Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preoperative neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio is a prognostic factor for overall survival in patients with gastric cancer

Purpose Preoperative neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) reflects patients' inflammation status, clinical stage, and survival in various malignancies. However, only a limited amount of information on the clinical importance and prognostic significance of NLR in gastric cancer has been reported. The objective of this study is to assess the prognostic values of preoperative NLR in patients with gastric cancer. Methods During the period between August 1, 2005 and December 31, 2011, we collected data from 601 patients among those who had undergone surgery for gastric cancer at the Department of Surgery, Konkuk University Medical Center. We classified the subjects into high NLR (NLR ≥ 1.7) group and low NLR (NLR < 1.7) group. Results The gender, age, and American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) score did not differ in the two NLR groups. The pathologic features (tumor size, histology, number of examined lymph node, T stage, N stage, and TNM stage) did not differ either, except for tumor location (P = 0.006). Multivariate analysis identified TNM stage, NLR, and age as significant prognostic factors. Gender, tumor size, location, and histology did not show their prognostic significance when we applied the Cox proportional hazard model. Conclusion Our study verified that advanced stage, high preoperative NLR (NLR ≥ 1.7), and old age (≥ 70 years) are significant, independent prognostic factor for overall survival in patients with gastric cancer.
The Cancer Stem Cell Fraction in Hierarchically Organized Tumors Can Be Estimated Using Mathematical Modeling and Patient-Speci fi c Treatment Trajectories

Many tumors are hierarchically organized and driven by a subpopulation of tumor-initiating cells (TIC), or cancer stem cells. TICs are uniquely capable of recapitulating the tumor and are thought to be highly resistant to radioand chemotherapy. Macroscopic patterns of tumor expansion before treatment and tumor regression during treatment are tied to the dynamics of TICs. Until now, the quantitative information about the fraction of TICs frommacroscopic tumor burden trajectories could not be inferred. In this study, we generated a quantitative method based on a mathematical model that describes hierarchically organized tumor dynamics and patient-derived tumor burden information. The method identifies two characteristic equilibrium TIC regimes during expansion and regression. We show that tumor expansion and regression curves canbe leveraged to infer estimates of the TIC fraction in individual patients at detection and after continued therapy. Furthermore, our method is parameter-free; it solely requires the knowledge of a patient's tumor burden over multiple time points to reveal microscopic properties of the malignancy. We demonstrate proof of concept in the case of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), wherein our model recapitulated the clinical history of the disease in two independent patient cohorts. On the basis of patient-specific treatment responses in CML, we predict that after one year of targeted treatment, the fraction of TICs increases 100-fold and continues to increase up to 1,000-fold after 5 years of treatment. Our novel framework may significantly influence the implementation of personalized treatment strategies and has the potential for rapid translation into the clinic. Cancer Res; 76(7); 1705–13. 2016 AACR.
Protecting satellite networks from disassociation DoS attacks

Security is an important concern in satellite multicast communications. Due to its highly dynamic broadcast nature, the multicast systems generally have a large number of terminal members with frequent join-leave characteristic. Therefore, the satellite networks face significant security challenges. Denial of service (DoS) is one of the most harmful attacks to the satellite networks and also terrestrial fixed or mobile networks. It can maliciously prevent legitimate users from accessing the service. It is especially true for disassociation DoS attacks where an attacker sends bogus disassociation requests to disable the communication between the server and their legitimate clients. In this paper, the main focus is on disassociation DoS attacks on the satellite networks and we propose solutions to detect and defend against disassociation DoS attacks.
Self-Healing Properties of Partially Coherent Schell-Model Beams

Convolution expression for partially coherent beams that are partially blocked by an opaque obstacle is derived in detail in a paraxial $ABCD$ optical system. The examples are showed to how the formula can be applied to study the self-healing for different beams and different obstructions. In particular, this approach can be used to conveniently deal with any partially coherent Schell-model beams partially blocked by any shape obstacle. Furthermore, the self-healing ability characterization based on the similarity degree of intensity to intensity is proposed. Our method not only can be used to estimate the self-healing ability of beams in theory, but also can be applied to characterize the self-healing ability of beams in experiment. It offers a good and convenient method for investigating or comparing the self-healing ability of different beams, including fully coherent beams and partially coherent beams.
Two distant and precisely positioned domains promote transcription of Xenopus laevis rRNA genes: analysis with linker-scanning mutants

To examine the internal organization of the promoter of the Xenopus laevis rRNA gene, we constructed a series of linker-scanning mutants that traverse the rDNA initiation region. The mutant genes, which have 3 to 11 clustered base substitutions set within an otherwise unaltered rDNA promoter sequence, were injected into Xenopus oocyte nuclei, and their transcriptional capacity was assessed by S1 nuclease analysis of the resultant RNA. The data demonstrate that there are two essential promoter domains, the distal boundaries of which coincide with the promoter boundaries established previously by analysis of 5' and 3' deletion mutants. The upstream promoter domain is relatively small and extends from residues ca. -140 to -128. The downstream domain is considerably larger, encompassing residues ca. -36 to +10, and exactly corresponds in both size and position to the mammalian minimal promoter region. The Xenopus rDNA sequence between these two essential domains has a much smaller effect on the level of transcriptional initiation. In light of the fact that a large portion of this intervening region consists of a segment (residues -114 to -72) that is duplicated many times in the upstream spacer to form an rDNA enhancer sequence, it is noteworthy that a "-115/-77 linker scanner," in which virtually this entire segment is replaced by a polylinker sequence, has full promoter activity in the injected Xenopus borealis oocytes. Analysis of a parallel series of spacing change linker-scanning mutants revealed the unexpected result that the relative positions of the upstream and downstream promoter domains are very critical: all spacing alterations of more than 2 base pairs within this 100-base-pair region virtually abolish promoter activity. We conclude that the factors that bind to these two distant promoter domains must interact in a very precise stereospecific manner.
Small FPGA polynomial approximations with 3-bit coefficients and low-precision estimations of the powers of x

This paper presents small FPGA implementations of low precision polynomial approximations of functions without multipliers. Our method uses degree-2 or degree-3 polynomial approximations with at most 3-bit coefficients and low-precision estimations of the powers of x. Here we denote by 3-bit coefficients values with at most 3 nonzero and possibly noncontiguous signed bits (e.g., 1.0010001~). This leads to very small operators by replacing the costly multipliers by a small number of additions. Our method provides approximations with very low average error and is suitable for signal processing applications.
Assessing personality: a guide for students

A good understanding of personality is fundamental to all psychiatric assessments and management. The aim of this paper is to present some basic information on personality which may be useful to students. What is personality? Personality can be defined as “those features of the individual which determine that individual’s unique response to the environment”. There are other longer definitions, but this one is very appropriate to psychiatry. It tells us why an understanding of personality is fundamental to the field. It tells us that when we have a good understanding of the personality of the individual we are better able to predict his/her future behavior. In particular, it helps us to look forward, to predict (to some extent) his/her response to treatment. It tells us whether he/she will be able to form a trusting relationship with a therapist, whether he/she will co-operate with recommendations, keep appointments, and comply with medication directions.
Personalized Digital Item Adaptation in Service-Oriented Environments

The delivery of multimedia content often needs the adaptation of the content in order to satisfy user constraints. With the digital item adaptation part, the MPEG-21 standard already defines a useful framework to handle this task. However, when the functionality of adaptation is split over several services the central instantiation of a suitable service chain needs to tackle a complex multi-objective optimization problem. In this problem between content choice and possible adaptations the current preference model in the MPEG-7/21 standard still lacks expressiveness. In the course of this paper we demonstrate this shortcoming and how the integration of more powerful models can ease the instantiation problem. As a running example we use a typical media streaming application with Web services as basic modules. We will let a central coordinator instantiate a service composition by integrating all needed Web services to adapt the multimedia content in the best possible fashion
A network topology design for structural health monitoring

A network topology design for structural health monitoring is proposed. It is achieved by the development of wireless sensor network with the interfacing from the civil structure sensors. A plug-and-play scheme is designed for the platform sensor node, which is consisted of two major circuit boards. One is based on the IEEE 802.15. 4 standard of low power consumption wireless module for the signal transmitting and/or receiving, and the other is for acquiring sensing data. In addition to the hardware design for the sensor node, the firmware for both of the MAC and PHY layers in network coding was modified from TI standard design to provide applicable function calls for facilitating the design. Based on our own developed adaptive wireless sensor platform, a source routing scheme is proposed with the help of the designed flexible beacon synchronization method. Moreover, a network topology is also designed to fit the larger scale of structural health monitoring. Experimental results demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed network topology scheme for structural health monitoring.
High IDH1 expression is associated with a poor prognosis in cytogenetically normal acute myeloid leukemia

The prognostic value of IDH1 mutations has been systematically evaluated in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients recently. However, the role of IDH1 expression in AML is still under exploration. To investigate the clinical significance, we analyzed the IDH1/2 expression in 320 patients with cytogenetically normal AML (CN‐AML) by quantitative real‐time reverse‐transcription polymerase chain reaction. High expression of IDH1 was predominant in patients with FLT3‐ITD and DNMT3A mutations and less prevalent in cases with CEBPA double allele mutations. Strong association was observed between high IDH1 expression and low expression of microRNA 181 family. Prognosis was adversely affected by high IDH1 expression, with shorter overall survival and event‐free survival in the context of clinical characteristics, including age, WBC count, and gene mutations of NPM1, FLT3‐ITD, CEBPA, IDH1, IDH2 and DNMT3A in CN‐AML. Moreover, the clinical outcome of IDH1 expression in terms of overall survival, event‐free survival and complete remission rate still remained in multivariate models in CN‐AML. Importantly, the prognostic value was validated using the published microarray data from 79 adult patients treated according to the German AMLCG‐1999 protocol. Our results demonstrated that high IDH1 expression is associated with a poor prognosis of CN‐AML.
Division in the Ranks: An Analysis of Alliances and Dissension in the Alcohol Industry and Advocacy Communities

Neither the alcohol industry nor the advocacy community is a monolithic entity. Dominant industry players include beer, wine, and distilled spirits manufacturers, who compete for consumers. The public health advocacy community often competes for state and federal budget allocations against other health issues as well as among themselves. This paper describes the relationships within and between the alcohol industry and the advocacy worlds and explores underlying reasons for the divisiveness and cohesion that exist among the players. Findings are based on 64 in-depth qualitative interviews with key informants in these communities. The differing positions that players take on a variety of alcohol control policies stem from assumptions and historical events as well as from shifting priorities of the public and politicians. The industry is divided on global environmental policies like taxation and television advertising, while the public health community demonstrates fragmentation in its valuation of key targeted policies, such as responsible beverage service and underage drinking programs.
Attention Deficit Disorder in Children and Adults: Strategies for Experiential Educators.

Current research suggests that 5 percent of American children are affected by attention deficit disorder (ADD) and as many as 70 percent of them do not grow out of it in adolescence or adulthood. This paper aims to help outdoor and experiential educators understand how a person with ADD thinks and feels, and offers strategies for positively impacting behavior and social and emotional growth of students with ADD. Most people with ADD wrestle with self-esteem issues as a result of years of disapproval or ridicule from parents, teachers, and peers. By teaching survival skills, outdoor teachers can build student self-esteem based on accomplishment and a sense of independence. Praise is also important, but it should be awarded only to the extraordinary and to the things the student is proud of. Success for ADD kids depends upon having a clear mental picture of what excellnce looks like. The outdoor leader must set the stage for successful activities by first having one person demonstrate and then leading a mini-debriefing that highlights goals and success factors. Other strategies fo educators include avoiding timed activities and evaluations, challenging ADD students by giving extra assignments that require attention to detail, being aware of the ability of ADD persons to focus their attention totally (a trademark of ADD known as "hyperfocus"), and providing graceful transitions between activities. Additional resources on ADD are included. (SV) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. * *********************************************************************** Attention Deficit Disorder In Children And Adults: Strategies For Experiential Educators.
Asymptotic Performance of Linear Receivers in MIMO Fading Channels

Linear receivers are an attractive low-complexity alternative to optimal processing for multiple-antenna multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications. In this paper, we characterize the information-theoretic performance of MIMO linear receivers in two different asymptotic regimes. For fixed number of antennas, we investigate the limit of error probability in the high-signal-to noise-ratio (SNR) regime in terms of the diversity-multiplexing tradeoff (DMT). Following this, we characterize the error probability for fixed SNR in the regime of large (but finite) number of antennas.As far as the DMT is concerned, we report a negative result: we show that both linear zero-forcing (ZF) and linear minimum mean- square error (MMSE) receivers achieve the same DMT, which is largely suboptimal even in the case where outer coding and deAcircnot coding is performed across the antennas. We also provide an apAcircnot proximate quantitative analysis of the markedly different behavior of the MMSE and ZF receivers at finite rate and nonasymptotic SNR, and show that while the ZF receiver achieves poor diversity at any finite rate, the MMSE receiver error curve slope flattens out progressively, as the coding rate increases. When SNR is fixed and the number of antennas becomes large, we show that the mutual information at the output of an MMSE or ZF linear receiver has fluctuations that converge in distribution to a Gaussian random variable, whose mean and variance can be characterized in closed form. This analysis extends to the linear reAcircnot ceiver case a well-known result previously obtained for the optimal receiver. Simulations reveal that the asymptotic analysis captures accurately the outage behavior of systems even with a moderate number of antennas.
A critique of Standard ML

Abstract Standard ML is an excellent language for many kinds of programming. It is safe, efficient, suitably abstract, and concise. There are many aspects of the language that work well. However, nothing is perfect: Standard ML has a few shortcomings. In some cases there are obvious solutions, and in other cases further research is required.
Microwave breast imaging by the filtered forward-backward time-stepping method

In this paper, an inverse scattering technique referred to as the filtered forward-backward time-stepping method is applied to microwave imaging for breast cancer detection. A two-dimensional numerical breast phantom (derived from MR images) with high contrast between fat and fibroglandular tissues, and low contrast between fibroglandular and tumor tissues are used to assess the efficacy of the proposed method.
Comparing Onset Detection & Perceptual Attack Time

Accurate performance timing is associated with the perceptual attack time (PAT) of notes, rather than their physical or perceptual onsets (PhOT, POT). Since manual annotation of PAT for analysis is both time-consuming and impractical for real-time applications, automatic transcription is desirable. However, computational methods for onset detection in audio signals are conventionally measured against PhOT or POT data. This paper describes a comparison between PAT and onset detection data to assess whether in some circumstances they are similar enough to be equivalent, or whether additional models for PAT-PhOT difference are always necessary. Eight published onset algorithms, and one commercial system, were tested with five onset types in short mono-phonic sequences. Ground truth was established by multiple human transcription of the audio for PATs using rhythm adjustment with synchronous presentation, and parameters for each detection algorithm manually adjusted to produce the maximum agreement with the ground truth. Results indicate that for percussive attacks, a number of algorithms produce data close to or within the limits of human agreement and therefore may be substituted for PATs, while for non-percussive sounds corrective measures are necessary to match detector outputs to human estimates.
The design and deployment of a wearable vibrotactile feedback system

We present work on the development and deployment of a wearable system for displaying vibrotactile stimuli at multiple locations on a person. This system is targeted as a general-purpose controller, with the flexibility to support many types of output devices, such as pager motors, muffin fans, and solenoids. We describe the deployment of one configuration of our system for use in the military, and discuss design changes we made that resulted from this deployment. Our major design goals include physical robustness, light weight, low power, and wireless communication. Once these goals are attained, we will explore the size of the "vocabulary" of cues that can be unambiguously identified by the wearer.
A Model for the Estimation of Hepatic Insulin Extraction After a Meal

Goal: Quantitative assessment of hepatic insulin extraction (TIE) after an oral glucose challenge, e.g., a meal, is important to understand the regulation of carbohydrate metabolism. The aim of the current study is to develop a model of system for estimating TIE. Methods: Nine different models, of increasing complexity, were tested on data of 204 normal subjects, who underwent a mixed meal tolerance test, with frequent measurement of plasma glucose, insulin, and C-peptide concentrations. All these models included a two-compartment model of C-peptide kinetics, an insulin secretion model, a compartmental model of insulin kinetics (with number of compartments ranging from one to three), and different TIE descriptions, depending on plasma glucose and insulin. Model performances were compared on the basis of data fit, precision of parameter estimates, and parsimony criteria. Results: The three-compartment model of insulin kinetics, coupled with TIE depending on glucose concentration, showed the best fit and a good ability to precisely estimate the parameters. In addition, the model calculates basal and total indices of TIE (HEb and HEtot, respectively), and provides an index of TIE sensitivity to glucose (SGHE). Conclusion: A new physiologically based TIE model has been developed, which allows an improved quantitative description of glucose regulation. Significance: The use of the new model provides an in-depth description of insulin kinetics, thus enabling a better understanding of a given subject's metabolic state.
Antigen Recognition in the Islets Changes with Progression of Autoimmune Islet Infiltration

In type 1 diabetes, the pancreatic islets are an important site for therapeutic intervention because immune infiltration of the islets is well established at diagnosis. Therefore, understanding the events that underlie the continued progression of the autoimmune response and islet destruction is critical. Islet infiltration and destruction is an asynchronous process, making it important to analyze the disease process on a single islet basis. To understand how T cell stimulation evolves through the process of islet infiltration, we analyzed the dynamics of T cell movement and interactions within individual islets of spontaneously autoimmune NOD mice. Using both intravital and explanted two-photon islet imaging, we defined a correlation between increased islet infiltration and increased T cell motility. Early T cell arrest was Ag dependent and due, at least in part, to Ag recognition through sustained interactions with CD11c+ APCs. As islet infiltration progressed, T cell motility became Ag independent, with a loss of T cell arrest and sustained interactions with CD11c+ APCs. These studies suggest that the autoimmune T cell response in the islets may be temporarily dampened during the course of islet infiltration and disease progression.