Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adapted User-Centered Design: A Strategy for the Higher User Acceptance of Innovative e-Health Services

Being familiar with all the benefits of e-Health and the strategic plan for the Slovenian health sector’s informatization, Telekom Slovenia and the Faculty of Medicine from the University of Maribor, along with other partners, have initiated an e-Health project. The project group is developing various e-Health services that are based on modern ICT (information and communications technology) solutions and will be available on several screens. In order to meet the users’ needs and expectations and, consequently, achieve the high acceptance of e-Health services, the user-centered design (UCD) approach was employed in the e-Health project. However, during the research it was found that conventional UCD methods are not completely appropriate for older adults: the target population of the e-Health services. That is why the selected UCD methods were modified and adapted for older adults. The modified UCD methods used in the research study are presented in this paper. Using the results of the adapted UCD methods, a prototype for a service named MedReminder was developed. The prototype was evaluated by a group of 12 study participants. The study participants evaluated the MedReminder service as acceptable with a good potential for a high adoption rate among its target population, i.e., older adults.
Present and future challenges of induced pluripotent stem cells

Growing old is our destiny. However, the mature differentiated cells making up our body can be rejuvenated to an embryo-like fate called pluripotency which is an ability to differentiate into all cell types by enforced expression of defined transcription factors. The discovery of this induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology has opened up unprecedented opportunities in regenerative medicine, disease modelling and drug discovery. In this review, we introduce the applications and future perspectives of human iPSCs and we also show how iPSC technology has evolved along the way.
Robust artificial-noise aided transmit design for multi-user MISO systems with integrated services

This paper considers an optimal artificial noise (AN)-aided transmit design for multi-user MISO systems in the eyes of service integration. Specifically, two sorts of services are combined and served simultaneously: one multicast message intended for all receivers and one confidential message intended for only one receiver. The confidential message is kept perfectly secure from all the unauthorized receivers. This paper considers a general case of imperfect channel state information (CSI), aiming at a joint and robust design of the input covariances for the multicast message, confidential message and AN, such that the worst-case secrecy rate region is maximized subject to the sum power constraint. To this end, we reveal its hidden convexity and transform the original worst-case robust secrecy rate maximization (SRM) problem into a sequence of semidefinite programming. Numerical results are presented to show the efficacy of our proposed method.
Defining and characterizing the critical transition state prior to the type 2 diabetes disease

Background Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), with increased risk of serious long-term complications, currently represents 8.3% of the adult population. We hypothesized that a critical transition state prior to the new onset T2DM can be revealed through the longitudinal electronic medical record (EMR) analysis. Method We applied the transition-based network entropy methodology which previously identified a dynamic driver network (DDN) underlying the critical T2DM transition at the tissue molecular biological level. To profile pre-disease phenotypical changes that indicated a critical transition state, a cohort of 7,334 patients was assembled from the Maine State Health Information Exchange (HIE). These patients all had their first confirmative diagnosis of T2DM between January 1, 2013 and June 30, 2013. The cohort’s EMRs from the 24 months preceding their date of first T2DM diagnosis were extracted. Results Analysis of these patients’ pre-disease clinical history identified a dynamic driver network (DDN) and an associated critical transition state six months prior to their first confirmative T2DM state. Conclusions This 6-month window before the disease state provides an early warning of the impending T2DM, warranting an opportunity to apply proactive interventions to prevent or delay the new onset of T2DM.
Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis as a fingerprinting method for the analysis of soil microbial communities.

In soil microbial ecology, the effects of environmental factors and their gradients, temporal changes or the response to specific experimental treatments of microbial communities can only be effectively analyzed using methods that address the structural differences among whole communities. Fingerprinting methods are the most appropriate technique for this task when multiple samples must be analyzed. Among the methods currently used to compare microbial communities based on nucleic acid sequences, the techniques based on differences in the melting properties of double-stranded molecules, denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) or temperature gradient gel electrophoresis (TGGE), are the most widely used. Their main advantage is that they provide the possibility to further analyze whole sequences contained in fingerprints using molecular methods. In addition to the analysis of microbial communities based on DNA extracted from soils, DGGE/TGGE can also be used for the assessment of the active part of the community based on the analysis of RNA-derived sequences or for the analysis of sequences of functional genes encoding for proteins involved in important soil processes.
The Role of Brain Connectivity in Musical Experience

Human beings of all ages and all cultures enjoy, celebrate, and create music, but the positive neuroscience of music is only beginning. Drawing on studies in human behavior and neuroimaging from our lab and others, in this chapter I review current research relating structural and functional connectivity in the human brain to musical ability. I begin by documenting evidence for enhancements in structural and functional brain connectivity in several special populations that possess exceptional musical abilities, specifically people with absolute pitch and colored-music synesthesia. Next I discuss the neural pathways underlying domain-general cognitive and perceptual learning abilities that enable musical capacities in the general population. From the discussion of music learning, I turn towards the emotional power of music, in which I outline a recent study to identify the brain network of connections that engender strong emotional responses to music. Taken together, these results suggest that multiple connected networks of structural and functional way stations in the brain must operate in concert to actualize the perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and motor aspects of musical experience.
Phosphate overload accelerates vascular aging in uremic patients

Vascular calcification is a very common event in atients affected by diabetes and chronic kidney disease (CKD). Recently, it has been well documented that abnormalities in mineral and bone metabolism in CKD patients are associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Elevated serum phosphate and calcium-phosphate product levels play an important role in the pathogenesis of vascular mineralization in uremic patients and also appear to be associated with increased cardiovascular mortality. Together with classical passive precipitation of calcium-phosphate in soft tissues, during the last decade it has been demonstrated that inorganic phosphate may cause extraskeletal calcification directly through a real “ossification” of the tunica media in the vasculature of CKD patients. Therefore, control of phosphate retention is now an even more crucial target of treatment in patients affected by chronic kidney disease.
Redundant via insertion under timing constraints

Redundant via insertion is a useful technique to alleviate the yield loss and elevate the reliability of VLSI designs. While extra vias are inserted into the design, the electronic properties of designed circuit might be altered, and the circuit timing might be changed and needs to be efficiently re-analyzed. Therefore, a fast timing (incremental timing) analyzer is required to assistant the redundant via insertion procedure. This work develops an efficient redundant via insertion method under timing constraints. Firstly, an effectively incremental circuit timing analysis method is developed, and the redundant via insertion task is transformed into a mixed bipartite-conflict graph matching problem. Then, the insertion problem is solved by a timing-driven minimum weighted matching algorithm. The experimental results show that the developed algorithm can achieve 3.2% extra insertion rates over the method without considering timing effects, which all redundant vias would be removed if the timing of that net does not meet the timing requirements, in average. In addition, the developed incremental timing analysis mechanism can speed up the runtime of redundant via insertion procedure under timing constraints by over 34 times in average.
Semi-parametric Methods for Estimating Time-varying Graph Structure ∗

Stochastic networks are a plausible representation of the relational information among entities in dynamic systems such as living cells or social communities. While there is a rich literature in estimating a static or temporally invariant network from observation data, little has been done towards estimating time-varying networks from time series of entity attributes. In this paper, we present two new machine learning methods for estimating time-varying networks, which both build on a temporally smoothed l1-regularized logistic regression formalism that can be cast as standard convex-optimization problem and solved efficiently using generic solvers scalable to large networks. We report promising results on recovering simulated time-varying networks. For real datasets, we reverse engineer the latent sequence of temporally rewiring political networks between Senators from the US Senate voting records and the latent evolving regulatory networks underlying 588 genes across the life cycle of Drosophila melanogaster from microarray time course. We provide some theoretical guarantees for the proposed methods. ∗This work was done under supervision of my advisor Eric Xing. A part of this work is going to appear in Annals of Applied Statistics (Kolar, Song, Ahmed, Xing. Estimating Timevarying Networks). I am very grateful for multiple discussions I had with Larry Wasserman and John Lafferty.
The Condition of Significant Wave Height and Wind Velocity in Makassar Strait during 2017

This study aims to look at the conditions and characteristics of significant wave height and its relationship to wind velocity in the Makassar Strait in 2017. The data used in this study are bathymetry data from GEBCO with a resolution of 30 seconds, significant wave height data (Hs) with a resolution of 0.25 x 0.25 as well as wind velocity and direction with a resolution of 0.25 x 0.25 which are secondary data results from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) with a span of one year in 2017. The method used in this research is an analysis of the energy spectrum of significant wave height using Fast Fourier Transform. In addition, wind velocity and direction are processed by using GrADS software to see the visual conditions. Based on this study, it can be concluded that wind velocity is strongly associated with significant wave height values. This can be seen at each sample point in the Makassar Strait, where when the value of wind velocity is high, the value of significant wave height has the same conditions, and vice versa. The wind velocity value has a maximum value in the Makassar Strait during the east season with a value of more than 4.5 m/s. The highest energy spectrum occurs at point 3 in the Makassar Strait, which is 7303 m2 with a period of 6 months.
A New Speech Enhancement Algorithm for Car Environment Noise Cancellation with MBD and Kalman Filtering

We present a new speech enhancement algorithm in a car environment with two microphones. The car audio signals and other background noises are the target noises to be suppressed. Our algorithm is composed of two main parts, i.e., the spatial and the temporal processes. The multi-channel blind deconvolution (MBD) is applied to the spatial process while the Kalman filter with a second-order high pass filter, for the temporal one. For the fast convergence, the MBD is newly expressed in frequency-domain with a normalization matrix. The final performance evaluated with the severely car noise corrupted speech shows that our algorithm produces noticeably enhanced speech.
Nonsymmetric interpolation Macdonald polynomials and g_n basic hypergeometric series

The Knop-Sahi interpolation Macdonald polynomials are inhomogeneous and nonsymmetric generalisations of the well-known Macdonald polynomials. In this paper we apply the interpolation Macdonald polynomials to study a new type of basic hypergeometric series of type g_n. Our main results include a new q-binomial theorem, new q-Gauss sum, and several transformation formulae for g_n series.
Active contractility in actomyosin networks

Contractile forces are essential for many developmental processes involving cell shape change and tissue deformation. Recent experiments on reconstituted actomyosin networks, the major component of the contractile machinery, have shown that active contractility occurs above a threshold motor concentration and within a window of cross-link concentration. We present a microscopic dynamic model that incorporates two essential aspects of actomyosin self-organization: the asymmetric load response of individual actin filaments and the correlated motor-driven events mimicking myosin-induced filament sliding. Using computer simulations, we examine how the concentration and susceptibility of motors contribute to their collective behavior and interplay with the network connectivity to regulate macroscopic contractility. Our model is shown to capture the formation and dynamics of contractile structures and agree with the observed dependence of active contractility on microscopic parameters, including the contractility onset. Cooperative action of load-resisting motors in a force-percolating structure integrates local contraction/buckling events into a global contractile state via an active coarsening process, in contrast to the flow transition driven by uncorrelated kicks of susceptible motors.
Pharmacokinetics of trimethoprim and sulfamethoxazole in serum and cerebrospinal fluid of adult patients with normal meninges

The pharmacokinetics of trimethoprim (TMP) and sulfamethoxazole (SMX) in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and serum after a single intravenous infusion of 5 mg of TMP and 25 mg of SMX per kg of body weight over approximately 120 min were studied i nine patients who had uninflamed meninges and were undergoing elective myelography. Peak concentrations of TMP and SMX in CSF were 1 microgram/ml and 13.8 micrograms/ml, respectively. The peak TMP concentration in CSF occurred significantly earlier than the peak SMX concentration (60 versus 480 min postinfusion). At 15 h, there was no detectable TMP in the CSF, and there was 4.7 micrograms of SMX per ml of CSF. In the postdistribution phase (in CSF), simultaneous CSF-to-serum concentration ratios ranged from 0.23 to 0.53 for TMP and from 0.20 to 0.36 for SMX. CSF penetration (measured by comparison of the area under the curve of the composite CSF and serum concentration-time curves) was 18% for TMP and 12% for SMX. A loading dose of TMP-SMX (bases on TMP) of 10 to 12 mg/kg and a maintenance dose of 6 mg/kg every 8 h or 8 mg/kg every 12 h (with a 2-h infusion) should yield steady-state peak concentrations of at least 5 micrograms of TMP per ml of serum and 160 micrograms of SMX per ml of serum. Further studies of TMP-SMX administered in these doses in the treatment of serious bacterial infection, including meningitis, are warranted.
Cholinergic Neurons of the Medial Septum Are Crucial for Sensorimotor Gating

Hypofunction of NMDA receptors has been considered a possible cause for the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. More recently, indirect ways to regulate NMDA that would be less disruptive have been proposed and metabotropic glutamate receptor subtype 5 (mGluR5) represents one such candidate. To characterize the cell populations involved, we demonstrated here that knock-out (KO) of mGluR5 in cholinergic, but not glutamatergic or parvalbumin (PV)-positive GABAergic, neurons reduced prepulse inhibition of the startle response (PPI) and enhanced sensitivity to MK801-induced locomotor activity. Inhibition of cholinergic neurons in the medial septum by DREADD (designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs) resulted in reduced PPI further demonstrating the importance of these neurons in sensorimotor gating. Volume imaging and quantification were used to compare PV and cholinergic cell distribution, density, and total cell counts in the different cell-type-specific KO lines. Electrophysiological studies showed reduced NMDA receptor-mediated currents in cholinergic neurons of the medial septum in mGluR5 KO mice. These results obtained from male and female mice indicate that cholinergic neurons in the medial septum represent a key cell type involved in sensorimotor gating and are relevant to pathologies associated with disrupted sensorimotor gating such as schizophrenia. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The mechanistic complexity underlying psychiatric disorders remains a major challenge that is hindering the drug discovery process. Here, we generated genetically modified mouse lines to better characterize the involvement of the receptor mGluR5 in the fine-tuning of NMDA receptors, specifically in the context of sensorimotor gating. We evaluated the importance of knocking-out mGluR5 in three different cell types in two brain regions and performed different sets of experiments including behavioral testing and electrophysiological recordings. We demonstrated that cholinergic neurons in the medial septum represent a key cell-type involved in sensorimotor gating. We are proposing that pathologies associated with disrupted sensorimotor gating, such as with schizophrenia, could benefit from further evaluating strategies to modulate specifically cholinergic neurons in the medial septum.
An SDRAM-aware router for Networks-on-Chip

In this paper, we present an NoC (Networks-on-Chip) router with an SDRAM-aware flow control. Based on a priority-based arbitration, it schedules packets to improve memory utilization and reduce memory latency. Moreover, our multi-scheduling scheme performed by the multiple SDRAM-aware routers helps to achieve better SDRAM performance and save the hardware cost of NoC platform. Experimental results show that our SDRAM-aware router improves memory latency by 18% and memory utilization by 4.9% on average with over 42% saving of gate count of the NoC platform with dual memory subsystem.
THE ROLE OF THE NFκB PATHWAY IN ATHEROSCLEROSIS

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in Western countries. Although coronary thrombosis is the final event in acute coronary syndromes, there is increasing evidence that inflammation also plays a role in development of atherosclerosis and its clinical manifestations, such as myocardial infarction, stroke, and peripheral vascular disease. Many inflammatory genes relevant to atherosclerosis are influenced by the transcriptional regulator nuclear factor κ B (NFκB).
Detection of Plasma Catecholamines in Human Pheochromocytoma and Primary Hypertension Based on Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry.

BACKGROUND The measurement of plasma catecholamines (CAs) including dopamine (DA), epinephrine (E), and norepinephrine (NE) and their derivatives including metanephrine (MN), normetanephrine (NMN), vanillylmandelic acid (VMA), and homovanillic acid (HVA) has been used in the diagnosis of pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma (PPGL) and primary hypertension (PH) but are typically detected individually when clinical testing. In this study, pre-column derivatization with dansyl chloride (DNS-Cl) combined with an ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) method was developed to simultaneously quantify HVA, VMA, MN, NMN, DA, E, and NE in the plasma from patients with PPGL and PH. METHODS Plasma samples were extracted by acetonitrile and derivatized with DNS-Cl, followed by reverse phase separation and triple quadruple detection. Quantification of the CAs and their derivatives in 10 PPGL, 10 PH, and 100 healthy subjects was performed by UPLC-MS/MS analysis. RESULTS All the values of detected CAs/derivatives were in the linearity ranges of the fitted curves. The expression levels of the seven CAs in the PPGL and PH patients were significantly higher than the healthy controls, suggesting increased CA production in the former. There were significant differences in plasma NE, NMN, and VMA levels between the PPGL and PH patients, but there was no significant difference in plasma E, MN, DA, and HVA. A discriminant analysis showed that 90% of the final cases were classified correctly based on the detected CAs/derivatives. CONCLUSIONS Our results show that the combined detection of the seven CAs/derivatives could be used for the clinical diagnosis of PPGL and PH.
Prevalence, Predictors, and Impact of Low High-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol on in-Hospital Outcomes Among Acute Coronary Syndrome Patients in the Middle East

Objective: To estimate the prevalence, predictors, and impact of low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) on in-hospital outcomes among acute coronary syndrome (ACS) patients in the Middle East. Methods: Data were collected prospectively from 6,266 consecutive patients admitted with a diagnosis of ACS and enrolled in the Gulf Registry of Acute Coronary Events (Gulf RACE). A low HDL-C was defined as a level <40 mg/Dl (1.0 mmol/L) for males and <50 mg/dL (1.3 mmol/L) for females. Analyses were performed using univariate and multivariate statistical techniques. Results: The overall mean age of the cohort was 56±12 years and majority were males (77%). The overall prevalence of low HDL-C was 62%. During in-hospital stay and at discharge, the majority were on statin therapy (83%) while 10% were on other cholesterol lowering agents. After adjustment of demographic and clinical characteristics, the predictors for low HDL-C were higher body mass index (BMI), prior myocardial infarction (MI), diabetes mellitus, smoking and impaired renal function. Multivariable adjustment revealed that low HDL-C was associated with higher in-hospital mortality (odds ratio (OR), 1.54; 95% CI: 1.06-2.24; p=0.022) and cardiogenic shock (OR, 1.61; 95% CI: 1.20-2.14; p=0.001). Conclusions: ACS patients in the Middle East have a high prevalence of low HDL-C. Higher BMI, prior MI, diabetes mellitus, smoking, and impaired renal function were predictors of low HDL-C. Significantly higher in-hospital mortality and cardiogenic shock were associated with low HDL-C in men but not in women.
A Simulation Study on the Design of a Novel Automated Container Terminal

In this paper, we design, analyze, and evaluate a novel automated container terminal (ACT), namely, the rail-shuttle-based ACT. To analyze the performance, one detailed simulation system is built based on parametric design ideas. Two different microscopic rail-shuttle-based ACT simulation models, in which either straddle carriers (SCs) or automated guided vehicles with lifting devices (lift-AGVs) are employed, are formulated. Simulation experiments are carried out to obtain a reasonable equipment configuration for the proposed ACT. The results indicate that the performance of conventional ACTs can be improved if equipped with rail shuttles, and the performance of the rail-shuttle-based ACT with SCs exceeds that with lift-AGVs.