Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Incidence, predictors, and outcome of thrombosis after successful implantation of drug-eluting stents.

CONTEXT Traditionally, stent thrombosis has been regarded as a complication of percutaneous coronary interventions during the first 30 postprocedural days. However, delayed endothelialization associated with the implantation of drug-eluting stents may extend the risk of thrombosis beyond 30 days. Data are limited regarding the risks and the impact of this phenomenon outside clinical trials. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the incidence, predictors, and clinical outcome of stent thrombosis after implantation of sirolimus-eluting and paclitaxel-eluting stents in routine clinical practice. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS Prospective observational cohort study conducted at 1 academic hospital and 2 community hospitals in Germany and Italy. A total of 2229 consecutive patients underwent successful implantation of sirolimus-eluting (1062 patients, 1996 lesions, 2272 stents) or paclitaxel-eluting (1167 patients, 1801 lesions, 2223 stents) stents between April 2002 and January 2004. INTERVENTIONS Implantation of a drug-eluting stent (sirolimus or paclitaxel). All patients were pretreated with ticlopidine or clopidogrel and aspirin. Aspirin was continued indefinitely and clopidogrel or ticlopidine for at least 3 months after sirolimus-eluting and for at least 6 months after paclitaxel-eluting stent implantation. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Subacute thrombosis (from procedure end through 30 days), late thrombosis (>30 days), and cumulative stent thrombosis. RESULTS At 9-month follow-up, 29 patients (1.3%) had stent thrombosis (9 [0.8%] with sirolimus and 20 [1.7%] with paclitaxel; P = .09). Fourteen patients had subacute thrombosis (0.6%) and 15 patients had late thrombosis (0.7%). Among these 29 patients, 13 died (case fatality rate, 45%). Independent predictors of stent thrombosis were premature antiplatelet therapy discontinuation (hazard ratio [HR], 89.78; 95% CI, 29.90-269.60; P<.001), renal failure (HR, 6.49; 95% CI, 2.60-16.15; P<.001), bifurcation lesions (HR, 6.42; 95% CI, 2.93-14.07; P<.001), diabetes (HR, 3.71; 95% CI, 1.74-7.89; P = .001), and a lower ejection fraction (HR, 1.09; 95% CI, 1.05-1.36; P<.001 for each 10% decrease). CONCLUSIONS The cumulative incidence of stent thrombosis 9 months after successful drug-eluting stent implantation in consecutive "real-world" patients was substantially higher than the rate reported in clinical trials. Premature antiplatelet therapy discontinuation, renal failure, bifurcation lesions, diabetes, and low ejection fraction were identified as predictors of thrombotic events.
A Belgian case control study on bladder cancer : rationale and design

Previous analyses of the Limburg Cancer registry (LIKAR) indicated the existence of a geographical cluster of bladder cancer incidence, particularly transitional cell carcinomas, amongst males in the surrounding area of the Belgian cities Hasselt and Alken. In subsequent ecologic analyses no risk factors were identified which could explain the existence of this cluster. Therefore, a case-control study has been started in the province of Limburg to explore the determinants of the cluster. In the coming years, the following determinants will be investigated: socio-demographic characteristics (e.g. age, sex, socio-economic status), life style factors (smoking, alcohol and diet), occupational exposure and genetic predisposition. The research setup combines a traditional population based case-control design with a case-only design. 203 Cases, defined by a recent histological confirmed diagnosis of transitional cell carcinoma (after January 2000), have been recruited through the LIKAR registry, the pathologist and the referring urologist. Population based controls (n=380) have been selected, through simple random sampling, from the inhabitants of the province of Limburg above the age of 50. Individual data have been collected through personal (structured) interviews by two trained interviewers. Genetic polymorphisms have been determined using genomic DNA extracted from blood samples. Determinant distributions of cases have been compared with those from controls in logistic regression analyses with special emphasis on gene-environment and gene-gene interactions. This paper will introduce this study and will report on its methodology in more detail than is possible in subject specific results papers.
Perspectives of Using Oscillators for Computing and Signal Processing

It is an intriguing concept to use oscillators as fundamental building blocks of electronic computers. The idea is not new, but is currently subject to intense research as a part of the quest for 'beyond Moore' electronic devices. In this paper we give an engineering-minded survey of oscillator-based computing architectures, with the goal of understanding their promise and limitations for next-generation computing. We will mostly discuss non-Boolean, neurally-inspired computing concepts and put the emphasis on hardware and on circuits where the oscillators are realized from emerging, nanoscale building blocks. Despite all the promise that oscillatory computing holds, existing literature gives very few clear-cut arguments about the possible benefits of using oscillators in place of other analog nonlinear circuit elements. In this survey we will argue for finding the rationale of using oscillatory building blocks and call for benchmarking studies that compare oscillatory computing circuits to level-based (analog) implementations.
Influence of milling time on the nutritional composition and antioxidant content of Thai rice bran

Four regular rice strains (KDML105, PT1, SPT and RD31) and one pigmented rice strain (DSK) were assessed regarding their composition and antioxidant content. Phenolic compounds and -oryzanol were the dominant antioxidants in all rice varieties. The highest total phenolic content was found in the black glutinous rice DSK with 1.04 mg GAE/g. Anthocyanin was also found at a high concentration in DSK (1.13 mg/g). Brown rice samples were abrasively milled for 0-60 seconds to make a degree of milling (DOM) curve. A non-linear relationship between milling time and DOM was observed in all samples. The curve demonstrated that 30 sec of milling removed almost allof the bran fraction. The brans collected after 10, 20 and 30 sec of milling were assessed regarding their compositions and antioxidant content. Longer milling time decreased the content of protein, fiber and ash in the brans, while carbohydrates were increased. The total phenolic content in rice bran was reduced with longer milling time. On average, bran after 10 sec of milling contained 8.9% and 21.5% more total phenolics than the rice bran after 20 and 30 sec of milling, respectively. The -oryzanol and α-tocopherol contents of rice bran were in the range of 1.40-2.60 mg/g and1.24-21.56 μg/g, respectively. The DPPH radical scavenging activity of DSK bran after 10 sec of milling was highest, and was approximately three-fold higher than the other bran samples. However, the DPPH radical scavenging activity of all extracts was lower than that of BHT, a synthetic antioxidant.
Aumann and Serrano’s economic index of risk for sums of gambles

Abstract We study Aumann and Serrano’s (2008) risk index for sums of gambles that are not dependent. If the dependent parts are similarly ordered, then the risk index of the sum is always larger than the minimum of the risk indices of the two gambles. For negative dependence, the risk index of the sum is always smaller than the maximum. The above results agree with our intuitions of risk diversification well. These result points out another attractive property of Aumann and Serrano’s risk index. These properties are potentially useful for risk assessment purposes of financial securities.
Predictive score of sarcopenia occurrence one year after bariatric surgery in severely obese patients

Background and aim Sarcopenic obesity is a risk factor of morbidity and mortality. The aim of this study was to generate a predictive score of sarcopenia occurrence one year after bariatric surgery. Patients and methods We conducted an observational prospective cohort study on a total of 184 severely obese patients admitted to our institution to undergo sleeve gastrectomy. Skeletal muscle cross-sectional area at the third lumbar vertebrae (SMA, cm2) was measured from the routinely performed computed tomography. The skeletal muscle index (SMI) was calculated as follows: SMA/height2 (cm2/m2). Sarcopenia was defined as an SMI < 38.5 cm2/m2 for women and < 52.4 cm2/m2 for men. Measurements were performed at surgery and one year later. Results Most of the included patients were female (79%), with a mean age of 42±0.9 years and body mass index of 43.2±0.5 kg/m2. Fifteen patients (8%) had sarcopenia before surgery and 59 (32%) at the one-year follow-up. Male gender (p<0.0001), SMA before surgery (p<0.0001), and SMI before surgery (p<0.0001) significantly correlated with the occurrence of sarcopenia one year after surgery by multivariate analysis. Two predictive sarcopenia occurrence scores were constructed using SMA and gender (SS1 score) or SMI and gender (SS2 score). The area under receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) curve of the SS2 score was significantly greater than that of the SS1 score for the diagnosis of postoperative sarcopenia occurrence (0.95±0.02 versus 0.90±0.02; p<0.01). A cut-off value for the SS2 score of 0.53 had a sensitivity of 90%, a specificity of 91%, a positive predictive value of 83%, and a negative predictive value of 95%. In the group of patients without baseline sarcopenia, the SS2 score had still an excellent AUROC of 0.92±0.02. A cut-off of 0.55 predicted development of sarcopenia one year after sleeve gastrectomy in these patients with a sensitivity of 87%, a specificity of 88%, and negative predictive value of 95%. Conclusion The SS2 score has excellent predictive value for the occurrence of sarcopenia one year after sleeve gastrectomy. This score can be used to target early intensification of nutritional and dietetic follow-up to the predicted high-risk population.
Plasmonic Interaction between Nanospheres

When metallic (or plasmonic) nanospheres are nearly touching, strong concentration of light can occur in the narrow gap regions. This phenomenon has a potential application in nanophotonics, biosensing and spectroscopy. The understanding of the strong interaction between the plasmonic spheres turns out to be quite challenging. Indeed, an extremely high computational cost is required to compute the electromagnetic field. Also, the classical method of image charges, which is effective for dielectric spheres system, is not valid for plasmonic spheres because of their negative permittivities. Here we develop new analytical and numerical methods for the plasmonic spheres system by clarifying the connection between transformation optics and the method of image charges. We derive fully analytic solutions valid for two plasmonic spheres. We then develop a hybrid numerical scheme for computing the field distribution produced by an arbitrary number of spheres. Our method is highly efficient and accurate even in the nearly touching case and is valid for plasmonic spheres.
Autonomous 3D scene understanding and exploration in cluttered workspaces using point cloud data

One of the many challenges in advanced robotics is the autonomous exploration, recognition and manipulation of objects in cluttered unstructured workspaces. The problem is even more challenging when multiple heterogeneous robots with different tools or end-effectors are expected to perform complex collaborative missions, such as disassembly. Within this context, the aim of this work is to develop a framework enabling a robot to detect and localise objects in a workspace and share environment information with another robot, which subsequently performs a grasping operation. The motivation lies in merging point cloud data measured from multiple poses to enrich the representation of the workspace, and decomposing a part into generic primitive geometric features to allow efficient shape recognition in the semantic space. This allows easier integration with an ontological knowledge base for object searching using natural language input. To identify primitive geometrical characteristics and infer object types, this paper introduces a simple but efficient graph-based method, where the graph nodes represent elementary geometric shapes such as planes. The concept is demonstrated using two KUKA robots, where one is acting as the eye of the system, equipped with an RGB-D camera providing views from multiple angles, and the other one has a gripper for grasping, and is acting as a hand. Although the current paper uses basic components such as cubes and triangular blocks, the algorithm is interpretable, and can be extended with more complex shapes. The approach is demonstrated using wood blocks, which are employed to simulate disassembly in unstructured environments.
Content Based Image Retrieval of Ultrasound Liver Diseases Based on Hybrid Approach

Problem statement: In the past few years, immense improvement was obtained in the field of Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR). Nevertheless, existing systems still fail when applied to medical image databases. Simple feature-extraction algorithms that operate on the entire image for characterization of color, texture, or shape cannot be related to the descriptive semantics of medical knowledge that is extracted from images by human experts. Approach: In this study, we present a hybrid approach called Support vector machine combined with relevance feedback for the retrieval of liver diseases from Ultrasound (US) images is introduced. SVM and RF are supervised active learning technique used to improve the effectiveness of the retrieval system. Three kinds of liver diseases are identified including cyst, alcoholic cirrhosis and carcinoma. The diagnosis scheme includes four steps: image registration, feature extraction, feature selection and image retrieval. First the ultrasound images are registered in the database based on the modality. Then the features, derived from first order statistics, gray level co-occurrence matrix and fractal geometry, are obtained from the Pathology Bearing Regions (PBRs) among the normal and abnormal ultrasound images. The Correlation Based Feature Selection (CFS) algorithm selects the certain features for the specific diseases and also reduces dimensionality space for classification. Finally, we implement our hybrid approach for retrieval of specific diseases from the database. Results: This hybrid approach can get the query from user and has retrieved both positive and negative samples from the database, by getting feedback in each round from the radiologist is help to improve the retrieval of correct images. Conclusion: The hybrid approach (SVM+RF) comprises several benefits when compared to existing CBIR for medical system by neural network algorithms. Fractal geometry in feature extraction plays crucial role in ultrasound liver image retrieval. CFS also reduce the dimensionality issue during storage. Image registration plays an important role in the retrieval. It reduces the redundancy of retrieval images and increases the response rate. Getting relevance feedback from physician helps to improve the accuracy of retrieval images from the database.
Spotlight on the Female Condom Demand Generation for 13 Life-Saving Commodities: A Synthesis of the Evidence

age are at high risk of unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV. The female condom (FC) is the only women-initiated, dual-protection commodity that protects women from both STIs—including HIV—and unintended pregnancy. However, the FC must be correctly and consistently used in order to be most effective. When used correctly with every act of sex, about five pregnancies per 100 women using female condoms occur over the first year. As commonly used, about 21 pregnancies per 100 women using female condoms occur over the first year (WHO & JHUCCP, 2011). However, the FC remains an underutilized commodity in family planning and HIV prevention, and as such, has been identified by the UN Commission on LifeSaving Commodities for Women’s and Children’s Health as one of 13 commodities that, if more widely accessed and properly used, could save the lives of more than six million women and children worldwide.
False Memories in Healthy Older Adults

The aim of this paper is to discussed the literature about affect of aging on false memories and explain the retrieval model as an underlying factor. Therefore, it is a mini review which focused on ten related papers in terms of their hypotheses, designs, used methodologies and findings. Although this paper does provide evidence from the literature that indicates the effect of the retrieval processes on false memories in older adults, it will also examine contradictory papers which claim the importance of encoding over the retrieval process. It has also been mentioned about a widely accepted explanation on false memories; the source monitoring framework (SMF) which is a mechanism used to distinguish between real past events and imagined ones.
Another Look at the Fast Iterative Shrinkage/Thresholding Algorithm (FISTA)

This paper provides a new way of developing the "Fast Iterative Shrinkage/Thresholding Algorithm (FISTA)" [3] that is widely used for minimizing composite convex functions with a nonsmooth term such as the ℓ1 regularizer. In particular, this paper shows that FISTA corresponds to an optimized approach to accelerating the proximal gradient method with respect to a worst-case bound of the cost function. This paper then proposes a new algorithm that is derived by instead optimizing the step coefficients of the proximal gradient method with respect to a worst-case bound of the composite gradient mapping. The proof is based on the worst-case analysis called Performance Estimation Problem in [11].
Chapter 41 Hyperbaric Oxygen and Critical Care

The first recorded notion of the use of hyperbaric therapy was in 1662, when Henshaw, in Britain, proposed using an organ bellow to manipulate the pressure within an enclosed chamber in which a patient could be placed. He recommended high pressure for acute diseases and low pressure for chronic diseases (1). Widespread use of hyperbaric therapy for numerous conditions began in the 19th century: Junod (2) used pressures of 1.5 atmospheres absolute (ATA) to treat patients, but performed experiments up to 4 ATA; Simpson (1), using pressures in the range of 1.3 to 1.5 ATA, reported treating a variety of complaints, including dysphonia, asthma, tuberculosis, menorrhagia, and deafness, although without any physiologic basis. Compressed air construction work was also developed in the 1800s, in which men were exposed to elevated ambient pressure within compartments for the purpose of excavating tunnels or bridge piers in muddy soil that was otherwise subject to flooding. Upon decompression at the end of a work shift, workers often developed joint pains or neurologic manifestations (caisson disease, the bends, or decompression sickness). Although the pathophysiology (nitrogen bubble formation in tissues—see below) was not understood, it was observed that recompression of these individuals could relieve the symptoms. Administration of recompression therapy then became routine during construction of the Hudson River tunnel in the 1890s (3). All of these treatments used compressed air. Although oxygen breathing under pressure had been suggested for the treatment of decompression sickness as early as 1897 (4), and was used intermittently over the subsequent 30 years, systematic study and use of hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) did not occur until much later. Compared with air, oxygen administration during recompression therapy for decompression sickness was proven to increase the efficacy of treatment (5,6), and became known as HBO therapy. In the 1950s, pilot investigations were performed of HBO as a therapy for diseases other than those related to gas bubbles, including carbon monoxide poisoning, clostridial myonecrosis (gas gangrene), and, later, selected chronic wounds. For many years, the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society has regularly reviewed and published information regarding the use of HBO in selected diseases, and its recommendations have been widely accepted. The list of accepted indications (7) contains a heterogeneous group of conditions (Table 41.1), suggesting that more than one mechanism mediates the clinical effects of HBO, including the increase in ambient pressure (partly responsible for its efficacy in conditions caused by gas bubble disease) and pharmacologic effects of supraphysiologic increases in blood and tissue PO2, as discussed below. EffECts Of HypErOxIa
Culture and Management in Italy: Tradition, Modernization, New Challenges

The relationship between culture and management in Italy is quite complex. The main reason for this is the complexity of Italian culture itself. Italian society is characterized by an extremely high degree of diversity, in terms of local traditions, resources, languages, attitudes, values. In many ways, Italy looks more like a “community of communities”, than like a homogeneous culture. In this chapter, however, we try to identify some of those social and cultural elements that, more than others, seem to have significantly influenced the way Italian companies are organized and managed. Specifically, we focus on three important aspects: the role of the central State in the historical development of the Italian economy, the wide diffusion of family-owned and family-managed enterprises, and the economic relevance of the “territory”, that is, the geographical proximity of firms and their reference to local communities. 1. Giovanni Masino has a Ph.D. in Business Organization from the University of Bologna (Italy). He is Associate Professor of Organization Theory at the Faculty of Economics, University of Ferrara (Italy). His research interests include topics in the fields of organizational behavior, organizational and technological change, and organization theory. Masino, Giovanni. “Culture and Management in Italy: Tradition, Modernization, New Challenges”, In: Eduardo Davel, Jean-Pierre Dupuis, et Jean-François Chanlat (Eds.), Gestion en contexte interculturel : approches, problématiques, pratiques et plongées, Québec, Presse de l’Université Laval et Télé-université (UQAM), 2008. 2 PArTIE V ✦ PLONGéES EN EUrOPE
Collaborative Partnership Design: The Implications of Organizational Affiliation for Watershed Partnerships

Collaborative watershed partnerships are a common strategy for addressing complex natural resource management decisions. Despite a large literature surrounding their procedural strengths and weaknesses, little theory regarding collaborative partnership design is available to guide policymaking and implementation efforts. This study investigated the relationship between partnership structure and activities using interview data from 29 of Oregon's watershed partnerships. Confirming previous research, partnership composition is related to outcomes. Further exploration reveals that organizational affiliation is related to both composition and activities. Independent partnerships were more likely to conduct scientific assessments or plans, while agency-affiliated partnerships focused primarily on restoration projects. Additional findings suggest that independent partnerships develop priorities internally, while agency-affiliated partnerships tend to adopt the strategies of their parent organization. Diverse participation, incentives, and capacity are identified as critical design considerations for collaborative partnerships.