Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Anatomy‐guided joint tissue segmentation and topological correction for 6‐month infant brain MRI with risk of autism

Tissue segmentation of infant brain MRIs with risk of autism is critically important for characterizing early brain development and identifying biomarkers. However, it is challenging due to low tissue contrast caused by inherent ongoing myelination and maturation. In particular, at around 6 months of age, the voxel intensities in both gray matter and white matter are within similar ranges, thus leading to the lowest image contrast in the first postnatal year. Previous studies typically employed intensity images and tentatively estimated tissue probabilities to train a sequence of classifiers for tissue segmentation. However, the important prior knowledge of brain anatomy is largely ignored during the segmentation. Consequently, the segmentation accuracy is still limited and topological errors frequently exist, which will significantly degrade the performance of subsequent analyses. Although topological errors could be partially handled by retrospective topological correction methods, their results may still be anatomically incorrect. To address these challenges, in this article, we propose an anatomy‐guided joint tissue segmentation and topological correction framework for isointense infant MRI. Particularly, we adopt a signed distance map with respect to the outer cortical surface as anatomical prior knowledge, and incorporate such prior information into the proposed framework to guide segmentation in ambiguous regions. Experimental results on the subjects acquired from National Database for Autism Research demonstrate the effectiveness to topological errors and also some levels of robustness to motion. Comparisons with the state‐of‐the‐art methods further demonstrate the advantages of the proposed method in terms of both segmentation accuracy and topological correctness.
Plant zonation in low‐latitude salt marshes: disentangling the roles of flooding, salinity and competition

1 We investigated the factors producing zonation patterns of the dominant plants in south‐eastern USA salt marshes where Juncus roemerianus dominates the high marsh, and Spartina alterniflora the middle and low marsh. 2 Juncus did not occur naturally in the Spartina zone and performed poorly when transplanted there, irrespective of whether neighbours were present or removed, indicating that its lower limit was set by physical stress. 3 In contrast, although Spartina occurred naturally at low densities in the Juncus zone, it performed well if transplanted there only if neighbours were removed, indicating that its upper limit was set by competition. 4 Parallel laboratory and field manipulations of flooding, salinity and competition indicated that the lower limit of Juncus was mediated by both flooding and salinity, but not by competition. 5 The general mechanisms producing zonation patterns of vegetation in coastal salt marshes may be universal, as suggested by previous studies, but the importance of particular factors is likely to vary geographically. In particular, salinity stress probably plays a much more important role in mediating plant zonation patterns at lower latitudes. 6 Our results suggest that the nature of ecological interactions is likely to vary geographically because of variation in the physical environment, and this variation must be taken into account in order to successfully generalize the results of field studies across geographical scales.
Health Benefits In 2016: Family Premiums Rose Modestly, And Offer Rates Remained Stable.

The annual Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research and Educational Trust Employer Health Benefits Survey found that in 2016, average annual premiums (employer and worker contributions combined) were $6,435 for single coverage and $18,142 for family coverage. The family premium in 2016 was 3 percent higher than that in 2015. On average, workers contributed 18 percent of the premium for single coverage and 30 percent for family coverage. The share of firms offering health benefits (56 percent) and of workers covered by their employers' plans (62 percent) remained statistically unchanged from 2015. Employers continued to offer financial incentives for completing wellness or health promotion activities. Almost three in ten covered workers were enrolled in a high-deductible plan with a savings option-a significant increase from 2014. The 2016 survey included new questions on cost sharing for specialty drugs and on the prevalence of incentives for employees to seek care at alternative settings.
The Collective Benefits of Feeling Good and Letting Go: Positive Emotion and (dis)Inhibition Interact to Predict Cooperative Behavior

Cooperation is central to human existence, forming the bedrock of everyday social relationships and larger societal structures. Thus, understanding the psychological underpinnings of cooperation is of both scientific and practical importance. Recent work using a dual-process framework suggests that intuitive processing can promote cooperation while deliberative processing can undermine it. Here we add to this line of research by more specifically identifying deliberative and intuitive processes that affect cooperation. To do so, we applied automated text analysis using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software to investigate the association between behavior in one-shot anonymous economic cooperation games and the presence inhibition (a deliberative process) and positive emotion (an intuitive process) in free-response narratives written after (Study 1, N = 4,218) or during (Study 2, N = 236) the decision-making process. Consistent with previous results, across both studies inhibition predicted reduced cooperation while positive emotion predicted increased cooperation (even when controlling for negative emotion). Importantly, there was a significant interaction between positive emotion and inhibition, such that the most cooperative individuals had high positive emotion and low inhibition. This suggests that inhibition (i.e., reflective or deliberative processing) may undermine cooperative behavior by suppressing the prosocial effects of positive emotion.
Hospital Volume Outcomes After Septal Myectomy and Alcohol Septal Ablation for Treatment of Obstructive Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy: US Nationwide Inpatient Database, 2003-2011.

IMPORTANCE Previous data on septal myectomy (SM) and alcohol septal ablation (ASA) in obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy have been limited to small, nonrandomized, single-center studies. Use of septal reduction therapy and the effect of institutional experience on procedural outcomes nationally are unknown. OBJECTIVE To examine in-hospital outcomes after SM and ASA stratified by hospital volume within a large, national inpatient database. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS This study analyzed all patients who were hospitalized for SM or ASA in a nationwide inpatient database from January 1, 2003, through December 31, 2011. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Rates of adverse in-hospital events (death, stroke, bleeding, acute renal failure, and need for permanent pacemaker) were examined. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed to compare overall outcomes after each procedure based on tertiles of hospital volume of SM and ASA. RESULTS Of 71 888 761 discharge records reviewed, a total of 11 248 patients underwent septal reduction procedures, of whom 6386 (56.8%) underwent SM and 4862 (43.2%) underwent ASA. A total of 59.9% of institutions performed 10 SM procedures or fewer, whereas 66.9% of institutions performed 10 ASA procedures or fewer during the study period. Incidence of in-hospital death (15.6%, 9.6%, and 3.8%; P < .001), need for permanent pacemaker (10.0%, 13.8%, and 8.9%; P < .001), and bleeding complications (3.3%, 3.8%, and 1.7%; P < .001) after SM was lower in higher-volume centers when stratified by first, second, and third tertiles of hospital volume, respectively. Similarly, there was a lower incidence of death (2.3%, 0.8%, and 0.6%; P = .02) and acute renal failure (6.2%, 7.6%, and 2.4%; P < .001) after ASA in higher-volume centers. The lowest tertile of SM volume among hospitals was an independent predictor of in-hospital all-cause mortality (adjusted odds ratio, 3.11; 95% CI, 1.98-4.89) and bleeding (adjusted odds ratio, 3.77; 95% CI, 2.12-6.70), whereas being in the lowest tertile of ASA by volume was not independently associated with an increased risk of adverse postprocedural events. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In US hospitals from 2003 through 2011, most centers that provide septal reduction therapy performed few SM and ASA procedures, which is below the threshold recommended by the 2011 American College of Cardiology Foundation/American Heart Association Task Force Guideline for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy. Low SM volume was associated with worse outcomes, including higher mortality, longer length of stay, and higher costs. More efforts are needed to encourage referral of patients to centers of excellence for septal reduction therapy.
Constraint Logic Programming over Infinite Domains with an Application to Proof

We present a CLP(FD)-based constraint solver able to deal with unbounded domains. It is based on constraint propagation, resorting to enumeration if all other methods fail. An important aspect is detecting when enumeration was complete and if this has an impact on the soundness of the result. We present a technique which guarantees soundness in the following way: if the constraint solver finds a solution it is guaranteed to be correct; if the constraint solver fails to find a solution it can either return the result "definitely false" in case it knows enumeration was exhaustive, or "unknown" in case it was aborted. The technique can deal with nested universal and existential quantifiers. It can easily be extended to set comprehensions and other operators introducing new quantified variables. We show applications in data validation and proof.
An Automated Three-Dimensional Detection and Segmentation Method for Touching Cells by Integrating Concave Points Clustering and Random Walker Algorithm

Characterizing cytoarchitecture is crucial for understanding brain functions and neural diseases. In neuroanatomy, it is an important task to accurately extract cell populations' centroids and contours. Recent advances have permitted imaging at single cell resolution for an entire mouse brain using the Nissl staining method. However, it is difficult to precisely segment numerous cells, especially those cells touching each other. As presented herein, we have developed an automated three-dimensional detection and segmentation method applied to the Nissl staining data, with the following two key steps: 1) concave points clustering to determine the seed points of touching cells; and 2) random walker segmentation to obtain cell contours. Also, we have evaluated the performance of our proposed method with several mouse brain datasets, which were captured with the micro-optical sectioning tomography imaging system, and the datasets include closely touching cells. Comparing with traditional detection and segmentation methods, our approach shows promising detection accuracy and high robustness.
Classifier Fusion With Contextual Reliability Evaluation

Classifier fusion is an efficient strategy to improve the classification performance for the complex pattern recognition problem. In practice, the multiple classifiers to combine can have different reliabilities and the proper reliability evaluation plays an important role in the fusion process for getting the best classification performance. We propose a new method for classifier fusion with contextual reliability evaluation (CF-CRE) based on inner reliability and relative reliability concepts. The inner reliability, represented by a matrix, characterizes the probability of the object belonging to one class when it is classified to another class. The elements of this matrix are estimated from the $K$ -nearest neighbors of the object. A cautious discounting rule is developed under belief functions framework to revise the classification result according to the inner reliability. The relative reliability is evaluated based on a new incompatibility measure which allows to reduce the level of conflict between the classifiers by applying the classical evidence discounting rule to each classifier before their combination. The inner reliability and relative reliability capture different aspects of the classification reliability. The discounted classification results are combined with Dempster–Shafer’s rule for the final class decision making support. The performance of CF-CRE have been evaluated and compared with those of main classical fusion methods using real data sets. The experimental results show that CF-CRE can produce substantially higher accuracy than other fusion methods in general. Moreover, CF-CRE is robust to the changes of the number of nearest neighbors chosen for estimating the reliability matrix, which is appealing for the applications.
Can Telemedicine Improve Adherence to Resuscitation Guidelines for Critically Ill Children at Community Hospitals? A Randomized Controlled Trial Using High-Fidelity Simulation

Objectives Children transferred from community hospitals lacking specialized pediatric care are more seriously ill than those presenting to pediatric centers. Pediatric consultation and adherence to management guidelines improve outcomes. The aims of the study were (1) to assess whether telemedicine consultation in critical situations is feasible and (2) to compare the impact of pediatric critical care medicine (PCCM) consultation via telemedicine versus telephone on community hospital adherence to resuscitation guidelines through a randomized controlled telemedicine trial. Methods In situ, high-fidelity simulation scenarios of critically ill children presenting to a community hospital and progressing to cardiopulmonary arrest were performed. Scenarios were randomized to PCCM consultation via telephone (control) or telemedicine (intervention). Primary outcome measure was proportion of teams who successfully defibrillated in 180 seconds or less from presentation of pulseless ventricular tachycardia. Results The following 30 scenarios were completed: 15 control and 15 intervention. Only 11 (37%) of 30 teams, defibrillated in 180 seconds or less from presentation of pulseless ventricular tachycardia; control: 6 (40%) of 15 versus intervention: 5 (33%) of 15, P = 0.7. Request for or use of backboard during cardiopulmonary resuscitation occurred in 24 (80%) of 30 scenarios; control: 9 (60%) of 15 versus intervention: 15 (100%) of 15, P = 0.006. Request for or use of stepstool during cardiopulmonary resuscitation occurred in 6 (20%) of 30 scenarios; control: 1 (7%) of 15 versus intervention: 5 (33%) of 15, P = 0.07. Conclusions This study demonstrates the feasibility of using telemedicine to support acute management of children who present to community hospitals. Neither study arm adhered to current resuscitation guidelines and telemedicine consultation with PCCM experts was not associated with improvement. However, further research on optimizing telemedicine impact on the quality of pediatric care at community hospitals is warranted.
Learning in Dynamic Environments: Decision Trees for Data Streams

This paper presents an adaptive learning system for induction of forest of trees from data streams able to detect Concept Drift. We have extended our previous work on Ultra Fast Forest Trees (UFFT) with the ability to detect concept drift in the distribution of the examples. The Ultra Fast Forest of Trees is an incremental algorithm, that works online, processing each example in constant time, and performing a single scan over the training examples. Our system has been designed for continuous data. It uses analytical techniques to choose the splitting criteria, and the information gain to estimate the merit of each possible splitting-test. The number of examples required to evaluate the splitting criteria is sound, based on the Hoeffding bound. For multi-class problems the algorithm builds a binary tree for each possible pair of classes, leading to a forest of trees. During the training phase the algorithm maintains a short term memory. Given a data stream, a fixed number of the most recent examples are maintained in a data-structure that supports constant time insertion and deletion. When a test is installed, a leaf is transformed into a decision node with two descendant leaves. The sufficient statistics of these leaves are initialized with the examples in the short term memory that will fall at these leaves. To detect concept drift, we maintain, at each inner node, a naive-Bayes classifier trained with the examples that traverse the node. While the distribution of the examples is stationary, the online error of naive-Bayes will decrease. When the distribution changes, the naiveBayes online error will increase. In that case the test installed at this node is not appropriate for the actual distribution of the examples. When this occurs all the subtree rooted at this node will be pruned. This methodology was tested with two artificial data sets and one real world data set. The experimental results show a good performance at the change of concept detection and also with learning the
Rapid regulatory evolution of a nonrecombining autosome linked to divergent behavioral phenotypes

Significance The evolution of nonrecombining chromosomes such as sex chromosomes involves degeneration leading to loss of genetic information. We do not know, however, what happens during the incipient stages of such chromosomes, before appreciable degeneration. We studied this process in white-throated sparrows, a species that occurs in two alternative behavioral phenotypes determined by a nonrecombining autosomal rearrangement. We report that this rearrangement shows few signs of large-scale genetic degeneration. Instead, substantial changes have evolved at the level of gene expression, some of them consistent with adaptive evolution. Our work with this chromosome reveals that rapid changes in gene expression and dosage compensation, not necessarily large-scale genetic degeneration, characterize the early evolution of heteromorphic chromosomes and the associated divergent phenotypes. In the white-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis), the second chromosome bears a striking resemblance to sex chromosomes. First, within each breeding pair of birds, one bird is homozygous for the standard arrangement of the chromosome (ZAL2/ZAL2) and its mate is heterozygous for a different version (ZAL2/ZAL2m). Second, recombination is profoundly suppressed between the two versions, leading to genetic differentiation between them. Third, the ZAL2m version is linked with phenotypic traits, such as bright plumage, high aggression, and low parental behavior, which are usually associated with males. These similarities to sex chromosomes suggest that the evolutionary mechanisms that shape sex chromosomes, in particular genetic degeneration of the heterogametic version due to the suppression of recombination, are likely important in this system as well. Here, we investigated patterns of protein sequence evolution and gene expression evolution between the ZAL2 and ZAL2m chromosomes by whole-genome sequencing and transcriptome analyses. Patterns of protein evolution exhibited only weak signals of genetic degeneration, and few genes harbored signatures of positive selection. We found substantial evidence of transcriptome evolution, such as significant expression divergence between ZAL2 and ZAL2m alleles and signatures of dosage compensation for highly expressed genes. These results suggest that, early in the evolution of heteromorphic chromosomes, gene expression divergence and dosage compensation can prevail before large-scale genetic degeneration. Our results show further that suppression of recombination between heteromorphic chromosomes can lead to the evolution of alternative (sex-like) behavioral phenotypes before substantial genetic degeneration.
Let's Take Advantage of Mixtures of Bupivacaine or Ropivacaine in Urologic Inguinal and Scrotal Surgery

ticle, which is one of the few reports about the safety of a mixture of bupivacaine in children who underwent urologic inguinal and scrotal surgery. In their study, patients were injected with a mixture of 0.5% bupivacaine and 2% lidocaine (2:1 volume ratio) at the surgical site, just before surgery ended [1]. Hemodynamic and electrocardiographic parameters were measured before local anesthesia, 30 minutes after the administration of local anesthesia, and 60 minutes after administration [1]. The results of their study indicate that no mixturerelated adverse events (nausea, vomiting, pruritus, sedation, or respiratory depression) or adverse events related to electrocardiographic parameters (arrhythmias or asystole) were reported in any patients [1]. The observation that even children did not experience side effects suggests that this mixture will be even safer in adults. In our previous study, we evaluated the efficacy and safety of 0.75% ropivacaine instillation into inguinal wounds in patients who underwent bilateral microsurgical varicocelectomy [2]. Before repairing the external oblique aponeurosis, 6 mL of 0.75% ropivacaine or 6 mL of normal saline was instilled under the fascia and around the funiculus (spermatic cord) in a randomized and double-blind study design. Visual analogue scale (VAS) pain scores and the Prince Henry Pain Score (PHPS) were used for evaluating the operative sites at 1, 2, 4, and 8 hours and 7 days after surgery [2]. The VAS pain scores and PHPS at the ropivacaineinstilled operative sites were significantly lower than those in the placebo group at 2, 4, and 8 hours after surgery [2]. In general, the instillation of ropivacaine was safe and well tolerated in patients [2]. Bupivacaine is a long-acting amide-based topical anesthetic that is commonly used in clinical practice [3], while ropivacaine is a new amino amide with a structure similar to that of bupivacaine. Bupivacaine and ropivacaine are long-acting local anesthetics. Bupivacaine and ropivacaine produce cutaneous vasoconstriction that restricts
Implicit Surfaces

RenderMan provides the ability to render (sometimes referred to in RenderMan as "RiBlobby" or blobby surfaces). Most geometry types implicit surfaces in RenderMan have explicit control meshes: the geometry is specified by a collection of vertices that are on or near the surface. Implicit surfaces are different: they are built up from primitives that are defined , by use of a mathematical function that is equal to some threshold value at every point implicitly on the surface. This complicated math is hidden by the renderer but leads to a representation that allows for a very efficient way to model geometry in situations where users want to create amorphous shapes, and are willing to trade away fine control over details of shape for ease of modeling gross features.
STARE: Spatio-Temporal Attention Relocation for Multiple Structured Activities Detection

We present a spatio-temporal attention relocation (STARE) method, an information-theoretic approach for efficient detection of simultaneously occurring structured activities. Given multiple human activities in a scene, our method dynamically focuses on the currently most informative activity. Each activity can be detected without complete observation, as the structure of sequential actions plays an important role on making the system robust to unattended observations. For such systems, the ability to decide where and when to focus is crucial to achieving high detection performances under resource bounded condition. Our main contributions can be summarized as follows: 1) information-theoretic dynamic attention relocation framework that allows the detection of multiple activities efficiently by exploiting the activity structure information and 2) a new high-resolution data set of temporally-structured concurrent activities. Our experiments on applications show that the STARE method performs efficiently while maintaining a reasonable level of accuracy.