Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Endoscopic mucosal resection for treatment of early gastric cancer

BACKGROUND In Japan, endoscopic mucosal resection (EMR) is accepted as a treatment option for cases of early gastric cancer (EGC) where the probability of lymph node metastasis is low. The results of EMR for EGC at the National Cancer Center Hospital, Tokyo, over a 11 year period are presented. METHODS EMR was applied to patients with early cancers up to 30 mm in diameter that were of a well or moderately histologically differentiated type, and were superficially elevated and/or depressed (types I, IIa, and IIc) but without ulceration or definite signs of submucosal invasion. The resected specimens were carefully examined by serial sections at 2 mm intervals, and if histopathology revealed submucosal invasion and/or vessel involvement or if the resection margin was not clear, surgery was recommended. RESULTS Four hundred and seventy nine cancers in 445 patients were treated by EMR from 1987 to 1998 but submucosal invasion was found on subsequent pathological examination in 74 tumours. Sixty nine percent of intramucosal cancers (278/405) were resected with a clear margin. Of 127 cancers without “complete resection”, 14 underwent an additional operation and nine were treated endoscopically; the remainder had intensive follow up. Local recurrence in the stomach occurred in 17 lesions followed conservatively, in one lesion treated endoscopically, and in five lesions with complete resection. All tumours were diagnosed by follow up endoscopy and subsequently treated by surgery. There were no gastric cancer related deaths during a median follow up period of 38 months (3–120 months). Bleeding and perforation (5%) were two major complications of EMR but there were no treatment related deaths. CONCLUSION In our experience, EMR allows us to perform less invasive treatment without sacrificing the possibility of cure.
Reduced Residual Stress Curvature and Branched Comb Fingers Increase Sensitivity of MEMS Acoustic Sensor

We present an enhanced in-plane capacitive readout for sensing out-of-plane displacement in a MEMS acoustic sensor. The sensor is fabricated in a multi-user silicon-on-insulator process, using a thicker device layer to reduce misalignment between moving and fixed comb fingers. This misalignment is found to reduce the sensitivity and render the response nonlinear. In addition, incorporation of a branched comb design doubles the readout capacitor surface area for a given sensor size, to further increase the sensitivity. These two modifications restore linearity to the readout and increase its sensitivity to displacement by an order of magnitude.
Contrasting Effects of Basic Fibroblast Growth Factor and Neurotrophin 3 on Cell Cycle Kinetics of Mouse Cortical Stem Cells

Basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) exerts a mitogenic effect on cortical neuroblasts, whereas neurotrophin 3 (NT3) promotes differentiation in these cells. Here we provide evidence that both the mitogenic effect of bFGF and the differentiation-promoting effect of NT3 are linked with modifications of cell cycle kinetics in mouse cortical precursor cells. We adapted an in vitro assay, which makes it possible to evaluate (1) the speed of progression of the cortical precursors through the cell cycle, (2) the duration of individual phases of the cell cycle, (3) the proportion of proliferative versus differentiative divisions, and (4) the influence on neuroglial differentiation. Contrary to what has been claimed previously, bFGF promotes proliferation via a change in cell cycle kinetics by simultaneously decreasing G1 duration and increasing the proportion of proliferative divisions. In contrast, NT3 lengthens G1 and promotes differentiative divisions. We investigated the molecular foundations of these effects and show that bFGF downregulates p27kip1 and upregulates cyclin D2 expression. This contrasts with NT3, which upregulates p27kip1 and downregulates cyclin D2 expression. Neither bFGF nor NT3 influences the proportion of glia or neurons in short to medium term cultures. The data point to links between the length of the G1 phase and the type of division of cortical precursors: differentiative divisions are correlated with long G1 durations, whereas proliferative divisions correlate with short G1 durations. The present results suggest that concerted mechanisms control the progressive increase in the cell cycle duration and proportion of differentiative divisions that is observed as corticogenesis proceeds.
Matching Interest Points Using Projective Invariant Concentric Circles

We present a new method to perform reliable matching between different images. This method exploits a projective invariant property between concentric circles and the corresponding projected ellipses to find complete region correspondences centered on interest points. The method matches interest points allowing for a full perspective transformation and exploiting all the available luminance information in the regions. Experiments have been conducted on many different data sets to compare our approach to SIFT local descriptors. The results show the new method offers increased robustness to partial visibility, object rotation in depth, and viewpoint angle change. Index Terms — Image Matching, Interest Point, Local Descriptors.
Stacking Algorithms for Automated Container Ports: An Improvement by Direct Stacking

In an automated container port, after a container is transported into the container yard by a rail mounted gantry, the containers are allocated automatically by stacking terminals. A direct stacking mode is put forward in this article to improve the stacking schedule. It is induced to decrease the vertical transportation distance. In fact, the simulation results show that the total transportation distance is dropped too, which means it is far more efficient in cost than traditional modes. On the other hand, the indirect mode is more efficient in space, especially when the number of containers is small.
Retail food environments research: Promising future with more work to be done

As members of the scientific committee for the Food Environments in Canada conference, we reflect on the current state of food environments research in Canada. We are very encouraged that the field is growing and there have been many collaborative efforts to link researchers in Canada, including the 2015 Food Environments in Canada Symposium and Workshop. We believe there are 5 key challenges the field will need to collectively address: theory and causality; replication and extension; consideration of rural, northern and vulnerable populations; policy analysis; and intervention research. In addressing the challenges, we look forward to working together to conduct more sophisticated, complex and community-driven food environments research in the future. RésuméEn tant que membres du comité scientifique de la conférence « Food Environments in Canada », nous réfléchissons à l’état actuel de la recherche sur les environnements alimentaires au pays. Nous sommes très encouragés par la croissance du domaine et par les nombreux efforts concertés pour établir des liens entre les chercheurs à l’échelle nationale, dont le colloque et l’atelier « Food Environments in Canada » de 2015. Nous croyons qu’il y a cinq grands défis à relever collectivement dans ce domaine: la théorie et la causalité; la répétition et la vulgarisation des résultats; la prise en compte des populations rurales, nordiques et vulnérables; l’analyse des politiques; et la recherche d’intervention. Pour aborder ces défis, nous envisageons avec intérêt de travailler ensemble à mener des études de recherche sur les environnements alimentaires plus élaborées, plus complexes et plus axées sur les communautés à l’avenir.
Better cloth through unbiased strain limiting and physics-aware subdivision

The ongoing challenge of cloth simulation in both interactive applications and film (where animators generally use iterative design, rerunning a simulation many times with different parameters) is speed. Current methods to allow large time steps do not have guarantees on stability and/or consistency with respect to physical parameters; we correct this with a new unbiased strain limiting scheme which is order and mesh independent. We also propose a physics-aware subdivision scheme which adds missing wrinkle and fold detail to coarse mesh simulations in a quasi-static way, making the use of faster and more easilycontrolled coarse meshes more practical.
Challenges of Achieving Tuberculosis Elimination by 2050: A Need for More Attention in the TB Control Program in Iran

The epidemic of HIV and tuberculosis (TB) put a high socioeconomic burden on the communities. Despite progress in the TB program indexes in recent years, an increasing trend in HIV remains as a global challenge within and between countries. This letter aims to highlight a number of issues, which may help policymakers to make better policies to control the morbidity and mortality. First, based on international reports of the WHO data for countries from 1990-2014 (Fig. 1), the estimated prevalence of TB from 1995 to 2010 in Iran was decreasing, after that there is an increasing trend for prevalence of TB (Annual Percent Change=2.65) (Table 1). In addition, the national studies have also showed an increasing trend in the TB incidence (1).
Joint and Competitive Caching Designs in Large-Scale Multi-Tier Wireless Multicasting Networks

Caching and multicasting are two promising methods to support massive content delivery in multi-tier wireless networks. In this paper, we consider a random caching and multicasting scheme with caching distributions in the two tiers as design parameters, to achieve efficient content dissemination in a two- tier large-scale cache-enabled wireless multicasting network. First, we derive tractable expressions for the successful transmission probabilities in the general region as well as the high SNR and high user density region, respectively, utilizing tools from stochastic geometry. Then, for the case of a single operator for the two tiers, we formulate the optimal joint caching design problem to maximize the successful transmission probability in the asymptotic region, which is nonconvex in general. By using the block successive approximate optimization technique, we develop an iterative algorithm, which is shown to coverage to a stationary point. Next, for the case of two different operators, one for each tier, we formulate the competitive caching design game where each tier maximizes its successful transmission probability in the asymptotic region. We show that the game has a unique Nash equilibrium (NE) and develop an iterative algorithm, which is shown to converge to the NE under a mild condition. Finally, by numerical simulations, we show that the proposed designs achieve significant gains over existing schemes.
The Next Best Underwater View

To image in high resolution large and occlusion-prone scenes, a camera must move above and around. Degradation of visibility due to geometric occlusions and distances is exacerbated by scattering, when the scene is in a participating medium. Moreover, underwater and in other media, artificial lighting is needed. Overall, data quality depends on the observed surface, medium and the timevarying poses of the camera and light source (C&L). This work proposes to optimize C&L poses as they move, so that the surface is scanned efficiently and the descattered recovery has the highest quality. The work generalizes the next best view concept of robot vision to scattering media and cooperative movable lighting. It also extends descattering to platforms that move optimally. The optimization criterion is information gain, taken from information theory. We exploit the existence of a prior rough 3D model, since underwater such a model is routinely obtained using sonar. We demonstrate this principle in a scaled-down setup.
SecureBus: towards application-transparent trusted computing with mandatory access control

The increasing number of software-based attacks has attracted substantial efforts to prevent applications from malicious interference. For example, Trusted Computing (TC) technologies have been recently proposed to provide strong isolation on application platforms. On the other hand, today pervasively available computing cycles and data resources have enabled various distributed applications that require collaboration among different application processes. These two conflicting trends grow in parallel. While much existing research focuses on one of these two aspects, a few authors have considered simultaneously providing strong isolation as well as collaboration convenience, particularly in the TC environment. However, none of these schemes is transparent. That is, they require modifications either of legacy applications or the underlying Operating System (OS). In this paper, we propose the SecureBus (SB) architecture, aiming to provide strong isolation and flexible controlled information flow and communication between processes at runtime. Since SB is application and OS transparent, existing applications can run without changes to commodity OS's. Furthermore, SB enables the enforcement of general access control policies, which is required but difficult to achieve for typical legacy applications. To study its feasibility and performance overhead, we have implemented a prototype system based on User-Mode Linux. Our experimental results show that SB can effectively achieve its design goals.
Star chromatic numbers and products of graphs

The star-chromatic number of a graph, a concept introduced by Vince, is natural generalization of the chromatic number of a graph. We point out an alternate definition of the star-chromatic number, which sheds new light on the relation of the star-chromatic number and the ordinary chromatic number. This new point of view allows us to answer several problems posed by Vince. We then study the starchromatic number from the perspective of graph homomorphisms and of graph products.
Evaluation of the VDA 238-100 Tight Radius Bending Test using Digital Image Correlation Strain Measurement

The VDA238-100 standard for tight radius bending (v-bending) of sheet materials has received widespread acceptance with automotive suppliers and material producers to characterize local formability. However, the test fixture and tooling in the v-bend test standard is not amenable to direct strain measurement and the operator cannot terminate the test at the onset of crack initiation as the outer bend surface is not visible. Consequently, fracture is identified using a load threshold and the bend angle estimated from an analytical formula based upon the punch displacement and tooling geometry. Bend angles are not directly transferable and must be interpreted relative to the sheet thickness and bend radius unlike a strain measurement. By obtaining an in-situ strain measurement on the surface using digital image correlation (DIC), the plane strain fracture limit can be accurately identified at the onset of cracking and remove ambiguity in translating the bend angles to practical forming operations and simulations. A novel inverted VDA test frame was developed to incorporate DIC strain measurement during the bend test and a variety of advanced high strength sheet materials were evaluated. It was observed that the VDA bend test creates a homogeneous strain state of plane strain across the width of the sample along with a proportional strain path to fracture without necking that is ideal for fracture characterization. A correlation is developed to relate the bend angle with the major strain for the materials considered and accounts for the sheet thickness and bend radius. A comparison of the bend angle obtained using the formula in the VDA standard based on the punch displacement was in very good agreement with manual measurements and an algorithm to measure the bend angle using DIC analysis was developed.
Homoserine and quorum-sensing acyl homoserine lactones as alternative sources of threonine: a potential role for homoserine kinase in insect-stage Trypanosoma brucei

De novo synthesis of threonine from aspartate occurs via the β‐aspartyl phosphate pathway in plants, bacteria and fungi. However, the Trypanosoma brucei genome encodes only the last two steps in this pathway: homoserine kinase (HSK) and threonine synthase. Here, we investigated the possible roles for this incomplete pathway through biochemical, genetic and nutritional studies. Purified recombinant TbHSK specifically phosphorylates L‐homoserine and displays kinetic properties similar to other HSKs. HSK null mutants generated in bloodstream forms displayed no growth phenotype in vitro or loss of virulence in vivo. However, following transformation into procyclic forms, homoserine, homoserine lactone and certain acyl homoserine lactones (AHLs) were found to substitute for threonine in growth media for wild‐type procyclics, but not HSK null mutants. The tsetse fly is considered to be an unlikely source of these nutrients as it feeds exclusively on mammalian blood. Bioinformatic studies predict that tsetse endosymbionts possess part (up to homoserine in Wigglesworthia glossinidia) or all of the β‐aspartyl phosphate pathway (Sodalis glossinidius). In addition S. glossinidius is known to produce 3‐oxohexanoylhomoserine lactone which also supports trypanosome growth. We propose that T. brucei has retained HSK and threonine synthase in order to salvage these nutrients when threonine availability is limiting.
FlexVAPs: a system for managing virtual appliances in heterogeneous virtualized environments

Virtual appliances have emerged as an important concept in systems virtualization. They are conceived as data packages that can be electronically delivered and easily shared and distributed. A virtual appliance usually contains at least an operating system, libraries and tools targeted to provide a specific service on top of a virtual machine monitor. As virtualization technologies are rapidly evolving, there are many virtual machine monitors in the market and it is increasingly usual to have multiple, different monitors coexisting in the same software infrastructure. In this paper, we propose a software system for managing virtual appliances in such kind of heterogeneous virtualized infrastructure. This system, named FlexVAPs, provide the users with a flexible and adaptable virtual appliance management system, allowing to instantiate virtual machines over different types of virtual machine monitors. To validate our ideas, we designed and prototyped a system architecture based on weakly coupled and specialized components. This allows us to extend and use the system in different computing environments, easily meeting users particular requirements. At the end of this paper, we establish a comparison among FlexVAPs and two major solutions targeted to virtual appliance management, so as to highlight their benefits and drawbacks.
Parametrized Models of Aqueous Free Energies of Solvation Based on Pairwise Descreening of Solute Atomic Charges from a Dielectric Medium

The pairwise descreening approximation provides a rapid computational algorithm for the evaluation of solute shape effects on electrostatic contributions to solvation energies. In this article we show that solvation models based on this algorithm are useful for predicting free energies of solvation across a wide range of solute functionalities, and we present six new general parametrizations of aqueous free energies of solvation based on this approach. The first new model is based on SM2-type atomic surface tensions, the AM1 model for the solute, and Mulliken charges. The next two new models are based on SM5-type surface tensions, either the AM1 or the PM3 model for the solute, and Mulliken charges. The final three models are based on SM5-type atomic surface tensions and are parametrized using the AM1 or the PM3 model for the solute and CM1 charges. The parametrizations are based on experimental data for a set of 219 neutral solute molecules containing a wide range of organic functional groups and the ato.
Cochlear Implantation in Children Younger Than 12 Months

Objectives. As a result of universal newborn hearing screening and improved evaluation tools, many children with severe to profound hearing loss are being diagnosed as infants. This affords the opportunity to provide these children access to cochlear implantation, although medical and audiologic challenges must be addressed. The purpose of this study was to investigate the safety and efficacy of cochlear implantation in children who are younger than 1 year. Methods. A prospective study was conducted of 18 children who had confirmed severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss and received cochlear implants at our medical center before 12 months of age. The length of device usage ranged from 6 months to 4 years, 5 months. The main outcomes measured were perioperative and postoperative surgical/medical aspects, the Infant-Toddler Meaningful Auditory Integration Scale and age-appropriate phoneme, and word and sentence recognition tests, when appropriate. Results. All children had full insertions of the electrode array without surgical complications and are developing age-appropriate auditory perception and oral language skills. Conclusions. Early implantation is feasible and beneficial in some children who are younger than 12 months and should be considered with attention to variables involved in the decision-making process, including possible increased surgical risk, skull size and scalp thickness, and mastoid development.
Micrometastases or isolated tumor cells and the outcome of breast cancer.

BACKGROUND The association of isolated tumor cells and micrometastases in regional lymph nodes with the clinical outcome of breast cancer is unclear. METHODS We identified all patients in The Netherlands who underwent a sentinel-node biopsy for breast cancer before 2006 and had breast cancer with favorable primary-tumor characteristics and isolated tumor cells or micrometastases in the regional lymph nodes. Patients with node-negative disease were randomly selected from the years 2000 and 2001. The primary end point was disease-free survival. RESULTS We identified 856 patients with node-negative disease who had not received systemic adjuvant therapy (the node-negative, no-adjuvant-therapy cohort), 856 patients with isolated tumor cells or micrometastases who had not received systemic adjuvant therapy (the node-positive, no-adjuvant-therapy cohort), and 995 patients with isolated tumor cells or micrometastases who had received such treatment (the node-positive, adjuvant-therapy cohort). The median follow-up was 5.1 years. The adjusted hazard ratio for disease events among patients with isolated tumor cells who did not receive systemic therapy, as compared with women with node-negative disease, was 1.50 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.15 to 1.94); among patients with micrometastases, the adjusted hazard ratio was 1.56 (95% CI, 1.15 to 2.13). Among patients with isolated tumor cells or micrometastases, the adjusted hazard ratio was 0.57 (95% CI, 0.45 to 0.73) in the node-positive, adjuvant-therapy cohort, as compared with the node-positive, no-adjuvant-therapy cohort. CONCLUSIONS Isolated tumor cells or micrometastases in regional lymph nodes were associated with a reduced 5-year rate of disease-free survival among women with favorable early-stage breast cancer who did not receive adjuvant therapy. In patients with isolated tumor cells or micrometastases who received adjuvant therapy, disease-free survival was improved.