Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Randomized Phase II Crossover Study of Imatinib or Rituximab for Cutaneous Sclerosis after Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation

Purpose: Cutaneous sclerosis occurs in 20% of patients with chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) and can compromise mobility and quality of life. Experimental design: We conducted a prospective, multicenter, randomized, two-arm phase II crossover trial of imatinib (200 mg daily) or rituximab (375 mg/m2 i.v. weekly × 4 doses, repeatable after 3 months) for treatment of cutaneous sclerosis diagnosed within 18 months (NCT01309997). The primary endpoint was significant clinical response (SCR) at 6 months, defined as quantitative improvement in skin sclerosis or joint range of motion. Treatment success was defined as SCR at 6 months without crossover, recurrent malignancy or death. Secondary endpoints included changes of B-cell profiles in blood (BAFF levels and cellular subsets), patient-reported outcomes, and histopathology between responders and nonresponders with each therapy. Results: SCR was observed in 9 of 35 [26%; 95% confidence interval (CI); 13%–43%] participants randomized to imatinib and 10 of 37 (27%; 95% CI, 14%–44%) randomized to rituximab. Six (17%; 95% CI, 7%–34%) patients in the imatinib arm and 5 (14%; 95% CI, 5%–29%) in the rituximab arm had treatment success. Higher percentages of activated B cells (CD27+) were seen at enrollment in rituximab-treated patients who had treatment success (P = 0.01), but not in imatinib-treated patients. Conclusions: These results support the need for more effective therapies for cutaneous sclerosis and suggest that activated B cells define a subgroup of patients with cutaneous sclerosis who are more likely to respond to rituximab. Clin Cancer Res; 22(2); 319–27. ©2015 AACR.
Weighted Integration Suggests That Visual and Tactile Signals Provide Independent Estimates About Duration

Humans might possess either a single (amodal) internal clock or multiple clocks for different sensory modalities. Sensitivity could be improved by the provision of multiple signals. Such improvements can be predicted quantitatively, assuming estimates are combined by summation, a process described as optimal when summation is weighted in accordance with the variance associated with each of the initially independent estimates. This possibility was assessed for visual and tactile information regarding temporal intervals. In Experiment 1, 12 musicians and 12 nonmusicians judged durations of 300 and 600 ms, compared to test values spanning these standards. Bimodal precision increased relative to unimodal conditions, but not to the extent predicted by optimally weighted summation. In Experiment 2, 6 musicians and 6 other participants each judged 6 standards, ranging from 100 ms to 600 ms, with conflicting cues providing a measure of the weight assigned to each sensory modality. A weighted integration model best fitted these data, with musicians more likely to select near-optimal weights than nonmusicians. Overall, data were consistent with the existence of separate visual and tactile clock components at either the counter/integrator or memory stages. Independent estimates are passed to a decisional process, but not always combined in a statistically optimal fashion.
Designing User-Centric Patient Portals: Clinician and Patients' Uses and Gratifications.

BACKGROUND Legislation mandates that clinicians make patients' medical information available digitally. This has resulted in hurriedly installing patient portals that do not fully meet the needs of patients or clinicians. This study examined a specific portal, MyPreventiveCare (MPC), a patient-centered portal designed to promote preventive care to consumers, to elicit recommendations from patients and clinicians about how it could be more beneficial by uncovering their uses and gratifications (U&G). MATERIALS AND METHODS In-depth interviews with 31 patients and two clinician focus groups were conducted. Multiple methods were utilized, such as grounded theory coding to develop themes and content analysis to classify responses according to the U&G framework. RESULTS Four main categories emerged that users desire to be included in health portals: integration with technology (27%), coordination of care (27%), incorporation of lifestyle (26%), and increased control (20%). Additional analysis revealed that health portals are mainly utilized to fulfill cognitive and affective needs, with over 80% of recommendations related to the U&G categories of cognitive and affective needs. Cognitive (60%), affective (21%), social integrative (10%), personal integrative (9%), and tension release (0%). CONCLUSIONS Portals will continue to evolve and become important health communication tools if they address the user's perspective and are inclusive of new technological advances. Specifically, portals must become more user centric and incorporate aspects of the patients' lifestyle and integrate health information technology.
Models meet data: Challenges and opportunities in implementing land management in Earth system models

As the applications of Earth system models (ESMs) move from general climate projections toward questions of mitigation and adaptation, the inclusion of land management practices in these models becomes crucial. We carried out a survey among modeling groups to show an evolution from models able only to deal with land‐cover change to more sophisticated approaches that allow also for the partial integration of land management changes. For the longer term a comprehensive land management representation can be anticipated for all major models. To guide the prioritization of implementation, we evaluate ten land management practices—forestry harvest, tree species selection, grazing and mowing harvest, crop harvest, crop species selection, irrigation, wetland drainage, fertilization, tillage, and fire—for (1) their importance on the Earth system, (2) the possibility of implementing them in state‐of‐the‐art ESMs, and (3) availability of required input data. Matching these criteria, we identify “low‐hanging fruits” for the inclusion in ESMs, such as basic implementations of crop and forestry harvest and fertilization. We also identify research requirements for specific communities to address the remaining land management practices. Data availability severely hampers modeling the most extensive land management practice, grazing and mowing harvest, and is a limiting factor for a comprehensive implementation of most other practices. Inadequate process understanding hampers even a basic assessment of crop species selection and tillage effects. The need for multiple advanced model structures will be the challenge for a comprehensive implementation of most practices but considerable synergy can be gained using the same structures for different practices. A continuous and closer collaboration of the modeling, Earth observation, and land system science communities is thus required to achieve the inclusion of land management in ESMs.
Comparing terrestrial laser scanning and unmanned aerial vehicle structure from motion to assess top of canopy structure in tropical forests

Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with digital cameras have attracted much attention from the forestry community as potential tools for forest inventories and forest monitoring. This research fills a knowledge gap about the viability and dissimilarities of using these technologies for measuring the top of canopy structure in tropical forests. In an empirical study with data acquired in a Guyanese tropical forest, we assessed the differences between top of canopy models (TCMs) derived from TLS measurements and from UAV imagery, processed using structure from motion. Firstly, canopy gaps lead to differences in TCMs derived from TLS and UAVs. UAV TCMs overestimate canopy height in gap areas and often fail to represent smaller gaps altogether. Secondly, it was demonstrated that forest change caused by logging can be detected by both TLS and UAV TCMs, although it is better depicted by the TLS. Thirdly, this research shows that both TLS and UAV TCMs are sensitive to the small variations in sensor positions during data collection. TCMs rendered from UAV data acquired over the same area at different moments are more similar (RMSE 0.11–0.63 m for tree height, and 0.14–3.05 m for gap areas) than those rendered from TLS data (RMSE 0.21–1.21 m for trees, and 1.02–2.48 m for gaps). This study provides support for a more informed decision for choosing between TLS and UAV TCMs to assess top of canopy in a tropical forest by advancing our understanding on: (i) how these technologies capture the top of the canopy, (ii) why their ability to reproduce the same model varies over repeated surveying sessions and (iii) general considerations such as the area coverage, costs, fieldwork time and processing requirements needed.
Foam-based mass emergency depopulation of floor-reared meat-type poultry operations.

Current control strategies for avian influenza and other highly contagious poultry diseases often include quarantine, depopulation, and disposal of infected birds. For biosecurity reasons, on-farm depopulation and disposal methods are preferred. The options for mass depopulation are limited, as reported by the "2000 Report of the AVMA Panel on Euthanasia. " Current depopulation techniques may have excessive labor requirements, are not appropriate for all house types, and may not be suitable for large-scale emergency implementation. A procedure has been developed that uses foam to rapidly form a blanket over the birds. The procedure requires relatively few people, can be performed in a variety of house types, and is compatible with in-house composting. Results from 2 experiments using foam for depopulation are presented in this paper. These studies have shown that foams are comparable to the CO(2) polyethylene tent procedure in time to death in small groups and that the foam is faster as group size increases. Adding CO(2) to the foam does not enhance its efficacy. Based on corticosterone levels, the study also showed that the foams are no more stressful than the CO(2) depopulation method. Necropsy and histological examination of birds indicated that blood was present to some degree in the trachea, syrinx, and bronchial tree in broilers subjected to foam with CO(2), foam without CO(2), and CO(2) polyethylene tent methods of depopulation. Foam caused a rapid onset of airway occlusion. In both foam- and CO(2)-euthanized broilers, lesions are consistent with anoxia or hypoxia. This suggests that foam acts by physically induced hypoxia, whereas CO(2) causes chemically induced hypoxia.
EFFECTS OF THE FIXATION METHODS OF MENISCUS ALLOGRAFT ON THE MECHANICAL CHARACTERISTIC OF LIGAMENTS AND BONE IN TIBIOFEMORAL JOINT

Based on MRI images of the normal human knee at four flexion angles(0°/25°/60°/80°),the finite element models of the normal tibiofemoral joint and two medial meniscus transplantation models(2-tunnel fixation and 3-tunnel fixation) were built in this paper.The internal and external rotation torque of 10N.m were applied to models for the finite element simulation and the stress and displacement distributions were obtained.The maximum tensile stress on ligaments,the tension in ligaments,the maximum displacement of ligaments and the maximum Von Mises stress on the femur and tibia in transplantation models were respectively compared with those in the normal model to determine the effect of 2/3-tunnel fixation on ligaments.Results showed that two fixation methods both improved ligaments’ abnormal mechanical behavior caused by the removal of meniscus,especially after 3-tunnel fixation to improve even more apparently.Compared with 2-tunnel fixation,3-tunnel fixation caused smaller changes in the maximum tensile stress on ligaments and in the tension of ligaments.Although 3-tunnel fixation made the average deformation of ligaments at four flexion angles under two kinds of loads experience greater changes,the average percent changes were only less than 10%. Both of the two fixation methods affected the stress distribution of femur and tibia.By contrast,3-tunnel fixation affected less apparently.On the whole,3-tunnel fixation was better for the restoration of ligaments’ mechanical characteristics and the stress distribution of femur and tibia was more closely to the normal.Results are expected to provide reference data for the clinical application of meniscus allograft transplantation and postoperative analysis.
Information propagation game: a tool to acquire humanplaying data for multiplayer influence maximization on social networks

With the popularity of online social network services, influence maximization on social networks has drawn much attention in recent years. Most of these studies approximate a greedy based sub-optimal solution by proving the submodular nature of the utility function. Instead of using the analytical techniques, we are interested in solving the diffusion competition and influence maximization problem by a data-driven approach. We propose Information Propagation Game (IPG), a framework that can collect a large number of seed picking strategies for analysis. Through the IPG framework, human players are not only having fun but also helping contributing the seed picking strategies. Preliminary experiment suggests that centrality based heuristics are too simple for seed selection in a multiple player environment.
Software Bug Prediction using Machine Learning Approach

Software Bug Prediction (SBP) is an important issue in software development and maintenance processes, which concerns with the overall of software successes. This is because predicting the software faults in earlier phase improves the software quality, reliability, efficiency and reduces the software cost. However, developing robust bug prediction model is a challenging task and many techniques have been proposed in the literature. This paper presents a software bug prediction model based on machine learning (ML) algorithms. Three supervised ML algorithms have been used to predict future software faults based on historical data. These classifiers are Naive Bayes (NB), Decision Tree (DT) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). The evaluation process showed that ML algorithms can be used effectively with high accuracy rate. Furthermore, a comparison measure is applied to compare the proposed prediction model with other approaches. The collected results showed that the ML approach has a better performance.
Automatically Designing and Printing 3-D Objects with EvoFab 0.2

Although Evolutionary Design has had great success in creating virtual objects, very few of these evolved designs have been manufactured. Standing in the way is the fabrication gap caused by a reliance on prescriptive rather than descriptive representations of evolved objects. Evolutionary Fabrication describes an alternative process which evolves how rather than what to build. In this paper we describe EvoFab 0.2, a completely automated physically embodied machine which implements Evolutionary Fabrication and evolves three dimensional objects. We describe the mechanism and underlying algorithms in detail, and show how it can be used to create novel structures.
All‐optical functional synaptic connectivity mapping in acute brain slices using the calcium integrator CaMPARI

The genetically encoded fluorescent calcium integrator calcium‐modulated photoactivatable ratiobetric integrator (CaMPARI) reports calcium influx induced by synaptic and neural activity. Its fluorescence is converted from green to red in the presence of violet light and calcium. The rate of conversion – the sensitivity to activity – is tunable and depends on the intensity of violet light. Synaptic activity and action potentials can independently initiate significant CaMPARI conversion. The level of conversion by subthreshold synaptic inputs is correlated to the strength of input, enabling optical readout of relative synaptic strength. When combined with optogenetic activation of defined presynaptic neurons, CaMPARI provides an all‐optical method to map synaptic connectivity.
The impact of repeated organophosphorus pesticide exposure on biomarkers and neurobehavioral outcomes among adolescent pesticide applicators

ABSTRACT Egyptian adolescents are hired as seasonal workers to apply pesticides to the cotton crop and may perform this occupation for several years. However, few studies examined the effects of repeated pesticide exposure on health outcomes The goal of this study was to determine the impact of repeated pesticide exposure on neurobehavioral (NB) performance and biomarkers of exposure (urinary metabolite) and effect (cholinesterase activity). Eighty-four adolescents from two field stations in Menoufia, Egypt, were examined four times: before and during pesticide application season in 2010 and again before and during application season in 2011. At each of the four time points, participants completed a questionnaire, performed an NB test battery, and were assessed for urinary levels of the chlorpyrifos metabolite TCPy (3,5,6-trichloro-2-pyridinol) and blood cholinesterase activity. Following the study cohort over two consecutive pesticide application seasons revealed that TCPy levels significantly increased following exposure, and returned to baseline levels following the end of the application season. Blood butyryl cholinesterase activity exhibited a similar pattern. Although NB outcomes displayed learning and practice effects over time, deficits in performance were significantly associated with increased TCPy levels with reduction in the number of NB measures showing improvement over time. Biomarkers of exposure and effect demonstrated changes associated with pesticide application and recovery after application ended. Deficits in NB performance were correlated with elevated pesticide exposure. Data demonstrated that repeated pesticide exposure may exert a long-term adverse impact on human health.
The Role of Speed in ADHD-Related Working Memory Deficits

Several recent commentaries suggest that, for psychological science to move beyond “homuncular” explanations for cognitive control, it is critically important to examine the role of basic and computationally well-defined processes (e.g. cognitive processing speed). Correlational evidence has previously linked slow speed to working memory (WM) deficits in Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), but the directionality of this relationship has not been investigated experimentally and the mechanisms through which speed may influence WM are unclear. Herein, we demonstrate in school-aged children with and without ADHD that manipulating speed (indexed with the diffusion model) within a WM paradigm reduces WM capacity due to an increase in cognitive load, in a manner that is consistent with predictions of the time-based resource-sharing model of WM. Results suggest slow speed is a plausible cause of WM deficits in ADHD, provide a mechanistic account of this relationship, and urge the exploration of nonexecutive neurocognitive processes in clinical research on etiology.
In Defense of Classical Image Processing: Fast Depth Completion on the CPU

With the rise of data driven deep neural networks as a realization of universal function approximators, most research on computer vision problems has moved away from handcrafted classical image processing algorithms. This paper shows that with a well designed algorithm, we are capable of outperforming neural network based methods on the task of depth completion. The proposed algorithm is simple and fast, runs on the CPU, and relies only on basic image processing operations to perform depth completion of sparse LIDAR depth data. We evaluate our algorithm on the challenging KITTI depth completion benchmark, and at the time of submission, our method ranks first on the KITTI test server among all published methods. Furthermore, our algorithm is data independent, requiring no training data to perform the task at hand. The code written in Python is publicly available at https://github.com/kujason/ip_basic
Musculoskeletal Complications Among Children with Sickle Cell Admitted in University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital Ituku - Ozalla Enugu: A 58 Month Review

Background: Sickle cell anemia (SCA) is a genetic hematological disorder characterized by red blood cells that assume abnormal, rigid, and sickle shape. The musculoskeletal complications of SCA result from vessel occlusion, leading to tissue ischemia and infarction and progressive end organ damage. Aim: The aim of this study was to determine the pattern of musculoskeletal complications among children with SCA admitted at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH) Ituku Ozalla. Subjects and Methods: This is a retrospective study of cases of musculoskeletal complications among SCA patients admitted in UNTH over a 58 month period. Data were analyzed using the SPSS version 20 and GraphPad Prism 5 soft-wares. Variables analyzed include musculoskeletal complications, age and gender distribution of subjects. Fisher's exact was used to test for significant association of categorical variables while Mann Whitney U-test was used to compare the means. A P value of less than 0.05 was accepted as significant. Results: There were 300 registered patients in our sickle cell clinic. A total of 78 patients (52 males and 26 females) were admitted between January 2007 and October 2012. The median age of the patients was 10 years (range: 9 months to 17 years). 25 of the 78 patients had musculoskeletal complications, giving a prevalence rate of 32.1%. The most common musculoskeletal complication was acute osteomyelitis, diagnosed in 10/78 (12.8%) of the patients. Conclusion: Acute osteomyelitis is the most common musculoskeletal complications in children with SCA attending UNTH Ituku Ozalla.
Damage-tolerant Zr-Cu-Al-based bulk metallic glasses with record-breaking fracture toughness

Bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) exhibit high yield strength but little tensile ductility. For this class of materials, damage tolerance is a key mechanical design parameter needed for their engineering use. Recently we have discovered a correlation between the local structural characteristics in the glass and the propensity for shear transformations. Based on the dependence of glass structure on alloy composition, zirconium (Zr)-rich Zr-titanium (Ti)-copper (Cu)-aluminum (Al) compositions are predicted to be more prone to spread-out plastic deformation and hence profuse shear banding. This structural perspective has guided us to locate a Zr_61Ti_2Cu_25Al_12 (ZT1) BMG that exhibits a record-breaking fracture toughness, on par with the palladium (Pd)-based BMG recently developed at Caltech. At the same time, the new BMG consists of common metals and has robust glass-forming ability. Interestingly, the ZT1 BMG derives its high toughness from its high propensity for crack deflection and local loading-mode change (from mode I to substantially mode II) at the crack tip due to extensive shear band interactions. A crack-resistance curve ( R -curve) has been obtained following American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) standards, employing both “single-specimen” and “multiple-specimen” techniques as well as fatigue precracked specimens. The combination of high strength and fracture toughness places ZT1 atop all engineering metallic alloys in the strength-toughness Ashby diagram, pushing the envelop accessible to a structural material in terms of its damage tolerance.