Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combined biliary and duodenal stenting for palliation of pancreatic cancer

The aim of this case report was to evaluate the usefulness of combined biliary and duodenal stenting in the palliation of pancreatic cancer. We report a series of 4 consecutive patients (2 men and 2 women, mean age 58.5 years, range 38–77 years) who underwent combined biliary and duodenal stenting in our department between March 2000 and April 2001. All patients had cancer of the head of the pancreas causing stricture of the common bile duct and second portion of the duodenum. Biliary and duodenal stents were successfully positioned, with relief of symptoms in all cases. No early complications were observed, except for a transient increase in serum lipase and amylase in one case. Mean follow‐up was 7.5 months (range 5–14 months). One patient presenting recurrence of vomiting after 4 months because of tumour overgrowth at the distal edge of the prosthesis was successfully treated by insertion of a partially overlapping second coaxial stent. Combined biliary and duodenal stenting for the palliation of pancreatic cancer was performed safely and successfully. Stents allowed effective re‐canalization of the biliary tract and duodenum, relieving both jaundice and vomiting. This procedure should be considered as an alternative to palliative surgery, especially in critically ill patients.
Endothelium-Dependent Vasodilation in Human Mesenteric Artery Is Primarily Mediated by Myoendothelial Gap Junctions Intermediate Conductance Calcium-Activated K+ Channel and Nitric Oxide

Myoendothelial microdomain signaling via localized calcium-activated potassium channel (KCa) and gap junction connexins (Cx) is critical for endothelium-dependent vasodilation in rat mesenteric artery. The present study determines the relative contribution of NO and gap junction-KCa mediated microdomain signaling to endothelium-dependent vasodilation in human mesenteric artery. The hypothesis tested was that such activity is due to NO and localized KCa and Cx activity. In mesenteric arteries from intestinal surgery patients, endothelium-dependent vasodilation was characterized using pressure myography with pharmacological intervention. Vessel morphology was examined using immunohistochemical and ultrastructural techniques. In vessel segments at 80 mm Hg, the intermediate (I)KCa blocker 1-[(2-chlorophenyl)diphenyl-methyl]-1H-pyrazole (TRAM-34; 1 μM) inhibited bradykinin (0.1 nM–3 μM)-induced vasodilation, whereas the small (S) KCa blocker apamin (50 and 100 nM) had no effect. Direct IKCa activation with 1-ethyl-2-benzimidazolinone (1-EBIO; 10–300 μM) induced vasodilation, whereas cyclohexyl-[2-(3,5-dimethyl-pyrazol-1-yl)-6-methyl-pyrimidin-4-yl]-amine (1–30 μM), the SKCa activator, failed to dilate arteries, whereas dilation induced by 1-EBIO (10–100 μM) was blocked by TRAM-34. Bradykinin-mediated vasodilation was attenuated by putative gap junction block with carbenoxolone (100 μM), with remaining dilation blocked by N-nitro l-arginine methyl ester (100 μM) and [1H-[1,2,4]oxadiazolo-[4,3-a]quinoxalin-1-one] (10 μM), NO synthase and soluble guanylate cyclase blockers, respectively. In human mesenteric artery, myoendothelial gap junction and IKCa activity are consistent with Cx37 and IKCa microdomain expression and distribution. Data suggest that endothelium-dependent vasodilation is primarily mediated by NO, IKCa, and gap junction Cx37 in this vessel. Myoendothelial microdomain signaling sites are present in human mesenteric artery and are likely to contribute to endothelium-dependent vasodilation via a mechanism that is conserved between species.
Barriers to SCHIP enrollment

Abstract background. Enrollment in the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), created under the federal Balanced Budget Act of 1997, had a distressingly slow start and varied substantially county-to-county in many states, including Pennsylvania. methods. We performed a quantitative county-level analysis of barriers to enrollment in Pennsylvania's Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for the year 2000, seven years after it was implemented and three years after federal SCHIP legislation. Using multivariate regression analysis with a county as the unit of observation, we modeled enrollment in SCHIP as a function of accessibility to health care, availability of clinicians, and community economic health. results. High clinic density and Medicaid managed-care membership predicted SCHIP enrollment success, while female head-of-household predicted SCHIP enrollment failure. A principal-components factor analysis revealed four underlying barriers to enrollment: accessibility, availability, affordability, and effort. conclusions. The most formidable barriers to SCHIP enrollment success in Pennsylvania were not programmatic; they were correlates of poverty itself.
Information-Centric Wireless Networks with Virtualization and D2D Communications

Wireless network virtualization and ICN are two promising technologies for next generation wireless networks. Although some excellent works have focused on these two technologies, D2D communications have not beeen investigated in information-centric virtualized cellular networks. Meanwhile, content caching in mobile devices has attracted much attention due to the saved backhaul consumption or reduced transmission latency in D2D-assisted cellular networks. However, when it comes to the multi-operator scenario, direct content sharing between different operators via D2D communications is typically infeasible. In this article, we propose a novel information-centric virtualized cellular network framework with D2D communications, enabling not only content caching in the air, but also inter-operator content sharing between mobile devices. We describe the key components in the proposed framework, and present the interactions among them. We incorporate and formulate the content caching strategies in resource allocation optimization, to maximize the total utility of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) by caching popular content in mobile devices. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework and scheme with different system parameters.
Ers1, a Rapidly Diverging Protein Essential for RNA Interference-dependent Heterochromatic Silencing in Schizosaccharomyces pombe*

Centromeric silencing and heterochromatin formation in Schizosaccharomyces pombe require the RNA interference (RNAi) machinery. Three factors that mediate this mechanism have been identified: 1) the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase complex RdRC, 2) the Argonaute-containing RITS (RNA-induced initiation of transcriptional silencing) complex, and 3) the endoribonuclease Dicer ortholog Dcr1. S. pombe mutants lacking a new factor described here, Ers1, are completely defective in RNAi-dependent silencing of centromeric regions but, importantly, not in RNAi-independent silencing at the mat3M or tel2R loci. ers1Δ cells likewise fail to convert centromeric pre-small interfering RNA transcripts into small interfering RNAs, are defective in histone H3 Lys9 methylation, and are unable to recruit the RITS complex to centromeric sequences. Surprisingly, Ers1 lacks obvious orthologs outside of the genus Schizosaccharomyces. Within this group, it is diverging rapidly, raising the possibility that it is coevolving with target RNA elements.
Structure-function relations in voluntary movements

Volume 2 of this series contains chapters by more than 12 different internationally known speakers who presented at the Second International Conference of Progress in Motor Control. It continues the spirit of Nikolai Bernstein, who contributed significantly to the structure-function controversy. Unlike Volume 1, which was more theoretical, Volume 2 proposes rather direct relations of the motor function to neurophysical and/or biomechanical structures.
POSTER: TouchCtrl: fine-grained access control for collaborative environments

The design of modern desktop operating systems is based on the assumption that a single user controls input and output devices at a time. This is also the case for access control, where applications inherit the privileges from the user that started them. This is not sufficient for multi-user collaboration on Single Display Groupware (SDG) or tabletop systems. For these we suggest a more fine-grained access control method based on the user that is interacting with an application. In our ongoing work of building a multi-user multitouch system we developed a technique we call event backtracking that exploits the asynchronous behavior of modern desktop applications on the Mac OS X platform. Event backtracking follows the execution of a program and tags threads with user IDs taken from the input events of users. This information is subsequently used to dynamically restrict applications' access rights. Our implementation works within applications as well as across application borders, transparent to the applications themselves.
Dynamic placement of virtual machines for cost optimization in multi-cloud environments

The number of providers in the cloud computing market is increasing at rapid pace. At the same time, we are observing a fragmentation of the market in terms of pricing schemes, virtual machine offers and value-add features. In the early phase of cloud adoption, the price model was dominated by fixed prices. However, cloud market trend shows that dynamic pricing schemes utilization is being increased. In this plan, prices change according to demand in each cloud provider. In general, it is difficult for users to search cloud prices and decide where to put their resources. In this paper, we propose a scheduling model for optimizing virtual cluster placements across available cloud offers. This scheduler uses some variables such as average prices or cloud prices trends for suggesting an optimal deployment. Also, this scheduler is part of a cloud broker which automates actions and makes them transparent for users. The performance of our model is evaluated in a real-world cloud environment and the results show that user's investment decreases when part of the virtual infrastructure is dynamically distributed among clouds instead of maintaining it in a fixed one.
Optimal Calibration Interval Determination Techniques: the Example of a Rubidium Frequency Standard

In this paper we consider two different techniques in order to determine the optimal calibration interval: the intervals obtained using a mathematical model and those calculated with an iterative technique referred to as simple response method (SRM). We apply these methods to rubidium frequency standard data. We have chosen this example because the degradation of its calibration condition can be modelled by the use of a quite complex stochastic process called integrated Brownian motion (IBM) also of interest in other different contexts. Moreover the rubidium frequency standard is quite diffused in industrial calibration laboratories
The cAMP/Protein Kinase A Pathway and Virulence in Cryptococcus neoformans

The basidiomycete fungus Cryptococcus neoformans is an important pathogen of immunocompromised people. The ability of the fungus to sense its environment is critical for proliferation and the generation of infectious propagules, as well as for adaptation to the mammalian host during infection. The conserved cAMP/protein kinase A pathway makes an important contribution to sensing, as demonstrated by the phenotypes of mutants with pathway defects. These phenotypes include loss of the ability to mate and to elaborate the key virulence factors capsule and melanin. This review summarizes recent work that reveals new targets of the pathway, new phenotypic consequences of signaling defects, and a more detailed understanding of connections with other aspects of cryptococcal biology including iron regulation, pH sensing, and stress.
Advances and Applications in Bioinformatics and Chemistry

A rapid method for combined analysis of common and rare variants at the level of a region, gene, or pathway Abstract: Previously described methods for the combined analysis of common and rare variants have disadvantages such as requiring an arbitrary classification of variants or permutation testing to assess statistical significance. Here we propose a novel method which implements a weighting scheme based on allele frequencies observed in both cases and controls. Because the test is unbiased, scores can be analyzed with a standard t-test. To test its validity we applied it to data for common, rare, and very rare variants simulated under the null hypothesis. To test its power we applied it to simulated data in which association was present, including data using the observed allele frequencies of common and rare variants in NOD2 previously reported in cases of Crohn's disease and controls. The method produced results that conformed well to those expected under the null hypothesis. It demonstrated more power to detect association when rare and common variants were analyzed jointly, the power further increasing when rare variants were assigned higher weights. 20,000 analyses of a gene containing 62 variants could be performed in 80 minutes on a laptop. This approach shows promise for the analysis of data currently emerging from genome wide sequencing studies.
Code optimizations using formally verified properties

Formal program verification offers strong assurance of correctness, backed by the strength of mathematical proof. Constructing these proofs requires humans to identify program invariants, and show that they are always maintained. These invariants are then used to prove that the code adheres to its specification. In this paper, we explore the overlap between formal verification and code optimization. We propose two approaches to reuse the invariants derived in formal proofs and integrate them into compilation. The first applies invariants extracted from the proof, while the second leverages the property of program safety (i.e., the absence of bugs). We reuse this information to improve the performance of generated object code. We evaluated these methods on seL4, a real-world formally-verified microkernel, and obtained improvements in average runtime performance (up to 28%) and in worst-case execution time (up to 25%). In macro-benchmarks, we found the performance of para-virtualized Linux running on the microkernel improved by 6-16%.
t-Covering Arrays: Upper Bounds and Poisson Approximations

A k×n array with entries from the q-letter alphabet {0, 1, …, q − 1} is said to be t-covering if each k × t submatrix has (at least one set of) qt distinct rows. We use the Lovász local lemma to obtain a general upper bound on the minimal number K = K(n, t, q) of rows for which a t-covering array exists; for t = 3 and q = 2, we are able to match the best-known such bound. Let Kλ = Kλ(n, t, q), (λ ≥ 2), denote the minimum number of rows that guarantees the existence of an array for which each set of t columns contains, amongst its rows, each of the qt possible ‘words’ of length t at least λ times. The Lovász lemma yields an upper bound on Kλ that reveals how substantially fewer rows are needed to accomplish subsequent t-coverings (beyond the first). Finally, given a random k × n array, the Stein–Chen method is employed to obtain a Poisson approximation for the number of sets of t columns that are deficient, i.e. missing at least one word.
“Omni-Paddle”: Amphibious spherical rotary paddle mechanism

This paper describes a combination mechanism of a wheeground a paddle to realize an effective movement on the border of ground and water. For the conventional mobile mechanisms on water or on ground the combination of the mechanism to the body of the robot separately, and each one can be the interruption to the other in each field. In this research, we propose a hybrid mechanism of a wheeground a paddle as drive mechanism itself to realize an effective movement on the border such as a coast with debris after a disaster like a seismic sea wave or a tanker grounding accident. A prototype robot has been built and basic experiments on its motion have been conducted.
Parallelized Optimization of LDPC Decoding Algorithms

One of the major problems in communications engineering is to efficiently recover errors of transmitted data blocks by forward error correction (FEC). Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes are very popular for FEC. They are known to be one of the best coding schemes in terms of error correction performance. Because the decoding of practically used LDPC codes is NP-hard, only suboptimal algorithms can be applied. To optimize decoding algorithms in terms of decoding performance, a high amount of numerical simulations is needed. We present a parallelized method for evaluating and optimizing the performance of LDPC decoding algorithms. Using performance criteria of the decoding algorithms, the optimization is done by applying nonlinear optimization methods to select algorithm parameters.
Vulnerability of children and the developing brain to neurotoxic hazards.

For much of the history of toxicology, the sensitivity of the developing organism to chemical perturbation attracted limited attention. Several tragic episodes and new insights finally taught us that the course of early brain development incurs unique risks. Although the process is exquisitely controlled, its lability renders it highly susceptible to damage from environmental chemicals. Such disturbances, as recognized by current testing protocols and legislation such as the Food Quality Protection Act, can result in outcomes ranging from death to malformations to functional impairment. The latter are the most difficult to determine. First, they require a variety of measures to assay their extent. Second, adult responses may prove an inadequate guide to the response of the developing brain, which is part of the reason for proposing additional safety factors for children. Third, neuropsychological tests are deployed in complex circumstances in which many factors, including economic status, combine to produce a particular effect such as lowered intelligence quotient score. Fourth, the magnitude of the effect, for most environmental exposure levels, may be relatively small but extremely significant for public health. Fifth, changes in brain function occur throughout life, and some consequences of early damage may not even emerge until advanced age. Such factors need to be addressed in estimating the influence of a particular agent or group of agents on brain development and its functional expression. It is especially important to consider ways of dealing with multiple risks and their combinations in addition to the prevailing practice of estimating risks in isolation. ImagesFigure 1Figure 4Figure 5Figure 8
Image Thresholding for Weld Defect Extraction in Industrial Radiographic Testing

In non destructive testing by radiography, a perfect knowledge of the weld defect shape is an essential step to appreciate the quality of the weld and make decision on its acceptability or rejection. Because of the complex nature of the considered images, and in order that the detected defect region represents the most accurately possible the real defect, the choice of thresholding methods must be done judiciously. In this paper, performance criteria are used to conduct a comparative study of thresholding methods based on gray level histogram, 2-D histogram and locally adaptive approach for weld defect extraction in radiographic images.
Comparative Analysis of the Flexural Stiffness of Pinniped Vibrissae

Vibrissae are important components of the mammalian tactile sensory system and are used to detect vibrotactile stimuli in the environment. Pinnipeds have the largest and most highly innervated vibrissae among mammals, and the hair shafts function as a biomechanical filter spanning the environmental stimuli and the neural mechanoreceptors deep in the follicle-sinus complex. Therefore, the material properties of these structures are critical in transferring vibrotactile information to the peripheral nervous system. Vibrissae were tested as cantilever beams and their flexural stiffness (EI) was measured to test the hypotheses that the shape of beaded vibrissae reduces EI and that vibrissae are anisotropic. EI was measured at two locations on each vibrissa, 25% and 50% of the overall length, and at two orientations to the point force. EI differed in orientations that were normal to each other, indicating a functional anisotropy. Since vibrissae taper from base to tip, the second moment of area (I) was lower at 50% than 25% of total length. The anterior orientation exhibited greater EI values at both locations compared to the dorsal orientation for all species. Smooth vibrissae were generally stiffer than beaded vibrissae. The profiles of beaded vibrissae are known to decrease the amplitude of vibrations when protruded into a flow field. The lower EI values of beaded vibrissae, along with the reduced vibrations, may function to enhance the sensitivity of mechanoreceptors to detection of small changes in flow from swimming prey by increasing the signal to noise ratio. This study builds upon previous morphological and hydrodynamic analyses of vibrissae and is the first comparative study of the mechanical properties of pinniped vibrissae.
ISS of multistable systems with delays: Application to droop-controlled inverter-based microgrids

Motivated by the problem of phase-locking in droop-controlled inverter-based microgrids with delays, the recently developed theory of input-to-state stability (ISS) for multistable systems is extended to the case of multistable systems with delayed dynamics. Sufficient conditions for ISS of delayed systems are presented using Lyapunov-Razumikhin functions. It is shown that ISS multistable systems are robust with respect to delays in a feedback. The derived theory is applied to two examples. First, the ISS property is established for the model of a nonlinear pendulum and delay-dependent robustness conditions are derived. Second, it is shown that, under certain assumptions, the problem of phase-locking analysis in droop-controlled inverter-based microgrids with delays can be reduced to the stability investigation of the nonlinear pendulum. For this case, corresponding delay-dependent conditions for asymptotic phase-locking are given.
Telecracy: Testing for Channels of Persuasion

Can biased information persuade in the long run? Political information on Italian TV has been biased towards Berlusconi's party since 1994. We exploit a shock to viewers' exposure to Berlusconi bias: idiosyncratic deadlines to switch to digital TV from 2008 to 2012. Digital TV increased the number of freeview channels tenfold. As a consequence, viewership of Berlusconi-controlled channels by digital users dropped by 19% from 2008 to 2010 elections. Although the control of most pre-digital outlets by Berlusconi was widely known, the switch caused a drop in his coalition vote share by 5.5 to 7.5 percentage points. The e ect was stronger in towns with older and less educated voters. At least 30% of digital users had not ltered out the bias from 1994 to 2010. Moving to digital TV a ected voting via turnout: previous Berlusconi supporters went to vote less than others, hence his vote share dropped. We discuss several Bayesian interpretations, and argue that they cannot fully explain these results. Coarse thinking, selective attention, and persuasion bias are broadly consistent with the evidence.