Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Clinical relevance of flow cytometric immunophenotyping of the cerebrospinal fluid in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.

BACKGROUND Central nervous system (CNS) relapse is an uncommon but dramatic complication of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). Several studies have demonstrated the superiority of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow cytometry (FCM), as compared with conventional cytology (CC), in detecting occult leptomeningeal disease. The clinical relevance of a positive FCM still has to be clarified. PATIENTS AND METHODS We analyzed CSF from 114 DLBCL patients at diagnosis (n = 95) or at relapse (n = 19) by FCM and CC. Most patients received meningeal prophylaxis. FCM results did not influence treatment strategies. RESULTS Fourteen samples were FCM+, versus one CC+ (also FCM+). Within all patients without neurological symptoms (n = 101), four (4%) relapsed in the CNS, with a median time to relapse of 5.2 months. Only one-fourth (25%) was FCM+ before relapse. More than one extranodal disease site and elevated lactate dehydrogenase levels were associated with an increased risk of CNS relapse. CONCLUSIONS FCM gives far more positive results than CC. However, a positive FCM result did not translate into a significant increase in CNS relapse rate in this histologically uniform population receiving CNS prophylaxis.
Cherenkov-excited Multi-Fluorophore Sensing in Tissue-Simulating Phantoms and In Vivo from External Beam Radiotherapy

In this work, Cherenkov-excited molecular sensing was used to assess the potential for simultaneous quantitative sensing of two NIR fluorophores within tissue-simulating phantoms through spectral separation of signals. Cherenkov emissions induced by external beam gamma photon radiation treatment to tissues/tissue-simulating phantoms were detectable over the 500–900-nm wavelength range. The presence of blood was demonstrated to reduce the integrated intensity of detected Cherenkov emissions by nearly 50%, predominantly at wavelengths below 620 nm. The molecular dyes, IRDye 680RD and IRDye 800CW, have excitation and emission spectra at longer wavelengths than the strongest blood absorption peaks, and also where the intensity of Cherenkov light is at its lowest, so that the emission signal relative to background signal is maximized. Tissue phantoms composed of 1% intralipid and 1% blood were used to simulate human breast tissue, and vials containing fluorophore were embedded in the media, and irradiated with gamma photons for Cherenkov excitation. We observed that fluorescence emissions excited by the Cherenkov signal produced within the phantom could be detected at 5-mm depth into the media within a 0.1–25 μM fluorophore concentration range. The detected fluorescence signals from these dyes showed linear relationships with radiation doses down to the cGy level. In vivo tests were successful only within the range near a μM, suggesting that these could be used for metabolic probes in vivo where the local concentrations are near this range.
Partisan Politics and Fiscal Policy

Does the partisan character of governing parties play a role in the formation of fiscal policy? The conventional view is that the left tends toward excessive deficits, whereas the right practices a more prudent fiscal policy; however, strong arguments have been advanced that whatever room existed previously for partisanship in fiscal policy making has been sharply reduced by developments in recent decades. These issues are examined with a series of models that have been estimated using data from 14 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries for the period from 1961 through 1991. The evidence suggests that the relationship between partisanship and fiscal policy is contingent on macroeconomic conditions. The evidence also suggests that these differences have been reduced over recent decades.
Retrospective Motion Gating in Small Animal CT of Mice and Rats

Objectives:Implementation and evaluation of retrospective respiratory and cardiac gating of mice and rats using a flat-panel volume-CT prototype (fpVCT). Materials and Methods:Respiratory and cardiac gating was implemented by equipping a fpVCT with a small animal monitoring unit. ECG and breathing excursions were recorded and 2 binary gating signals derived. Mice and rats were scanned continuously over 80 seconds after administration of blood-pool contrast media. Projections were chosen to reconstruct volumes that fall within defined phases of the cardiac/respiratory cycle. Results:Multireader analysis indicated that in gated still images motion artifacts were strongly reduced and diaphragm, tracheobronchial tract, heart, and vessels sharply delineated. From 4D series, functional data such as respiratory tidal volume and cardiac ejection fraction were calculated and matched well with values known from literature. Discussion:Implementation of retrospective gating in fpVCT improves image quality and opens new perspectives for functional cardiac and lung imaging in small animals.
Blood groups and malignant melanoma

The charts of 168 patients with malignant melanoma were reviewed with regard to the incidence of the major blood groups. Blood group A was encountered in 39.9%, Group B in 7.7%, Group AB in 3%, and Group O in 49.4%. Although blood group O had a higher frequency compared to that of the general white population of various series, the difference was not significant. Patients with blood group A had a median survival of 67.7 months whereas patients with blood group O had a median survival of 46.6 months (p = 0.04). The improved survival for blood group A remained significant only in female patients, when the sexes were considered separately. However, group A had an incidence of 24% in early Clark's lesions while that incidence in group O was 9.8%. Female patients had longer median survival (86 months) than male patients (44 months).
SVM-Based Microcalcification Detection in Digital Mammograms

Mammography is one of the most efficient imaging techniques for the early detection and diagnosis of breast cancer in woman. The appearance of microcalcifications (MCs) in X-ray mammograms can be regarded as important early diagnostic feature of breast cancer. However, the detection of MCs in X-ray mammograms only depend on radiologists by visual inspection is a difficult task. In this paper, a novel algorithm for the automated detection of MCs in digital mammograms is described. The aim of approach is to locate suspicious MCs by analyzing the distribution of brightness over the digital mammograms. The algorithm for the detection of MCs is performed in two steps. First, the digital X-ray mammogram intensity surface is well-fitted by the least squares support vector machines (LS-SVM), and then the maximum extremum points are detected on the fitted intensity surface by convolving the image with the second order directional derivative operators deduced from the mapped LS-SVM with mixture of kernels. The proposed approach is developed and evaluated by using MIAS database. The experimental results demonstrate the possible MCs are detected accurately and efficiently.
Printing materials and processes for electrochemical applications

3D printing has revolutionised traditional manufacturing methods, opening up and distributing design and production of low cost, custom objects to virtually anyone. Tailoring of print material and part geometry allows for the benefits of this technology to reach multiple engineering and scientific fields, given appropriate design. A multidisciplinary approach concerning development of new print materials and methods was undertaken with the aim of further expansion and application of 3D printing towards electrochemical applications. Specific requirements of materials used in this domain, such as conductivity and chemical stability, led to development of functional printable carbon composites, compatible with consumer grade 3D printers. This allows facile production of cheap, reusable, disposable, electrodes for analytical applications, demonstrating heavy metal detection in aqueous media and allowing further tailoring to specific applications to be easily implemented. A new method for printing of cellulose solutions was developed, with post processing of printed parts resulting in biocompatible, porous, conductive structures. When used as electrodes in microbial fuel cells, improved power and current output over traditionally used carbon cloth electrodes was achieved. Other developments resulting from this work applicable to other fields include a novel trajectory generation method based on exponential functions which can be applied to practically any robotic system, as well as improvements to the production process of metal alloy filaments for 3D printing of metallic components.
Key Management and Distribution for Authenticating Group Communication

In network communication, security is essential to prevent intruder's attack; Where Authentication plays a vital role so as to ensure the right participant in communication. To authenticate a group of users and to hold confidentiality between them a new approach of key management is handled in this paper. This key management presentation is a group key used for cryptography process that provides security with less computation complexity, which leads to fast and easy authentication. Here, a tree based key management scheme has been designed through which the key distribution among the users involves authentication with less storage complexity too. This paper describes the dynamic membership authentication, which states the communication or transaction between user and required server with a new different instant key that is formed from a group of members who are currently participating in transaction or communication. Releasing or joining a user from the group or to the group is possible so that the key gets changed instantly whenever there is an alteration in current participation of users in communication. With the help of each user's hidden key an `instant key' can be computed. As the entire user's hidden keys are used for obtaining an instant key, it can ensure the authentication among the valid users during communication. So an intruder cannot interrupt any communication between users as the key gets varied often. Thus it supports clear authentication and provides security among group communication
Key Circuits for a Reconfigurable and Bi-directional Beamformer for Ultra wideband Applications

This paper describes the performance of reconfigurable broadband active power splitter and combiner intended for a two-dimensional beamformer for ultra-wideband active phased array. The topology of the beamformer has been developed so that it allows bi-directionality and reconfigurability. Simulated performance of a broadband reconfigurable 8x8 active beamformer is also presented.
A cognitive approach to identifying measurable milestones for programming skill acquisition

Traditional approaches to programming education, as exemplified by the typical CS1/CS2 course sequence, have not taken advantage of the long record of psychological and experimental studies on the development of programming skills. These studies indicate a need for a new curricular strategy for developing programming skills and indicate that a cognitive approach would be a promising starting point. This paper first reviews the literature on studies of programming skills, cognition and learning, then within that context reports on a new formal structure, called an anchor graph, that supports curricular design and facilitates the setting of measurable milestones.
Distinct Parietal and Temporal Connectivity Profiles of Ventrolateral Frontal Areas Involved in Language Production

Broca's region, which in the language-dominant hemisphere of the human brain plays a major role in language production, includes two distinct cytoarchitectonic areas: 44 and 45. The unique connectivity patterns of these two areas have not been well established. In a resting-state functional connectivity study, we tested predictions about these areas from invasive tract-tracing studies of the connectivity of their homologs in the macaque monkey. We demonstrated their distinct connectivity profiles as well as their differences from the caudally adjacent ventral parts of the premotor cortex and the primary motor cortical region that represent the orofacial musculature. Area 45 is strongly connected with the superior temporal sulcus and the cortex on the adjacent superior and middle temporal gyri. In the parietal region, area 45 is connected with the angular gyrus, whereas area 44 is connected with the supramarginal gyrus. The primary motor cortical region in the caudal precentral gyrus is not connected with the posterior parietal region, which lies outside the confines of the postcentral gyrus, whereas the ventrorostral premotor cortical area 6VR, in the most anterior part of the precentral gyrus, has strong connections with the rostral supramarginal gyrus. Thus, area 44, which has stronger connections to the posterior supramarginal gyrus, can be distinguished from both the adjacent area 6VR and area 45. These findings provide a major improvement in understanding the connectivity of the areas in the ventrolateral frontal region that are involved in language production.
The Neurobiology of Borderline Personality Disorder: The Synergy of “Nature and Nurture”

The author reviews the current state of our knowledge concerning the neurobiology of borderline personality disorder (BPD). A converging body of scientific evidence indicates that patients with BPD suffer from impairments in the brain systems that regulate impulsivity, aggression, and affect. This article reviews data on the neurobiology of the symptoms of BPD, including emotional and behavioral dysregulation, identity disturbance, cognitive impairments, and interpersonal difficulties. The author first considers the evolutionary context in which BPD can develop to put the neurobiological findings in perspective, and then discusses the roles of both genetic inheritance and the environment in the development of BPD. The role of neurotransmitter systems in the development of impulsive-aggression and affective instability is reviewed. Possible neurobiological contributors to the identity disturbance seen in BPD are also described. The author then considers environmental contributions to BPD and discusses the synergy of nature and nurture in the development of BPD symptoms. Findings concerning the types of neurobiological impairments that can arise as a result of childhood neglect and abuse and other types of chronic severe stress and trauma are discussed. Finally, the author reviews studies of animal attachment models that suggest that types of maternal care can produce lifelong behavioral and physiological differences in offspring and that this effect is mediated through the regulation of gene expression. The author suggests that the large body of neuroscience research reviewed in this article suggests that, while patients with BPD may be born with innate genetic tendencies for impaired brain systems for regulating impulses and affect, the environment they find themselves born into may be critical in determining whether or not they develop the full blown syndrome of BPD.
Adaptive Web Sites: an AI Challenge

The creation of a complex web site is a thorny problem in user interface design. First, different visitors have distinct goals. Second, even a single visitor may have different needs at different times. Much of the information at the site may also be dynamic or time-dependent. Third, as the site grows and evolves, its original design may no longer be appropriate. Finally, a site may be designed for a particular purpose but used in unexpected ways. Web servers record data about user interactions and accumulate this data over time. We believe that AI techniques can be used to examine user access logs in order to automatically improve the site. We challenge the AI community to create adaptive web sites: sites that automatically improve their organization and presentation based on user access data. Several unrelated research projects in plan recognition, machine learning, knowledge representation, and user modeling have begun to explore aspects of this problem. We hope that posing this challenge explicitly will bring these projects together and stimulate fundamental AI research. Success would have a broad and highly visible impact on the web and the AI community.
Specimen boundary induced size effect on quasi‐brittle fracture

A simple asymptotic analysis dealing with the influence of specimen boundaries on quasi-brittle fracture of brittle heterogenous materials is presented. The influence of crack-length/specimen-size ratio (α-ratio) on fracture behaviour of finite- sized specimens has been quantitatively determined by the asymptotic boundary effect model. Different to the common size effect study relying on two scaling parameters that can only be determined by curve-fitting to experimental results, the present boundary effect model is able to predict the quasi-brittle fracture behaviour using two fundamental material properties: the tensile strength ft and fracture toughness KIC. ft and KIC can be determined separately following the standard strength and fracture toughness tests, or estimated from the available data in the literature for most commonly-used materials. Alternatively, ft and KIC can be determined indirectly from quasi-brittle fracture results using the boundary effect model so that the stringent tensile and fracture toughness tests can be replaced by the simple quasi-brittle fracture tests. The boundary effect model shows the two scaling parameters used in the size effect study are α-ratio dependent, and can only be taken as experimental constants for geometrically similar specimens of one single α-ratio. Furthermore, un-notched specimens containing small natural flaws have also been considered by the boundary effect model through linking the micro-flaws to equivalent shallow notches with a near zero α-ratio. As a result, both notched and un-notched specimens can be analysed by the same boundary effect relationship.
Changes in root canal geometry after preparation assessed by high-resolution computed tomography.

Root canal morphology changes during canal preparation, and these changes may vary depending on the technique used. Such changes have been studied in vitro by measuring cross-sections of canals before and after preparation. This current study used nondestructive high-resolution scanning tomography to assess changes in the canals' paths after preparation. A microcomputed tomography scanner (cubic resolution 34 microm) was used to analyze 18 canals in 6 extracted maxillary molars. Canals were scanned before and after preparation using either K-Files, Lightspeed, or ProFile . 04 rotary instruments. A special mounting device enabled precise repositioning and scanning of the specimens after preparation. Differences in surface area (deltaA in mm2) and volume (deltaV in mm3) of each canal before and after preparation were calculated using custom-made software. deltaV ranged from 0.64 to 2.86, with a mean of 1.61 +/- 0.7, whereas deltaA varied from 0.72 to 9.66, with a mean of 4.16 +/- 2.63. Mean deltaV and deltaA for the K-File, ProFile, and Lightspeed groups were 1.28 +/- 0.57 and 2.58 +/- 1.83; 1.79 +/- 0.66 and 4.86 +/- 2.53; and 1.81 +/- 0.57 and 5.31 +/- 2.98, respectively. Canal anatomy and the effects of preparation were further analyzed using the Structure Model Index and the Transportation of Centers of Mass. Under the conditions of this study variations in canal geometry before preparation had more influence on the changes during preparation than the techniques themselves. Consequently studies comparing the effects of root canal instruments on canal anatomy should also consider details of the preoperative canal geometry.
BotDigger: Detecting DGA Bots in a Single Network

To improve the resiliency of communication between bots and C&C servers, bot masters began utilizing Domain Generation Algorithms (DGA) in recent years. Many systems have been introduced to detect DGA-based botnets. However, they su ↵ er from several limitations, such as requiring DNS tra � c collected across many networks, the presence of multiple bots from the same botnet, and so forth. These limitations make it very hard to detect individual bots when using tra � c collected from a single network. In this paper, we introduce BotDig-ger, a system that detects DGA-based bots using DNS tra � c without a priori knowledge of the domain generation algorithm. BotDigger utilizes a chain of evidence, including quantity, temporal and linguistic evidence to detect an individual bot by only monitoring tra � c at the DNS servers of a single network. We evaluate BotDigger’s performance using traces from two DGA-based botnets: Kraken and Conﬂicker. Our results show that BotDigger detects all the Kraken bots and 99.8% of Conﬁcker bots. A one-week DNS trace captured from our university and three traces collected from our research lab are used to evaluate false positives. The results show that the false positive rates are 0.05% and 0.39% for these two groups of background traces, respectively.
On Wet Tropospheric Correction for Altimetry in Coastal Regions

In order to correct the altimeter range from tropospheric humidity, a microwave radiometer is added to altimetry missions (ENVISAT/MWR, Jason/JMR, TOPEX-Poseidon/TMR). Over open ocean, the combination altimeter/radiometer is satisfactory. This is not the case in coastal zones, where the signal coming from the surrounding land surfaces contaminates the measurement and makes the humidity retrieval method unsuitable. In this paper, a radiometer simulator is built, using data from the FETCH experiment (high resolution meteorological model, in-situ measurements, and TMR measurements). This simulator is used to perform sensitivity tests and to evaluate the current methods used up to now to retrieve the wet tropospheric correction in transition areas. Refinements are then proposed. Finally, a method using the proportion of land in the mixed pixel to decontaminate measured brightness temperatures is developed
Disambiguation of Compound Noun Translations Extracted from Bilingual Comparable Corpora

Bilingual machine readable dictionaries are important and indispensable information resources for cross-language information retrieval, machine translation, and so on. In this paper, we describe a bilingual dictionary acquisition system which extracts translations from non-parallel but comparable corpora of a specific academic domain and disambiguates the extracted translations. We also experimentally evaluate the proposed method.
Compressed sensing with unknown sensor permutation

Compressed sensing is the ability to retrieve a sparse vector from a set of linear measurements. The task gets more difficult when the sensing process is not perfectly known. We address such a problem in the case where the sensors have been permuted, i.e., the order of the measurements is unknown. We propose a branch-and-bound algorithm that converges to the solution. The experimental study shows that our approach always retrieves the unknown permutation, while a simple convex relaxation strategy almost always fails. In terms of its time complexity, we show that the proposed algorithm converges quickly with respect to the combinatorial nature of the problem.