Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mortality in COPD: Inevitable or Preventable? Insights from the Cardiovascular Arena

Mortality due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease continues to rise, whereas mortality rates related to cardiovascular disease appear to be slowing, or even declining. This is due at least in part to more widespread use of preventative therapies that have been shown to reduce cardiovascular mortality, raising the question of whether appropriate use of therapies for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease which potentially reduce mortality could have a similar impact. This article discusses approaches used successfully in managing heart disease and considers whether these can be applied to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and whether a better understanding of the strongest predictors of mortality in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is needed. It reviews the role of inhaled corticosteroids, both alone and in combination with long-acting β2-agonists, in individuals with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, including the role of combination therapy with inhaled corticosteroids/long-acting β2-agonists (budesonide/formoterol or salmeterol/fluticasone propionate) in decreasing exacerbations and improving health status, potentially providing survival benefits in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. This review also discusses the potential impact of treatments indicated for cardiovascular disease on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and possible links between the two diseases.
Reputation Management and Seniority Systems in Firms

This paper studies the role of a seniority based profit and task allocation system in a firm. The firm chooses either a farsighted or a shortsighted action in each period. The former corresponds to keeping or rebuilding a good reputation, while the latter to cheating consumers or giving up rebuilding. We assume that even if the firm chooses the farsighted (shortsighted) action, it may get a bad (good) reputation with positive probability. In this situation, we show that an efficient seniority system helps to maintain a good reputation in the sense that the farsighted action profile is sustainable in equilibrium. This is because under the seniority system, the decision-maker of the firm gives attention to both short- and long-term performances.
Segmenting Multi-attribute Sequences Using Dynamic Bayesian Networks

Discovering dependencies between attributes in multi- attribute event sequences (multi-sequences), also known as synchronized multi-stream sequences, is an important prob- lem in many domains, including monitoring systems and molecular biology. Many real-life multi-sequences have a segmental structure, with segments of differing complexities of attribute dependencies, which reflects a changing nature of the dependencies over time and space. In this paper we propose a new approach for discovering dependencies in multi-sequences which considers a possible segmental na- ture of such dependencies and tries to describe the multi- sequences in probabilistic terms using Dynamic Bayesian Networks (DBN). To accurately quantify such changing de- pendencies, we segment the multi-sequence by fitting an op- timal DBN for each segment. We use the Bayesian Informa- tion Criterion (BIC) to select an optimal DBN structure and the number of segments of the multi-sequence.
Qigong Sensory Training pilot study: A tactile home program for children with or at-risk for autism

ABSTRACT This pilot study investigated the efficacy of Qigong Sensory Training, a parent-implemented tactile intervention, in improving sensory processing and self-regulation in children with or at-risk for autism who were enrolled in early intervention. A pretest-posttest, single-subject design was implemented with three families. After 5 months, atypical sensory processing and self-regulation improved by more than one standard deviation for all children. Parenting stress decreased by more than one standard deviation for two of the mothers. These results suggest that Qigong Sensory Training can be effective for children with or at-risk for autism when provided through a coaching model in an early intervention setting.
Early enteral nutrition in acutely ill patients: A systematic review

Objective To evaluate the effect of early enteral nutrition on the outcome of critically ill and injured patients. Data Sources MEDLINE, citation review of relevant primary and review articles, personal files, and contact with expert informants. Study Selection Randomized, controlled studies that compared early with delayed enteral nutrition in hospitalized adult postoperative, trauma, head-injured, burn, or medical intensive care unit (ICU) patients. From 161 articles screened, 27 were identified as randomized, controlled trials comparing early with delayed enteral nutrition and were included for data extraction. Of these, 12 were excluded. None of the studies included medical ICU patients. Data Extraction Fifteen studies containing 753 subjects were analyzed. Descriptive and outcome data were extracted independently from the articles by the two reviewers. Main outcome measures were infections, noninfectious complications, length of hospital stay, and mortality. The meta-analysis was performed using the random effects model. Data Synthesis Early enteral nutrition was associated with a significantly lower incidence of infections (relative risk reduction, 0.45; 95% confidence interval, 0.30–0.66;p = .00006; test for heterogeneity, p = .049) and a reduced length of hospital stay (mean reduction of 2.2 days; 95% confidence interval, 0.81–3.63 days;p = .004; test for heterogeneity, p = .0012). There were no significant differences in mortality or noninfectious complications between the two groups of patients. Conclusions The results of this meta-analysis support the experimental data demonstrating the benefit of the early initiation of enteral nutrition. The results of this meta-analysis must, however, be interpreted with some caution because of the significant heterogeneity between studies.
Endothelial Cells Proactively Form Microvilli-Like Membrane Projections upon Intercellular Adhesion Molecule 1 Engagement of Leukocyte LFA-1 1

Specific leukocyte/endothelial interactions are critical for immunity and inflammation, yet the molecular details of this interaction interface remain poorly understood. Thus, we investigated, with confocal microscopy, the distribution dynamics of the central adhesion molecules ICAM-1 and LFA-1 in this context. Monolayers of activated HUVECs stained with fluorescent anti-ICAM-1 Fabs or Chinese hamster ovary-K1 cells expressing ICAM-1-green fluorescent protein were allowed to bind LFA-1-bearing monocytes, neutrophils, or K562 LFA-1 transfectants. ICAM-1 was rapidly relocalized to newly formed microvilli-like membrane projections in response to binding LFA-1 on leukocytes. These ICAM-1-enriched projections encircled the leukocytes extending up their sides and clustered LFA-1 underneath into linear tracks. Projections formed independently of VCAM-1/very late Ag 4 interactions, shear, and proactive contributions from the LFA-1-bearing cells. In the ICAM-1-bearing endothelial cells, projections were enriched in actin but not microtubules, required intracellular calcium, and intact microfilament and microtubule cytoskeletons and were independent of Rho/Rho kinase signaling. Disruption of these projections with cytochalasin D, colchicine, or BAPTA-AM had no affect on firm adhesion. These data show that in response to LFA-1 engagement the endothelium proactively forms an ICAM-1-enriched cup-like structure that surrounds adherent leukocytes but is not important for firm adhesion. This finding leaves open a possible role in leukocyte transendothelial migration, which would be consistent with the geometry and kinetics of formation of the cup-like structure.
Experimental Investigation of the Hysteretic Behavior of Wide-Flange Steel Columns under High Axial Load and Lateral Drift Demands

This paper discusses the findings from a large-scale experimental program that characterized the hysteretic behavior of typical steel wide-flange columns in steel moment-resisting frames (MRFs). The test specimens were tested in a cantilever configuration with a fixed point of inflection. The main testing parameters included various lateral and axial loading histories, the applied axial compressive load and the local slenderness of the cross-section. It is shown that (a) steel columns subjected to high compressive axial loads (i.e., larger than 50% of their critical axial load) should not be treated as forced-controlled elements as suggested by ASCE/SEI 41-13;(b) the axial shortening is an important deterioration mode that should be explicitly considered as part of the seismic design process of columns in steel MRFs; (c) end columns are characterized by non-symmetric hysteretic behavior due to the dynamic overturning effects during an earthquake. The test program provided unique experimental data that characterized the monotonic backbone curve of steel columns through the loss of their axial load carrying capacity under various levels of axial load ratios.
An analysis of scale-space sampling in SIFT

The most popular image matching algorithm SIFT, introduced by D. Lowe a decade ago, has proven to be sufficiently scale invariant to be used in numerous applications. In practice, however, scale invariance may be weakened by various sources of error. The density of the sampling of the Gaussian scale-space and the level of blur in the input image are two of these sources. This article presents an empirical analysis of their impact on the extracted keypoints stability. We prove that SIFT is really scale and translation invariant only if the scale-space is significantly oversampled. We also demonstrate that the threshold on the difference of Gaussians value is inefficient for eliminating aliasing perturbations.
Time Complexity for Face Recognition under varying Pose, Illumination and Facial Expressions based on Sparse Representation

Sparse representation based face recognition is the most recent technique used, this technique first codes a testing sample as a sparse linear combination of all the training samples, and then classifies the testing sample by evaluating which class leads to the minimum representation error. The l1-norm sparsity improves the face recognition accuracy. While most of the research focus has been in increasing the face recognition accuracy, in this paper we analyze the time needed for face recognition under varying Facial expressions, Pose and Illumination. This analysis is done on various public data sets. GRIMACE and ATT data sets provide variations in Facial expressions, SUBJECT data set provides Pose variations and YALEB data set provides 64 illumination conditions. The average time taken is calculated for each of the data set.
Cytotoxic Cutaneous Adverse Drug Reactions during Anti-PD-1 Therapy

Purpose: Immunotherapy has experienced impressive progress in cancer treatment. Antibodies against PD-1 improved survival in different types of cancer including melanoma. They are generally well tolerated. However, skin toxicities including pruritus, rashes, and vitiligo are reported. Although frequent, they have not been characterized further yet. In this analysis, we aimed to systematically assess and characterize the adverse cutaneous reactions observed in patients with melanoma treated with anti-PD-1 antibodies. Experimental Design: Patients with melanoma were treated with anti-PD-1 antibodies within clinical trials and an early-access program. Adverse cutaneous eruptions that emerged in our melanoma patient cohort were systematically investigated and classified using histology and gene expression profiling in comparison with maculopapular drug rash, cutaneous GVHD, and the severe drug eruption toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN). Results: Between February 2013 and September 2015, 68 patients with stage IV melanoma were treated at the University Hospital Zurich (Zurich, Switzerland); 15 patients (22%) developed cutaneous reactions and 10 (15%) vitiligo. The cutaneous reactions ranged from small erythematous papules with mild pruritus to disseminated erythematous maculopapular rashes (MPR) without signs of epidermal involvement to severe MPRs, including epidermal detachment and mucosal involvement. Although skin involvement varied from mild rash to bullous drug eruptions, gene expression profiling pathogenically classified all investigated cases as TEN-like reactions. Conclusions: As predicted by the PD-1 knockout mouse, anti-PD-1 antibodies frequently cause adverse cutaneous reactions. Gene expression profiling reminds in all cases of a TEN-like pattern, suggesting that PD-1/PD-L1 interaction is required to preserve epidermal integrity during inflammatory skin reactions. Clin Cancer Res; 22(16); 4023–9. ©2016 AACR.
Attitude Heading Reference System based vehicle stationary state detection

Vehicle navigation is a crucial requirement for many applications. Global Positioning System (GPS) can provide accurate navigation information. But the GPS performance degrades and even a complete outage may occur in urban areas due to line of sight problem. Inertial Navigation System (INS) can provide navigation information during a GPS outage. However, due to bias, drift, noise and other errors, the position information quickly diverges which is more sever for low cost INS. These errors can be corrected in a stationary state. Detecting the stationary state to correct the INS error is crucial for navigation system. This paper proposes a novel stationary detection technique by the threshold approach with an Attitude Heading Reference System (AHRS) built from the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensors and acceleration information. The stationary state is detected from variance of the acceleration data and the heading of the vehicle. The test result shows that the 87% correct stationary state is detected from both the acceleration and heading information. The stationary state detection can help to correct the INS errors.
Differential flatness based full authority helicopter control design

A full authority helicopter control design based on differential flatness is presented. The concept of outer flatness is deployed for the design. The position dynamics and attitude dynamics are treated as the outer and inner systems respectively. The proposed design is based on an approximate model which is differentially flat, and then modified for the exact model. Given a desired trajectory in trim flight condition, the proposed control scheme is proved to result in global exponentially stability and convergence in the trajectory error.
Measuring perceptual contrast in a multi-level framework

In this paper, we propose and discuss some approaches for measuring perceptual contrast in digital images. We start from previous algorithms by implementing different local measures of contrast and a parameterized way to recombine local contrast maps and color channels. We propose the idea of recombining the local contrast maps and the channels using particular measures taken from the image itself as weighting parameters. Exhaustive tests and results are presented and discussed, in particular we compare the performance of each algorithm in relation to perceived contrast by observers. Current results show an improvement in correlation between contrast measures and observers perceived contrast when the variance of the three color channels separately is used as weighting parameter for local contrast maps.
On carrots and mobs

This study explores the global diffusion of a new ethical consumption tactic named carrotmob. We trace the spread of carrotmobs from the US across six continents and compare cases of successful and unsuccessful national diffusion. We argue that the heterogeneous spread of carrotmobs cannot be explained solely by differences in individual characteristics of consumers, such as post-materialist value orientation or income, or in the economic opportunity structures, such as national affluence or the availability of environmental labeled goods. Results from semi-structured interviews with organizers and activists in 15 countries suggest that activist brokers relied on social media to influence mobilization, and that social movement organizations, mass media, and governmental organizations played an important role for the diffusion of those collective actions. Our results support theories of connective action and political opportunities, but contradict theories of statism.
“ Umbrella ” : A novel fixed-size DHT protocol

In this paper we present the Umbrella protocol, a novel distributed hash table architecture that supports key publishing and retrieval on top of an overlay network for content distribution. The Umbrella protocol provides a scalable environment with efficient algorithms based on a distributed routing table of constant size for each node, thus minimizing traffic load and scalability problems. Through our theoretical analysis and simulation results we prove the integrity of our algorithms and their logarithmic requirements as node population increases.
Herding CATs: A Comparison of Linear Chromatic-Adaptation Transforms for CIECAM97s

There are currently five transformation matrices being considered for use in the linear chromatic-adaptation transform in a revision of the CIECAM97s color appearance model. Four of the matrices were developed independently for the purpose of transforming tristimulus values to spectrally sharpened RGB responses. The fifth is the HuntPointer-Estevez transform of CIE tristimulus values to normalized cone responsivities. RGB images were transformed between CIE illuminant D65 and CIE illuminant A white point using each of the matrices and results were examined visually. In addition, pixel-wise ( ' and DE ( ' calculations between corresponding color images showed the performance of the four XYZ-to-RGB transformation matrices was essentially equal. In a complex image, these slight differences would most likely go undetected.
A NOVEL APPROACH FOR OPTIMAL WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK DEPLOYMENT

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) limited resources in terms of processing capability and power supply raise a variety of challenges which make them a fertile ground to numerous investigation efforts. Increasing the sensing range, maintaining and improving the connectivity, or extending the lifetime represent the main objectives of WSN researches. In this paper we propose an approach for the deployment of WSN based on the use of simulated annealing to obtain close to optimal solutions for the placement of sensors in terms of minimizing the number of hops between all the nodes of the target region and the sink node while covering as much of the interest area as possible. By reducing the number of hops, the energy saving is also improved. Finally, this paper shows the flexibility of this technique for studying the influence of different parameters of interest at a design stage of the network, prior to the real deployment of WSN nodes.
Phase maintenance in a rhythmic motor pattern during temperature changes in vivo.

Central-pattern-generating neural circuits function reliably throughout an animal's life, despite constant molecular turnover and environmental perturbations. Fluctuations in temperature pose a problem to the nervous systems of poikilotherms because their body temperature follows the ambient temperature, thus affecting the temperature-dependent dynamics of various subcellular components that constitute neuronal circuits. In the crustacean stomatogastric nervous system, the pyloric circuit produces a triphasic rhythm comprising the output of the pyloric dilator, lateral pyloric, and pyloric constrictor neurons. In vitro, the phase relationships of these neurons are maintained over a fourfold change in pyloric frequency as temperature increases from 7°C to 23°C. To determine whether these temperature effects are also found in intact crabs, in the presence of sensory feedback and neuromodulator-rich environments, we measured the temperature dependence of the pyloric frequency and phases in vivo by implanting extracellular electrodes into Cancer borealis and Cancer pagurus and shifting tank water temperature from 11°C to 26°C. Pyloric frequency in the intact crab increased significantly with temperature (Q10 = 2-2.5), while pyloric phases were generally conserved. For a subset of the C. borealis experiments, animals were subsequently dissected and the stomatogastric ganglion subjected to a similar temperature ramp in vitro. We found that the maximal frequency attained at high temperatures in vivo is lower than it is under in vitro conditions. Our results demonstrate that, over a wide temperature range, the phases of the pyloric rhythm in vivo are generally preserved, but that the frequency range is more restricted than it is in vitro.
Perchlorate: Health Effects and Technologies for Its Removal from Water Resources

Perchlorate has been found in drinking water and surface waters in the United States and Canada. It is primarily associated with release from defense and military operations. Natural sources include certain fertilizers and potash ores. Although it is a strong oxidant, perchlorate is very persistent in the environment. At high concentrations perchlorate can affect the thyroid gland by inhibiting the uptake of iodine. A maximum contaminant level has not been set, while a guidance value of 6 ppb has been suggested by Health Canada. Perchlorate is measured in environmental samples primarily by ion chromatography. It can be removed from water by anion exchange or membrane filtration. Biological and chemical processes are also effective in removing this species from water.
Four-Point Preprandial Self-Monitoring of Blood Glucose for the Assessment of Glycemic Control and Variability in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Treated with Insulin and Vildagliptin

The study explored the utility of four-point preprandial glucose self-monitoring to calculate several indices of glycemic control and variability in a study adding the DPP-4 inhibitor vildagliptin to ongoing insulin therapy. This analysis utilized data from a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled crossover study in 29 patients with type 2 diabetes treated with vildagliptin or placebo on top of stable insulin dose. During two 4-week treatment periods, self-monitoring of plasma glucose was undertaken at 4 occasions every day. Glucose values were used to assess several indices of glycemic control quality, such as glucose mean, GRADE, M-VALUE, hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia index, and indices of glycemic variability, such as standard deviation, CONGA, J-INDEX, and MAGE. We found that vildagliptin improved the glycemic condition compared to placebo: mean glycemic levels, and both GRADE and M-VALUE, were reduced by vildagliptin (P < 0.01). Indices also showed that vildagliptin reduced glycemia without increasing the risk for hypoglycemia. Almost all indices of glycemic variability showed an improvement of the glycemic condition with vildagliptin (P < 0.02), though more marked differences were shown by the more complex indices. In conclusion, the study shows that four-sample preprandial glucose self-monitoring is sufficient to yield information on the vildagliptin effects on glycemic control and variability.