Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A survey of architectures and scenarios in satellite‐based wireless sensor networks: system design aspects

This paper is not a survey related to generic wireless sensor networks (WSNs), which have been largely treated in a number of survey papers addressing more focused issues; rather, it specifically addresses architectural aspects related to WSNs in some way connected with a satellite link, a topic that presents challenging interworking aspects. The main objective is to provide an overview of the potential role of a satellite segment in future WSNs. In this perspective, requirements of the most meaningful WSN applications have been drawn and matched to characteristics of various satellite/space systems in order to identify suitable integrated configurations. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A Hybridized Vector Optimal Algorithm for Multiobjective Designs of Inverse Problems

Problem with multiple objectives is a natural fashion in most disciplines of the real world, and multi-objective evolutionary algorithm is a technique which has a challenge of achieving a series of best solutions with respect to fitness and spread. In this regard, it is essential to keep the balance of local and global search abilities. Quantum-behaved Particle Swarm Optimization (QPSO) is a population-based swarm intelligence algorithm, and Differential Evolutionary (DE) is another simple population based stochastic search method for global optimization with real valued parameters. Although the two techniques have been successfully employed to solve a wide range of problems, they also suffer from the premature convergence and the lack of diversity in the latter searching stages. This is probably due to the insufficient dimensional searching strength, especially for multi-objective optimization problems with many decision parameters. In this study, a new multi-objective non-dominated optimization methodology combining QPSO, DE and Tabu search algorithm (QPSO-DET) is proposed to guarantee the balance between the local and global searches. The performances of the proposed QPSO-DET are compared with those of other two widely recognized vector optimizers using different case studies.
Retrospective Analysis on the Use of Amphotericin B Lipid Complex in Neutropenic Cancer Patients with Suspected Fungal Infections in Lebanon, a Single Center Experience and Review of International Guidelines

Introduction Immunocompromised patients carry a high risk for invasive fungal disease (IFD), which is associated with high mortality. Materials and methods This is a retrospective chart review of a 4-year experience of amphotericin B lipid complex (ABLC) utilization for the management of suspected IFD at the Hematology/Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplantation unit at Makassed General Hospital, Beirut, Lebanon between January 2011 and December 2014. We focused on treatment strategy, response rate, and adverse drug events associated with ABLC therapy. We also reviewed ABLC indications in international guidelines beyond its Food and Drug Administration approval. Results A total of 89 patients received ABLC therapy for suspected fungal infection. Forty-eight percent were treated for a possible fungal infection, 19% for a problable fungal infection, 12% based on hospital guidelines, and 20% based on treating physician’s recommendations. The overall response rate was 71%. Nephrotoxicity occurred in 24% of patients and serum creatinine improved in 10% of these patients. Moderate hypokalemia was observed in 61% of the patients and severe hypokalemia in 10% but was corrected in both cases. Hepatotoxicity was observed in 12% of the patients throughout ABLC therapy. Infusion-related reactions were observed in 36% of the patients. There was a decrease in the incidence of these reactions upon using combination of premedication drugs. Conclusion In this study, ABLC proved to be an effective and safe option in the management of suspected IFD in immunocompromised patients failing previous therapies.
A US database study characterizing patients initiating a budesonide–formoterol combination versus tiotropium bromide as initial maintenance therapy for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Objective To compare clinical and demographic characteristics, resource utilization and costs of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients prior to initiating budesonide–formoterol combination (BFC) or tiotropium-maintenance therapy. Materials and methods This cross-sectional study used claims-based diagnosis to identify COPD patients in the HealthCore Integrated Research Database who initiated BFC or tiotropium therapy between March 1, 2009 and January 31, 2012 (intake period); the index date was defined as the initial prescription fill for either agent. Patients diagnosed with respiratory tract cancer or receiving inhaled corticosteroids/long-acting β2-adrenergic agonists or tiotropium in 12 months prior to index date were excluded. Categorical variables were evaluated with χ2 tests; mean cost differences were evaluated using γ-regression. Results Overall, 6,940 BFC and 10,831 tiotropium patients were identified. The BFC group was younger (mean age 64 versus 67 years), with a greater proportion of females (54% versus 51%). BFC-treated patients had more comorbid respiratory conditions, including asthma (25% versus 13%), but fewer comorbid cardiovascular conditions, including atherosclerosis (7% versus 10%) and myocardial infarction (4% versus 6%). A greater proportion of BFC patients received prior respiratory medication, including oral corticosteroids (46% versus 35%) and short-acting β2-agonists (44% versus 35%). Tiotropium-treated patients had a greater mean number of COPD-related outpatient visits (4.6 versus 4.1). BFC-treated patients had lower total all-cause ($17,259 versus $17,926) and COPD-related ($1,718 versus $1,930) health care costs, driven by lower all-cause and COPD-related inpatient expenditures. Conclusion Initiators of BFC or tiotropium showed differences in clinical and demographic characteristics and health care utilization and costs prior to starting COPD maintenance therapy.
Automatic segmentation of the sphenoid sinus in CT-scans volume with DeepMedics 3D CNN architecture

Today, researchers are increasingly using manual, semi-automatic, and automatic segmentation techniques to delimit or extract organs from medical images. Deep learning algorithms are increasingly being used in the area of medical imaging analysis. In comparison to traditional methods, these algorithms are more efficient to obtain compact information, which considerably enhances the quality of medical image analysis system. In this paper, we present a new method to fully automatic segmentation of the sphenoid sinus using a 3D (convolutional neural network). The scarcity of medical data initially forced us through this study to use a 3D CNN model learned on a small data set. To make our method fully automatic, preprocessing and post processing are automated with extraction techniques and mathematical morphologies. The proposed tool is compared to a semi-automatic method and manual deductions performed by a specialist. Preliminary results from CT volumes appear very promising.
Hypothalamic AMPK as a Regulator of Energy Homeostasis

Activated in energy depletion conditions, AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) acts as a cellular energy sensor and regulator in both central nervous system and peripheral organs. Hypothalamic AMPK restores energy balance by promoting feeding behavior to increase energy intake, increasing glucose production, and reducing thermogenesis to decrease energy output. Besides energy state, many hormones have been shown to act in concert with AMPK to mediate their anorexigenic and orexigenic central effects as well as thermogenic influences. Here we explore the factors that affect hypothalamic AMPK activity and give the underlying mechanisms for the role of central AMPK in energy homeostasis together with the physiological effects of hypothalamic AMPK on energy balance restoration.
Blockade of the Bcr-Abl Kinase Activity Induces Apoptosis of Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia Cells by Suppressing Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription 5–Dependent Expression of Bcl-XL

Bcr-Abl–expressing leukemic cells are highly resistant to apoptosis induced by chemotherapeutic drugs. Although a number of signaling molecules have been shown to be activated by the Bcr-Abl kinase, the antiapoptotic pathway triggered by this oncogene has not been elucidated. Here, we show that the interleukin 3-independent expression of the antiapoptotic protein, Bcl-xL, is induced by Bcr-Abl through activation of signal transducer and activator of transcription (Stat)5. Inhibition of the Bcr-Abl kinase activity in Bcr-Abl–expressing cell lines and CD34+ cells from chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) patients induces apoptosis by suppressing the capacity of Stat5 to interact with the bcl-x promoter. Interestingly, after inhibition of the Bcr-Abl kinase, the expression of Bcl-xL is downregulated more rapidly in chronic phase than in blast crisis CML cells, suggesting an involvement of this protein in disease progression. Overall, we describe a novel antiapoptotic pathway triggered by Bcr-Abl that may contribute to the resistance of CML cells to undergo apoptosis.
Remodeling of Saccular Cerebral Artery Aneurysm Wall Is Associated With Rupture: Histological Analysis of 24 Unruptured and 42 Ruptured Cases

Background and Purpose— The cellular mechanisms of degeneration and repair preceding rupture of the saccular cerebral artery aneurysm wall need to be elucidated for rational design of growth factor or drug-releasing endovascular devices. Methods— Patient records, preoperative vascular imaging studies, and the snap-frozen fundi resected after microsurgical clipping from 66 aneurysms were studied. Immunostainings for markers of smooth muscle cell (SMC) phenotype, proliferation, and inflammatory cell subtypes and TUNEL reaction were performed. Results— Unruptured (24) and ruptured (42) aneurysms had similar dimensions (median diameter in unruptured 6 mm; median in ruptured 7 mm; P=0.308). We identified 4 basic types of aneurysm wall that associated with rupture: (1) endothelialized wall with linearly organized SMCs (17/66; 42% ruptured), (2) thickened wall with disorganized SMCs (20/66; 55% ruptured), (3) hypocellular wall with either myointimal hyperplasia or organizing luminal thrombosis (14/66; 64% ruptured), and (4) an extremely thin thrombosis-lined hypocellular wall (15/66; 100% ruptured). Apoptosis, de-endothelialization, luminal thrombosis, SMC proliferation, and T-cell and macrophage infiltration associated with rupture. Furthermore, macrophage infiltration associated with SMC proliferation, and both were increased in ruptured aneurysms resected <12 hours from rupture, suggesting that these were not just reactive changes. Conclusions— Before rupture, the wall of saccular cerebral artery aneurysm undergoes morphological changes associated with remodeling of the aneurysm wall. Some of these changes, like SMC proliferation and macrophage infiltration, likely reflect ongoing repair attempts that could be enhanced with pharmacological therapy.
Tri-factorization learning of sub-word units with application to vocabulary acquisition

In prior work, we proposed a method for vocabulary acquisition based on a co-occurrence model and non-negative matrix factorization. The vocabulary is described in terms of co-occurrence statistics of frame-level acoustic descriptions and suffers from poor scalability to larger vocabularies. Much like whole-word HMM models, there is no reuse of a sub-word units such as phone models. In this paper, we apply the co-occurrence framework to learn a set of sub-word units unsupervisedly using a matrix tri-factorization and propose a method for computing their posteriorgram and finally show vocabulary acquisition from the posteriorgram. The method outperforms our prior work in that it can learn from a smaller set of labeled data and shows a better recognition accuracy.
Estrogen increases ENaC activity via PKCδ signaling in renal cortical collecting duct cells

The most active estrogen, 17β‐estradiol (E2), has previously been shown to stimulate a female sex‐specific antisecretory response in the intestine. This effect is thought to contribute to the increase in whole body extracellular fluid (ECF) volume which occurs in high estrogen states, such as in the implantation window during estrous cycle. The increased ECF volume may be short‐circuited by a renal compensation unless estrogen exerts a proabsorptive effect in the nephron. Thus, the effect of E2 on ENaC in kidney cortical collecting duct (CCD) cells is of interest to understand estrogen regulation of ECF volume. Previous studies showed a rapid stimulatory effect of estrogen on ENaC in bronchial epithelium. In this study we examined if such a rapid effect on Na+ absorption could occur in the kidney. Experiments were carried out on murine M1‐CCD cell cultures. E2 (25 nmol/L) treatment caused a rapid‐onset (<15 min) and sustained increase in the amiloride‐sensitive Na+ current (INa) in CCD monolayers mounted in Ussing chambers (control, 1.9 ± 0.2 μA/cm2; E2, 4.7 ± 0.3 μA/cm2; n = 43, P < 0.001), without affecting the ouabain‐sensitive Na+/K+ pump current. The INa response to E2 was inhibited by PKCδ activity antagonism with rottlerin (5 μmol/L), inhibition of matrix metalloproteinases activity with GM6001 (1 μmol/L), inhibition of EGFR activity with AG1478 (10 μmol/L), inhibition of PLC activity with U‐73122 (10 μmol/L), and inhibition of estrogen receptors with the general ER antagonist ICI‐182780 (100 nmol/L). The estrogen activation of INa could be mimicked by the ERα agonist PPT (1 nmol/L). The nuclear excluded estrogen dendrimer conjugate (EDC) induced similar stimulatory effects on INa comparable to free E2. The end target for E2 stimulation of PKCδ was shown to be an increased abundance of the γ‐ENaC subunit in the apical plasma membrane of CCD cells. We have demonstrated a novel rapid “nongenomic” function of estrogen to stimulate ENaC via ERα‐EGFR transactivation in kidney CCD cells. We propose that the salt‐retaining effect of estrogen in the kidney together with its antisecretory action in the intestine are the molecular mechanisms causing the expanded ECF volume in high‐estrogen states.
The Crowding Effect Of Rewards On Knowledge-Sharing Behavior In Virtual Communities

Knowledge sharing is an important activity in virtual communities (VC). Recently, some researchers have explored various motivators that may influence VC members' contribution. Although providing rewards has been found to significantly motivate employees to share knowledge in organizational research, it also has been found to diminish intrinsic motivation and lead to reduced efforts in in some cases psychology literature. The phenomenon that external intervention (e.g. monetary incentives or punishments) may either undermine (crowd-out) or enhance (crowd-in) intrinsic motivation is called the motivation crowding effect. Based on the motivation crowding theory, this study investigated the moderating effect of monetary incentives on the relationships of motivations and members' intention for knowledge sharing. The research framework includes two motivational factors, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, for knowledge sharing in virtual communities. The model was tested using a field experiment on 204 VC members of two different virtual communities. The results confirmed the existence of the crowding effect. That is, the relationship between intrinsic motivation and knowledgesharing intention was significantly lowered after the treatment of monetary incentives. The findings suggest that VC managers should carefully consider providing monetary rewards in promoting their websites because monetary incentives can potentially affect the knowledge-sharing behavior of VC
'Build or Buy' Strategies in the Local Loop

We provide a dynamic model to study how the presence of the option to "buy" the incumbent local exchange carrier's (ILEC) facilities via local loop unbundling affects the competitive local exchange carriers' (CLECs) incentives to "build" alternative infrastructures. We show that an unregulated incumbent sets a rental path for its local loop which delays technology adoption compared to the case in which there is no unbundling. We also characterize the equilibrium rental path set by the unregulated incumbent; it is prohibitively high at the initial phases when there is no effective threat of entry with alternative technologies, and it is decreasing over time in later phases. The decrease in the rental price follows the rise of the entrant's opportunity cost of leasing lines. We also argue that neither allowing higher prices for unbundled elements over time nor setting a sunset clause would suffice to induce facility-based competition. By studying the unregulated ILECs decision regarding unbundling, we challenge the implicit assumption behind the sunset clauses, which is that the ILEC would either deny unbundling or charge too high a price for its network elements in the absence of regulation. We claim that the ILECs that initially resist unbundling requirements would tend to charge attractive access prices (relative to the entrants' alternatives) for their infrastructure, which become less essential over time. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.) (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
A high-density genetic map of cucumber derived from Specific Length Amplified Fragment sequencing (SLAF-seq)

High-density genetic map provides an essential framework for accurate and efficient genome assembly and QTL fine mapping. Construction of high-density genetic maps appears more feasible since the advent of next-generation sequencing (NGS), which eases SNP discovery and high-throughput genotyping of large population. In this research, a high-density genetic map of cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) was successfully constructed across an F2 population by a recently developed Specific Length Amplified Fragment sequencing (SLAF-seq) method. In total, 18.69 GB of data containing 93,460,000 paired-end reads were obtained after preprocessing. The average sequencing depth was 44.92 in the D8 (female parent), 42.16 in the Jin5-508 (male parent), and 5.01 in each progeny. 79,092 high-quality SLAFs were detected, of which 6784 SLAFs were polymorphic, and 1892 of the polymorphic markers met the requirements for constructing genetic map. The genetic map spanned 845.87 cm with an average genetic distance of 0.45 cm. It is a reliable linkage map for fine mapping and molecular breeding of cucumber for its high marker density and well-ordered markers.
Performance Evaluation of Color Based Edge Detectors

This paper evaluates the performance of the color based edge detection techniques. As known in prior the color images provides more information than the gray scale images, 90% of the edges are same in both type of images but 10% edges cannot be detected in gray images. Therefore color edge detection may improve the edge clarity further and also avoids false edges. The overall purpose of this paper is to design and implement color edge detectors variations using canny edge detector. This paper ends up with the comparison of Hue, PCA, Fusion of them, Color fuzzy and Fusion based Fuzzy color edge detection algorithms. The overall performance analysis has proven that the fuzzy based color edge detection outperforms over available techniques. But there exists tradeoff between fuzzy and fusion based fuzzy with respect to Pratt's figure of merit.
Coal Smoke and the Costs of the Industrial Revolution

While the Industrial Revolution brought economic growth, there is a long debate in economics over the costs of the pollution externalities that accompanied early industrialization. To help settle this debate, this paper introduces a new theoretically-grounded strategy for estimating the impact of industrial pollution on local economic development and applies this approach to data from British cities for 1851-1911. I show that local industrial coal use substantially reduced long-run city employment growth over this period. Moreover, a counterfactual analysis suggests that plausible improvements in coal use efficiency would have led to substantially higher urbanization rates in Britain by 1911.
Focus on Nintedanib in NSCLC and Other Tumors

Nintedanib is a new triple angiokinase inhibitor that potently blocks the proangiogenic pathways mediated by vascular endothelial growth factor receptors, platelet-derived growth factor receptors, and fibroblast growth factor receptors. Evidence about its efficacy in addition to second-line chemotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has been produced by two large randomized phase III clinical trials (LUME-Lung 1 and LUME-Lung 2), conducted in patients with pretreated NSCLC, without major risk factors for bleeding. In the LUME-Lung 1, the addition of nintedanib to docetaxel significantly improved progression-free survival, which was the primary end point of the trial (3.4 vs. 2.7 months, hazard ratio: 0.79; p = 0.0019). Furthermore, a significant improvement in median overall survival (from 10.3 to 12.6 months) was observed in patients with adenocarcinoma histology, with a greater advantage in patients who progressed within 9 months after start of first-line treatment (from 7.9 to 10.9 months) and in patients who were most refractory to first-line chemotherapy (from 6.3 to 9.8 months). Adverse events were more common in the docetaxel plus nintedanib group, and they included diarrhea and increased liver enzymes, while no statistically significant increase in the incidence of bleeding and hypertension events by the addition of nintedanib was observed. On these bases, the combination of docetaxel and nintedanib can be considered a new option for the second-line treatment for patients with advanced NSCLC with adenocarcinoma histology. Future challenges are the identification of predictive factors to help the decision of using nintedanib in eligible patients.
Radio resource allocation in LTE-advanced cellular networks with M2M communications

Machine-to-machine (M2M) communications are expected to provide ubiquitous connectivity between machines without the need of human intervention. To support such a large number of autonomous devices, the M2M system architecture needs to be extremely power and spectrally efficient. This article thus briefly reviews the features of M2M services in the third generation (3G) long-term evolution and its advancement (LTE-Advanced) networks. Architectural enhancements are then presented for supporting M2M services in LTE-Advanced cellular networks. To increase spectral efficiency, the same spectrum is expected to be utilized for human-to- human (H2H) communications as well as M2M communications. We therefore present various radio resource allocation schemes and quantify their utility in LTE-Advanced cellular networks. System-level simulation results are provided to validate the performance effectiveness of M2M communications in LTE-Advanced cellular networks.