Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparison of EndoPredict and EPclin With Oncotype DX Recurrence Score for Prediction of Risk of Distant Recurrence After Endocrine Therapy

Background: Estimating distant recurrence (DR) risk among women with estrogen receptor–positive (ER+), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)–negative early breast cancer helps decisions on using adjuvant chemotherapy. The 21-gene Oncotype DX recurrence score (RS) is widely used for this. EndoPredict (EPclin) is an alternative test combining prognostic information from an eight-gene signature (EP score) with tumor size and nodal status. We compared the prognostic information provided by RS and EPclin for 10-year DR risk. Methods: We used likelihood ratio χ² and Kaplan-Meier survival analyses to compare prognostic information provided by EP, EPclin, RS, and the clinical treatment score (CTS) of clinicopathologic parameters in 928 patients with ER+ disease treated with five years’ anastrozole or tamoxifen. Comparisons were made for early (0-5 years) and late (5-10 years) DR according to nodal status. All statistical tests were two-sided. Results: In the overall population, EP and EPclin provided substantially more prognostic information than RS (LRχ2: EP = 49.3; LRχ2: EPclin = 139.3; LRχ2: RS = 29.1), with greater differences in late DR and in node-positive patients. EP and EPclin remained statistically significantly prognostic when adjusted for RS (ΔLRχ2: EP+RS vs RS = 20.2; ΔLRχ2: EPclin+RS vs RS = 113.8). Using predefined cut-offs, EPclin and RS identified 58.8% and 61.7% patients as low risk, with hazard ratios for non-low vs low risk of 5.99 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 3.94 to 9.11) and 2.73 (95% CI = 1.91 to 3.89), respectively. Conclusions: EP and EPclin were highly prognostic for DR in endocrine-treated patients with ER+, HER2-negative disease. EPclin provided more prognostic information than RS. This was partly but not entirely because of EPclin integrating molecular data with nodal status and tumor size.
Send Orders of Reprints at Reprints@benthamscience.net Heart Failure in the Middle East

The clinical syndrome of heart failure is the final pathway for a myriad of diseases that affect the heart, and is a leading and growing cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Evidence-based guidelines have provided clinicians with valuable data for better applying diagnostic and therapeutic tools, particularly the overwhelming new imaging technology and other, often expensive, therapies and devices, in heart failure patients. In the Middle East, progress has recently been made with the development of regional and multi-centre registries to evaluate the quality of care for patients with heart failure. A new heart function clinic recently began operation and has clearly resulted in a reduced readmission rate for heart failure patients. Many Middle Eastern countries have observed increases in the prevalence of the risk factors for the development of heart failure, including diabetes mellitus, obesity, and hypertension, with heart failure in the Middle Eastern population developing earlier than it is in their Western counterparts by at least 10 years. The earlier onset of disease is the result of the earlier onset of coronary artery disease, highlighting the need for Middle Eastern countries to establish prevention programs across all age groups. The health systems across the Middle East need to be modified in order to provide improved evidence-based medical care. Existing registries also need to be expanded to include long-term survey data, and additional funding for heart failure research is warranted.
Fast noise variance estimation by principal component analysis

Noise variance estimation is required in many image denoising, compression, and segmentation applications. In this work, we propose a fast noise variance estimation algorithm based on principal component analysis of image blocks. First, we rearrange image blocks into vectors and compute the covariance matrix of these vectors. Then, we use Bartlett's test in order to select the covariance matrix eigenvalues, which correspond only to noise. This allows estimating the noise variance as the average of these eigenvalues. Since the maximum possible number of eigenvalues corresponding to noise is utilized, it is enough to process only a small number of image blocks, which allows reduction of the execution time. The blocks to process are selected from image regions with the smallest variance. During our experiments involving seven state of the art methods, the proposed approach was signi_cantly faster than the methods with similar or higher accuracy. Meanwhile, the relative error of our estimator was always less than 15%. We also show that the proposed method can process images without homogeneous areas.
A novel chaos-based high-resolution imaging technique and its application to through-the-wall imaging

In this letter, we present a novel chaos-based imaging technique. The proposed technique has good range-Doppler resolution and excellent side lobe suppression characteristics that promise immense potential for high-resolution imaging applications. We derive the range and Doppler resolution functions of the proposed technique and compare it with that of conventional time modulation-based imaging. Additionally, the noise performance of the proposed scheme is derived to show the improvement compared to the conventional amplitude and time modulation schemes. The proposed imaging technique is applied to through-the-wall radar imaging. Numerical electromagnetic simulations are performed to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique.
Combining pattern matching and shallow parsing techniques for detecting and correcting spoken language extragrammaticalities

In the context of spoken language understanding systems, we investigated the possibility of normalizing oral utterances. Our approach is based on the integration of different knowledge sources for detecting and correcting spoken language extragrammaticalities. The processing has been done following two main steps: at the first, a lexical processing allows the normalization of oral words and other spontaneous phenomena like hesitations and filled pauses. Afterwards, Post-filtering modules assume the task of normalizing repetitions, selfrepairs, false starts and incomplete utterances (Supra Lexical Extragrammaticalities). This is done by the way of a set of patterns and rules representing the various manifestations of these phenomena. Our evaluation on a transcribed corpus shows the efficiency of our approach to detect and correct the main forms of spoken language extragrammaticalities.
Agreement between frequency doubling perimetry and static perimetry in eyes with high tension glaucoma and normal tension glaucoma

Aims: To investigate the agreement in results between frequency doubling technology (FDT) and the conventional automated static perimeter in eyes with normal tension glaucoma (NTG) and high tension glaucoma (HTG). Methods: 72 eyes of 36 patients, who had two or more experiences with the Humphrey field analyser (HFA) program C30-2, were examined with the screening C-20-1 program of FDT. The result of FDT at each of the 17 stimulus points was graded as one of four categories. 58 out of 76 test points of HFA were assigned to one of the 17 clusters corresponding to FDT test points. Each cluster was represented as the lowest (scotoma of HFA) or the highest (threshold of HFA) probability symbol of total deviation (TD) of the HFA test points included in the cluster. The agreement between scotoma/threshold of HFA and FDT results was evaluated for NTG and HTG. Results: In a total of 65 eyes, the Spearman coefficients between the FDT and HFA (threshold/scotoma of HFA) were 0.599 and 0.515 (p<0.0001), respectively. In the HFA mean deviation matched 20 HTG eyes and 20 NTG eyes, the number of points with abnormal FDT results were 102 and 62 in eyes with HTG and NTG, respectively. The eyes with HTG had more abnormal FDT results than NTG eyes (p=0.0014, Mann-Whitney U test). The kappa coefficient between FDT and threshold of HFA in eyes with HTG and NTG was 0.288 and 0.520, respectively, and the agreement between FDT and scotoma of HFA was 0.480 and 0.439, respectively. Conclusions: The best agreement of the results of FDT and HFA was observed in eyes with NTG using threshold of HFA. The eyes with HTG showed lower agreement with more abnormal points in FDT results, which suggests enough sensitivity of FDT in eyes with NTG, and higher sensitivity of FDT in eyes with HTG.
CamelParser: A system for Arabic Syntactic Analysis and Morphological Disambiguation

In this paper, we present CamelParser, a state-of-the-art system for Arabic syntactic dependency analysis aligned with contextually disambiguated morphological features. CamelParser uses a state-of-the-art morphological disambiguator and improves its results using syntactically driven features. The system offers a number of output formats that include basic dependency with morphological features, two tree visualization modes, and traditional Arabic grammatical analysis.
A mobile cloud middleware to support mobility and cloud interoperability

With the recent advances in cloud computing and the improvement in the capabilities of mobile devices in terms of speed, storage, and computing power, Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) is emerging as one of important branches of cloud computing. MCC is an extension of cloud computing with the support of mobility. In this paper, we first present the specific concerns and key challenges in mobile cloud computing, we then discuss the different approaches to tackle the main issues in MCC that have been introduced so far, and finally we focus on describing the proposed overall architecture of a middleware that will contribute to providing mobile users data storage and processing services based on their mobile devices capabilities, availability, and usage. A prototype of the middleware is developed and three scenarios are described to demonstrate how the middleware performs in adapting the provision of cloud web services by transforming SOAP messages to REST and XML format to JSON, in optimizing the results by extracting relevant information, and in improving the availability by caching. Initial analysis shows that the mobile cloud middleware improves the quality of service for mobiles, and provides lightweight responses for mobile cloud services.
COMPARATIVE STUDY ON FEATURE EXTRACTION METHOD FOR BREAST CANCER CLASSIFICATION

This paper presents an evaluation and comparison of the performance of three different feature extract ion methods for classification of normal and abnormal p tterns in mammogram. Three different feature extraction methods used here are intensity histogra m, GLCM (Grey Level Co-occurrence Matrix) and intensity based features. A supervised classifier s ystem based on neural network is used. The performa nce of the each feature extraction method is evaluated on Digital Database for Screening Mammography (DDSM) breast cancer database. The experimental res u ts uggest that GLCM method outperformed the other two methods.
"Millipede": a MEMS-based scanning-probe data-storage system

Ultrahigh storage densities of up to 1 Tbit/in. /sup 2/ or more can be achieved by local-probe techniques to write, read back, and erase data in very thin polymer films. The thermomechanical scanning-probe-based data-storage concept called Millipede combines ultrahigh density, small form factor, and high data rate. After illustrating the principles of operation of the Millipede, we introduce system aspects related to the read-back process, multiplexing, and position-error-signal generation for tracking.
A Data Reception Method to Reduce Interruption Time in P2P Streaming Environments

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in P2P (Peer-to-Peer) streaming environments. In P2P streaming environments, compared with the traditional server-client model, the load of the server can be reduced by transmitting the divided streaming data (pieces) among clients. However, when bandwidths between clients are narrow, interruption occurs since clients cannot receive the necessary piece of data until the time to play it. In this paper, we propose a data reception method to reduce interruption time in P2P streaming environments. Our proposed method calculates the importance of each piece which takes into account the immediacy and the scarcity of the piece. The evaluation results show that our proposed method can reduce the interruption time for peers in a P2P environment compared with conventional methods.
Integrating Memory Optimization with Mapping Algorithms for Multi-Processors System-on-Chip

Due to their great ability to parallelize at a very high integration level, Multi-Processors Systems-on-Chip (MPSoCs) are good candidates for systems and applications such as multimedia. Memory is becoming a key player for significant improvements in these applications (power, performance and area). The large amount of data manipulated by these applications requires high-capacity computing and memory. Lately, new programming models have been introduced. This leads to the need of new optimization and mapping techniques suitable for embedded systems and their programming models. This article presents novel approaches for combining memory optimization with mapping of data-driven applications while considering anti-dependence conflicts. Two different approaches are studied and integrated with existing mapping algorithms. The first approach (based on heuristic algorithms) keeps the graph transformation for memory optimization stage from the mapping stage and enables their combination in a design flow. The second approach (based on evolutionary algorithms) combines these two stages and integrates them in a unique stage. Some significant improvements are obtained for memory gain, communication load and physical links.
Porovnání dvou typů vizualizací z hlediska percepční a kognitivní zátěže a kognitivních schopností jedince

Výzkum je zaměřen na porovnani dvou typů vizualizaci - zakladni topograficke vojenske a transportni kontextove mapy. Výzkumný design je navržen pro dvě skupiny probandů, jedna pracujici pouze se zakladni topografickou vojenskou mapou, druha skupina pracuje jak s touto topografickou mapou, tak s transportni kontextovou mapou. U zakladni topograficke mapy, jakožto komplexniho zobrazeni je předpokladana vyssi percepcni zatěž pro uživatele, ale nižsi kognitivni v důsledku prace jen s jednim typem vizualizace. U transportni kontextove mapy, resp. jednodussi formy zobrazeni, naopak vyssi kognitivni zatěž z hlediska přechodu z jineho druhu zobrazeni. Pro zvýseni rozdilů v kognitivni zatěže mezi skupinami, je použita audio nahravka, v ramci ktere probandi musi reagovat na urcita slovni spojeni. Obě skupiny pracuji s identickou testovou baterii. Experiment je rozdělen do dvou fazi, prvni probiha na SW platformě Hypothesis, druha je propojena s eye-trackingem. Výzkumnou skupinu tvoři 43 osob, 24 mužů (55,8 %) a 19 žen (44,2 %) ve věku od 18 do 44 let (mean=26,58, median=24,0). Eye-tracking byl použit celkem u 27 osob. Dva respondenti byli vyřazeni ihned po dokonceni administrace vzhledem k chybě nahravani dat do SW OGAMA. Eye-trackingový výzkumný soubor tedy tvořilo 25 osob (12 mužů a 13 žen) od věku 18 do 44 let (mean=27,96, median=28).
Ativação do centro de força de idosas com e sem incontinência urinária de esforço

Specialization Monograph Specialization in Physical and Motor Rehabilitation Federal University of Santa Maria ACTIVATION OF CENTRAL FORCE IN ELDERLY WOMEN WITH AND WITHOUT STRESS URINARY INCONTINENCE AUTHOR: SINARA POROLNIK ADVISOR: Dra. MELISSA MEDEIROS BRAZ Date and Place of Defense: Santa Maria, July 11, 2013. This study aimed to compare the activation of the central force in elderly women with and without Stress Urinary Incontinence (SUI). Comparative observational transversal with quantitative analysis. Data were collected in the months from January to April 2013, through a structured questionnaire and tests for evaluation of respiratory muscles, transversus abdominis and multifidus muscles, which were conducted with elderly women participating in group aerobics CEFD / UFSM. Was composed of 22 elderly 8 without the presence of urinary incontinence (Continents) and 14 with the presence of stress urinary incontinence (incontinence). Regarding the muscles involved in core stability, it can be seen that three (37.5%) of the multifidus muscle showed Continents normal and 3 (37.5%) good, and for incontinent 10 (71.4%) researched showed that normal muscle. Continents in 4 (50%) women was the transversus abdominis satisfactory, incontinent in 9 (64.2%) women was the transversus abdominis unsatisfactory. Regarding respiratory muscle strength, the average MIP of Continents was 64.7 cmH20, whereas the incontinent was 70 cmH20. As for the MEP values were 72.7 cmH20 for Continents and 75.4 cmH20 for incontinent. We conclude that there was greater difficulty in activating the deep muscles of the abdomen in the group of incontinent, and respiratory muscle strength showed the incontinent MIP and MEP values in relation to continents.
Reducing overhead in flow-switched networks: an empirical study of Web traffic

To efficiently transfer large amounts of diverse traffic over high-speed links, modern integrated networks require more efficient packet-switching techniques that can capitalize on advances in switch hardware. Several promising approaches attempt to improve performance by creating dedicated "shortcut" connections for long-lived traffic flows, at the expense of the network overhead for establishing and maintaining these shortcuts. The network can balance these cost-performance tradeoffs through three tunable parameters: the granularity of flow end-point addresses, the timeout for grouping related packets into flows, and the trigger for migrating a long-lived flow to a shortcut connection. Drawing on a continuous one-week trace of Internet traffic, we evaluate the processor and switch overheads for transferring HTTP server traffic through a flow-switched network. In contrast to previous work, we focus on the full probability distributions of flow sizes and cost-performance metrics to highlight the subtle influence of the HTTP protocol and user behavior on the performance of flow switching. We find that moderate levels of aggregation and triggering yield significant reductions in overhead with a negligible reduction in performance. The traffic characterization results further suggest schemes for limiting the shortcut setup rate and the number of simultaneous shortcuts by temporarily delaying the creation of shortcuts during peak load, and by aggregating related packets that share a portion of their routes through the network.
Meditative Movement for Depression and Anxiety

This review focuses on Meditative Movement (MM) and its effects on anxiety, depression, and other affective states. MM is a term identifying forms of exercise that use movement in conjunction with meditative attention to body sensations, including proprioception, interoception, and kinesthesis. MM includes the traditional Chinese methods of Qigong (Chi Kung) and Taijiquan (Tai Chi), some forms of Yoga, and other Asian practices, as well as Western Somatic practices; however this review focuses primarily on Qigong and Taijiquan. We clarify the differences between MM and conventional exercise, present descriptions of several of the key methodologies of MM, and suggest how research into these practices may be approached in a systematic way. We also present evidence for possible mechanisms of the effects of MM on affective states, including the roles of posture, rhythm, coherent breathing, and the involvement of specific cortical and subcortical structures. We survey research outcomes summarized in reviews published since 2007. Results suggest that MM may be at least as effective as conventional exercise or other interventions in ameliorating anxiety and depression; however, study quality is generally poor and there are many confounding factors. This makes it difficult to draw definitive conclusions at this time. We suggest, however, that more research is warranted, and we offer specific suggestions for ensuring high-quality and productive future studies.
Dense Non-rigid Shape Correspondence Using Random Forests

We propose a shape matching method that produces dense correspondences tuned to a specific class of shapes and deformations. In a scenario where this class is represented by a small set of example shapes, the proposed method learns a shape descriptor capturing the variability of the deformations in the given class. The approach enables the wave kernel signature to extend the class of recognized deformations from near isometries to the deformations appearing in the example set by means of a random forest classifier. With the help of the introduced spatial regularization, the proposed method achieves significant improvements over the baseline approach and obtains state-of-the-art results while keeping short computation times.
Exploring the nonverbal facet of ethnic discrimination: a field experiment on anti-Roma racism in the Paris métro

Abstract A field experiment on the discrimination of Roma migrants from Eastern Europe was conducted in two stations of the Paris metro to explore the behaviors that may communicate misrecognition in everyday encounters. An actress asked for help to randomly chosen passengers on a metro platform, wearing a glaringly Romani skirt in the treatment condition but an unconspicuous middle-class style in the control condition. In interaction with the actress wearing the Romani skirt, passengers were found to enact the so-called “visual dominance pattern”, and male passengers in particular were found to keep greater distances. Reverse discrimination also occurred as women kept shorter distances from the actress bearing the ethnic stigma. Last, passengers helped less the stigmatized actress, but only in one of the two metro stations where trials were conducted.
Role of the subunit composition of central nicotinic acetylcholine receptors for the stimulatory and dopamine-enhancing effects of ethanol.

AIMS The stimulatory, rewarding, and dopamine (DA)-enhancing effects of ethanol may involve central nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChR), especially those located in the ventral tegmental area (VTA). Identifying the subunit composition that mediates these effects of ethanol would increase the understanding of the neurochemical basis underlying the addictive properties of ethanol. In the present series of experiments, the role of the alpha(3)beta(2)(*) and/or beta(3)(*) and/or alpha(6)(*) subunits of the nAChR for the stimulatory and DA-enhancing effects of ethanol was investigated by using alpha-conotoxin MII (alphaCtxMII), selective to the alpha(3)beta(2)(*) and/or beta(3)(*) and/or the alpha(6)(*) subunits of the nAChR, and the alpha-conotoxin PIA-analogue (alphaCtxPIA-analogue), suggested to be selective to the alpha(6)(*) subunits. METHODS alphaCtxMII and the alphaCtxPIA-analogue were synthesized using a modified literature procedure. The purity and identity of the peptides were confirmed with HPLC and FAB-MS analyses, respectively. Locomotor activity and in vivo microdialysis in freely moving mice were used. RESULTS alphaCtxMII and the alphaCtxPIA-analogue were synthesized in good yields (>95%; >90%). In addition, we found that synthesized alphaCtxMII antagonized ethanol-induced locomotor stimulation, which confirms our previous results with the commercially available alphaCtxMII. Furthermore, the synthesized alphaCtxPIA-analogue, assumably also selective for alpha(6)(*) subunits of the nAChR, did neither antagonize the stimulatory nor the accumbal DA-enhancing effects of ethanol. CONCLUSION These results indicate that alphaCtxMII- but not alphaCtxPIA-analogue-sensitive receptors, i.e. the alpha(3)beta(2)(*) and/or beta(3)(*) rather than the alpha(6)(*) subunits of the nAChR, appear to be of greater importance for these effects of ethanol and that these subunits could constitute neurochemical targets for developing new drugs for the treatment of alcohol dependence.