Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prognostic Value of Anatomical Dominance of Coronary Circulation in Patients with Surgical Myocardial Revascularization

Introduction: This study evaluated the frequency of domination of the coronary arteries types in patients treated by surgical myocardial revascularization. The aim of the study was to determine whether the left coronary circulation dominance is a prognostic factor for poorer outcome in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery. Material and methods: A total sample consisted of 100 patients with coronary artery disease that were treated with coronary artery bypass grafting at the Clinic for Cardiac Surgery, Clinical Center of the University of Sarajevo. To all patients on the basis of preoperative coronary angiography was determined the dominance of the coronary arteries. Patients included in the study were divided into two groups, with the left and right with coronary dominance. Results: Left coronary dominance in a sample of patients was present in 21/100 (21%), right in 69/100 (69%) and balanced in 10/100 (10%) cases. Female gender was significantly more frequent in patients with left coronary dominance and proved to be a stronger predictor of poorer outcome, especially in combination with left main stenosis of the left coronary artery and left coronary dominance. Inability of revascularization of the r. interventricularis posterior (RIVP) was statistically significantly higher in case of left dominance 9/21 (42.9%), compared to the right 16/79 (20.3%), p=0.033. Lethal outcome was more common in case of left dominance in relation to the right (9.4% vs 0.9%). The incidence of surgical complications, respiratory, neurological and renal complications was not significantly different between groups, while the length of hospital stay was significantly higher in the group of patients with left dominance, p = 0.003. Conclusion: Left coronary dominance is an important risk factor for patients undergoing surgical myocardial revascularization.
Control strategies for improving ground vehicle stability: State-of-the-art review

Vehicle stability control system has evolved significantly over the past three decades. Several control strategies have been implemented to enhance the vehicle stability control performance. However, most of these control strategies have not been focused on improving the transient response for vehicle yaw rate and sideslip angle tracking controller in the presence of uncertainties and disturbance. This paper is aimed at reviewing the proposed control algorithms based on their control objectives, different types of actuators required for the vehicle stability control system, advantages and disadvantages. According to this review, we derive that the advanced type of sliding mode control with non-singular fast terminal sliding surface has an ideal capacity to provide a fast transient response of yaw rate and sideslip tracking controllers under the presence of disturbances.
To Give or Not to Give? Interactive Effects of Status and Legitimacy on Generosity

Although previous research has demonstrated that generosity can lead to status gains, the converse effect of status on generosity has received less attention. This is a significant gap because groups and society at large rely on the beneficence of all members, especially those holding high-status positions. More broadly, research on the psychology of status remains largely unexplored, which is striking in light of the attention given to other forms of social hierarchy, such as power. The current work focuses on the psychology of status and explores the interactive effects of status and legitimacy on generosity. In particular, we hypothesize that status will decrease generosity when the status hierarchy is perceived as legitimate because status can inflate views of one’s value to the group and sense of deservingness. In contrast, we hypothesize that status increases generosity when the status hierarchy is perceived as illegitimate, due to efforts to restore equity through one’s generosity. Our results support these hypotheses across 6 studies (a field study and 5 experiments) and empirically demonstrate that the effects of status and legitimacy on generosity can be attributed to concerns about equity in status allocation.
The use of k-means++ for approximate spectral clustering of large datasets

Spectral clustering (SC) has been commonly used in recent years, thanks to its nonparametric model, its ability to extract clusters of different manifolds and its easy application. However, SC is infeasible for large datasets because of its high computational cost and memory requirement. To address this challenge, approximate spectral clustering (ASC) has been proposed for large datasets. ASC involves two steps: firstly limited number of data representatives (also known as prototypes) are selected by sampling or quantization methods, then SC is applied to these representatives using various similarity criteria. In this study, several quantization and sampling methods are compared for ASC. Among them, k-means++, which is a recently popular algorithm in clustering, is used to select prototypes in ASC for the first time. Experiments on different datasets indicate that k-means++ is a suitable alternative to neural gas and selective sampling in terms of accuracy and computational cost.
Utility of Ultrasound Guidance for Central Venous Access in Children

Background Placement of a central venous catheter (CVC) in a pediatric patient is an important skill for pediatric emergency medicine physicians but can be challenging and time consuming. Ultrasound (US) guidance has been shown to improve success of central line placement in adult patients. Objectives This article aims to review the literature and evaluate the benefit of US guidance in the placement of CVCs, specifically in pediatric emergency department patients, and to review the procedure. Results Four meta-analyses of US-guided CVC placement in adult patients concluded that US guidance reduces placement failure, decreases complications, and decreases the need for multiple attempts. Two studies in the emergency department setting support these conclusions. Pediatric-specific data related to US-guided CVC placement include data suggesting a benefit with US guidance, as well as data indicating no difference in outcome measures when US guidance is used compared with the landmark technique. Conclusions The evidence surrounding US-guided CVC insertion supports its use in adult patients. Pediatric-specific literature is sparse and includes mixed results. As more pediatric emergency physicians adopt the use of point-of-care US, we expect an increase in data supporting its use for CVC placement in pediatric emergency department patients.
Unilateral Centrifugation: Utricular Assessment and Protocol Comparison

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine how 2 different methods of lateral translation affect subjective visual vertical (SVV), ocular torsion position, and symptoms of nausea in a healthy population. Study Design: Prospective study. Setting: Tertiary referral center. Patients: Eleven healthy control subjects ranging between 26 and 48 years of age with normal hearing sensitivity and no history of balance disorders, dizziness, or neurologic involvement. Intervention(s): Subjects underwent 2 types of lateral translation: 1) lateral translation followed by rotation, and 2) lateral translation during rotation. The order of lateral translation type and order of translation were randomized to avoid an order effect. Main Outcome Measure(s): Ocular torsion and SVV deviation were measured during each lateral translation trial. A visual analog scale was used to assess each participant's level of nausea before and directly after each lateral translation trial. Results: There was no significant difference in ocular torsion, SVV deviation, or level of nausea between the 2 methods. Both ocular torsion and SVV deviation were symmetrical to the right and left within both methods, and both demonstrated a linear relationship with the gravito-inertial acceleration vector. Conclusion: Both ocular torsion and SVV have been shown to offset systematically in response to unilateral utricular stimulation regardless of the lateral translation method used, with no significant difference in subjective sensations of nausea.
Microstructure of α' Martensites in Ti‐V‐Al Alloys Studied by High‐Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy

Atomic structures of hexagonal α’ martensites in Ti-6mass%Al-4mass%V alloys have been studied by means of aberration corrected high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and electron diffraction. There observed differences in atomic structures of the }11 10{ -type twin boundaries of the α’ martensites: stacking faults, a few atomic layers in width, was observed at the twin boundary for the as-quenched alloy after solution treatment at 1100 o C (above the β transus), while the alloy solution treated at 950 o C (below the β transus) showed a clear-cut twin boundary. The excellent ductility is observed in the latter alloy.
Preformed and regenerated phosphate in ocean general circulation models: can right total concentrations be wrong?

Phosphate distributions simulated by seven state-of-the-art biogeochemical ocean circulation models are evaluated against observations of global ocean nutrient distributions. The biogeochemical models exhibit different structural complexities, ranging from simple nutrient-restoring to multi-nutrient NPZD type models. We evaluate the simulations using the observed volume distribution of phosphate. The errors in these simulated volume class distributions are significantly larger when preformed phosphate (or regenerated phosphate) rather than total phosphate is considered. Our analysis reveals that models can achieve similarly good fits to observed total phosphate distributions for a~very different partitioning into preformed and regenerated nutrient components. This has implications for the strength and potential climate sensitivity of the simulated biological carbon pump. We suggest complementing the use of total nutrient distributions for assessing model skill by an evaluation of the respective preformed and regenerated nutrient components.
What is he/she like?: Estimating Twitter user attributes from contents and social neighbors

We propose a new method for estimating user attributes (gender, age, occupation, and interests) of a Twitter user from the user's contents (profile document and tweets) and social neighbors, i.e. those whom the user has mentioned. Our labeling method is able to collect a large amount of training data automatically by using Twitter users associated with a blog account. Furthermore, we experiment estimation methods using social neighbors with three adjustable levels of its information and show that our method, which uses the target user's profile document and tweets and the neighbors' profile documents (not including tweets), achieves the best accuracy.
A GPU-accelerated envelope-following method for switching power converter simulation

In this paper, we propose a new envelope-following parallel transient analysis method for the general switching power converters. The new method first exploits the parallelisim in the envelope-following method and parallelize the Newton update solving part, which is the most computational expensive, in GPU platforms to boost the simulation performance. To further speed up the iterative GMRES solving for Newton update equation in the envelope-following method, we apply the matrix-free Krylov basis generation technique, which was previously used for RF simulation. Last, the new method also applies more robust Gear-2 integration to compute the sensitivity matrix instead of traditional integration methods. Experimental results from several integrated on-chip power converters show that the proposed GPU envelope-following algorithm leads to about 10× speedup compared to its CPU counterpart, and 100× faster than the traditional envelop-following methods while still keeps the similar accuracy.
Implementing a proven-secure and cost-effective countermeasure against the compression ratio info-leak mass exploitation (CRIME) attack

Header compression is desirable for network applications as it saves bandwidth and reduces latency. However, when data is compressed before being encrypted, the amount of compression leaks information about the amount of redundancy in the plaintext. In web requests, headers contain secret web cookies. Therefore, compression of headers before encryption will reveal the information about the secret web cookies. This side-channel has led to Compression Ratio Info-leak Made Easy (CRIME) attack on web traffic protected by the SSL/TLS protocols. In order to mitigate the CRIME attack, compression is completely disabled at the TLS/SSL layer, which in return increases the bandwidth consumption and latency. In a previous work (Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2015), two countermeasures are presented with formal security proofs, against compression side-channel attacks, namely (l)-separating secret cookies from user inputs and (2)-using a static compression dictionary. In this work we create a test environment to replicate the CRIME attack and verify the attack. Moreover, we implement a proven-secure countermeasure against the CRIME attack, in a real world client/server setup, following the aforementioned two countermeasures. Our implementation achieves better compression ratio (closer to the original TLS/SSL compression), and hence reduces the bandwidth usage and latency significantly (therefore cost-effective). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first proven-secure and cost-effective countermeasure implementation against the CRIME attack.
The Description of Situations: Towards Replicable Domains of Psychological Situation Characteristics

Using the most comprehensive lexical approach with English adjectives to date, Parrigon et al. (2017) found 7 major dimensions of psychological situation characteristics (CAPTION: Complexity, Adversity, Positive Valence, Typicality, Importance, humOr, Negative Valence). Researchers using or studying situations may be interested in how well these dimensions empirically overlap with dimensions from other taxonomies, such as the DIAMONDS (Duty, Intellect, Adversity, Mating, pOsitivity, Negativity, Deception, Sociality). This comment highlights empirical and theoretical convergences between CAPTION and DIAMONDS scales, yielding evidence for 5 replicable dimensions. In general, average convergent correlations were substantial (.47–.69), much larger than discriminant ones (.18–.30), and as high as or higher than those typically found for Big Five scales. We highlight the opportunity to integrate different situation characteristics taxonomies and conclude with the plea for large-scale, cross-cultural research that can further expand our knowledge on the structures of situation characteristics.
RankSQL: Supporting Ranking Queries in Relational Database Management Systems

Ranking queries (or top-k queries) are dominant in many emerging applications, e.g., similarity queries in multimedia databases, searching Web databases, middleware, and data mining. The increasing importance of top-k queries warrants an efficient support of ranking in the relational database management system (RDBMS) and has recently gained the attention of the research community. Top-k queries aim at providing only the top k query results, according to a user-specified ranking function, which in many cases is an aggregate of multiple criteria. The following is an example top-k query.
Pathways of sexual desire.

INTRODUCTION Sexual desire is controlled by brain systems involved in sexual excitation and inhibition. Hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) may result from hypofunctional excitation, hyperfunctional inhibition, or some mix of the two. AIM This study aimed to identify neurochemical and neuroanatomical systems involved in sexual excitation and inhibition, their role during normal, and hypoactive sexual expressions. METHODS A comprehensive review of the human and animal literature is made, and a theory surrounding the ways that HSDD can be manifested and treated is presented. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Drug effects and neural systems derived largely from rat studies that are involved in the stimulation of sexual desire (excitatory system) vs. the stimulation of sexual reward, sedation, and satiety (inhibitory system). RESULTS Brain dopamine systems (incertohypothalamic and mesolimbic) that link the hypothalamus and limbic system appear to form the core of the excitatory system. This system also includes melanocortins, oxytocin, and norepinephrine. Brain opioid, endocannabinoid, and serotonin systems are activated during periods of sexual inhibition, and blunt the ability of excitatory systems to be activated. CONCLUSIONS Drugs that stimulate the activation of hypothalamic dopamine or that blunt endocannabinoid or serotonin release and/or postsynaptic binding may be effective in stimulating sexual desire in animals and humans. The characterization of how those drugs work will help generate a rational approach to drug development in the treatment of HSDD.
17 Induction Therapy in Renal Transplant Recipients

1.1 Historical overview Renal transplantation remains the most effective treatment modality for end-stage renal disease. The initial results with renal transplantation were plagued with significant perioperative morbidity and high rates of immunological events. At the time, the transplant physician’s armamentarium consisted of glucocorticoids and azathioprine. As modifications and improvements in surgical technique reduced morbidity, immunological events remained formidable foes to the transplant physician. Significant efforts were undertaken to elucidate the components and mechanisms of these immunological events, ultimately leading to the discovery of lymphocytes as the primary culprits in acute rejection. Early preclinical trials demonstrated that lymphocyte-specific antibodies could be induced in animal models by injecting them with lymphocytes. The serum could then be isolated and re-injected in other animals to decrease the lymphocyte count. Thus, these experiments lead to the earliest forms of antilymphocyte antibody formulations, including antithymocyte globulin, antilymphocyte serum, and antilymphocyte globulin (Bishop et al., 1975; Cosimi et al., 1976). These initial medications had little specificity and broad effects, but their potent ability to treat acute rejection episodes led to their widespread use in the 1970’s (Cosimi, 1981a). The extensive use of these formulations exposed their various drawbacks. Because of nonspecific binding, cross-reactivity with various hematopoietic cells revealed dose-limiting side effects including thrombocytopenia, anemia, and neutropenia (Henricsson et al., 1977; Rosenberg, 1975). Additionally, the method of preparation was not standardized, thus leading to dosing variations. Because these formulations were typically made in rabbits or horses, the proteins had potential antigenic properties leading to the development of serum sickness, cytokine release syndrome, or even anaphylaxis (Niblack et al., 1987; Prin Mathieu et al., 1997; Tatum et al., 1984). The development of specific, monoclonal antibodies by Kohler and Milstein circumvented many of the drawbacks of polyclonal formulations, including lack of specificity and variability in preparation (Kohler & Milstein, 1975). Muromonab, or OKT3, was the first monoclonal antibody prepared from mouse, which is specific for cluster of differentiation 3 (CD3) (Cosimi et al, 1981b). OKT3 was effective at specifically depleting T cells from the
Evaluating effectiveness of smartphone typing as an indicator of user emotion

In Affective Computing, different modalities, such as speech, facial expressions, physiological properties, smart-phone usage patterns, and their combinations, are applied to detect the affective states of a user. Keystroke analysis i.e. study of the typing behavior in desktop computer is found to be an effective modality for emotion detection because of its reliability, non-intrusiveness and low resource overhead. As smartphones proliferate, typing behavior on smartphone presents an equally powerful modality for emotion detection. It has the added advantage to run in-situ experiments with better coverage than the experiments using desktop computer keyboards. This work explores the efficacy of smartphone typing to detect multiple affective states. We use a qualitative and experimental approach to answer the question. We conduct an online survey among 120 participants to understand the typing habits in smartphones and collect feedback on multiple measurable parameters that affect their emotion while typing. The findings lead us to design and implement an Android based emotion detection system, TapSense, which can identify four different emotion states (happy, sad, stressed, relaxed) with an average accuracy (AUCROC) of 73% (maximum of 94%) based on typing features only. The analysis also reveals that among different features, typing speed is the most discriminative one.
Alternatives to antibiotics for maximizing growth performance and feed efficiency in poultry: a review

Abstract With the increase in regulations regarding the use of antibiotic growth promoters and the rise in consumer demand for poultry products from ‘Raised Without Antibiotics’ or ‘No Antibiotics Ever’ flocks, the quest for alternative products or approaches has intensified in recent years. A great deal of research has focused on the development of antibiotic alternatives to maintain or improve poultry health and performance. This review describes the potential for the various alternatives available to increase animal productivity and help poultry perform to their genetic potential under existing commercial conditions. The classes of alternatives described include probiotics, prebiotics, synbiotics, organic acids, enzymes, phytogenics, antimicrobial peptides, hyperimmune egg antibodies, bacteriophages, clay, and metals. A brief description of the mechanism of action, efficacy, and advantages and disadvantages of their uses are also presented. Though the beneficial effects of many of the alternatives developed have been well demonstrated, the general consensus is that these products lack consistency and the results vary greatly from farm to farm. Furthermore, their mode of action needs to be better defined. Optimal combinations of various alternatives coupled with good management and husbandry practices will be the key to maximize performance and maintain animal productivity, while we move forward with the ultimate goal of reducing antibiotic use in the animal industry.