Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Segmentation of Thoracic Organs Using Pixel Shuffle

This paper summarizes our contribution to the SegTHOR challenge. This competition addresses the problem of organs at risk segmentation in CT images. For lung cancer treatment, segmentation of nearby healthy organs is essential. The task of organs delineation is largely manual and can be potentially a source of mistakes. At this point, the segmentation of organs that are located close to the tumor is a routine and tedious procedure. With the intention to simplify this procedure we study approaches of automatic organs segmentation within CT images. The solution we came up with is based on deep learning and explores two concepts: attention mechanism and pixel shufﬂe as an upsampling operator. In this study, we describe our approach in details and evaluate it with test data provided by challenge organizers. Without any post-processing our method achieves notable performance with following intermediate results: 0.8303, 0.9381, 0.9088, 0.9353 for Esophagus, Heart, Trachea, and Aorta respectively (Dice scores are reported).
Phase I, Randomized, Double‐blind, Placebo‐controlled, Single‐dose, and Multiple‐dose Studies of Erenumab in Healthy Subjects and Patients With Migraine

Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) targeting calcitonin gene‐related peptide (CGRP) signaling are being explored as prophylactic treatments for migraine. Erenumab (AMG 334) is the first potent, selective, and competitive human mAb antagonist of the CGRP receptor. We report the data from two phase I studies assessing the safety, pharmacokinetics (PK), and pharmacodynamics of single and multiple administrations of erenumab in healthy subjects and patients with migraine. The results indicate that the PK profile of erenumab is nonlinear from 1 mg to 70 mg and the linear portion of the clearance from 70 mg to 210 mg is consistent with other human immunoglobulin G2 antibodies. Single doses of erenumab resulted in >75% inhibition of capsaicin‐induced dermal blood flow, with no apparent dose‐dependency for erenumab ≥21 mg. Erenumab was generally well tolerated, with an acceptable safety profile, supporting further clinical development of erenumab for migraine prevention.
Long-term effects of acupuncture for chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome: systematic review and single-arm meta-analyses.

Background Cumulative evidences indicate that acupuncture may ameliorate the symptoms of chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CP/CPPS). However, the long-lasting effects of acupuncture on CP/CPPS has not been fully evaluated. The objective of this study is to assess the sustained effects of acupuncture on CP/CPPS. Methods We searched PubMed, EMBASE, and CENTRAL databases for studies on the use of acupuncture in patients with CP/CPPS. Studies with long-term follow-up periods were included. Single-arm meta-analyses were performed using random-effects model. The primary outcome was the response rate at the end of follow-up period; the secondary outcomes were changes of the National Institutes of Health Chronic Prostatitis Symptom Index (NIH-CPSI) scores at the end of follow-up, including total score and 3 sub-scores (pain, urinary, and quality of life). Results Six studies with 310 patients were performed in data synthesis, among which four studies were randomized controlled trials (RCT) and two were case series studies. At the end of follow-up, the weighted "average" response rate was 68.4% (95% CI: 42.1% to 89.5%, n=226; I2=93.5%); the change of NIH-CPSI total score were -14.8 (95% CI: -17.0 to -12.6, n=310; I2=92.1%); the change of pain, urinary, and quality of life sub-scores were -6.0 (95% CI: -6.9 to -5.2, n=266; I2=83.6%), -2.6 (95% CI: -3.2 to -2.0, n=266; I2=87.9%), and -4.4 (95% CI: -6.2 to -2.6, n=266; I2=98.7%), respectively. The source of heterogeneity could not be identified owing to insufficient studies. Conclusions Acupuncture may have clinically long-lasting benefits for CP/CPPS. However, current evidence is limited owing to insufficient data and significant heterogeneity. Further studies with larger sample size and long-term follow-up periods are warranted.
Supersymmetric DBI equations in diverse dimensions from the BRS invariance of a pure spinor superstring

We examine the BRS invariance of the open pure spinor superstring in the presence of background superfields on a Dp-brane. It is shown that the BRS invariance leads not only to boundary conditions on the spacetime spinors, but also to supersymmetric Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) equations of motion for the background superfields on the Dp-brane. These DBI equations are consistent with the supersymmetric DBI equations for a D9-brane.
Vessel layer separation in x-ray angiograms with fully convolutional network

Percutaneous coronary intervention is a minimally-invasive procedure to treat coronary artery disease. In such procedures, X-ray angiography, a real-time imaging technique, is commonly used for image guidance to identify lesion sites and navigate catheters and guide-wires within coronary arteries. Due to the physical nature of X-ray imaging, photon energy undergoes absorption when penetrating tissues, rendering a 2D projection image of a 3D scene, in which semi-transparent structures overlap with each other. The overlapping structures make robust information processing of X-ray images challenging. To tackle this issue, layer separation techniques for X-ray images were proposed to separate those structures into different image layers based on structure appearance or motion pattern. These techniques have been proven effective for vessel enhancement in X-ray angiograms. However, layer separation approaches still suffer either from spurious structures or non-real-time processing, which prevent their application in clinics. Purpose of this work is to investigate whether vessel layer separation from X-ray angiography images is possible via a data-driven strategy. To this end, we develop and evaluate a deep learning based method to extract the vessel layer. More specifically, U-Net, a fully convolutional network architecture, was trained to separate the vessel layer from the background. The results of our experiments show good vessel layer separation on 42 clinical sequences. Compared to the previous state-of-the-art, our proposed method has similar performance but runs much faster, which makes it a potential real-time clinical application.
A Universal Energy Distribution for FRB 121102

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond radio transients with large dispersion measures. An outstanding question is the relation between repeating FRBs and those with a single burst. In this paper, we study the energy distribution of the repeating FRB 121102. For a power-law distribution of energy , we show that the value of αE is in a narrow range 1.6–1.8 for bursts observed by different telescopes at different frequencies, which indicates a universal energy distribution for FRB 121102. Interestingly, a similar power-law index of energy distribution for nonrepeating FRBs observed by Parkes and ASKAP is also found. However, if low-energy bursts below the completeness threshold of Arecibo are discarded for FRB 121102, the slope could be up to 2.2. Implications of such a universal energy distribution are discussed.
Is the weekend effect really ubiquitous? A retrospective clinical cohort analysis of 30-day mortality by day of week and time of day using linked population data from New South Wales, Australia

Objective To examine the associations between day of week and time of admission and 30-day mortality for six clinical conditions: ischaemic and haemorrhagic stroke, acute myocardial infarction, pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and congestive heart failure. Design Retrospective population-based cohort analyses. Hospitalisation records were linked to emergency department and deaths data. Random-effect logistic regression models were used, adjusting for casemix and taking into account clustering within hospitals. Setting All hospitals in New South Wales, Australia, from July 2009 to June 2012. Participants Patients admitted to hospital with a primary diagnosis for one of the six clinical conditions examined. Outcome measures Adjusted ORs for all-cause mortality within 30 days of admission, by day of week and time of day. Results A total of 148 722 patients were included in the study, with 17 721 deaths within 30 days of admission. Day of week of admission was not associated with significantly higher likelihood of death for five of the six conditions after adjusting for casemix. There was significant variation in mortality for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease by day of week; however, this was not consistent with a strict weekend effect (Thursday: OR 1.29, 95% CI 1.12 to 1.48; Friday: OR 1.25, 95% CI 1.08 to 1.44; Saturday: OR 1.18, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.37; Sunday OR 1.05, 95% CI 0.90 to 1.22; compared with Monday). There was evidence for a night effect for patients admitted for stroke (ischaemic: OR 1.30, 95% CI 1.17 to 1.45; haemorrhagic: OR 1.58, 95% CI 1.40 to 1.78). Conclusions Mortality outcomes for these conditions, adjusted for casemix, do not vary in accordance with the weekend effect hypothesis. Our findings support a growing body of evidence that questions the ubiquity of the weekend effect.
The Autism and Angelman Syndrome Protein Ube3A/E6AP: The Gene, E3 Ligase Ubiquitination Targets and Neurobiological Functions

UBE3A is a gene implicated in neurodevelopmental disorders. The protein product of UBE3A is the E3 ligase E6-associated protein (E6AP), and its expression in the brain is uniquely regulated via genetic imprinting. Loss of E6AP expression leads to the development of Angelman syndrome (AS), clinically characterized by lack of speech, abnormal motor development, and the presence of seizures. Conversely, copy number variations (CNVs) that result in the overexpression of E6AP are strongly associated with the development of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), defined by decreased communication, impaired social interest, and increased repetitive behavior. In this review article, we focus on the neurobiological function of Ube3A/E6AP. As an E3 ligase, many functional target proteins of E6AP have been discovered, including p53, Arc, Ephexin5, and SK2. On a neuronal level, E6AP is widely expressed within the cell, including dendritic arbors, spines, and the nucleus. E6AP regulates neuronal morphological maturation and plays an important role in synaptic plasticity and cortical development. These molecular findings provide insight into our understanding of the molecular events underlying AS and ASDs.
Self-Attention Capsule Networks for Image Classification

We propose a novel architecture for image classiﬁcation, called Self-Attention Capsule Networks (SACN). SACN is the ﬁrst model that incorporates the Self-Attention mechanism as an integral layer within the Capsule Network (Cap-sNet). While the Self-Attention mechanism selects the more dominant image regions to focus on, the CapsNet analyzes the relevant features and their spatial correlations inside these regions only. The features are extracted in the convolutional layer. Then, the Self-Attention layer learns to suppress irrelevant regions based on features analysis, and highlights salient features useful for a speciﬁc task. The attention map is then fed into the CapsNet primary layer that is followed by a classiﬁcation layer. The SACN proposed model was designed to use a relatively shallow CapsNet architecture to reduce computational load, and compensates for the absence of a deeper network by using the Self-Attention module to signiﬁcantly improve the results. The proposed Self-Attention CapsNet architecture was extensively evaluated on ﬁve different datasets, mainly on three different medical sets, in addition to the natural MNIST and SVHN. The model was able to classify images and their patches with diverse and complex backgrounds better than the baseline CapsNet. As a result, the proposed Self-Attention CapsNet signiﬁcantly improved classiﬁcation performance within and across different datasets and outperformed the baseline CapsNet not only in classiﬁcation accuracy but also in robustness.
The Ideal Versus the Real

The common perception in both academic literature and industry today is that virtual machines offer better security, whereas containers offer better performance. However, a detailed review of the history of these technologies and the current threats they face reveals a different story. This survey covers key developments in the evolution of virtual machines and containers from the 1950s to today, with an emphasis on countering modern misperceptions with accurate historical details and providing a solid foundation for ongoing research into the future of secure isolation for multitenant infrastructures, such as cloud and container deployments.
The role of novel molecular techniques for tuberculosis diagnostics in the WHO European Region.

Tuberculosis and particularly multidrug resistant TB remains a major public health concern in the WHO European Region. In order to reduce the burden of the disease, early, accurate and rapid diagnoses play a crucial role. Sputum smear microscopy that has long been used as the main TB diagnostic method detects TB only with low sensitivity and phenotypic culture-based methods require several weeks and high biosafety laboratory infrastructures. The use of the WHO endorsed rapid molecular method for simultaneous detection of TB and rifampicin resistance detection has promising advantages to overcome these challenges and lead to major advances for early and accurate diagnosis of TB. With better understanding appearing discordances between phenotypic and genotypic methods, as well as the development and implementation of regionally adapted diagnostic algorithms, the precision of result acquisition and interpretation can advance even further.
Collider signals of the Mirror Twin Higgs boson through the hypercharge portal

We consider the collider signals arising from kinetic mixing between the hypercharge gauge boson of the Standard Model and its twin counterpart in the Mirror Twin Higgs model, in the framework in which the twin photon is massive. Through the mixing, the Standard Model fermions acquire charges under the mirror photon and the mirror Z boson. We determine the current experimental bounds on this scenario, and show that the mixing can be large enough to discover both the twin photon and the twin Z at the LHC, or at a future 100 TeV hadron collider, with dilepton resonances being a particularly conspicuous signal. We show that, in simple models, measuring the masses of both the mirror photon and mirror Z, along with the corresponding event rates in the dilepton channel, overdetermines the system, and can be used to test these theories.
Refinement from service economics planning to ubiquitous services implementation

Service Economics has been successfully proposed and implemented for promoting the macro service market especially in Global value chains which however does not provide guidance and integrate directly with the IT side implementation. Therefore there leaves a gap of the refinement from the strategic business planning to ubiquitous services implementation in the API (Application Program Interface) economy. Recently Gio Wiederhold attributed this gap to the knowledge difference between economists and the IT professionals and proposed to solve it from the IT side. As an instance of this guidance in the practice of Value Driven Design, we proposed a systemic formalization from the value calculation to the design quality measurement which binds the modification and change on the design artifacts with the business value strategy through a framework of managed quality properties in a service design process.
Attributed-based authentication and access control for IoT home devices: demo abstract

We demonstrate attribute-based authentication and access control schemes tailored to resource-constrained devices typical of IoT home environments. The demo shows how IoT devices would be managed and controlled in such scenario. The underlying cryptographic scheme relies on an Attribute-Based Cryptosystem (ABC) to cryptographically implement an authenticated Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) mechanism.
Rule-Based Query Tree Evaluation over Fragmented XML Documents

XML documents are used to hold information and to make exchanges between systems. In this paper, we consider documents that embed knowledge and rules, which may contain considerable redundancy. To control redundancy, documents are decomposed into fragments that are stored separately. Then, to materialize documents for end-users, they need to be dynamically constructed from their sources (separately stored fragments) by evaluating rules, which requires database queries to be executed according to the document structure.
Role of CT in Assessment of Unresectable Wilms' Tumor Response after Preoperative Chemotherapy in Pediatrics

The purpose of this study was to define the structural response of unresectable Wilms' tumor following preoperative chemotherapy by computed tomography (CT). We also compared CT changes in relation to histopathological nature. The study included 36 patients with 41 nephroblastomas. All were examined by CT before preoperative chemotherapy using multiphasic CT protocol study. The unresectability was diagnosed by CT imaging. All patients were subjected to fine-needle biopsy (FNB) to confirm the diagnosis and to define the histopathological type before preoperative chemotherapy. Five patients had unfavorable pathology and 31 patients with 36 nephroblastomas had favorable pathology. All patients received first line of treatment. Follow-up of these patients by CT at the 6th week was reviewed. All of our patients were diagnosed as unresectable Wilms' tumor by CT. Preoperative chemotherapy was started. Among our patients, 28 (77.8%) gave good response in the form of significant reduction in tumor size, disappearance of one tumor in two cases with bilateral WT and inferior vena cava (IVC) thrombus, and increased nonenhancing necrotizing content. Two patients with unfavorable pathology did not show any response. The remaining six patients gave partial response. CT can be used to evaluate tumor response and resectability after preoperative chemotherapy with high accuracy. The response to preoperative chemotherapy is not related to the histopathological classifications.
Perception of Impossible Scenes Reveals Differential Hippocampal and Parahippocampal Place Area Contributions to Spatial Coherency

Surprisingly little is known about how the brain combines spatial elements to form a coherent percept. Regions that may underlie this process include the hippocampus (HC) and parahippocampal place area (PPA), regions central to spatial perception but whose role in spatial coherency has not been explored. Participants were scanned with functional MRI while they judged whether Escher‐like scenes were possible or impossible. Univariate analyses revealed differential HC and PPA involvement, with greater HC activity during spatial incoherency detection and more PPA activity during spatial coherency detection. Recognition and eye‐tracking data ruled out long‐ or short‐term memory confounds. Multivariate statistics demonstrated spatial coherency‐dependent functional connectivity for the HC, but not PPA, with greater HC connectivity to various brain regions including lateral occipital complex during spatial incoherency detection. We suggest the PPA is preferentially involved during the perception of spatially coherent scenes, whereas the HC binds distinct features to create coherent representations. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Exploring Challenges in Conducting E-Mental Health Research Among Asian American Women

Abstract In this discussion paper, we explore the challenges of conducting e-mental health intervention research among Asian American women and propose a model for addressing these barriers. Based on an extensive literature review, we identify two main types of barriers to conducting e-mental health intervention research among Asian American women: recruitment barriers and adherence barriers. Recruitment barriers are further subcategorized into those related to (1) stigmatized cultural beliefs about mental illness and mental health services; (2) lack of awareness about mental health services; and (3) language barrier. As to adherence barriers, the two identified subtypes concern (1) acuity and severity of mental health condition; and (2) lack of time. In order to enhance recruitment and adherence in e-mental health intervention research among the studied population, we formulate the following three main research strategies, namely: (1) considering the cultural and social contexts of Asian American women in the development of e-mental health interventions; (2) determining appropriate program length; and (3) conducting feasibility studies to test e-mental health interventions. We suggest that nurse researchers integrate our proposed model in conducting e-mental health interventions among Asian American women. Our proposed model also implies that nurses play an important role in encouraging Asian American women’s acceptance of and adherence to e-mental health interventions. In order to overcome the obstacles to conducting e-mental health research among Asian American women, we recommend that nurses familiarize themselves with credible, relevant, and evidence-based e-mental health resources and integrate online mental health services and information within their nursing practice.
Graded Return-to-Work as a Stepping Stone to Full Work Resumption

While there is increasing evidence that graded return-to-work is an effective tool for the rehabilitation of sick-listed workers, little is known on the optimal timing and level of grading in return-to-work trajectories. We use administrative data from a Dutch private workplace reintegration provider to fill this gap. In order to correct for the selection bias inherent to the evaluation of activation strategies, we exploit the discretionary room of the case managers in setting up treatment plans. We find that graded return-to-work has the potential to speed up the recovery process, but does not necessarily help rehabilitate workers who would otherwise have not rehabilitated. Work resumption can be achieved faster when graded return-to-work is started earlier and may permanently increase when started at a higher rate of work resumption. These findings however do not hold for individuals who have problems related to mental health.
Harnessing the Power of the Electronic Medical Record to Facilitate an Opt-Out HIV Screening Program in an Urban Academic Emergency Department

Emergency Departments (EDs) are important settings for routine HIV screening because they are safety nets for populations with limited access to primary care and high risk for HIV infection. However, EDs rarely perform routine HIV screening due to logistical barriers. An electronic medical record (EMR)-driven routine opt-out HIV screening program was implemented in an urban academic ED and led to rapid scale-up of screening volume and detection of unknown HIV infection. The streamlined tool, requiring 4 mouse clicks, automates screening for eligibility, facilitates documentation of consent and orders the HIV test. HIV screening increased to a monthly average of 550 tests compared to an average of 7 tests prior to program implementation. Similar EMR innovations can be leveraged in a variety of other clinical settings and for testing of other diseases to improve clinical flow and outcomes.