Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Novel Treatment Regimen for BK Viremia

Background BK viremia, a prerequisite for BK virus nephropathy (BKVN), affects 5% to 16% of pediatric renal transplant recipients (PRTR). We evaluated the safety and efficacy of a novel approach to treating BK viremia using fluoroquinolones and leflunomide in PRTR. Methods We studied 230 PRTR at Mattel Children’s Hospital, UCLA, who underwent renal transplantation between January 2003 and October 2010. Nineteen patients were found to have BK viremia. Ciprofloxacin was started when the BK viral load was greater than 625 copies/mL, and patients were switched to leflunomide if BK viral load did not decrease after 2 months of ciprofloxacin therapy. All patients underwent transplant kidney biopsy, and their estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and BK PCR was measured serially. The side effects of ciprofloxacin and leflunomide were recorded in each patient. Results There was a significant decrease in BK viral load in patients treated with ciprofloxacin and leflunomide (P<0.001) with only a small reduction in immunosuppression. BK viremia was associated with a significantly decreased eGFR (P<0.001), and treatment with ciprofloxacin and leflunomide was associated with improved eGFR (P<0.001). This approach resulted in a BKVN rate of only 1%. Conclusions This analysis demonstrates for the first time that, used in a stepwise fashion, ciprofloxacin and leflunomide are effective and safe treatments for BK viremia in PRTR.
Object Detection in Video using Faster R-CNN

Convolutional neural networks (CNN) currently dominate the computer vision landscape. Recently, a CNN based model, Faster R-CNN [1], achieved state-of-the-art performance at object detection on the PASCAL VOC 2007 and 2012 datasets. It combines region proposal generation with object detection on a single frame in less than 200ms. We apply the Faster R-CNN model to video clips from the ImageNet 2015 Object Detection from Video challenge [2]. By leveraging additional temporal information from the video, we ranked 3 rd place in terms of mean average precision. This work is being presented as a poster at the ICCV 2015 ImageNet and MS COCO Visual Recognition Challenges Joint Workshop.
Exact Expected Average Precision of the Random Baseline for System Evaluation

Abstract Average precision (AP) is one of the most widely used metrics in information retrieval and natural language processing research. It is usually thought that the expected AP of a system that ranks documents randomly is equal to the proportion of relevant documents in the collection. This paper shows that this value is only approximate, and provides a procedure for efficiently computing the exact value. An analysis of the difference between the approximate and the exact value shows that the discrepancy is large when the collection contains few documents, but becomes very small when it contains at least 600 documents.
An integrated view of Grid services, Agents and Human Learning

The contribution reports on three aspects of our research activities on Grid services, Agents and Human learning: an integrated vision, a statement of intentions concerning a relatively new life cycle for Service Engineering and a review of achieved results, presented by embedding remarks and quotations in the relevant points. The essence of the contribution lies in the concept of service that is considered to be intrinsically conversational both during its dynamic definition and during its delivery. It is shown that Agents are the most promising abstractions (and technologies) offering a concrete approximation for future conversational Grid services and that Human learning is a quite suitable context for including the Human in the loop of the higher level services to be developed for mixed Virtual Organizations on future Grid networks.
Tidal excitation of hydromagnetic waves and their damping in the Earth

We examine the possibility that the Earth's outer core, as a tidally distorted fluid-filled rotating spheroid, may be the seat of an elliptical instability. The instability mechanism is described within the framework of a simple Earth-like model. The preferred forms of wave disturbance are explored and a likely growth rate supremum deduced. Estimates are made of the Ohmic and viscous decay rates of such hydromagnetic waves in the outer core. Rather than a conclusive disparity of scales, we find that typical elliptical growth rates, Ohmic decay rates and viscous decay rates all have the same order for plausible core fields and core-to-mantle conductivities. This study is all the more timely considering the recent realization that the Earth's precession may also drive similar instabilities at comparable strengths in the outer core.
Multiscale modelling of nanomechanics and micromechanics: an overview

Recent advances in analytical and computational modelling frameworks to describe the mechanics of materials on scales ranging from the atomistic, through the microstructure or transitional, and up to the continuum are reviewed. It is shown that multiscale modelling of materials approaches relies on a systematic reduction in the degrees of freedom on the natural length scales that can be identified in the material. Connections between such scales are currently achieved either by a parametrization or by a ‘zoom-out’ or ‘coarse-graining’ procedure. Issues related to the links between the atomistic scale, nanoscale, microscale and macroscale are discussed, and the parameters required for the information to be transferred between one scale and an upper scale are identified. It is also shown that seamless coupling between length scales has not yet been achieved as a result of two main challenges: firstly, the computational complexity of seamlessly coupled simulations via the coarse-graining approach and, secondly, the inherent difficulty in dealing with system evolution stemming from time scaling, which does not permit coarse graining over temporal events. Starting from the Born–Oppenheimer adiabatic approximation, the problem of solving quantum mechanics equations of motion is first reviewed, with successful applications in the mechanics of nanosystems. Atomic simulation methods (e.g. molecular dynamics, Langevin dynamics and the kinetic Monte Carlo method) and their applications at the nanoscale are then discussed. The role played by dislocation dynamics and statistical mechanics methods in understanding microstructure self-organization, heterogeneous plastic deformation, material instabilities and failure phenomena is also discussed. Finally, we review the main continuum-mechanics-based framework used today to describe the nonlinear deformation behaviour of materials at the local (e.g. single phase or grain level) and macroscopic (e.g. polycrystal) scales. Emphasis is placed on recent progress made in crystal plasticity, strain gradient plasticity and homogenization techniques to link deformation phenomena simultaneously occurring at different scales in the material microstructure with its macroscopic behaviour. In view of this wide range of descriptions of material phenomena involved, the main theoretical and computational difficulties and challenges are critically assessed.
The Characteristics of Abused Women in the Caseload of a Child Protection Service 1

This study identifies case characteristics of abused women in a child protection services caseload. The sample was drawn from a large child protection agency in southwestern Ontario consisting of 853 children chosen at random from among all children who had a new referral over a 12-month period. Files of the children were reviewed to derive study data. Results indicate that abused women are significantly more likely to have mental and physical health problem characteristics such as substance abuse, mental illness, impaired mental/emotional/intellectual capacity to care for the child, and a chronic medical condition compared to non-abused women. Abused women are more likely to rely on social assistance, be unemployed, less likely to cope effectively with family stress, and less likely to have the availability of reliable and useful social supports in place compared to non-abused women. Abused women are more likely to have been abused and neglected as children and more likely to have been involved with child protection services as children than are women who were not abused. Children of abused women are more likely to be currently in the care of child protection authorities than are the children of women who are not abused. Surprisingly, violence perpetrated by the mother towards their child and the severity of child abuse/neglect inflicted by the mother does not differ for children of abused and non-abused women. These findings are discussed in relation to their implications for understanding woman abuse in the context of child protection services.
In Vitro Antibacterial Activity of three Indian Spices Against Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

OBJECTIVE To explore the in vitro antibacterial activity of ethanolic extracts of cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum; CIN), clove (Syzygium aromaticum, CLV) and cumin (Cuminum cyminum, CMN) against clinical isolates of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), from Kolkata, India. METHODS The CIN, CLV and CMN were tested for their antibacterial activity against MRSA by in vitro methods. Minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values of the three extracts were determined, and time-kill studies were performed in order to investigate the bactericidal activity of the extracts (at the MIC level) for the isolates. The killing efficacy of the extracts was determined at various concentrations. RESULTS The zone diameter of inhibition (ZDI) obtained due to CIN, CLV and CMN ranged between 22-27 mm, 19-23 mm and 9-15 mm, respectively; while the MICs, for the isolates, were in the range of 64-256, 64-512 and 128-512 µg/ml, respectively. When tested for their MIC levels; the CIN and CLV were found to be bactericidal after 6 hrs of incubation, while CMN showed bactericidal activity after 24 hrs. However, when tested at various concentrations; CIN, CLV and CMN displayed bactericidal activity against S. aureus, after 24 hrs of incubation, at 200, 200 and 300 µg/ml, respectively. CONCLUSION The C. zeylanicum and S. aromaticum showed the strongest in vitro antibacterial activity followed by C. cyminum against MRSA, and such findings could be considered a valuable support in the treatment of infection and may contribute to the development of potential antimicrobial agents for inclusion in anti- S. aureus regimens.
Classifying voice quality via pitch and spectral analysis

This study discusses the implementation of a digital signal processing computerised application which is specifically designed to measure and classify aberrant voice quality in the context of the Frenchay Dysarthria Assessment (FDA) diagnostic test series. It has been observed that subjective evaluations of voice quality -- particularly when performed by inexperienced clinicians -- can occasionally be inconsistent and such inconsistency may result in an inaccurate diagnosis of a dysarthric condition. It is demonstrated that the newly developed computerised application will accurately and consistently identify two types of pathological voice quality -- hoarseness and breathiness -- via the use of spectral analysis techniques to detect abnormal energy distributions in the audio signal. When a collection of digital audio recordings (featuring a variety of both aberrant and normal voice samples) were evaluated by both the application and an expert panel of clinicians, the application's classification results evidenced an overall correlation of 0.86 with those of the expert clinicians; this strong correlation reinforces the validity and reliability of the objective voice quality evaluation procedures developed during the course of this investigation.
A GIS-based Local Spatial Autocorrelation for Drought Risk Assessment in Arid and Semi-Arid Environments: a Case Study in Ejin Oasis, Western China

Drought risk assessment is an important issue of environmental monitoring and assessment in arid environments. Using remote sensing and GIS techniques, this study quantified cumulative vegetative and hydrological drought risks in Ejin Oasis, western China. Analyses of spatial distributions in drought are often influenced by spatial autocorrelation. The use of the Getis statistic (Gi*) provides insights on the spatial relationships of land cover changes to drought risk assessment. Specially, the location of significant Gi* values identified areas where the differences in cumulative vegetative and hydrological drought risks occur and are spatially clustered. Analyzing the local spatial autocorrelation of the differences between vegetative and hydrological drought risks identified those areas that have systematic sensitivity to areas of high drought risk. This information may then be used to map the high drought risk areas and help governments to improve the use of local water resources.
Replication of HIV-1 in Dendritic Cell-Derived Syncytia at the Mucosal Surface of the Adenoid

Human immunodeficiency virus-type 1 (HIV-1) replicates actively in infected individuals, yet cells with intracellular depots of viral protein are observed only infrequently. Many cells expressing the HIV-1 Gag protein were detected at the surface of the nasopharyngeal tonsil or adenoid. This infected mucosal surface contained T cells and dendritic cells, two cell types that together support HIV-1 replication in culture. The infected cells were multinucleated syncytia and expressed the S100 and p55 dendritic cell markers. Eleven of the 13 specimens analyzed were from donors who did not have symptoms of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). The interaction of dendritic cells and T cells in mucosa may support HIV-1 replication, even in subclinical stages of infection.
Establishing a tight bound on task interference in embedded system instruction caches

To help meet the increasing performance demands of embedded applications, caches are utilized in some embedded systems. However, caches are problematic in real-time systems because they may cause a task's execution time to be uncertain, making a tight worst-case time-bound difficult to achieve. To simplify an execution time analysis, conservative assumptions are often made that may waste system capability or lead to an unnecessarily costly system. Efficient system design requires methods to tightly bound the effect of complex cache behavior.This paper presents methods that bound the effect of sharing an instruction cache among multiple tasks. If an application is interrupted, the intervening task often changes cache state - so the application experiences degraded performance when it resumes. Techniques that tightly bound this effect are the goal of this paper.Our methodology uses the concept of a "live cache frame," a cache frame that contains a block that is accessed in the future and without an intervening eviction. An intervening task delays the completion of an application both by its execution time and by evicting blocks from the application's live frames (LRU status changes have a secondary effect). Only these evictions cause future misses that would not otherwise occur. The maximum number of live frames coexistent during the execution of an application bound such misses, independent of intervening tasks. This is central to one method presented. We also present methods that exploit knowledge of the character of an intervening task to achieve a tighter bound when possible.
Pose Normalization Based on Rotation Transformation

In this paper, we propose an algorithm to calculate pose normalization for 3D mesh models based on an analysis about rotation transformation in the theory of analytic geometry. The method first evaluates an angle and an axis for rotation transformation of each triangle in model. Then, optimal rotating axis and angle are calculated by using probability theory for the whole model and a global rotation matrix is consequently constructed. Finally global rotation transformation defined by the matrix can be obtained and used to transform the model to normalized pose. The experimental results show that our algorithm can calculate pose estimations of models efficiently and automatically.
Assessment in the post-psychometric era: Learning to love the subjective and collective

Since the 1970s, assessment of competence in the health professions has been dominated by a discourse of psychometrics that emphasizes the conversion of human behaviors to numbers and prioritizes high-stakes, point-in-time sampling, and standardization. There are many advantages to this approach, including increased fairness to test takers; however, some limitations of overemphasis on this paradigm are evident. Further, two shifts are underway that have significant consequences for assessment. First, as clinical practice becomes more interprofessional and team-based, the locus of competence is shifting from individuals to teams. Second, expensive, high-stakes final examinations are not well suited for longitudinal assessment in workplaces. The result is a need to consider assessment methods that are subjective and collective.
2D Affine and Projective Shape Analysis

Current techniques for shape analysis tend to seek invariance to similarity transformations (rotation, translation, and scale), but certain imaging situations require invariance to larger groups, such as affine or projective groups. Here we present a general Riemannian framework for shape analysis of planar objects where metrics and related quantities are invariant to affine and projective groups. Highlighting two possibilities for representing object boundaries-ordered points (or landmarks) and parameterized curves-we study different combinations of these representations (points and curves) and transformations (affine and projective). Specifically, we provide solutions to three out of four situations and develop algorithms for computing geodesics and intrinsic sample statistics, leading up to Gaussian-type statistical models, and classifying test shapes using such models learned from training data. In the case of parameterized curves, we also achieve the desired goal of invariance to re-parameterizations. The geodesics are constructed by particularizing the path-straightening algorithm to geometries of current manifolds and are used, in turn, to compute shape statistics and Gaussian-type shape models. We demonstrate these ideas using a number of examples from shape and activity recognition.
Increased Positive Selection of B1 Cells and Reduced B Cell Tolerance to Intracellular Antigens in c1q-Deficient Mice1

Inherited deficiency of early components of the classical complement pathway is strongly associated with the targeting of intracellular self Ags in systemic lupus erythematosus, but the reasons for this association are debated. In this study, we show that C1q deficiency increases the positive selection of B1b B cells and IgM autoantibodies by an intracellular self Ag, which is exposed on dying cells, and decreases the negative selection of autoreactive conventional B cells by the same Ag. These effects are specific to intracellular Ag because C1q deficiency does not affect negative selection by extracellular self Ag or increase the positive selection of naive B cells. The B1-derived IgM autoantibody binds to the intracellular Ag when it is expressed on dying cells, leading to fixation of C1q and clearance of cells by phagocytosis. These findings suggest that the positive selection of autoreactive B1 cells by self Ags may contribute to the IgM and C1q-dependent clearance of dying cells in a feedback loop that limits exposure of conventional B cells to immunogenic self Ags. We show that exposure of intracellular Ag leads to the activation of conventional B cells, when there is a source of T cell help in vivo.
A proposed FPGA-based parallel architecture for matrix multiplication

Matrix multiplication is a computation intensive operation and plays an important role in many scientific and engineering applications. For high performance applications, this operation must be realized in hardware. This paper presents a parallel architecture for the multiplication of two matrices using field programmable gate array (FPGA). The proposed architecture employs advanced design techniques and exploits architectural features of FPGA. Results show that it provides performance improvements over previously reported hardware implementation. FPGA implementation results are presented and discussed.
Differential in Vivo Regulation of the Pituitary Growth Hormone-Releasing Hormone (GHRH) Receptor by GHRH in Young and Aged Rats.

In aging, alterations of pituitary GH-releasing hormone (GHRH) receptor (GHRH-R)-binding sites have been proposed as one of the initiating factors contributing to the loss of somatotroph responsiveness to GHRH. Changes in the characteristics and/or concentration of the functional GHRH-R could take place in the course of aging and reduce the sensitivity of the somatotroph axis to GHRH. Because chronic exposure to GHRH has been proposed to resensitize aged somatotroph cells, better knowledge of its effects on the regulation of the somatotroph axis is required, particularly at the level of GHRH-R. Two- and 18-month-old male Sprague Dawley rats were treated for 14 days with a daily s.c. injection of 0.5 or 1.0 mg/kg BW human GHRH-(1-29)NH2 or saline. In 2-month-old rats, treatment with 0.5 mg/kg GHRH increased the number of high affinity pituitary GHRH-R-binding sites by 2-fold (P < 0.05) and hypothalamic somatostatin (SRIF) content by 45% (P < 0.05). It did not affect hypothalamic GHRH content, serum total insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I), or body weight gain. Treatment with 1.0 mg/kg GHRH decreased the number of high affinity pituitary GHRH-R-binding sites by 2.4-fold compared with that in rats treated with 0.5 mg/kg BW (P < 0.05) and increased hypothalamic SRIF content by 45% (P < 0.05), but did not affect GHRH content. It also decreased circulating levels of IGF-I by 13% (P < 0.05) and slowed the growth rate by 17% (P < 0.05). In 18-month-old rats, treatment with 0.5 mg/kg GHRH for 14 days was not sufficient to rejuvenate pituitary GHRH binding parameters. However, treatment with 1.0 mg/kg GHRH restored the affinities of high and low affinity classes of GHRH-binding sites to values similar to those found in 2-month-old rats. Binding capacities of the high and low affinity classes of sites were increased by 1.8- and 3-fold, respectively, although significance was only reached for the low affinity site (P < 0.05). These changes were associated with a normalization of the level of 2.5-kb GHRH-R messenger RNA transcript, which was decreased by 31% in aging rats (P < 0.05), and by a trend for an increase in the 4-kb GHRH-R messenger RNA transcript, which was already increased by 49% in 18-month-old rats (P < 0.05). A normalization of serum IGF-I levels, which were decreased by 11% in 18-month-old control rats (P < 0.01), was also observed. No treatment effect was detected on body weight or hypothalamic SRIF and GHRH contents. We conclude that a 14-day administration of GHRH induces a differential GHRH-R-mediated regulation at the level of the pituitary and probably the hypothalamus as a function of age.