Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of Ventricular Activation Using Surface Electrocardiography to Predict Left Ventricular Reverse Volumetric Remodeling During Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy

Background— Cardiac resynchronization therapy for heart failure with left bundle branch block reduces left ventricular (LV) conduction delay, contraction asynchrony, and LV end-systolic volume (“reverse remodeling”). Up to one third of patients do not improve, and the electric requirements for reverse remodeling are unclear. We hypothesized that reverse remodeling is predicted by the left bundle branch block ventricular activation sequence, the paced activation sequence, and interactions between these 2 conditions. Methods and Results— Twelve-lead ECGs during left bundle branch block and cardiac resynchronization therapy were analyzed in 202 consecutive patients (New York Heart Association class III to IV heart failure, ejection fraction ≤35%) for predictors of reverse remodeling (≥10% reduction in end-systolic volume) at 6 months. Greater longest baseline LV activation time predicted increased odds of reverse remodeling (odds ratio [confidence interval]=1.30 [1.11, 1.52] per 10-ms increase), whereas higher QRS scores for LV scar predicted reduced reverse remodeling (odds ratio [confidence interval]=0.49 [0.27, 0.88] for each 1-point increase from 0 to 4; 0.92 [0.83, 1.01] for each 1-point increase >4). After cardiac resynchronization therapy, increasing R amplitudes in leads V1 through V2 (odds ratio [confidence interval]=2.76 [1.01, 7.51] for each 1× increase over [baseline R×4.5]) and left→right frontal axis shift (odds ratio [confidence interval]=2.00 [0.99, 4.02]), indicators of ventricular activation wavefront fusion, were positive predictors of reverse remodeling. Predicted probability of reverse remodeling ranged from <20% for patients with adverse predictors to 99% for those with positive predictors. Conclusions— Ventricular activation with the use of the ECG accurately predicts LV reverse remodeling during cardiac resynchronization therapy. Greater longest baseline LV activation time and smaller scar volume combined with wavefront fusion on the paced ECG, anticipate higher probability of reverse remodeling.
On matrix characterizations for propositionalsubstructural logicsEnno

This paper provides a uniied approach for matrix characterizations for propositional substructural logics, whereby the focus is laid on a uniform representation of diierent validity concepts in matrices. Starting from a restricted validity concept for matrices called basic-validity, where a matrix is considered as valid if each literal is connected exactly once, we use rewrite rules to obtain a wider class of validity concepts. Here a matrix is considered as valid if it can be transformed to a basic-valid matrix by using the appropriate rewrite-rules. For each validity concept we give corresponding algebraic semantics.
THE USE OF AGE , TECHNOLOGY USAGE , AND COGNITIVE CHARACTERISTICS IN RELATION TO USER PERCEIVED DISORIENTATION

Problem and Motivation The UK Office of Communication (Ofcom) report that over 50% of adults aged 65-74 and 25% of those aged 75+ now have access to the Internet [24]. With a growing number of adults using this technology comes a challenge in designing interfaces that this diverse population group can use. However, calling this cohort of users a single ‘group’ may cause problems the methods and skills used by one user online might well be completely different to that of another [14]. Users’ abilities can change greatly over time and these changes can differ depending on both the individual and the culture in which they live [13].
MBBP for improved iterative channel decoding in 802.16e WiMAX systems

We propose the application of multiple-bases belief-propagation, an optimized iterative decoding method, to a set of rate-1/2 LDPC codes from the IEEE 802.16e WiMAX standard. The presented approach allows for improved decoding performance when signaling over the AWGN channel. As all required operations for this method can be run in parallel, the decoding delay of this method and standard belief-propagation decoding are equal. The obtained results are compared to the performance of LDPC codes optimized with the progressive edge-growth algorithm and to bounds from information theory. It will be shown that the discussed method mitigates the gap to the well-known random coding bound by about 20 percent.
Refining Top-k Selection Queries based on User Feedback

In many applications, users specify target values for certa in attributes/features, without requiring exact matches to these values in return. Instead, the result is typ ically a ranked list of “top k” objects that best match the specified feature values. User subjectivity is an import ant aspect of such queries i.e. which objects are relevant to the user and which are not depends on the percepti on of the user. Due to the subjective nature of top-k queries, the answers returned by the system to an user query o ft n does not satisfy the user’s need right away; either because the weights and the distance functions associated with the features do not accurately capture the user’s perception or because the specified targe t valu s do not fully capture her information need or both. In such cases, the user would like to refine the query a nd resubmit it in order to get back a better set of answers. While there has been a lot of research on query refinement models, there is no work that we are aware of on supporting refinement of top-k queries efficie ntly in a database system. Done naively, each ‘refined’ query can be treated as a ‘starting’ query and evalu ated from scratch. This paper explores alternative approaches that significantly improve the cost of evaluatin g refined queries by exploiting the observation that the refined queries are not modified drastically from one iter ation to another. Our experiments over a real-life multimedia dataset show that the proposed techniques save m ore than 80% of the execution cost of refined queries over the naive approach and is more than an order of ma gnitude faster than a simple sequential scan.
Analyzing the scientific interactions of Islamic Azad University in the field of Humanities and Social Sciences between 2010-2014

This studies aim is to analyze the scientific interactions of Islamic Azad University in the field of humanities and social sciences between 2010-2014. method:This study uses a co-occurrence analysis method in scientometrics as well as social network analysis to investigate the interactions governing scientific cooperation networks in the field of humanities and social sciences in Islamic Azad University. Results:the collaboration network in the field of humanities and social sciences in Islamic Azad University has the density of 0.004that Masoud Hashemi,Saeed Sadeghi and Akbar Mohammadi are the important and influential authors in collaboration network of researchers at the individual level in terms of the different indicators.Tehran University,Allameh Tabatabaei University,Tarbiat Modares University,Tarbiat Moalem University,Ferdowsi University and also University of
The cell proliferation-associated antigen of antibody Ki-67: a very large, ubiquitous nuclear protein with numerous repeated elements, representing a new kind of cell cycle-maintaining proteins

The antigen defined by mAb Ki-67 is a human nuclear protein the expression of which is strictly associated with cell proliferation and which is widely used in routine pathology as a "proliferation marker" to measure the growth fraction of cells in human tumors. Ki-67 detects a double band with apparent molecular weights of 395 and 345 kD in immunoblots of proteins from proliferating cells. We cloned and sequenced the full length cDNA, identified two differentially spliced isoforms of mRNA with open reading frames of 9,768 and 8,688 bp encoding for this cell proliferation-associated protein with calculated molecular weights of 358,761 D and 319,508 D, respectively. New mAbs against a bacterially expressed part and a synthetic polypeptide deduced from the isolated cDNA react with the native Ki-67 antigen, thus providing a circle of evidence that we have cloned the authentic Ki-67 antigen cDNA. The central part of the Ki-67 antigen cDNA contains a large 6,845-bp exon with 16 tandemly repeated 366-bp elements, the "Ki-67 repeats", each including a highly conserved new motif of 66 bp, the "Ki-67 motif", which encodes for the epitope detected by Ki-67. Computer analysis of the nucleic acid and the deduced amino acid sequence of the Ki-67 antigen confirmed that the cDNA encodes for a nuclear and short-lived protein without any significant homology to known sequences. Ki-67 antigen-specific antisense oligonucleotides inhibit the proliferation of IM-9 cell line cells, indicating that the Ki-67 antigen may be an absolute requirement for maintaining cell proliferation. We conclude that the Ki-67 antigen defines a new category of cell cycle-associated nuclear nonhistone proteins.
Evaluation of PSI‐BLAST alignment accuracy in comparison to structural alignments

The PSI‐BLAST algorithm has been acknowledged as one of the most powerful tools for detecting remote evolutionary relationships by sequence considerations only. This has been demonstrated by its ability to recognize remote structural homologues and by the greatest coverage it enables in annotation of a complete genome. Although recognizing the correct fold of a sequence is of major importance, the accuracy of the alignment is crucial for the success of modeling one sequence by the structure of its remote homologue. Here we assess the accuracy of PSI‐BLAST alignments on a stringent database of 123 structurally similar, sequence‐dissimilar pairs of proteins, by comparing them to the alignments defined on a structural basis. Each protein sequence is compared to a nonredundant database of the protein sequences by PSI‐BLAST. Whenever a pair member detects its pair‐mate, the positions that are aligned both in the sequential and structural alignments are determined, and the alignment sensitivity is expressed as the per‐centage of these positions out of the structural alignment. Fifty‐two sequences detected their pair‐mates (for 16 pairs the success was bi‐directional when either pair member was used as a query). The average percentage of correctly aligned residues per structural alignment was 43.5 ± 2.2%. Other properties of the alignments were also examined, such as the sensitivity vs. specificity and the change in these parameters over consecutive iterations. Notably, there is an improvement in alignment sensitivity over consecutive iterations, reaching an average of 50.9 + 2.5% within the five iterations tested in the current study.
Apelin Increases Cardiac Contractility via Protein Kinase Cε- and Extracellular Signal-Regulated Kinase-Dependent Mechanisms

Background Apelin, the endogenous ligand for the G protein-coupled apelin receptor, is an important regulator of the cardiovascular homoeostasis. We previously demonstrated that apelin is one of the most potent endogenous stimulators of cardiac contractility; however, its underlying signaling mechanisms remain largely elusive. In this study we characterized the contribution of protein kinase C (PKC), extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) and myosin light chain kinase (MLCK) to the positive inotropic effect of apelin. Methods and Results In isolated perfused rat hearts, apelin increased contractility in association with activation of prosurvival kinases PKC and ERK1/2. Apelin induced a transient increase in the translocation of PKCε, but not PKCα, from the cytosol to the particulate fraction, and a sustained increase in the phosphorylation of ERK1/2 in the left ventricle. Suppression of ERK1/2 activation diminished the apelin-induced increase in contractility. Although pharmacological inhibition of PKC attenuated the inotropic response to apelin, it had no effect on ERK1/2 phosphorylation. Moreover, the apelin-induced positive inotropic effect was significantly decreased by inhibition of MLCK, a kinase that increases myofilament Ca2+ sensitivity. Conclusions Apelin increases cardiac contractility through parallel and independent activation of PKCε and ERK1/2 signaling in the adult rat heart. Additionally MLCK activation represents a downstream mechanism in apelin signaling. Our data suggest that, in addition to their role in cytoprotection, modest activation of PKCε and ERK1/2 signaling improve contractile function, therefore these pathways represent attractive possible targets in the treatment of heart failure.
Two-Dimensional Proof-Relevant Parametricity

Relational parametricity is a fundamental concept within theoretical computer science and the foundations of programming languages, introduced by John Reynolds [6]. His fundamental insight was that types can be interpreted not just as functors on the category of sets, but also as equality preserving functors on the category of relations. This gives rise to a model where polymorphic functions are uniform in a suitable sense; this can be used to establish e.g. representation independence, equivalences between programs, or deriving useful theorems about programs from their type alone [7]. The relations Reynolds considered were proof-irrelevant, which from a type theoretic perspective is a little limited. As a result, one might like to extend his work to deal with proof-relevant, i.e. set-valued relations. However naive attempts to do this fail: the fundamental property of equality preservation cannot be established. Our insight is that just as one uses parametricity to restrict definable elements of a type, one can use parametricity to restrict definable proofs to ensure equality preservation in the proof-relevant setting. Proof-relevant logical relations also appear in Benton, Hofmann and Nigam’s recent work [1], but for unary relations, and in a setting without ∀-types. Hence they do not need to consider equality preservation. In our work, we consider proof-relevant binary relations. A proof-relevant relation R over two sets A and B consists of a map R : A × B → Set which, for every two elements (a, b) ∈ A×B, associates a set of proofs that they are related. On top of this, we have a new proof-irrelevant layer: a 2-dimensional relation Q is defined over four sets and four binary proof-relevant relations. It can be thought of as over a square, where the vertices are sets and the edges are the binary proof-relevant relations:
Mandarin pitch accent prediction using hierarchical model based ensemble machine learning

In this study, we combine the Mandarin characteristics with Mandarin acoustic attribute and text information and use hierarchical model based ensemble machine learning to predict Mandarin pitch accent. Our model could make the best of advantages of prosody hierarchical structure and ensemble machine learning. When comparing our model with classification and regression tree (CART), support vector machine (SVM), adaboost with CART at different experimental conditions, the hierarchical model obtains the best results, it can achieve 84.75% accuracy rate to Mandarin read speech. At the same time, we compare our proposed method with previous proposed method at the same training set and test set. There are 2.25% and 0.82% absolute accuracy rate improvements.
A novel free reference image quality metric using neural network approach

A No Reference (NR) image quality index based on fusion of three NR metrics by neural networks is proposed. The idea is to combine different NR metrics in order to estimate various distortions. We believe that there is no NR metric able to objectively estimate all the known distortions. Therefore, the idea of combining some distortion measures in order to evaluate image quality is of great benefit. Here, the fusion is done using a neural network approach. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated subjectively using some known image databases.
The role of context in information retrieval

The scope for information retrieval applications continues to growth to encompass larger and more diverse archives and new computing environments. The consequent increased demands on information retrieval systems continue to motivate research into new and more efficient search technologies. Users of information retrieval systems work in personal and physical contexts, while the documents containing the information they seek often relate to specific contexts. It is argued that taking account of context can improve information retrieval effectiveness. While potential use of context has certainly been under explored, it is already present in established techniques such as relevance feedback. The emergence of new information retrieval environments, such as those associated with mobile computing, raises new challenges for information retrieval for which greater use of context may form a important component. Among the many questions raised by attempting to perform information retrieval in context are issues of how algorithms might be extended or developed to facilitate use of context, does the user need to be actively involved to make use of context, where should the context information come from, and how might the effectiveness of such methods be tested in extended evaluation frameworks?
Reliable Multihop Broadcast Protocols for Inter-Vehicular Communication in a Fading Channel

We consider a inter-vehicular communication scenario with vehicles moving along a highway. The vehicles are equipped with radio devices and can communicate among themselves. We study the problem of reliable multihop broadcasting in such a scenario. We propose two broadcasting algorithms -grid based multihop broadcast (GBMB) and controlled flooding (CF). Controlled flooding is derived from classical flooding. Grid based multihop broadcasting is a simple grid based multihop scheme that adds reliability as well as increases throughput by reducing collisions. We have shown through simulations that our proposed protocols have high reliability and yield efficient channel utilization when compared to Flooding, Probabilistic Flooding and Area Based Protocols in scenarios where the channel is lossy.
PCR-based Approaches for the Detection of Clinical Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus

Staphylococcus aureus is an important pathogen that can cause a variety of infections, including superficial and systematic infections, in humans and animals. The persistent emergence of multidrug resistant S. aureus, particularly methicillin-resistant S. aureus, has caused dramatically economic burden and concerns in the public health due to limited options of treatment of MRSA infections. In order to make a correct choice of treatment for physicians and understand the prevalence of MRSA, it is extremely critical to precisely and timely diagnose the pathogen that induces a specific infection of patients and to reveal the antibiotic resistant profile of the pathogen. In this review, we outlined different PCR-based approaches that have been successfully utilized for the rapid detection of S. aureus, including MRSA and MSSA, directly from various clinical specimens. The sensitivity and specificity of detections were pointed out. Both advantages and disadvantages of listed approaches were discussed. Importantly, an alternative approach is necessary to further confirm the detection results from the molecular diagnostic assays.
Brief Version of the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale – Straightforward Items (BFNE-S): Psychometric Properties in a Spanish Population

The aim of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Brief version of the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale – Straightforward Items (BFNE-S) in a non-clinical Spanish population. Rodebaugh et al. (2004) recommended the use of this scale composed of 8 straightforwardly-worded items, instead of the 12-item version of the BFNE. The sample consisted of 542 undergraduate students, 71.3% of whom were women and 28.7% were men; the mean age was 21.71 (4.78) years. Exploratory factor analysis produced one factor which accounted for 51.28% of variance. The internal consistency of the scale was α = . 89. The BFNE-S correlated with the Social Avoidance and Distress Scale (r = .44), the Personal Report of Confidence as Speaker – Modified (r = .44), the Public Speaking Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (r = -.38) and both subscales of the Self-Statements during Public Speaking (SSPS-P r = -.22; SSPS-N r = .53). ANOVAs revealed significant differences in the BFNE-S amongst a non-clinical population, persons suffering from specific social phobia, non-generalized social phobia and generalized social phobia. El objetivo del presente estudio fue comprobar las propiedades psicométricas de la escala compuesta por los ítems directos de la Escala de Miedo a la Evaluación Negativa versión breve (BFNE-S) en población no clínica española. Rodebaugh et al. (2004) recomendaron utilizar esta escala formada por 8 ítems directos, en lugar de la versión del BFNE de 12 ítems. La muestra estuvo formada por 542 estudiantes universitarios. El 71,3% de la muestra fueron mujeres, el 28,7% varones y la media de edad fue 21.71 (4.78). El análisis factorial exploratorio extrajo un solo factor que explicó el 51,28% de la varianza. La consistencia interna de la escala fue α = 0,89. El BFNE-S correlacionó con la Escala de Evitación y Malestar Social (r = 0,44), el Cuestionario de Confianza para Hablar en Público – Modificado (r = 0,44), el Cuestionario de Autoeficacia al Intervenir en Público (r = -0,38) y ambas subescalas del Cuestionario de Autoverbalizaciones durante la situación de hablar en público (SSPS-P r = -0,22; SSPS-N r = 0,53). Se realizó un ANOVA en el que se observaron diferencias significativas en el BFNE-S entre población no clínica, personas con fobia social específica, fobia social no generalizada y fobia social generalizada.
Effects of alprazolam on capture stress-related serum cortisol responses in Korean raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides koreensis)

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of alprazolam on the stress that Korean raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides koreensis) may experience while caught in a live trap by measuring their serum cortisol response. The animals were placed in a live trap with or without being pretreated with oral doses of alprazolam. In both groups, pre-trap blood samples were initially collected without anesthesia before the animals were positioned in the live trap; then post-trap blood samples were collected after the animals had remained in the live trap for 2 h. Changes in cortisol levels were observed using a chemiluminescent immunoassay. The level of cortisol increased in the control group and decreased in the alprazolam-pretreatment group (p < 0.05). In this study, we demonstrated that alprazolam pretreatment reduced stress during live trap capture.