colorectal liver metastases located in all segments of the liver.

PURPOSE Laparoscopic hepatectomy is not a well-established treatment modality for colorectal liver metastases. Moreover, most reports have been limited to tumors in the anterolateral segments (segments 2, 3, 4b, 5, and 6). We evaluated the short- and long-term outcomes after laparoscopic hepatectomy for colorectal liver metastases located in all segments, including tumors located in the posterosuperior segments (segments 1, 4a, 7, and 8). METHODS TThis retrospective study included 102 patients who underwent laparoscopic hepatectomy for colorectal liver metastases with radical intent between January 2009 and January 2016. The patients were divided into two groups (anterolateral and posterosuperior group) according to tumor location. The clinical and follow-up data of the two groups were retrospectively reviewed. RESULTS There was no 30-day postoperative mortality. Most of the postoperative 30-day complications were classified as minor complications (Clavien-Dindo classification). There was no difference in clinicopathologic characteristics between the two groups. Although posterosuperior group patients had significantly longer operative time (p=0.008) and postoperative hospital stay duration (p=0.041), as well as a greater blood loss (p=0.012), there was no significant difference in rate and severity of postoperative complications (p=0.314 and 1.000 respectively). During a median follow-up period of 41 months, the 5-year overall survival (OS) (p=0.449), and disease-free survival (DFS) (p=0.370) was no significant difference between the two groups. CONCLUSIONS Laparoscopic hepatectomy for colorectal liver metastases located in all segments of the liver can be safely performed in selected patients, with acceptable postoperative morbidity and oncologic results.
Comparison of Interjudge Reliabilities in Scoring TAT Protocols as a Measure of NACH

Several indices of interjudge reliability are discussed with respect to the TAT-scoring methodology. Some improvements are suggested for the indices proposed by McClelland, et al. (15). Two indices of proportion of agreement are proposed. A comparison of McClelland, et al.'s indices and those of proportion of agreement shows that the proportion of agreement in scoring subcategories is more severe and suggests that it should be added to evaluate more tightly interjudge reliability in scoring the TAT.
Competence web-based assessment for lifelong learning

Recent years have witnessed the important increase of the lifelong learning, fostered by the continuous development of Web-based assessment. Assessment is a crucial component of learning. Assessment activity is practical not only in formal learning, but also in view of employability and further lifelong training activities. In light of trends toward increased requirements for skilled workers, Web-based assessment presents today many challenges. It should address students' real performance in life. Although attempts have been made to address some aspects of competence-based assessment, this kind of assessment has to go a step further. Issues such as evidence, assessment grid and feedback should be tackled. This paper presents the essential components behind a competence web-based assessment model that will lead to the design of our framework as well as some challenges involved behind a real scenario description.
Indices of 1-forms on an isolated complete intersection singularity

There are some generalizations of the classical Eisenbud-Levine-Khimshashvili formula for the index of a singular point of an analytic vector field on $R^n$ for vector fields on singular varieties. We offer an alternative approach based on the study of indices of 1-forms instead of vector fields. When the variety under consideration is a real isolated complete intersection singularity (icis), we define an index of a (real) 1-form on it. In the complex setting we define an index of a holomorphic 1-form on a complex icis and express it as the dimension of a certain algebra. In the real setting, for an icis $V=f^{-1}(0)$, $f:(C^n, 0) \to (C^k, 0)$, $f$ is real, we define a complex analytic family of quadratic forms parameterized by the points $\epsilon$ of the image $(C^k, 0)$ of the map $f$, which become real for real $\epsilon$ and in this case their signatures defer from the "real" index by $\chi(V_\epsilon)-1$, where $\chi(V_\epsilon)$ is the Euler characteristic of the corresponding smoothing $V_\epsilon=f^{-1}(\epsilon)\cap B_\delta$ of the icis $V$.
The communication of compliments in romantic relationships: An investigation of relational satisfaction and sex differences and similarities in compliment behavior

The present study examines the role of compliments in romantic relationships. Surveys designed to assess relational satisfaction and participants’ feelings about compliments in romantic relationships were administered to 163 participants currently involved in a heterosexual romantic relationship. Participants were also asked to complete a diary, recording (1) the first three compliments received from their partner, or (2) the first three compliments given to their partner. The final data set consisted of 528 compliments. Compliments reported as received or given were coded for the formulaic structure of compliment, the topic of compliment, and verbal responses to compliment. Results indicate that compliments in romantic relationships are not as likely to follow the formulaic structure of compliments as do compliments given by strangers or acquaintances reported in previous research; participants’ perceptions of their own and their partners’ compliment behavior are positively related to relational satisfaction; women tend to be more aware of compliments than are men; and some differences, as well as similarities, between men and women occurred on topics of compliments given and received and on their verbal responses to compliments.
Exploiting big data for critical care research

Purpose of reviewOver recent years the digitalization, collection and storage of vast quantities of data, in combination with advances in data science, has opened up a new era of big data. In this review, we define big data, identify examples of critical care research using big data, discuss the limitations and ethical concerns of using these large datasets and finally consider scope for future research. Recent findingsBig data refers to datasets whose size, complexity and dynamic nature are beyond the scope of traditional data collection and analysis methods. The potential benefits to critical care are significant, with faster progress in improving health and better value for money. Although not replacing clinical trials, big data can improve their design and advance the field of precision medicine. However, there are limitations to analysing big data using observational methods. In addition, there are ethical concerns regarding maintaining confidentiality of patients who contribute to these datasets. SummaryBig data have the potential to improve medical care and reduce costs, both by individualizing medicine, and bringing together multiple sources of data about individual patients. As big data become increasingly mainstream, it will be important to maintain public confidence by safeguarding data security, governance and confidentiality.
Recommendations Based on Comprehensively Exploiting the Latent Factors Hidden in Items’ Ratings and Content

To improve the performance of recommender systems in a practical manner, several hybrid approaches have been developed by considering item ratings and content information simultaneously. However, most of these hybrid approaches make recommendations based on aggregating different recommendation techniques using various strategies, rather than considering joint modeling of the item’s ratings and content, and thus fail to detect many latent factors that could potentially improve the performance of the recommender systems. For this reason, these approaches continue to suffer from data sparsity and do not work well for recommending items to individual users. A few studies try to describe a user’s preference by detecting items’ latent features from content-description texts as compensation for the sparse ratings. Unfortunately, most of these methods are still generally unable to accomplish recommendation tasks well for two reasons: (1) they learn latent factors from text descriptions or user--item ratings independently, rather than combining them together; and (2) influences of latent factors hidden in texts and ratings are not fully explored. In this study, we propose a probabilistic approach that we denote as latent random walk (LRW) based on the combination of an integrated latent topic model and random walk (RW) with the restart method, which can be used to rank items according to expected user preferences by detecting both their explicit and implicit correlative information, in order to recommend top-ranked items to potentially interested users. As presented in this article, the goal of this work is to comprehensively discover latent factors hidden in items’ ratings and content in order to alleviate the data sparsity problem and to improve the performance of recommender systems. The proposed topic model provides a generative probabilistic framework that discovers users’ implicit preferences and items’ latent features simultaneously by exploiting both ratings and item content information. On the basis of this probabilistic framework, RW can predict a user’s preference for unrated items by discovering global latent relations. In order to show the efficiency of the proposed approach, we test LRW and other state-of-the-art methods on three real-world datasets, namely, CAMRa2011, Yahoo! , and APP. The experiments indicate that our approach outperforms all comparative methods and, in addition, that it is less sensitive to the data sparsity problem, thus demonstrating the robustness of LRW for recommendation tasks.
Modeling prosody patterns for Chinese expressive text-to-speech synthesis

This paper proposes an approach for modeling the prosody patterns of the acoustic features for Chinese expressive text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis. Based on the observation that the speaker usually tends to put more emphasis on one particular syllable within a multi-syllabic prosodic word, we identify such syllable as the core syllable that can be derived from the semantic stress and tone information of the text prompt. We then classify the syllables in speech into four classes, based on their relations with the core syllable in a prosodic word. We analyze the contrastive (neutral versus expressive) speech recordings for each of four classes, and develop a perturbation model that takes into account the prosody pattern to transform neutral speech to expressive speech. Perceptual experiments on both neutral speech recordings and neutral TTS outputs involving 13 subjects indicate that the proposed approach can significantly enhance expressivity in synthesizing expressive speech.
Oncobiguanides: Paracelsus' law and nonconventional routes for administering diabetobiguanides for cancer treatment

“The dose makes the poison”, the common motto of toxicology first expressed by Paracelsus more than 400 years ago, may effectively serve to guide potential applications for metformin and related biguanides in oncology. While Paracelsus' law for the dose-response effect has been commonly exploited for the use of some anti-cancer drugs at lower doses in non-neoplastic diseases (e.g., methotrexate), the opposite scenario also holds true; in other words, higher doses of non-oncology drugs, such as anti-diabetic biguanides, might exert direct anti-neoplastic effects. Here, we propose that, as for any drug, there is a dose range for biguanides that is without any effect, one corresponding to “diabetobiguanides” with a pharmacological effect (e.g., insulin sensitization in type 2 diabetes, prevention of insulin-dependent carcinogenesis, indirect inhibition of insulin and growth factor-dependent cancer growth) but with minimal toxicity and another corresponding to “oncobiguanides” with pharmacological (i.e., direct and strong anticancer activity against cancer cells) as well as toxic effects. Considering that biguanides demonstrate a better safety profile than most oncology drugs in current use, we should contemplate the possibility of administering biguanides through non-conventional routes (e.g., inhaled for carcinomas of the lung, topical for skin cancers, intravenous as an adjunctive therapy, rectal suppositories for rectal cancer) to unambiguously investigate the therapeutic value of high-dose transient biguanide exposure in cancer. Perhaps then, the oncobiguanides, as we call them here, could be viewed as a mechanistically different type of anti-cancer drugs employed at doses notably higher than those used chronically when functioning as diabetobiguanides.
Studies of human tumors by MRS: A review

The literature describing 31P, 1H, 13C, 23Na and 19F MRS in vivo in human cancers is reviewed. Cancers have typical metabolic characteristics in 31P and 1H MRS including high levels of phospholipid metabolites and a cellular pH more alkaline than normal. These alone are not specific for cancer but are diagnostic in appropriate clinical settings. Some metabolic characteristics appear to be prognostic indices and correlation with treatment response is emerging as an important potentially cost‐effective use of MRS in oncology. 19F MRS examines pharmacokinetics of 5‐fluorouracil and by demonstrating its retention predicts response of a cancer to treatment. Current needs include improvement of diagnostic specificity by use of techniques like multivoxel MRS, proton decoupling of 31P, short echo time and fat‐suppressed 1H MRS, 13C MRS direct or via 1H‐observe, and statistical analysis of multiple spectral features. Trials in large populations in well defined clinical settings are needed to determine if MRS can provide independent prognostic indices useful in cancer management.
Construction of a channel code from an arbitrary source code with decoder side information

The construction of a channel code by using a source code with decoder side information is introduced. For the construction, any pair of encoder and decoder is available for a source code with decoder side information. A constrained-random-number generator, which generates random numbers satisfying a condition specified by a function and its value, is used to construct a stochastic channel encoder. The result suggests that we can divide the channel coding problem into the problems of channel encoding and source decoding with side information.
The Relative Contribution of NMDA Receptor Channels in the Expression of Long‐term Potentiation in the Hippocampal CA1 Region

Long‐term potentiation (LTP) was studied in the hippocampal CA1 region of guinea‐pigs using a solution containing 0.1 mM magnesium and 10 μM of the non‐N‐methyl‐d‐aspartate (non‐NMDA) antagonist 6‐cyano‐7‐nitroquinoxaline‐2,3‐dione (CNQX), leaving an NMDA‐mediated field excitatory postsynaptic potential (EPSP). Brief high‐frequency afferent tetanization induced a substantial synapse‐specific potentiation of the NMDA EPSP with a time course closely resembling that previously described for LTP of the non‐NMDA‐mediated EPSP. This NMDA EPSP potentiation was occluded by prior induction of LTP in normal solution. Using a solution containing 0.1 mM magnesium and 1 μM CNQX, the EPSP was composed of both a non‐NMDA‐ and an NMDA‐mediated component which could be measured separately and in parallel. Manipulations that cause increased transmitter release, such as phorbol ester application and changes in stimulation frequency, enhanced the two measures nearly equally. Afferent tetanization induced an increase of both EPSP components, with a similar time course, the NMDA component showing a relative increase of about one‐third of that of the non‐NMDA one. These results suggest that, to the extent that LTP is based on an increased release of transmitter, the mechanism exhibits features distinct from those underlying other forms of enhanced release.
Familial Values in a Developing Society: A Decade of Change in Taiwan

Changes in attitudes and values about the family during a decade of rapid economic development are examined for data from Taiwan, 1965-76. Attitudes toward family formation norms and preferences, toward personal control of the family building process, and toward traditional familial values are documented, assessed against modernizing social strata, and implications for fertility transition theory discussed. The pace of change has been marked, but uneven, with strong cultural preferences for sons and attitudes toward support from children in old age lagging behind other attitude changes. While modification of attitudes and values occurred in all social strata and all cohorts, aggregate shifts are not accounted for by concommitant changes in societal structure. Regression analysis decomposition indicates that compositional factors are relatively less important for changes in attitudes over the decade than are the rates at which these background factors are translated into changed attitudes.
Wide-Locking Range Divide-by-3 Injection-Locked Frequency Divider Using Sixth-Order  $RLC$  Resonator

A wide-locking range divide-by-3 LC injection-locked frequency divider (ILFD) is proposed and implemented in the TSMC 0.18-μm 1P6M CMOS process. The divide-by-3 ILFD uses a cross-coupled nMOS pair, an injection MOSFET pair, and a sixth-order RLC resonator. The divide-by-3 ILFD has three oscillation frequency bands and three locking ranges. At the drain-source bias VDD of 0.9 V and at the incident power of 0 dBm, by switching a varactor bias, the high-band, middle-band, and low-band locking ranges of the ILFD are, respectively, given by 3.47 GHz (33.87%) from 8.51 to 11.98 GHz, 3.72 GHz (54.86%) from 4.92 to 8.64 GHz, and 1.05 GHz (19.76%) from 4.88 to 5.93 GHz. The operation range is 7.1 GHz (84.2%) from 4.88 to 11.98 GHz. The ILFD-core power consumption is 6.759 mW. A wider locking range of 4.43 GHz (67.07%) from 4.39 to 8.82 GHz is obtained by overlapping the three locking ranges at a fixed bias condition. The die area is 0.991 × 1.04 mm2.
Effects of Normal Blood Pressure, Prehypertension, and Hypertension on Coronary Microvascular Function

Background— The assessment of coronary flow reserve (CFR) by transthoracic Doppler echocardiography has recently been introduced into clinical practice, and reduced CFR has been suggested to be a sensitive indicator of hypertensive end-organ damage; however, to date, this methodology has not been used to evaluate CFR in subjects with prehypertension. Accordingly, the present study was designed to evaluate CFR in subjects with prehypertension. Methods and Results— We measured CFR of 40 subjects with prehypertension, 60 patients with hypertension, and 50 normotensive healthy volunteers using transthoracic Doppler echocardiography. None of the subjects had any systemic disease. Age, gender, body mass index, heart rate, lipid profiles, fasting glucose levels, and hemoglobin were similar among the 3 groups. CFR was significantly lower in the hypertension group than in the prehypertension and control groups; in addition, it was significantly lower in subjects with prehypertension than in control subjects (2.23±0.47, 2.54±0.48, and 2.91±0.53, respectively). Furthermore, we found that prehypertension (β=−0.31, P<0.01) and hypertension (β=−0.57, P<0.01) were significant predictors of lower CFR in a multivariable model that adjusted for other variables. CFR was significantly and inversely correlated with age (r=−0.20, P=0.01), systolic blood pressure (r=−0.51, P<0.01), diastolic blood pressure (r=−0.47, P<0.01), high-sensitivity C-reactive protein levels (r=−0.21, P=0.01), left atrium diameter (r=−0.22, P<0.01), mitral E deceleration time (r=−0.19, P=0.02), and mitral A velocity (r=−0.27, P<0.01), whereas mitral E/A ratio was significantly and positively correlated with CFR (r=0.26, P<0.01). Conclusions— CFR is impaired in subjects with prehypertension, but this impairment is not as severe as that in hypertension.
Administration of recombinant IL-12 to normal mice enhances cytolytic lymphocyte activity and induces production of IFN-gamma in vivo.

IL-12 is a heterodimeric cytokine that has been shown to enhance natural killer (NK) and cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) responses, and to induce IFN-gamma production in vitro. In this study, we have examined the effects in vivo of administering purified murine rIL-12 to normal mice. Daily injections of rIL-12 i.p. (1 ng to 10 micrograms/day) caused dose-dependent enhancement of NK cell lytic activity in the spleens and livers of treated mice. Histologic examination of the livers of IL-12-treated mice revealed focal mononuclear cell infiltrates, and flow cytometry studies indicated that the livers of IL-12-treated mice contained increased numbers of NK cells, CD8+ T cells, and monocytes. Liver and splenic lymphoid cells from IL-12-treated mice, unlike liver and splenic lymphoid cells from control mice, spontaneously secreted IFN-gamma in vitro, suggesting that they had been induced by IL-12 to produce IFN-gamma in vivo. Consistent with this, IFN-gamma could be detected in the serum of IL-12-treated mice. In mice which had been immunized by footpad injection of allogeneic splenocytes, daily administration of rIL-12 i.p. was shown to enhance the specific CTL response in the draining lymph nodes. Thus, these studies demonstrate that IL-12 can enhance NK and CTL activity and induce IFN-gamma production in vivo, as well as in vitro, and suggest possible mechanisms by which IL-12 may exert therapeutic effects in the treatment of some tumors and infectious diseases.
Innate immunity in the malaria vector Anopheles gambiae: comparative and functional genomics

SUMMARY The resurgence of malaria is at least partly attributed to the absence of an effective vaccine, parasite resistance to antimalarial drugs and resistance to insecticides of the anopheline mosquito vectors. Novel strategies are needed to combat the disease on three fronts: protection (vaccines), prophylaxis/treatment (antimalarial drugs) and transmission blocking. The latter entails either killing the mosquitoes (insecticides), preventing mosquito biting (bednets and repellents), blocking parasite development in the vector (transmission blocking vaccines), genetic manipulation or chemical incapacitation of the vector. During the past decade, mosquito research has been energized by several breakthroughs, including the successful transformation of anopheline vectors, analysis of gene function by RNAi, genome-wide expression profiling using DNA microarrays and, most importantly, sequencing of the Anopheles gambiae genome. These breakthroughs helped unravel some of the mechanisms underlying the dynamic interactions between the parasite and the vector and shed light on the mosquito innate immune system as a set of potential targets to block parasite development. In this context, putative pattern recognition receptors of the mosquito that act as positive and negative regulators of parasite development have been identified recently. Characterizing these molecules and others of similar function, and identifying their ligands on the parasite surface, will provide clues on the nature of the interactions that define an efficient parasite–vector system and open up unprecedented opportunities to control the vectorial capacity of anopheline mosquitoes.