Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Brain Natriuretic Peptide and Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy in Patients With Mildly Symptomatic Heart Failure

Background—There are limited data on the prognostic implications of brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) assessment in patients with mildly symptomatic heart failure (HF) who receive cardiac resynchronization therapy with a defibrillator (CRT-D). Methods and Results—The effect of elevated baseline and 1-year BNP levels (dichotomized at the upper tertile BNP of 120 pg/mL) on the risk of HF or death was assessed among the cohort of 1197 patients with baseline BNP data enrolled in MADIT (Multicenter Automated Defibrillator Implantation Trial)-CRT. Elevated baseline BNP was associated with a significant 68% (P=0.007) and 58% (P=0.02) increase in the risk of HF or death among MADIT-CRT patients allocated to CRT-D and implantable cardioverter defibrillator-only therapy, respectively. At 1 year of follow-up, patients allocated to CRT-D displayed significantly greater reductions in BNP (26% reduction) levels compared with implantable cardioverter defibrillator-only patients (8% increase; P=0.005). Patients with CRT-D in whom 1-year BNP levels were reduced or remained low experienced a significantly lower risk of subsequent HF or death as compared with patients in whom 1-year BNP levels were high. Similarly, the echocardiographic response to CRT-D was highest among those who maintained low BNP levels or in whom BNP level at 1-year was reduced. Conclusions—Our findings suggest that assessment of baseline and follow-up BNP provides important prognostic implications in patients with mildly symptomatic HF who receive CRT. Clinical Trial Registration—URL: http://www.clinicaltrials. gov. Unique identifier: NCT00180271.
Synthesis of CT Images Using CycleGANs : A Comparison of Loss Functions

Deep learning in the medical context is often limited by the availability of training data with sufficient quality. The synthesis of image data offers a solution to this data shortage. Here, we use the CycleGAN network architecture to synthesize axial CT slices based on anthropomorphic body phantoms. We investigate the influence of an identity loss and a gradient difference loss function on the image quality of the synthesized data. We evaluate the synthesized images with respect to anatomical accuracy and realistic CT noise properties. The additional loss functions improved the preservation of edges and anatomical structures compared to the original CycleGAN loss, without deteriorating the noise quality of the synthetic image.
mRNA encoding Sec61β, a tail-anchored protein, is localized on the endoplasmic reticulum

ABSTRACT Although one pathway for the post-translational targeting of tail-anchored proteins to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) has been well defined, it is unclear whether additional pathways exist. Here, we provide evidence that a subset of mRNAs encoding tail-anchored proteins, including Sec61β and nesprin-2, is partially localized to the surface of the ER in mammalian cells. In particular, Sec61b mRNA can be targeted to, and later maintained on, the ER using both translation-dependent and -independent mechanisms. Our data suggests that this process is independent of p180 (also known as RRBP1), a known mRNA receptor on the ER, and the transmembrane domain recognition complex (TRC) pathway components, TRC40 (also known as ASNA1) and BAT3 (also known as BAG6). In addition, our data indicates that Sec61b mRNA might access translocon-bound ribosomes. Our results show that certain tail-anchored proteins are likely to be synthesized directly on the ER, and this facilitates their membrane insertion. Thus, it is clear that mammalian cells utilize multiple mechanisms to ensure efficient targeting of tail-anchored proteins to the surface of the ER. Highlighted Article: The mRNA encoding certain tail-anchored proteins is directly localized to the surface of the endoplasmic reticulum, facilitating the insertion of newly synthesized proteins into the membrane.
Translating with Non-contiguous Phrases

This paper presents a phrase-based statistical machine translation method, based on non-contiguous phrases, i.e. phrases with gaps. A method for producing such phrases from a word-aligned corpora is proposed. A statistical translation model is also presented that deals such phrases, as well as a training method based on the maximization of translation accuracy, as measured with the NIST evaluation metric. Translations are produced by means of a beam-search decoder. Experimental results are presented, that demonstrate how the proposed method allows to better generalize from the training data.
Design of Microstrip Fed Monopole Antenna Using Photonic Band-Gap Structure for Ultra Wideband Application

This paper presents the design of a microstrip fed monopole antenna with photonic band-gap structure as substrate for ultrawide band application with dual band notched characteristics. The microstrip antenna designed and optimized by using CST Microwave Studio(CSTMWS) was found to operate satisfactorily. The measured results presents that the proposed dual band-notch monopole antenna offers a very wide bandwidth of 3.1-13 GHz with two notched bands, covering 3.5/5.5-GHz WiMAX and 8/12-GHz X-bands. And with further change in photonic structure it can be specified to operate only for X-band.
MR Imaging Findings in Alcoholic and Nonalcoholic Acute Wernicke's Encephalopathy: A Review

Wernicke's encephalopathy (WE) is a severe neurological syndrome caused by thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency and clinically characterized by the sudden onset of mental status changes, ocular abnormalities, and ataxia. Apart from chronic alcoholism, the most common cause of WE, a lot of other conditions causing malnutrition and decreasing thiamine absorption such as gastrointestinal surgical procedures and hyperemesis gravidarum must be considered as predisposing factors. Due to its low prevalence and clinical heterogeneity, WE is often misdiagnosed, leading to persistent dysfunctions and, in some cases, to death. Nowadays, MR imaging of the brain, showing T2 and FLAIR hyperintensities in typical (thalami, mammillary bodies, tectal plate, and periaqueductal area) and atypical areas (cerebellum, cranial nerve nuclei, and cerebral cortex), is surely the most important and effective tool in the diagnostic assessment of WE. The aim of this paper is to propose a state of the art of the role of MR imaging in the early diagnosis of this complex disease.
Customer churn analysis in telecom industry

With the rapid development of telecommunication industry, the service providers are inclined more towards expansion of the subscriber base. To meet the need of surviving in the competitive environment, the retention of existing customers has become a huge challenge. In the survey done in the Telecom industry, it is stated that the cost of acquiring a new customer is far more that retaining the existing one. Therefore, by collecting knowledge from the telecom industries can help in predicting the association of the customers as whether or not they will leave the company. The required action needs to be undertaken by the telecom industries in order to initiate the acquisition of their associated customers for making their market value stagnant. Our paper proposes a new framework for the churn prediction model and implements it using the WEKA Data Mining software. The efficiency and the performance of Decision tree and Logistic regression techniques have been compared.
Network protection with multiple availability guarantees q , qq

http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.comnet. 2014.08. 013 1389-1286/ 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. q Preliminary version of this work appeared in the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC). qq This work was supported by NSF Grants CNS-1116209 and CNS0830961, by DTRA Grants HDTRA1-07-1-0004 and HDTRA-09-1-005, and by the Department of the Air Force under Air Force contract #FA8721-05C-0002. Opinions, interpretations, conclusions and recommendations are those of the author and are not necessarily endorsed by the United States Government. ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: gregk@mit.edu (G. Kuperman), modiano@mit.edu (E. Modiano), arad@ll.mit.edu (A. Narula-Tam). Greg Kuperman a,⇑, Eytan Modiano , Aradhana Narula-Tam b
Nicotine induces human neutrophils to produce IL‐8 through the generation of peroxynitrite and subsequent activation of NF‐κB

Leukocytosis in tobacco smokers has been well recognized; however, the exact cause has not been elucidated. To test the hypothesis that tobacco nicotine stimulates neutrophils in the respiratory tract to produce IL‐8, which causes neutrophilia in vivo, we examined whether nicotine induces neutrophil‐IL‐8 production in vitro; the causative role of NF‐κB in its production, in association with the possible production of reactive oxygen intermediates that activate NF‐κB; and the nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) involved in IL‐8 production. Nicotine stimulated neutrophils to produce IL‐8 in both time‐ and concentration‐dependent manners with a 50% effective concentration of 1.89 mM. A degradation of IκB‐α/β proteins and an activity of NF‐κB p65 and p50 were enhanced following nicotine treatment. The synthesis of superoxide and the oxidation of dihydrorhodamine 123 (DHR) were also enhanced. The NOS inhibitor, nω‐Nitro‐l‐arginine methyl ester, prevented nicotine‐induced IL‐8 production, with an entire abrogation of DHR oxidation, IκB degradation, and NF‐κB activity. Neutrophils spontaneously produced NO whose production was not increased, but rather decreased by nicotine stimulation, suggesting that superoxide, produced by nicotine, generates peroxynitrite by reacting with preformed NO, which enhances the NF‐κB activity, thereby producing IL‐8. The nAChRs seemed to be involved in IL‐8 production. In smokers, blood IL‐8 levels were significantly higher than those in nonsmokers. In conclusion, nicotine stimulates neutrophil‐IL‐8 production via nAChR by generating peroxynitrite and subsequent NF‐κB activation, and the IL‐8 appears to contribute to leukocytosis in tobacco smokers.
The volatility of loss aversion : Quantifying the impact of higher stakes

In the controlled environment of the laboratory, the effect of stakes size on Cumulative Prospect Theory is investigated with a particular focus on loss aversion. The results reveal that loss aversion increases substantially and could be more than doubled although the starting point implies loss neutral behavior. This spike of loss aversion is unaffected by probability weighting and utility curvature. Moreover, loss aversion emerges as the main carrier of the higher stakes impact rather than utility in the loss domain. These reveal the importance of loss aversion in Cumulative Prospect Theory as well as its volatile nature. In addition, a simpler model, Dual Theory, confirms these findings.
A New Solution to Coherence Problems in Multicache Systems

A memory hierarchy has coherence problems as soon as one of its levels is split in several independent units which are not equally accessible from faster levels or processors. The classical solution to these problems, as found for instance in multiprocessor, multicache systems, is to restore a degree of interdependence between such units through a set of high speed interconnecting buses. This solution is not entirely satisfactory, as it tends to reduce the throughput of the memory hierarchy and to increase its cost.
Aqueous Humor Dynamics: A Review

Glaucoma is a family of optic neuropathies which cause irreversible but potentially preventable vision loss. Vision loss in most forms of glaucoma is related to elevated IOP with subsequent injury to the optic nerve. Secretion of aqueous humor and regulation of its outflow are physiologically important processes for maintaining IOP in the normal range. Thus, understanding the complex mechanisms that regulate aqueous humor circulation is essential for management of glaucoma. The two main structures related to aqueous humor dynamics are the ciliary body and the trabecular meshwork (TM). Three mechanisms are involved in aqueous humor formation: diffusion, ultrafiltration and active secretion. Active secretion is the major contributor to aqueous humor formation. The aqueous humor flow in humans follows a circadian rhythm, being higher in the morning than at night. The aqueous humor leaves the eye by passive flow via two pathways - the trabecular meshwork and the uveoscleral pathway. In humans, 75% of the resistance to aqueous humor outflow is localized within the TM with the juxtacanalicular portion of the TM being the main site of outflow resistance. Glycosaminoglycan deposition in the TM extracellular matrix (ECM) has been suggested to be responsible for increased outflow resistance at this specific site whereas others have suggested deposition of proteins, such as cochlin, obstruct the aqueous humor outflow through the TM. The uveoscleral outflow pathway is relatively independent of the intraocular pressure and the proportion of aqueous humor exiting the eye via the uveoscleral pathway decreases with age.
Random Early Drop with In & Out ( RIO ) for Asymmetrical Geostationary Satellite Links

1 Abstract—A model of the TCP/IP stack over Asymmetr ical Geostationary Satelli te links has been developed to evaluate support of pr ior itized and non-pr ior itized TCP traff ic over the satelli te link. Traff ic Pr ior itization is needed to provide end-toend support for Differentiated Services (DiffServ) in a hybr id terrestr ial and satelli te-based network. Var ious parameters, such as router buffer size, TCP window size, and performance of Random Ear ly Drop with In & Out (RIO) over the satelli te link is examined.
Combining Treewidth and Backdoors for CSP

We show that CSP is fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by the treewidth of a backdoor into any tractable CSP problem over a finite constraint language. This result combines the two prominent approaches for achieving tractability for CSP: (i) by structural restrictions on the interaction between the variables and the constraints and (ii) by language restrictions on the relations that can be used inside the constraints. Apart from defining the notion of backdoor-treewidth and showing how backdoors of small treewidth can be used to efficiently solve CSP, our main technical contribution is a fixed-parameter algorithm that finds a backdoor of small treewidth.
The moderating effect of Multiple Groups between Entrepreneurial Intention and its Influencing

In This paper is based on the Theory of Planned Behavior to examine the entrepreneurial intention of business students in Taiwan, and how the role of gender and the role of entrepreneurial education influence entrepreneurial intention. Data was collected by questionnaire from a sample of 500 students from National Taiwan University (NTU) Collage of Management. Our result shows that both males and females exhibit low entrepreneurial intention. Moreover, results indicate that male student’s entrepreneurial intention is stronger than female students, and students who participated in entrepreneurship program show higher entrepreneurial intention. We also found that the most significant predictors of entrepreneurial intention for both genders are personal attitude and perceived behavioral control. We considered that the role of gender stereotypes reduces female students’ entrepreneurial intention, and entrepreneurship education raises students’ entrepreneurial intention due to two skills: the scanning-and-search skill and the evaluation-and-judgment skill. This research contributes to test the entrepreneurial intention questionnaire developed from TPB and examine the moderating effect of gender differences and entrepreneurial education to EI. Practical implications and suggestions for further research are discussed. * Corresponding author E-mail: wangsm@ntu.edu. tw
Motivational Factors for Mobile Serious Games for Elderly Users

D ue to the increasing life expectancy in the world, the number of elderly people is also augmenting. Thus, society will have to offer more and more products and services that meet the specific needs and desires of these people, who seek alternatives for entertainment, social interaction and learning. Serious games are an option to provide them learning combined with entertainment. In Brazil, it is known that a small part of the elderly has access to computers, and that a larger part already uses mobile phones. Therefore, we carried out a survey to identify the features that serious mobile games should have, so that older people could feel pleasure and desire to use them. This survey was based on a literature review and also on a case study with a group of seniors who evaluated five serious games for smart phones. From the data collected we compiled a list of guidelines for developing mobile serious games that meet the needs, interests and motivations of older players.
Nonlinear control for VSC based HVDC system

Voltage source converter (VSC) based HVDC is a multivariable, strongly coupled nonlinear system. It is quite difficult to establish the precise mathematic model of the VSC. This paper adopts the theory of the nonlinear transformation and the feedback linearization of nonlinear system, establishes the nonlinear mathematic model of the VSC in d-q synchronous reference frame. The decoupled control strategy with state variable feedback linearization, which is combined with the optical control theory, is proposed in this paper. And with this strategy the active and reactive power can be controlled independently. Simulation results realized by PSCAD/EMTDC show that the designed control system has better control performance
ON THE MOON : GEOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS N 93-17434

The Moon is an excellent site for astronomical observations. This paper descaTes two geological aspects related to astronomy from the Moon. First it et_luates the sources of gases near a lunar base as Input to calculations reported in a separate paper on the growth of an am'fi_ lunar atmosphere. The results suggest that mining for 3He couM produce the most gas (1 kg/sec), but rocket exhaust (0.1 kg/sec) atui habitat venting (0.5 kg/sec) are also important. Secomg the _ discusses oqter_a that need to be considered when determining the site of a lunar astronomical facility. These are longitude and latitude (equatorial sites are favored), topography (irapo_ant to be relatively flat for ease of installation), distance from a lunar base (to be free of seismic noise, dust, and gases), the site's value to lunar geosctence (other factors being equal, a geologically a_'t_,rse site is better), and its t_lue as a mater_2s resource (mining and observato_es are incompatible).
Microphone arrays for noise reduction with low signal distortion in room acoustics

We propose a new method for noise reduction using a microphone array. The method takes advantage of the spatial diversity inherent to microphone arrays and optimizes certain criteria, namely, the output signal to noise ratio (SNR) or the mean squared error (MSE), subject to the constraint of spatial prediction that relates the noise free signals captured by the microphones. Simulation results demonstrate that resorting to this new method leads to high rate of noise reduction and low signal distortion.
On the Computations Analyzing Natural Optic Flow: Quantitative Model Analysis of the Blowfly Motion Vision Pathway

For many animals, including humans, the optic flow generated on the eyes during locomotion is an important source of information about self-motion and the structure of the environment. The blowfly has been used frequently as a model system for experimental analysis of optic flow processing at the microcircuit level. Here, we describe a model of the computational mechanisms implemented by these circuits in the blowfly motion vision pathway. Although this model was originally proposed based on simple experimenter-designed stimuli, we show that it is also capable to quantitatively predict the responses to the complex dynamic stimuli a blowfly encounters in free flight. In particular, the model visual system exploits the active saccadic gaze and flight strategy of blowflies in a similar way, as does its neuronal counterpart. The model circuit extracts information about translation velocity in the intersaccadic intervals and thus, indirectly, about the three-dimensional layout of the environment. By stepwise dissection of the model circuit, we determine which of its components are essential for these remarkable features. When accounting for the responses to complex natural stimuli, the model is much more robust against parameter changes than when explaining the neuronal responses to simple experimenter-defined stimuli. In contrast to conclusions drawn from experiments with simple stimuli, optimization of the parameter set for different segments of natural optic flow stimuli do not indicate pronounced adaptational changes of these parameters during long-lasting stimulation.
Intermittent electrical stimulation of the right cervical vagus nerve in salt-sensitive hypertensive rats: effects on blood pressure, arrhythmias, and ventricular electrophysiology

Hypertension (HTN) is the single greatest risk factor for potentially fatal cardiovascular diseases. One cause of HTN is inappropriately increased sympathetic nervous system activity, suggesting that restoring the autonomic nervous balance may be an effective means of HTN treatment. Here, we studied the potential of vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) to treat chronic HTN and cardiac arrhythmias through stimulation of the right cervical vagus nerve in hypertensive rats. Dahl salt‐sensitive rats (n = 12) were given a high salt diet to induce HTN. After 6 weeks, rats were randomized into two groups: HTN‐Sham and HTN‐VNS, in which VNS was provided to HTN‐VNS group for 4 weeks. In vivo blood pressure and electrocardiogram activities were monitored continuously by an implantable telemetry system. After 10 weeks, rats were euthanized and their hearts were extracted for ex vivo electrophysiological studies using high‐resolution optical mapping. Six weeks of high salt diet significantly increased both mean arterial pressure (MAP) and pulse pressure, demonstrating successful induction of HTN in all rats. After 4 weeks of VNS treatment, the increase in MAP and the number of arrhythmia episodes in HTN‐VNS rats was significantly attenuated when compared to those observed in HTN‐Sham rats. VNS treatment also induced changes in electrophysiological properties of the heart, such as reduction in action potential duration (APD) during rapid drive pacing, slope of APD restitution, spatial dispersion of APD, and increase in conduction velocity of impulse propagation. Overall, these results provide further evidence for the therapeutic efficacy of VNS in HTN and HTN‐related heart diseases.