Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MRI should be routine for all patients with localized prostate cancer? | Opinion: Yes

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been used for staging prostate cancer (PCa) since the 1990’s, more precisely after the advent of the endorectal coil, which enabled signi-ficant improvement in the quality of the examination. Also, the standardization of prostate MRI with multiparametric sequences (including high resolution T2-weighted, diffusion and dynamic contrast-enhanced or perfusion images), together with the progressive learning curve by uro-radiologists, contributed to include the method definitively in the list of available pro-cedures for staging prostate cancer (1). The accuracy of multiparametric MRI (mpMRI) is greater than that of other isolated clinical, laboratory and imaging methods available, with specificities around 85% for detec-tion of extracapsular extension and seminal vesicle invasion (2). Moreover, the incremental value of MRI has been validated around a decade ago in three articles by the interdisciplinary group of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, demonstrating that the addition of MRI to the commonly used clinical nomograms significantly increases the accuracy for prediction of organ-confined disease, extracapsular extension and seminal vesicle invasion (3-5). The indication and acceptance of mpMRI for prostate cancer staging increased after the development and clinical use of 3 Tesla (T) scanners (which have twice the magnet field strength in comparison to more common 1.5 T scanners), allowing the achievement of multi-parametric studies of the prostate without the need for an endorectal coil, with the same reso-lution and image quality as compared to the studies on 1.5 T scanners with endorectal coil (6). On the other hand, performing mpMRI for staging of PCa after the biopsy has some limitations. First, a recent meta-analysis with a very large number of studies and patients, eva-luating the performance of MRI for local staging of disease, showed high specificities (88-96%) but low sensitivities (57-61%), considering that microscopic infiltration of the capsule or se-minal vesicles might be undetectable even with state-of-the-art equipments and protocols (7). Also, there must be a minimum interval of three weeks between prostate biopsy and MRI, to minimize bleeding artifacts that impair the interpretation of the study (8). Finally, it is arguable that very-low and low risk tumors would not benefit from a staging mpMRI, since the chance of extraprostatic disease is small (9). In this decade, a new and promising application for MRI has emerged: by using stan-dardized interpretation and reporting systems (like PI-RADS and Likert), mpMRI can be used as an additional screening tool to stratify the risk for prostate cancer. mpMRI has the ability
Free Radical Scavenging and Antimicrobial Activities of Some Geranium Species

There are 35 Geranium (Geraniaceae) species recorded in the Flora of Turkey1,2. Some Geranium (Geraniaceae) species are used as antidiabetic, hemostatic, antihemorrhoidal, antidiarrheic and for the treatment of pain, fevers and gastrointestinal ailments3. Leaves of some Geranium species are consumed as food in Anatolia4. Furthermore, tubers of G. tuberosum in Erzurum and aerial parts of G. purpureum in Kocaeli are used as vegetable4,5. Plants from the genus Geranium are known to contain flavonoids6,7, tannins7,8, lignans9 and essential oils10. Recent papers reported that flavonoids and tannins isolated from this genus have different biological activities such as antileishmanial7, antiinflammatory11, antiprotozoal12, antiinfluenza13 antioxidant 6,8,14, antiproliferative14. Phytochemical investigations on G. tuberosum subsp. tuberosum and G. lasiopus resulted in the isolation of flavonoids, simple phenolic compounds and tannins15,16 in our laboratory. In the present study, antimicrobial and antioxidant activities of Geranium tuberosum L. subsp. tuberosum, G. purpureum Vill. and G. lasiopus Boiss&Heldr. are investigated. In order to evaluate the possible efficacy of antioxidant
Overview of 3D Reconstruction Methods Based on Multi-view

3D reconstruction based on multi-view is a hot research topic in computer vision due to more information and wide scope of the view of multiple views. Feature detection and matching, fundamental matrix estimation, camera self-calibration, 3D reconstruction and dense surface reconstruction are key proportions of 3D reconstruction. This paper summarizes the main algorithms in these parts, analyses and compares merits and drawbacks of the methods. The aim is to provide a concise, complete understanding of the subject so that the researchers in this field can have a holistic view of the problem and provide more efficient and unique solutions in the future.
Design of Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model based sliding mode controllers for nonlinear systems

A novel sliding mode controller based on Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model is designed for a class of nonlinear systems to tackle the nonlinear control problems with modelling uncertainties, time varying parameter fluctuations and external disturbances. A numerical example is simulated to verify the performances of the proposed control strategy, and the simulation results show that the controller designed is more effective than the conventional sliding mode controller in enhancing the robustness of control systems with high accuracy.
Where do we stand?

Make more knowledge even in less time every day. You may not always spend your time and money to go abroad and get the experience and knowledge by yourself. Reading is a good alternative to do in getting this desirable knowledge and experience. You may gain many things from experiencing directly, but of course it will spend much money. So here, by reading where do we stand, you can take more advantages with limited budget.
A Study of the Evolution of High-End Wines in Switzerland

In this paper, we analyze the evolution of fine wine prices over the period 2000-2010 on the Swiss market. We first estimate a fine wine index with several sub-indices (e.g. Bordeaux index, First growth index) using hand-collected hammer prices from Steinfels – the leading wine auction house in Switzerland. We then study the evolution of these wine indices. Not surprisingly, we find that high-end wines have achieved impressive returns over the last decade, with first growths from the Medoc being the very best performers. They have significantly outperformed Swiss stocks whilst maintaining a weak correlation with traditional asset classes like equities and bonds. These results confirm previous evidence that fine wine can be considered as an appealing alternative investment vehicle.
THE HEDGING EFFECTIVENESS OF DRY-BULK FREIGHT RATE FUTURES

Four years have passed since freight rate futures began trading on the London-based Baltic International Freight Futures Exchange (BIF-FEX) on May 1, 1985. This paper first explains the concept of freight rate futures, next presents a research method for determining the effectiveness of futures hedging, and then analyzes the empirical findings
Co-Registering Kinematics and Evoked Related Potentials during Visually Guided Reach-to-Grasp Movements

Background In non-human primates grasp-related sensorimotor transformations are accomplished in a circuit involving the anterior intraparietal sulcus (area AIP) and both the ventral and the dorsal sectors of the premotor cortex (vPMC and dPMC, respectively). Although a human homologue of such a circuit has been identified, the time course of activation of these cortical areas and how such activity relates to specific kinematic events has yet to be investigated. Methodology/Principal Findings We combined kinematic and event-related potential techniques to explicitly test how activity within human grasping-related brain areas is modulated in time. Subjects were requested to reach towards and grasp either a small stimulus using a precision grip (i.e., the opposition of index finger and thumb) or a large stimulus using a whole hand grasp (i.e., the flexion of all digits around the stimulus). Results revealed a time course of activation starting at the level of parietal regions and continuing at the level of premotor regions. More specifically, we show that activity within these regions was tuned for specific grasps well before movement onset and this early tuning was carried over - as evidenced by kinematic analysis - during the preshaping period of the task. Conclusions/Significance Data are discussed in terms of recent findings showing a marked differentiation across different grasps during premovement phases which was carried over into subsequent movement phases. These findings offer a substantial contribution to the current debate about the nature of the sensorimotor transformations underlying grasping. And provide new insights into the detailed movement information contained in the human preparatory activity for specific hand movements.
Architectural issues in mobile augmented reality systems: a prototyping case study

Augmented Reality (AR), mobile computing, and ubiquitous computing have each individually provided technology enablers for new types of applications. Researchers have demonstrated over the years spectacular toy systems that fire researchers' imaginations. However, cross-fertilization between these areas has only just begun. Combining these technology enablers into robust information systems that can be used in the field present many software engineering challenges that have not been taken into account by the toy systems mentioned above. In this paper, we report our efforts at TU Munich to analyze information generation, retrieval, transmission, and visualization in the context of maintenance procedures in nuclear powerplants. The use of AR to present such information online has significant implications on the overall system architecture. This paper focuses on pointing out open questions, discussing options for addressing them, and evaluating them in prototypical implementations.
Analysis of an outbreak of Salmonella enteritidis by repetitive-sequence-based PCR and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to investigate a large food-borne outbreak associated with eggs contaminated by Salmonella Enteritidis in a military unit using pulse field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and the Repetitive-sequence-based PCR (rep-PCR) employing the DiversiLab system. MATERIALS AND METHODS In mid-January 2008, a food-borne outbreak associated with S. Enteritidis occurred in a military unit located in the city centre of Isparta. A total of 2,469 patients were registered to six hospitals with gastrointestinal disease symptoms such as diarrhea and abdominal pain. Of those registered, 445 were hospitalized. S. Enteritidis was isolated from 276 stool samples and a blood sample of the hospitalized patients and from a food item. The PFGE patterns after XbaI digestion and rep-PCR profiles produced by the DiversiLab system were determined for eight randomly selected stool isolates, one blood isolate and one food isolate. RESULTS The PFGE patterns of all isolates were identical. The Rep-PCR profiles produced by using the DiversiLab system showed that all isolates were indistinguishable. The PFGE and rep-PCR interpretations were concordant for the S. Enteritidis isolates. All stool isolates, one blood isolate and one food isolate were susceptible to all antibiotics tested. CONCLUSION This data suggest that the DiversiLab system may be a reasonable alternative to PFGE for investigation and control of S. Enteritidis outbreaks, since it is easy to use, rapid and does not require highly skilled operators.
Power Allocation for Bidirectional AF Relaying with Direct Link over Rayleigh Fading Environment

This paper investigates bidirectional relaying with direct link, where two sources exchange data via a relay node using an amplify-and-forward (AF) protocol. Two power allocation strategies are proposed under Rayleigh fading channels. One scheme aims to improve average sum-rate and the other is to decrease sum-symbol error rate (SER). Numerical results have indicated significant performance gain over the equal power allocation.
A Scalable Capstone Course for Academic Preparation

Computer science departments at research universities face on-going challenges in providing a top-quality education at a reasonable cost to large numbers of students. Moreover, students, both undergraduate and graduate, are in need of more preparation to possibly continue their academic careers at the next level as both researchers and teachers. This paper considers the opportunity to adapt a capstone design course to meet these interwoven needs. The key idea is to employ a “hierarchy of learners” education approach, which puts all participants—undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty— in the dual roles of learners and teachers, thus preparing them for the next step in their careers. Such a course design is motivated and two variants of its implementation are discussed and evaluated, with recommendations for further improvements in scalable academic capstone in computer science.
Identifying interdependencies using attack graph generation methods

Information and communication technologies have augmented interoperability and rapidly advanced varying industries, with vast complex interconnected networks being formed in areas such as safety-critical systems, which can be further categorised as critical infrastructures. What also must be considered is the paradigm of the Internet of Things which is rapidly gaining prevalence within the field of wireless communications, being incorporated into areas such as e-health and automation for industrial manufacturing. As critical infrastructures and the Internet of Things begin to integrate into much wider networks, their reliance upon communication assets by third parties to ensure collaboration and control of their systems will significantly increase, along with system complexity and the requirement for improved security metrics. We present a critical analysis of the risk assessment methods developed for generating attack graphs. The failings of these existing schemas include the inability to accurately identify the relationships and interdependencies between the risks and the reduction of attack graph size and generation complexity. Many existing methods also fail due to the heavy reliance upon the input, identification of vulnerabilities, and analysis of results by human intervention. Conveying our work, we outline our approach to modelling interdependencies within large heterogeneous collaborative infrastructures, proposing a distributed schema which utilises network modelling and attack graph generation methods, to provide a means for vulnerabilities, exploits and conditions to be represented within a unified model.
Evaluation of Replica Placement and Retrieval Algorithms in Self-Organizing CDNs

Content distribution networks (CDN) have been increasingly used as the scalable solution to deliver high-quality multimedia content. However, despite the promising concept, current self-organizing content distribution networks (using realtime replica placement) lack placement and retrieval algorithms that are both intelligent and scalable. In this paper we present an architecture and relating algorithms for such a scalable, selfoptimizing content delivery service. Contrary to distributed and centralized CDN architectures, we propose a hybrid approach. In order to tackle specific problems such as congested network parts and the occurrence of flash crowds, network monitoring and multi-source traffic engineering are combined.
A nanobody-based toolset to investigate the role of protein localization and dispersal in Drosophila

Investigating the role of protein localization is crucial to understand protein function in cells or tissues. However, in many cases the role of different subcellular fractions of given proteins along the apical-basal axis of polarized cells has not been investigated in vivo, partially due to lack of suitable tools. Here, we present the GrabFP system, a nanobody-based toolbox to modify the localization and the dispersal of GFP-tagged proteins along the apical-basal axis of polarized cells. We show that the GrabFP system is an effective and easy-to-implement tool to mislocalize cytosolic and transmembrane GFP-tagged proteins and thereby functionally investigate protein localization along the apical-basal axis. We use the GrabFP system as a tool to study the extracellular dispersal of the Decapentaplegic (Dpp) protein and show that the Dpp gradient forming in the lateral plane of the Drosophila wing disc epithelium is essential for patterning of the wing imaginal disc.
Long-lasting amelioration of visuospatial neglect by prism adaptation.

It has been shown that unilateral left neglect can be significantly improved for a short time after a short period of adaptation to a prismatic shift of the visual field to the right. In neuropsychological studies, however, there is no evidence demonstrating long-lasting effects following treatment by prism adaptation (PA). The first aim of the present study was to find out whether the short-term amelioration found after prismatic adaptation could be converted into long-term therapeutic improvement. Secondly, we investigated whether the improvement of neglect in standard tests could be generalized to ecological visuospatial tests. Thirdly, the effects of prism adaptation on different spatial domains (far, near and personal space) were evaluated. Fourthly, the influence of PA on high-order visuospatial functions, such as spatial representation, and on a low-order factor, i.e. sensory--motor bias, was investigated. Finally, we investigated the possible correlation between neglect amelioration, the adaptation effect and the visuomotor after-effect, as assessed by a pointing task during and after PA. Seven patients with right hemisphere lesion and left visuospatial neglect were treated with prismatic lenses in twice-daily sessions over a period of 2 weeks. In each training session, patients were required to perform a pointing task wearing base-left wedge prisms inducing a shift of the visual field to the right by 10. The presence of visual neglect and the duration of the amelioration achieved were assessed before the treatment and 2 days, 1 week and 5 weeks after treatment by using a standardized battery that included a series of behavioural and ecological visuospatial tests. Six control, untreated patients, matched to the experimental group for gravity and duration of illness, were submitted to the same tests at the same intervals as the experimental patients. The results showed an improvement in the experimental patients' performance after PA, which was maintained during the 5-week period after treatment. The amelioration of neglect was found in standard as well as in behavioural tests and in all spatial domains. In contrast, control patients did not show any improvement in neglect. The amelioration of neglect occurred only in patients who showed the adaptation effect and the after-effect in the pointing task. Neglect amelioration did not occur in one patient who did not show the adaptation effect and had an unstable after-effect. In conclusion, these findings show that prism adaptation is a productive way of achieving long-lasting improvements in neglect treatment.
Toward Understanding Solution-Guided Multi-Point Constructive Search for CSPs

Solution-Guided Multi-Point Constructive Search (SGMPCS) is a complete, constructive search technique that has been shown to out-perform standard constructive search techniques on a number of constraint optimization and constraint satisfaction problems. In this paper, we perform a case study of the application of SGMPCS to a constraint satisfaction model of the multi-dimensional knapsack problem. We show that SGMPCS performs poorly. We then develop a descriptive model of its performance using fitness-distance analysis. It is demonstrated that SGMPCS search performance is partially dependent upon the correlation between the heuristic evaluation of the guiding solutions and their distance to the nearest satisfying solution. This is the first work to develop a descriptive model of SGMPCS search behaviour. The descriptive model points to a clear direction in improving the performance of constructive search for constraint satisfaction problems: the development of heuristic evaluations for partial solutions.
Logical time in distributed computing systems

The partial ordering of events as defined by their causal relationships, that is, the ability of one event to directly, or transitively, affect another is defined. Its generalized and practical implementations in terms of partially ordered logical clocks are described. Such clocks can provide a decentralized definition of time for distributed computing systems, which lack a common time base. In their full generality, partially ordered logical clocks may be impractically expensive for long-lived computations. Several possible optimizations, depending on the application environment in which the clocks will be used, are described. Some applications are summarized. <<ETX>>
Fixed-time consensus of multiple double-integrator systems under directed topologies: A motion-planning approach

This paper investigates the fixed-time consensus problem under directed topologies. By using a motion-planning approach, a class of distributed fixed-time algorithms are developed for a multi-agent system with double-integrator dynamics. In the context of the fixed-time consensus, we focus on both directed fixed and switching topologies. Under the directed fixed topology, a novel class of distributed algorithms are designed, which guarantee the consensus of the multi-agent system with a fixed settling time if the topology has a directed spanning tree. Under the directed periodically switching topologies, the fixedtime consensus is solved via the proposed algorithms if the topologies jointly have a directed spanning tree. In particular, the fixed settling time can be off-line pre-assigned according to task requirements. Compared with the existing results, to our best knowledge, it is the first time to solve the fixed-time consensus problem for double-integrator systems under directed topologies. Finally, a numerical example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the analytical results.
BAR: Bandwidth-aware opportunistic localized-routing for cognitive radio networks

In this paper, we propose the bandwidth-aware localized-routing that can sense the available spectrum bands within two-hop neighboring for choosing the highly opportunistic routes. Based on the mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) and through our proposed algorithm, we can determine the maximum of minimization bandwidth possible of links pairs through bandwidth approximation of relaxed variables, leading to reduce the computational complexity in the network. This allows selected routes corresponding to maximize bandwidths possible between CR users, which are based on behaviors of primary services, can be utilized the links pairs effectively. Simulation results show the efficiency of our proposed algorithm in CRNs.
Astrometric CCD observations of the inner Jovian satellites in 1999-2000

This paper presents the results of observations of the inner Jovian satellites Thebe, Amalthea, Adrastea and Metis made in October–November 1999 and in November 2000. We provide $\Delta\alpha$ and $\Delta\delta$ of Thebe and Amalthea with respect to the Galilean satellites, while the positions of Adrastea and Metis are referred to either the Galilean moons or to Thebe or to Amalthea. All observed positions are compared with theoretical ones. Residual statistics show an inner accuracy of our observations in the range from about 0.1 to 0.9 arcsec. The dependence of the differences of the observed and calculated positions on the orbital longitude is presented for our observations of Adrastea and Metis.