Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
TWIN-TWIN TRANSFUSION SYNDROME IN A DICHORIONIC-MONOZYGOTIC TWIN PREGNANCY: The End of a Paradigm?

The patient was a 30-year-old female, gravida-5, para-4, referred at 25 3/7 weeks’ gestation with the diagnosis of a dichorionic-diamniotic twin gestation with discordant amniotic fluid volumes. The patient had not previously undergone genetic or therapeutic amniocenteses. The pregnancy was conceived spontaneously. Ultrasound examination at our facility confirmed the presence of a twin gestation with an anterior placenta and a “twin-peak” sign (Figure 1). Twin A had grossly normal anatomy and a maximum vertical
Functional Relevance of the Transmembrane Domain and Cytoplasmic Tail of the Pseudorabies Virus Glycoprotein H for Membrane Fusion

ABSTRACT Herpesvirus membrane fusion depends on the core fusion machinery, comprised of glycoproteins B (gB) and gH/gL. Although gB structurally resembles autonomous class III fusion proteins, it strictly depends on gH/gL to drive membrane fusion. Whether the gH/gL complex needs to be membrane anchored to fulfill its function and which role the gH cytoplasmic (CD) and transmembrane domains (TMD) play in fusion is unclear. While the gH CD and TMD play an important role during infection, soluble gH/gL of herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) seems to be sufficient to mediate cell-cell fusion in transient assays, arguing against an essential contribution of the CD and TMD. To shed more light on this apparent discrepancy, we investigated the role of the CD and TMD of the related alphaherpesvirus pseudorabies virus (PrV) gH. For this purpose, we expressed C-terminally truncated and soluble gH and replaced the TMD with a glycosylphosphatidylinositol (gpi) anchor. We also generated chimeras containing the TMD and/or CD of PrV gD or HSV-1 gH. Proteins were characterized in cell-based fusion assays and during virus infection. Although truncation of the CD resulted in decreased membrane fusion activity, the mutant proteins still supported replication of gH-negative PrV, indicating that the PrV gH CD is dispensable for viral replication. In contrast, PrV gH lacking the TMD, membrane-anchored via a lipid linker, or comprising the PrV gD TMD were nonfunctional, highlighting the essential role of the gH TMD for function. Interestingly, despite low sequence identity, the HSV-1 gH TMD could substitute for the PrV gH TMD, pointing to functional conservation. IMPORTANCE Enveloped viruses depend on membrane fusion for virus entry. While this process can be mediated by only one or two proteins, herpesviruses depend on the concerted action of at least three different glycoproteins. Although gB has features of bona fide fusion proteins, it depends on gH and its complex partner, gL, for fusion. Whether gH/gL prevents premature fusion or actively triggers gB-mediated fusion is unclear, and there are contradictory results on whether gH/gL function requires stable membrane anchorage or whether the ectodomains alone are sufficient. Our results show that in pseudorabies virus gH, the transmembrane anchor plays an essential role for gB-mediated fusion while the cytoplasmic tail is not strictly required.
Pregnancy and Delivery in Women with Uterine Malformations.

BACKGROUND Uterine defects are the most common malformations of the female reproductive system. They can lead to many obstetric complications, e.g. preterm delivery, intrauterine growth restriction, oligohydramnios and operational delivery. OBJECTIVES Our aim was to analyze the impact of different types of uterine defects on pregnancy outcomes. MATERIAL AND METHODS The study involved 94 pregnant women with different types of uterine defects hospitalized at the Department of Fetal--Maternal Medicine and Gynecology, RIPMMH in Łódź, between 1994 and 2012. The patients were divided into 5 groups on the basis of diagnosed defects: arcuate (n=6), bicornuate (n=50), duplex (n=29), septate (n=5) and unicornuate uterus (n=4). In order to avoid correlated data in statistical analysis, our research did not consider the total number of pregnancies and births but the number of patients. The first pregnancy of each patient, if completed after 22-week gestation, was studied and analyzed. RESULTS Preterm delivery was the most common complication in pregnancy (55 women, 58.5%). The caesarean section was performed in 73 (78%) women. IUGR was diagnosed in 16% of cases. Placental abruption occurred in 13 (14%) and cervical insufficiency in 10 cases (11%), respectively. Prenatal diagnostic showed abnormalities in 12 fetuses (13%). The Apgar score from 0 to 4 points was assigned to 9 newborns (9.6%), 5-7 to 20 children (21.3%) and 8-10 points to 75 cases (69.1%). Normal birth weight (>2500 g) was determined in 51 newborns (54.3%). CONCLUSIONS Women with uterine defects are subject to an increased risk of complications in pregnancy and delivery, including premature births, low birth weights, births by cesarean section.
A Nearest-Neighbor Approach to Recognizing Subjective Beliefs in Human-Robot Interaction

Trust is critical to the success of human-robot interaction (HRI), and one of the critical antecedents to trust is transparency. To best interact with human teammates, a robot must be able to ensure that they understand its decision-making process. Recent work has developed automated explanation methods that can achieve this goal. However, individual differences among human teammates require that the robot dynamically adjust its explanation strategy based on their unobservable subjective beliefs. We therefore need methods by which a robot can recognize its teammates’ subjective beliefs relevant to trust-building (e.g., their understanding of the robot’s capabilities and process). We leverage a nonparametric method, common across many fields of artificial intelligence, to enable a robot to use its history of prior interactions as a means for recognizing and predicting a new teammate’s subjective beliefs. We first gather data combining observable behavior sequences with surveybased observations of typically unobservable subjective beliefs. We then use a nearest-neighbor approach to identify the prior teammates most similar to the new one. We use these neighbors to infer the likelihood of possible subjective beliefs, and the results provide insights into the types of subjective beliefs that are easy (and hard) to infer from purely behavioral observations.
A numerical approach for estimating the effective elastic properties of honeycomb structures

This paper presents a method for calculating effective elastic moduli of honeycomb core of sandwich plates. The theory is based on the homogenization method for periodic composite materials. Abaqus software is used to model the localization elastic problem on a representative volume element and then the balance of micro-macroscopic deformation energy enables to calculate homogenized elastic moduli of the honeycomb core. Numerical examples are carried out and compared to other models.
Insulin glargine 300 U/mL in the management of diabetes: clinical utility and patient perspectives

There is ongoing interest in optimizing basal insulin treatment by developing insulins with a flat pharmacological profile, a long duration of action (typically beyond 24 hours) and minimum day-to-day variation. Glargine-300 is a modified form of the long-acting insulin analog glargine in that it has been concentrated at 300 units/mL rather than the conventional 100 units/mL. Glargine-300 has a longer duration of action and a flatter pharmacological profile than original glargine-100. This property allows for more flexibility around the timing of administration, when injected once per day. Open-label studies in patients with diabetes have shown that treatment with glargine-300 achieves comparable glycemic control compared to treatment with glargine-100, albeit with consistently higher insulin requirements. These studies also showed that treatment with glargine-300 was associated with lower risks of nocturnal hypoglycemia in patients with type 2 diabetes, particularly those already on insulin, whereas data are mixed in insulin-naïve patients with type 2 diabetes or in patients with type 1 diabetes. Treatment with glargine-300 did not appear to affect the risk of overall hypoglycemia, whereas studies lacked sufficient power to investigate the effect on the risk of severe hypoglycemia. Future studies need to establish the role of glargine-300 in the treatment of diabetes alongside the other new long-acting insulin analog, insulin degludec, which was recently introduced to the market.
Loss Control Through the Combination of Buffer Management and Packet Scheduling

Conventional Quality of Service (QoS) control techniques are designed for achieving network-level QoS objectives. Due to the large differences between network-level and application-level QoS properties, these techniques cannot provide desirable QoS for video users. Previous work has been conducted to design a packet scheduling approach where application requirements and network-level QoS objectives are addressed simultaneously. In this paper, the packet scheduling approach is integrated with a buffer management technique for increasing the numbers of video users with QoS satisfaction. The effectiveness of the proposed technique is demonstrated through simulations.
Intervendor consistency and reproducibility of left ventricular 2D global and regional strain with two different high-end ultrasound systems

Aims We aimed to assess intervendor agreement of global (GLS) and regional longitudinal strain by vendor-specific software after EACVI/ASE Industry Task Force Standardization Initiatives for Deformation Imaging. Methods and results Fifty-five patients underwent prospective dataset acquisitions on the same day by the same operator using two commercially available cardiac ultrasound systems (GE Vivid E9 and Philips iE33). GLS and regional peak longitudinal strain were analyzed offline using corresponding vendor-specific software (EchoPAC BT13 and QLAB version 10.3). Absolute mean GLS measurements were similar between the two vendors (GE −17.5 ± 5.2% vs. Philips −18.9 ± 5.1%, P = 0.15). There was excellent intervendor correlation of GLS by the same observer [r = 0.94, P < 0.0001; bias −1.3%, 95% CI limits of agreement (LOA) −4.8 to 2.2%). Intervendor comparison for regional longitudinal strain by coronary artery territories distribution were: LAD: r = 0.85, P < 0.0001; bias 0.5%, LOA −5.3 to 6.4%; RCA: r = 0.88, P < 0.0001; bias −2.4%, LOA −8.6 to 3.7%; LCX: r = 0.76, P < 0.0001; bias −5.3%, LOA −10.6 to 2.0%. Intervendor comparison for regional longitudinal strain by LV levels were: basal: r = 0.86, P < 0.0001; bias −3.6%, LOA −9.9 to 2.0%; mid: r = 0.90, P < 0.0001; bias −2.6%, LOA −7.8 to 2.6%; apical: r = 0.74; P < 0.0001; bias −1.3%, LOA −9.4 to 6.8%. Conclusions Intervendor agreement in GLS and regional strain measurements have significantly improved after the EACVI/ASE Task Force Strain Standardization Initiatives. However, significant wide LOA still exist, especially for regional strain measurements, which remains relevant when considering vendor-specific software for serial measurements.
Students’ academic reading preferences: An exploratory study

The e-book reader revolution is already here. The questions we asked ourselves were: What are the reading preferences of Information Science students at the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century? How do different variables, such as relative advantage, comprehension, and learning strategies affect students’ reading preferences? The research was conducted in Israel during the first semester of the 2015 academic year and encompassed 177 Library and Information Science students in an Information Science Department in Israel. Three questionnaires were used: personal details, relative advantage, and learning strategies, and two further questions that focused on reading habits. The study showed students’ preferences for printed materials. In addition, it emphasizes the importance of two personal variables that may affect students’ will to read electronic materials: relative advantage and comprehension.
A Deep Pipelined Implementation of Hyperspectral Target Detection Algorithm on FPGA Using HLS

Real-time target detection for hyperspectral images (HSI) has received considerable interest in recent years. However, owing to enormous data volume provided by HSI, detection algorithms are generally computationally complex, thus developing rapid processing techniques for target detection has encountered several challenging issues. It seems that using a deep pipelined structure can improve the detection speed, and implementing on field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) can also achieve concurrent operations rather than run streams of sequential instruction. This paper presents a deep pipelined background statistics (DPBS) approach to optimizing and implementing a well-known subpixel target detection algorithm, called constrained energy minimization (CEM) on FPGA by using high-level synthesis (HLS). This approach offers significant benefits in terms of increasing data throughput and improving design efficiency. To overcome a drawback of HLS on implementing a task-level pipelined circuit that includes a feedback data path, a script based circuit design method is further developed to make connections between some of the modules created by HLS. Experimental results show that the proposed method can detect targets on a real-hyperspectral data set (HyMap Data) only in 0.15 s without compromising detection accuracy.
Small-Scale Renewable Energy Source Trading: A Contract Theory Approach

Energy informatics is expected to be significant to improve energy trading efficiency. In this framework, the cooperation among small-scale electricity suppliers and the efficient economic incentives to consumers play important roles to maximize the profits of each small-scale electricity supplier and a single aggregator. The aggregator first collects electricity from the suppliers and/or purchases electricity from the main macrogrid, then sells the electricity to the consumers. A coalitional game model in the presence of direct trading among suppliers is presented and a fair revenue division scheme based on the asymptotic Shapley value is derived. Moreover, an optimal contract-based scheme for electricity trading between the aggregator and consumers is proposed. The scheme enables the aggregator to generate more profits when it is for-profit and preferably supports it to serve all consumers when it is non-for-profit.
Prenatal exposure to maternal and paternal depressive symptoms and white matter microstructure in children

Prenatal maternal depression has been associated with multiple problems in offspring involving affect, cognition, and neuroendocrine functioning. This suggests that prenatal depression influences neurodevelopment. However, the underlying neurodevelopmental mechanism remains unclear. We prospectively assessed whether maternal depressive symptoms during pregnancy and at the child's age 3 years are related to white matter microstructure in 690 children. The association of paternal depressive symptoms with childhood white matter microstructure was assessed to evaluate genetic or familial confounding.
A comprehensive and quantitative exploration of thousands of viral genomes

The complete assembly of viral genomes from metagenomic datasets (short genomic sequences gathered from environmental samples) has proven to be challenging, so there are significant blind spots when we view viral genomes through the lens of metagenomics. One approach to overcoming this problem is to leverage the thousands of complete viral genomes that are publicly available. Here we describe our efforts to assemble a comprehensive resource that provides a quantitative snapshot of viral genomic trends – such as gene density, noncoding percentage, and abundances of functional gene categories – across thousands of viral genomes. We have also developed a coarse-grained method for visualizing viral genome organization for hundreds of genomes at once, and have explored the extent of the overlap between bacterial and bacteriophage gene pools. Existing viral classification systems were developed prior to the sequencing era, so we present our analysis in a way that allows us to assess the utility of the different classification systems for capturing genomic trends.
Exploiting Past Users' Interests and Predictions in an Active Learning Method for Dealing with Cold Start in Recommender Systems

This paper focuses on the new users cold-start issue in the context of recommender systems. New users who do not receive pertinent recommendations may abandon the system. In order to cope with this issue, we use active learning techniques. These methods engage the new users to interact with the system by presenting them with a questionnaire that aims to understand their preferences to the related items. In this paper, we propose an active learning technique that exploits past users’ interests and past users’ predictions in order to identify the best questions to ask. Our technique achieves a better performance in terms of precision (RMSE), which leads to learn the users’ preferences in less questions. The experimentations were carried out in a small and public dataset to prove the applicability for handling cold start issues.
Association of Hearing Impairment and Anxiety in Older Adults

Objective: The objective of the study is was investigate the association between hearing impairment and anxiety. Method: We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of 1,732 community-based adults aged 76 to 85 years who participated in the Health Aging and Body Composition (ABC) study. Logistic regression models were adjusted for demographic and cardiovascular risk factors. Hearing impairment was defined by the speech-frequency pure tone average. Anxiety was defined as reporting two symptoms of at least “a little” or one symptom “quite a bit” on the three-item Hopkins Symptom Checklist. Results: Compared with individuals with no hearing impairment, the odds of prevalent anxiety were higher among individuals with mild hearing impairment (odds ratio [OR] = 1.32, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [1.01, 1.73]) and moderate or greater hearing impairment (OR = 1.59, 95% CI = [1.14, 2.22]). Hearing aid use was not significantly associated with lower odds of anxiety. Discussion: Hearing impairment is independently associated with greater odds of anxiety symptoms in older adults.
Detection of atrial fibrillation episodes from short single lead recordings by means of ensemble learning

An approach is presented to classify ECG signals as normal, atrial fibrillation, other arrhythmia, or noisy in the context of the Physionet/CinC challenge 2017. The presented approach is a two-stage one, where first noisy recordings are detected based on generic features in the data. Then in the second stage known indices for atrial fibrillation are used as features. For both stages an ensemble model with decision trees is used, fitted with RUSBoost to account for the class imbalance in the dataset. With this approach an overall F1 score of 0.75 is obtained. The method achieves an accurate classification of AF signals, but the misclassification for other arrhythmia is relatively high. Suggestions are also presented on how ECG wave morphologies could be taken into account by using deep learning to further improve the classification.
Role of the Middle Lumbar Fascia on Spinal Mechanics: A Human Biomechanical Assessment

Study Design. Biomechanical experiment. Objective. The aims of the present study were to test the effect of fascial tension on lumbar segmental axial rotation and lateral flexion and the effect of the angle of fascial attachment. Summary of Background Data. Tension in the middle layer of lumbar fascia has been demonstrated to affect mechanical properties of lumbar segmental flexion and extension in the neutral zone. The effect of tension on segmental axial rotation and lateral flexion has, however, not been investigated. Methods. Seven unembalmed lumbar spines were divided into segments and mounted for testing. A 6 degree-of-freedom robotic testing facility was used to displace the segments in each anatomical plane (flexion-extension, lateral bending, and axial rotation) with force and moment data recorded by a load cell positioned beneath the test specimen. Tests were performed with and without a 20 N fascia load and the subsequent forces and moments were compared. In addition, forces and moments were compared when the specimens were held in a set position and the fascia loading angle was varied. Results. A fascial tension of 20 N had no measurable effect on the forces or moments measured when the specimens were displaced in any plane of motion (P > 0.05). When 20 N of fascial load were applied to motion segments in a set position small segmental forces and moments were measured. Changing the angle of the fascial load did not significantly alter these measurements. Conclusion. Application of a 20 N fascial load did not produce a measureable effect on the mechanics of a motion segment, even though it did produce small measurable forces and moments on the segments when in a fixed position. Results from the present study are inconsistent with previous studies, suggesting that further investigation using multiple testing protocols and different loading conditions is required to determine the effects of fascial loading on spinal segment behavior. Level of Evidence: N/A
Efficient Decentralized Collaborative Mapping for Outdoor Environments

An efficient mapping in mobile robotics may involve the participation of several agents. In this context, this article presents a framework for collaborative mapping applied to outdoor environments considering a decentralized approach. The mapping approach uses range measurements from a 3D lidar moving in six degrees of freedom. For that case, each robot performs a local SLAM. The maps are then merged when communication is available between the mobile units. This allows building a global map and to improve the state estimation of each agent. Experimental results are presented, where partial maps of the same environment are aligned and merged coherently in spite of the noise from the lidar measurement.
An Organic Down-Converting Material for White-Light Emission from Hybrid LEDs

A novel BODIPY-containing organic small molecule is synthesized and employed as a down-converting layer on a commercial blue light-emitting diode (LED). The resulting hybrid device demonstrates white-light emission under low-current operation, with color coordinates of (0.34, 0.31) and an efficacy of 13.6 lm/W; four times greater than the parent blue LED.
Designing instrumented walker to measure upper-extremity’s efforts: A case study

ABSTRACT The high prevalence of shoulder pain in using walkers in patients who have spinal cord injury (SCI). Also, the limited options available to economically measure grip forces in walkers, which drove the need to create one. This article describes a method to obtain upper-extremities’ forces and moments in a person with SCI by designing an appropriate instrumented walker. First, since the commercial multidirectional loadcells are too expensive, custom loadcells are fabricated. Ultimately, a complete gait analysis by means of VICON motion analysis and using inverse dynamic method has been held to measure upper-extremities’ efforts. The results for a person with SCI using a two-wheel walker in low and high heights and a basic walker show that there are higher shoulder and elbow flexion-extension moments and also higher shoulder forces in superior–inferior direction and higher elbow and wrist forces in anterior–posterior directions. The results are not much different in using two different types of walker. By using the proposed method, upper-extremities’ forces and moments were obtained and the results were compared to each other in using two different walkers.