Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hybrid control of master-slave velocity control and admittance control for safe remote surgery

Remote surgery has attracted great interest in recent decades because it has the potential to improve equality of access to health care. However, remote surgery has not been approved in any country, since patient safety cannot be guaranteed. In this paper, we present a hybrid control system for master-slave velocity control and admittance control for safe remote robotic surgery. The proposed controller switches between these two controls adaptively and stably and avoids excessive contact force between the robotic surgical instrument and the patient's organs. Through the proposed scheme, the contact force between the robotic instrument and objects at the slave site can be bounded by a set upper limit regardless of the motion the operator inputs at the master site. The performance of the proposed system was verified analytically. The proposed control scheme was implemented in a robotic surgical system and its performance was verified through simulations and experiments. The results of the simulations and experiments showed that the system autonomously switches stably between master-slave velocity control and admittance control and avoids excessive contact force.
Clinico-pathologic Parameters for Prediction of Microsatellite Instability in Colorectal Cancer

Purpose Although the incidence of microsatellite instability (MSI) accounts for 10-15% of cases of colorectal cancer, its clinical application for all colorectal cancers has widened. We attempted to identify clinical and pathological parameters that may be helpful in selection of patients with MSI-high (MSI-H). Materials and Methods A total of 120 resected colorectal cancers were enrolled retrospectively for this MSI study. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and denaturing high performance liquid chromatography and/or real time PCR methods with five markers and immunohistochemistry (IHC) for MLH1 and MSH2 were performed for analysis of cancer and blood specimens. Clinico-pathologic parameters, including IHC, were investigated in order to determine their usefulness as predictive factors of MSI. Results Among 120 cases of colorectal cancer, MSI was observed in 15 cases (12.5%), including 11 cases of MSI-H and four cases of MSI-low. Patients with MSI were younger, less than 50 years old, had a family history of cancer, Rt. sided colon cancer and/or synchronous multiple colorectal cancer, mucinous histologic type, and serum carcinoembryonic antigen group in the normal range. Results of multivariate analysis showed Bethesda guidelines, Rt. sided and/or synchronous multiple colorectal cancer, and negative expression of IHC for MLH1, which was consistently associated with MSI-H. MSI-H colorectal tumors have met at least one of these three parameters and their sensitivity and specificity were 100% and 72.5%, respectively. Conclusion Bethesda guidelines, tumor location, and negative expression of MLH1 protein are important parameters for selection of patients with colorectal cancers for MSI testing. MSI testing is recommended for patients showing any of these three parameters.
Exercise stress testing as a predictor of progression of early chronic Chagas heart disease

It is estimated that about four million people have chagasic heart disease in Latin America. The early detection of those patients who are likely to progress to more severe disease is necessary for appropriate treatment management to prevent further cardiac damage. The detection of ventricular arrhythmias is regarded as an expression of cardiac involvement in chagasic patients1 and it is a common finding during stress testing. The objective of this study was to ascertain whether stress testing has prognostic value for the progression of early chronic Chagas heart disease. Eight hundred and forty three patients with confirmed positive serology for Trypanosoma cruzi infection were seen between 1984 and 2003 at the Hospital Eva Peron, Buenos Aires, Argentina. All patients were evaluated with ECG, chest radiography, bidimensional echocardiography, and stress testing under basal conditions. Patients were grouped into four stages according to a modified Kuschnir classification.2 Patients in groups 0 (normal ECG and chest radiograph) and I (abnormal ECG and normal chest radiograph) and aged 20–60 …
Harnessing Social Media for Health Promotion and Behavior Change

Rapid and innovative advances in participative Internet communications, referred to as “social media,” offer opportunities for modifying health behavior. Social media let users choose to be either anonymous or identified. People of all demographics are adopting these technologies whether on their computers or through mobile devices, and they are increasingly using these social media for health-related issues. Although social media have considerable potential as tools for health promotion and education, these media, like traditional health promotion media, require careful application and may not always achieve their desired outcomes. This article summarizes current evidence and understanding of using social media for health promotion. More important, it discusses the need for evaluating the effectiveness of various forms of social media and incorporating outcomes research and theory in the design of health promotion programs for social media.
Reduction of Cogging Torque and EMF Harmonics in Modulated Pole Machines

This paper discusses a method for reducing cogging torque and harmonic content of back-electromotive force (EMF) waveforms in modulated pole machines (MPMs). Tooth pitching is applied to a separate phase MPM in order to reduce the most prominent harmonics present in a three-phase MPM's cogging torque. Experimental results show that the application of tooth pitching to these machines can reduce the cogging torque and back-EMF harmonics significantly. This comes without a significant impact to the useful output of the machine, which is confirmed by the comparison of measured results for two prototypes. Such a technique can be easily applied to existing machine designs without the need for extra components and for the same production cost.
Topographical organization of ascending cerebellar projections from the dentate and interposed nuclei in Macaca mulatta: An anterograde degeneration study

Discrete electrolytic lesions were placed in the dentate and interpositus cerebellar nuclei in the monkey Macaca mulatta and anterograde degeneration was traced in the ascending limb of the brachium conjunctivum using the Wiitanen technique. The dentate and interpositus anterior (IA) nuclei project topographically onto the two somatotopically organized divisions of the red nucleus and the ventrolateral‐ventral intermediate nuclei of the thalamus (VL‐Vim). Caudal parts of the dentate project to face areas in medial parts of the parvocellular red nucleus (RNpc) and VL‐Vim, rostrolateral parts to central arm areas in these nuclei. There is a small projection from the rostroventral dentate to lateral hindlimb areas in RNpc and VL. Dorsal parts of the dentate project to ventral parts of RNpc and VLc‐Vim (distal limb musculature area) exclusively, whereas ventral parts of the dentate project to dorsal parts of RNpc with some overlap ventrally dorsomedial VLc (proximal limb musculature and premotor areas). Caudal parts of IA project to medial forelimb and rostral parts to lateral hindlimb areas in the magnocellular red nucleus (RNmc) and VL‐Vim. Projections from IA are greatest to distal musculature areas in VL‐Vim. No projections from the interpositus posterior nucleus (IP) to the red nucleus could be identified positively, but projections to VL‐Vim are to proximal hindlimb musculature and premotor areas.
Comparison of GOMS analysis methods

Although members of the same family of techniques, the Keystroke Level Model and CPM-GOMS often predict different execution times for the same task [4]. Our data suggest that KLM describes error-tree performance of a skilled user with little practice on a particular task whereas CPM-GOMS describes error-free performance after extensive practice. A participant completed a task 500 times using two different methods. Observed times for the first error-free trial were close to the times predicted by KLM and quickly decreased with practice to more closely match those predicted by CPM-GOMS. The biggest contributor to the change were mental operators, which decreased markedly in both duration and frequency, although the duration of pointing also decreased.
Discharges in Human Muscle Receptor Afferents during Block Grasping

Human grasping relies on feedforward control that is monitored and corrected on-line by means of sensory feedback. While much of the sensory mechanisms underpinning hand-object interaction are known, information has been lacking about muscle receptor responses during the phases before and after actual object contact. We therefore let subjects use their thumb and fingers to grasp blocks presented to them while we recorded muscle afferents from the thumb and finger extensor muscles along with wrist and digit kinematics, and electromyographic activity. The kinematics of the task was indistinguishable from “normal” grasping. None of the afferents encoded either object contact or finger apposition. Both primary and secondary afferents were more phase advanced on the parent muscle lengths than expected from previous studies as well as from their responses to imposed length changes of their parent muscles. Thus, the discharges of both primary and secondary afferents were well correlated to the tendon velocity of their parent muscles and that of primary afferents also to acceleration whereas neither appeared to encode muscle length as such. Decoding the velocity of muscle length changes were significantly improved if the discharge of Golgi tendon organ afferents were taken into account along with that of the muscle spindle afferents. We propose that these findings may be explained by the biomechanical properties of contracting muscles. Moreover, we conclude that it seems unlikely that the muscle spindle afferents recorded in this task have any role in providing “proprioceptive” information pertaining to the size of an object grasped.
Early Events in Xenograft Development from the Human Embryonic Stem Cell Line HS181 - Resemblance with an Initial Multiple Epiblast Formation

Xenografting is widely used for assessing in vivo pluripotency of human stem cell populations. Here, we report on early to late events in the development of mature experimental teratoma from a well-characterized human embryonic stem cell (HESC) line, HS181. The results show an embryonic process, increasingly chaotic. Active proliferation of the stem cell derived cellular progeny was detected already at day 5, and characterized by the appearance of multiple sites of engraftment, with structures of single or pseudostratified columnar epithelium surrounding small cavities. The striking histological resemblance to developing embryonic ectoderm, and the formation of epiblast-like structures was supported by the expression of the markers OCT4, NANOG, SSEA-4 and KLF4, but a lack of REX1. The early neural marker NESTIN was uniformly expressed, while markers linked to gastrulation, such as BMP-4, NODAL or BRACHYURY were not detected. Thus, observations on day 5 indicated differentiation comparable to the most early transient cell populations in human post implantation development. Confirming and expanding on previous findings from HS181 xenografts, these early events were followed by an increasingly chaotic development, incorporated in the formation of a benign teratoma with complex embryonic components. In the mature HS181 teratomas not all types of organs/tissues were detected, indicating a restricted differentiation, and a lack of adequate spatial developmental cues during the further teratoma formation. Uniquely, a kinetic alignment of rare complex structures was made to human embryos at diagnosed gestation stages, showing minor kinetic deviations between HS181 teratoma and the human counterpart.
Sparsistency of ℓ1-regularized M-estimators

We consider the model selection consistency or sparsistency of a broad set of $\ell_1$-regularized $M$-estimators for linear and non-linear statistical models in a unified fashion. For this purpose, we propose the local structured smoothness condition (LSSC) on the loss function. We provide a general result giving deterministic sufficient conditions for sparsistency in terms of the regularization parameter, ambient dimension, sparsity level, and number of measurements. We show that several important statistical models have $M$-estimators that indeed satisfy the LSSC, and as a result, the sparsistency guarantees for the corresponding $\ell_1$-regularized $M$-estimators can be derived as simple applications of our main theorem.
Consideration of Possible Biologic Mechanisms of Fluorosis

T he significant decline in the prevalence of dental caries observed in several countries has been attributed, for the most part, to the effective use of systemic and topical fluorides (Brunelle and Carlos, 1982: Leverett, 1982, 1991; Graves and Stamm, 1985; Pendrys and Stamm, 1990). Along with the reported reductions in caries, increases in the prevalence of the milder forms of fluorosis, and a possible increase in severity, have been observed (Segreto et al., 1984; Leverett, 1986; Szpunar and Burt, 1987, 1988; Heifetz et al., 1988; Kumar et al., 1989; US Public Health Service, 1991). A continuing shift in the prevalence and severity of fluorosis may eventually result in aesthetic problems of concern to the general public. Such concern could pose a threat to the continued use of fluorides to control dental caries. Accordingly, there is intensified need for better understanding of the biologic mechanisms responsible for fluorosis to use fluorides more effectively to control dental disease, while confining the prevalence and severity of fluorosis to acceptable levels. The aims of this paper are: (1) to present a brief review of the various hypotheses that have been proposed to explain the biological mechanisms responsible for fluorosis; and, in that context, (2) to propose an additional possible mechanism. In recent years, several excellent reviews have been published regarding the nature of fluorotic enamel and the proposed biologic mechanisms responsible for its occurrence (Fejerskov et al., 1990; Robinson and Kirkham, 1990; DenBesten and Thariani, 1992). Hypotheses concerning the means by which fluoride acts to induce fluorosis may be divided into several general categories: (1) effects secondary to changes in systemic calcium metabolism, (2) effects on the composition of matrix
On Fast Optimal STDMA Scheduling over Fading Wireless Channels

Most prior studies on wireless spatial-reuse TDMA (STDMA) link scheduling for throughput optimization deal with the situation where instantaneous channel state information (CSI) is available. Under fast fading, however, the channel may change too quickly for the scheduler to track the instantaneous CSI. In this paper, instead of the instantaneous CSI, the scheduler performs its task according to the stochastic behavior of the channel state. A basic schedule consists of a set of simultaneously transmitting links. The essence of the scheduling problem is to determine a mixed schedule consisting of a weighted sum (TDMA mixture) of a number of basic schedules to optimize a certain utility objective. A key to reducing scheduling complexity is to identify the Pareto-efficient basic schedules, referred to as the extreme-point schedules, so that the construction of the optimal mixed schedule can be based on the extreme-point schedules rather than all the basic schedules. The precise identification of the extreme-point schedules, however, is intractable computation- ally. We show in this paper that identifying a slightly larger super- set of the extreme-point schedules can be highly efficient using a Perron-Frobenius condition: simulation experiments indicate that oftentimes there are only very few extraneous non-extreme-point schedules in the superset. Building on the effective identification method, we propose a fast scheduling algorithm. This algorithm beats the algorithm without using the identification method by a complexity-reduction factor of 166 in a 15-link network. In addition, numerical results suggest that our algorithm is robust to variations of system parameters. Index Terms—STDMA scheduling; Perron-Frobenius Theorem
FCNCs in supersymmetric multi-Higgs doublet models

We conduct a general discussion of supersymmetric models with three families in the Higgs sector. We analyse the scalar potential, and investigate the minima conditions, deriving the mass matrices for the scalar, pseudoscalar and charged states. Depending on the Yukawa couplings and the Higgs spectrum, the model might allow the occurrence of potentially dangerous ﬂavour changing neutral currents at the tree-level. We compute model-independent contributions for several observables, and as an example we apply this general analysis to a speciﬁc model of quark-Higgs interactions, discussing how compatibility with current experimental data constrains the Higgs sector.
devI Is an Evolutionarily Young Negative Regulator of Myxococcus xanthus Development

ABSTRACT During starvation-induced development of Myxococcus xanthus, thousands of rod-shaped cells form mounds in which they differentiate into spores. The dev locus includes eight genes followed by clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPRs), comprising a CRISPR-Cas system (Cas stands for CRISPR associated) typically involved in RNA interference. Mutations in devS or devR of a lab reference strain permit mound formation but impair sporulation. We report that natural isolates of M. xanthus capable of normal development are highly polymorphic in the promoter region of the dev operon. We show that the dev promoter is predicted to be nonfunctional in most natural isolates and is dispensable for development of a laboratory reference strain. Moreover, deletion of the dev promoter or the small gene immediately downstream of it, here designated devI (development inhibitor), suppressed the sporulation defect of devS or devR mutants in the lab strain. Complementation experiments and the result of introducing a premature stop codon in devI support a model in which DevRS proteins negatively autoregulate expression of devI, whose 40-residue protein product DevI inhibits sporulation if overexpressed. DevI appears to act in a cell-autonomous manner since experiments with conditioned medium and with cell mixtures gave no indication of extracellular effects. Strikingly, we report that devI is entirely absent from most M. xanthus natural isolates and was only recently integrated into the developmental programs of some lineages. These results provide important new insights into both the evolutionary history of the dev operon and its mechanistic role in M. xanthus sporulation. IMPORTANCE Certain mutations in the dev CRISPR-Cas (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat-associated) system of Myxococcus xanthus impair sporulation. The link between development and a CRISPR-Cas system has been a mystery. Surprisingly, DNA sequencing of natural isolates revealed that many appear to lack a functional dev promoter, yet these strains sporulate normally. Deletion of the dev promoter or the small gene downstream of it suppressed the sporulation defect of a lab strain with mutations in dev genes encoding Cas proteins. The results support a model in which the Cas proteins DevRS prevent overexpression of the small gene devI, which codes for an inhibitor of sporulation. Phylogenetic analysis of natural isolates suggests that devI and the dev promoter were only recently acquired in some lineages.
Ontology-supported quality assurance for component-based systems configuration

Systems development needs to reconcile views from many roles, such as domain experts and engineers. A particular challenge is the multitude of models for requirements and quality, which can get time consuming and error prone to trace, change, and verify. In this paper we introduce an ontology-supported component-based systems engineering approach for the production automation domain that describes explicitly stakeholder quality requirements and traces design decisions to generate new system and software versions that implement these requirements. The ontology approach is expected to allow continuous modeling and extracting model views for all roles involved to a) improve the quality assurance of system requirements; b) support more explicit feedback on the quality of intermediate models during systems development; and c) provide better auditing capabilities of the systems development process. Based on an industry case study, we describe the ontology concept of the system, the development process, and how software quality can be measured and improved.
The use of interval -related expert knowledge in processing 2-D and 3-D data, with an emphasis on applications to geosciences and biosciences

Processing different types of data is one of the main applications of computers, the application for which computers have been originally designed. The more data we need to process, the more computing power we need and thus, the more important it is to use (and design) faster algorithms for data processing. Even processing 1-D data often is very time-consuming, but processing 2-D data (e.g., images) and 3-D data is where we really encounter the limits of the current computer hardware abilities. Data processing algorithms sometimes produce results which contradict the expert knowledge – because this knowledge was not taken into account in the algorithm. For example, a mathematical solution to a seismic inverse problem may lead to un-physically large values of density inside the Earth. At present, in such situations, researchers try to repeatedly modify (“hack”) the process until the results produced by the algorithm agree with this expert knowledge. This process takes up a lot of expert time and – because of the need for numerous iterations – a lot of computer time. To avoid this long, ad-hoc process, it is desirable to explicitly incorporate the expert knowledge into the algorithms, so that the results are always consistent with the expert’s knowledge. Expert knowledge often comes in the form of bounds (i.e., intervals) on the actual values of the physical quantities. In this dissertation, we describe how this intervalrelated expert knowledge can be used in processing 2-D and 3-D data. In data processing, one can distinguish between two types of situations: simpler situations when we directly measure the data that needs to be processed, and more complex situations when the data points can only be measured indirectly, i.e., when these points themselves need to be determined from the measurement results. In this dissertation, we consider both types of data processing. For the case of directly measured 2-D and 3-D data (e.g., images), one of the main problems usually is referencing these images. For the
Principal curves with bounded turn

Principal curves, like principal components, are a tool used in multivariate analysis for ends like feature extraction. Defined in their original form, principal curves need not exist for general distributions. The existence of principal curves with bounded length and a learning algorithm for such curves for any distribution that satisfies some minimal regularity conditions has been shown. We define principal curves with bounded turn, show that they exist, and present a learning algorithm for them.