Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Does an Economic Recession Influence Effectiveness of Glaucoma Treatment

Purpose: Glaucoma affects Americans in all economic strata. Our fragmented insurance landscape provides robust coverage for eyedrop medications for some while others pay high retail costs. We set out to determine whether a recession would have a greater impact on intraocular pressure (IOP) control in individuals without vs. those with pharmacy benefits. Methods: Change in IOP and number of medications prescribed in glaucoma patients with and without pharmacy benefits was recorded on two consecutive visits before and during a recession. Results: Seventy-seven patients with (mean±SD age, 66±17 years; 61% female, 52% Caucasian; 69% Medicare) and 51 patients without (mean±SD age, 63±14 years; 61% female, 53% African American; 78% Charity Care) pharmacy benefits were included. Thirty-seven (48%) subjects with pharmacy benefits had ≥1 health insurance. Mean±SD IOP, number of glaucoma medications, and number of patients on ≥2 glaucoma medications before and after recession did not change significantly for either group. Conclusions: Our results did not show any difference in IOP control between those with and without pharmacy benefits. Other complex issues such as adherence may mask the impact of pharmacy benefit on IOP control. Journal of Nature and Science (JNSCI), 2(11):e241, 2016
Panel on Thoracic Imaging: Stephen

Procedure Appropriateness Category Relative Radiation Level Radiography chest Usually Appropriate ☢ CT chest without IV contrast Usually Appropriate ☢☢☢ CT chest with IV contrast May Be Appropriate ☢☢☢ MRI chest without and with IV contrast Usually Not Appropriate O MRI chest without IV contrast Usually Not Appropriate O CT chest without and with IV contrast Usually Not Appropriate ☢☢☢ FDG-PET/CT skull base to mid-thigh Usually Not Appropriate ☢☢☢☢
Comments of Science Review Panel on the Michigan Water Assessment Tool

The Science Review Panel views the overall goals and approach used by the Groundwater conservation Advisory Council to develop a science based screening tool as progressive, and we encourage their completion of this effort. We are impressed with the conceptual approach and scientific rigor used to develop linked groundwater-surface-water-ecological models that form the basis of the assessment tool. The amount and quality of empirical data being incorporated into model development are impressive, and they provide a strong basis for developing and implementing a science-based, statewide decision tool that can inform sustainable water and fisheries management of Michigan streams and groundwater.
COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY MORPHOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF THE VERTEBRAE C7 AND T1

Objetivo: El estudio anatomico de las vertebras de la union cervicotoracica C7 y T1 tuvo el objetivo de evaluar cuantitativamente mediante tomografia axial computarizada (TAC), las dimensiones anatomicas lineales y angulares de laminas de las vertebras de la union cervicotoracica C7 y T1 en adultos mayores de 18 anos. Metodos: Se analizaron retrospectivamente 49 TAC de la columna cervical y toracica (C7 y T1) de pacientes mayores de 18 anos de ambos sexos. Se evaluaron la longitud y el espesor de las laminas, asi como el angulo espinolaminar en secciones axiales de C7 y T1 en el punto de menor espesor entre las capas corticales internas. Las variables se correlacionaron con los grupos de edad y sexo de los individuos. El analisis estadistico se realizo mediante la prueba t y los resultados se consideraron significativos cuando p < 0,05. Resultados: Despues del analisis de las mediciones tomograficas de 49 pacientes, se encontro que los hombres tenian espesor de la lamina mayor que las mujeres, tanto en C7, como en T1, con el 71% de las laminas C7 y el 92% de las laminas T1 con espesor mayor que 5 mm, 97% de C7 y 100% de T1, mayor que 4 mm de espesor. El angulo espinolaminar promedio fue 56,40 grados en C7 y 57,31 grados en T1. Conclusion: Este estudio contiene informacion anatomica importante sobre la region de la union cervicotoracica C7 y T1 en la poblacion brasilena, mostrando que es anatomicamente posible la fijacion de C7 y T1 con tornillos intralaminares.
CS 506 Lecture : Voronoi Diagrams , Delanauy Triangulations and Hulls S ’ 2020 Lecture 11 : Voronoi Diagrams and Fortune ’ s Algorithm Voronoi

Voronoi Diagrams: Voronoi diagrams are among the most important structures in computational geometry. A Voronoi diagram encodes proximity information, that is, what is close to what. Let P = {p1, p2, . , pn} be a set of points in the plane, or more generally Rd, which we call sites. Let kpqk = Pd i=j(pj qj) 1/2 denote the Euclidean distance between two points p and q. Define V(pi), the Voronoi cell for pi, to be the set of points q in the plane that are closer to pi than to any other site, that is, V(pi) = {q 2 R : kpiqk < kpjqk, 8j 6= i},
ACCESS-OM2 v1.0: a global ocean–sea ice model at three resolutions

Abstract. We introduce ACCESS-OM2, a new version of the ocean–sea ice model of the Australian Community Climate and Earth System Simulator. ACCESS-OM2 is driven by a prescribed atmosphere (JRA55-do) but has been designed to form the ocean–sea ice component of the fully coupled (atmosphere–land–ocean–sea ice) ACCESS-CM2 model. Importantly, the model is available at three different horizontal resolutions: a coarse resolution (nominally 1∘ horizontal grid spacing), an eddy-permitting resolution (nominally 0.25∘), and an eddy-rich resolution (0.1∘ with 75 vertical levels); the eddy-rich model is designed to be incorporated into the Bluelink operational ocean prediction and reanalysis system. The different resolutions have been developed simultaneously, both to allow for testing at lower resolutions and to permit comparison across resolutions. In this paper, the model is introduced and the individual components are documented. The model performance is evaluated across the three different resolutions, highlighting the relative advantages and disadvantages of running ocean–sea ice models at higher resolution. We find that higher resolution is an advantage in resolving flow through small straits, the structure of western boundary currents, and the abyssal overturning cell but that there is scope for improvements in sub-grid-scale parameterizations at the highest resolution.
Cascade EF-GAN: Progressive Facial Expression Editing With Local Focuses

Recent advances in Generative Adversarial Nets (GANs) have shown remarkable improvements for facial expression editing. However, current methods are still prone to generate artifacts and blurs around expression-intensive regions, and often introduce undesired overlapping artifacts while handling large-gap expression transformations such as transformation from furious to laughing. To address these limitations, we propose Cascade Expression Focal GAN (Cascade EF-GAN), a novel network that performs progressive facial expression editing with local expression focuses. The introduction of the local focus enables the Cascade EF-GAN to better preserve identity-related features and details around eyes, noses and mouths, which further helps reduce artifacts and blurs within the generated facial images. In addition, an innovative cascade transformation strategy is designed by dividing a large facial expression transformation into multiple small ones in cascade, which helps suppress overlapping artifacts and produce more realistic editing while dealing with large-gap expression transformations. Extensive experiments over two publicly available facial expression datasets show that our proposed Cascade EF-GAN achieves superior performance for facial expression editing.
Turbulence excitation in counterstreaming paraxial superfluids of light

Turbulence in the quantum (superfluid) regime, similarly to its classical counterpart, continues to attract a great deal of scientific inquiry due to the yet high number of unresolved problems. While turbulent states can be routinely created in degenerate atomic gases, there is no generic scheme to produce turbulence in fluids of light. Under paraxial propagation, light in bulk nonlinear media behaves as a two-dimensional superfluid, described by a nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation formally equivalent to the Gross-Pitaevskii model of a weakly interacting Bose gas, where photon-photon interactions are mediated by a third-order (Kerr) nonlinearity. Here we develop the theory describing the onset of a kinetic instability when two paraxial optical fluids with different streaming velocities interact via the optical nonlinearity. From numerical simulations of the nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation, we further characterize the onset of the instability and describe its saturation in the form of vortex nucleation and excitation of turbulence. The experimental observation of such effects is also discussed. The class of instabilities described here thus provide a natural route towards the investigation of quantum (superfluid) turbulence, structure formation, and out-of-equilibrium dynamics in superfluids of light.
School closures, event cancellations, and the mesoscopic localization of epidemics in networks with higher-order structure

The COVID-19 epidemic is challenging in many ways, perhaps most obvious are failures of the surveillance system. Consequently, the official intervention has focused on conventional wisdom --- social distancing, hand washing, etc. --- while critical decisions such as the cancellation of large events like festivals, workshops and academic conferences are done on a case-by-case basis with limited information about local risks. Adding to this uncertainty is the fact that our mathematical models tend to assume some level of random mixing patterns instead of the higher-order structures necessary to describe these large events. Here, we discuss a higher-order description of epidemic dynamics on networks that provides a natural way of extending common models to interaction beyond simple pairwise contacts. We show that unlike the classic diffusion of standard epidemic models, higher-order interactions can give rise to mesoscopic localization, i.e., a phenomenon in which there is a concentration of the epidemic around certain substructures in the network. We discuss the implications of these results and show the potential impact of a blanket cancellation of events larger than a certain critical size. Unlike standard models of delocalized dynamics, epidemics in a localized phase can suddenly collapse when facing an intervention operating over structures rather than individuals.
A Semi-Automatic Software for Segmentation and Feature Extraction from Optical Coherence Tomography Images (Semi SFE)

The Ophthalmology Science has recently witnessed marked progress due to the advent of divergent imaging techniques, especially Optical Coherence Tomography which has caught many physicians' attention for being exact, rapid, non-invasive and low-cost. In this paper, we wish to solve the difficulties associated with OCT image segmentation by offering a handy software written in the MATLAB App Designer environment which helps researchers and clinicians to easily segment the images, save the numerical outcomes and send them for proper analysis. Serving an unambiguous user interface along with a unified platform in which all necessary functions have been incorporated graphically has made this software so unique that it could be recommended to anyone tending to work on ocular OCT layers and fluids segmentation.
Lifted samplers for partially ordered discrete state-spaces

A technique called lifting is employed in practice for avoiding that the Markov chains simulated for sampling backtrack too often. It consists in lifting the state-space to include direction variables for guiding these chains. Its implementation is direct when the probability mass function targeted is defined on a totally ordered set, such as that of a univariate random variable taking values on the integers. In this paper, we adapt this technique to the situation where only a partial order can be established and explore its benefits. Important applications include simulation of systems formed from binary variables, such as those described by the Ising model, and variable selection when the marginal model probabilities can be evaluated, up to a normalising constant. To accommodate for the situation where one does not have access to these marginal model probabilities, a lifted trans-dimensional sampler for partially ordered model spaces is introduced. We show through theoretical analyses and empirical experiments that the lifted samplers outperform their non-lifted counterparts in some situations, and this at no extra computational cost. The code to reproduce all experiments is available online.
Time Series Forecasting Using LSTM Networks: A Symbolic Approach

Machine learning methods trained on raw numerical time series data exhibit fundamental limitations such as a high sensitivity to the hyper parameters and even to the initialization of random weights. A combination of a recurrent neural network with a dimension-reducing symbolic representation is proposed and applied for the purpose of time series forecasting. It is shown that the symbolic representation can help to alleviate some of the aforementioned problems and, in addition, might allow for faster training without sacrificing the forecast performance.
Explaining Away Attacks Against Neural Networks

We investigate the problem of identifying adversarial attacks on image-based neural networks. We present intriguing experimental results showing significant discrepancies between the explanations generated for the predictions of a model on clean and adversarial data. Utilizing this intuition, we propose a framework which can identify whether a given input is adversarial based on the explanations given by the model. Code for our experiments can be found here: this https URL.
Antibacterial Coatings for Improving the Performance of Biomaterials

Biomedical devices have become essential in the health care. Every day, an enormous number of these devices are used or implanted in humans. In this context, the bacterial contamination that could be developed in implanted devices is critical since it is estimated that infections kill more people than other medical causes. Commonly, these infections are treated with antibiotics, but the biofilm formation on implant surfaces could significantly reduce the effectiveness of these antibiotics since bacteria inside the biofilm is protected from the drug. In some cases, a complete removal of the implant is necessary in order to overcome the infection. In this context, antibacterial coatings are considered an excellent strategy to avoid biofilm formation and, therefore, mitigate the derived complications. In this review, the main biomaterials used in biomedical devices, the mechanism of biofilm formation, and the main strategies for the development of antibacterial coatings, are reviewed. Finally, the main polymer-based strategies to develop antibacterial coatings are summarized, with the aim of these coatings being to avoid the bacteria proliferation by controlling the antibacterial mechanisms involved and enhancing long-term stability.
The wind-driven halo in high-contrast images I: analysis from the focal plane images of SPHERE

Context. The wind driven halo is a feature observed within the images delivered by the latest generation of ground-based instruments equipped with an extreme adaptive optics system and a coronagraphic device, such as SPHERE at the VLT. This signature appears when the atmospheric turbulence conditions are varying faster than the adaptive optics loop can correct. The wind driven halo shows as a radial extension of the point spread function along a distinct direction (sometimes referred to as the butterfly pattern). When present, it significantly limits the contrast capabilities of the instrument and prevents the extraction of signals at close separation or extended signals such as circumstellar disks. This limitation is consequential because it contaminates the data a substantial fraction of the time: about 30% of the data produced by the VLT/SPHERE instrument are affected by the wind driven halo. Aims. This paper reviews the causes of the wind driven halo and presents a method to analyze its contribution directly from the scientific images. Its effect on the raw contrast and on the final contrast after post-processing is demonstrated. Methods. We used simulations and on-sky SPHERE data to verify that the parameters extracted with our method are capable of describing the wind driven halo present in the images. We studied the temporal, spatial and spectral variation of these parameters to point out its deleterious effect on the final contrast. Results. The data driven analysis we propose does provide information to accurately describe the wind driven halo contribution in the images. This analysis justifies why this is a fundamental limitation to the final contrast performance reached. Conclusions. With the established procedure, we will analyze a large sample of data delivered by SPHERE in order to propose, in the future, post-processing techniques tailored to remove the wind driven halo.
On the Convergence of the Dynamic Inner PCA Algorithm

Dynamic inner principal component analysis (DiPCA) is a powerful method for the analysis of time-dependent multivariate data. DiPCA extracts dynamic latent variables that capture the most dominant temporal trends by solving a large-scale, dense, and nonconvex nonlinear program (NLP). A scalable decomposition algorithm has been recently proposed in the literature to solve these challenging NLPs. The decomposition algorithm performs well in practice but its convergence properties are not well understood. In this work, we show that this algorithm is a specialized variant of a coordinate maximization algorithm. This observation allows us to explain why the decomposition algorithm might work (or not) in practice and can guide improvements. We compare the performance of the decomposition strategies with that of the off-the-shelf solver Ipopt. The results show that decomposition is more scalable and, surprisingly, delivers higher quality solutions.
FRI0180 No Prediction of Relapse by TNF Blocker Concentrations or Detection of Antibodies against anti-TNF: Data from Strass Study

Background The goal of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) strategy is to reach remission or at least a low disease activity. When this gaol is reached, no clear guideline exist to manage therapy. Recently, STRASS (Spacing TNF-blocker injections in RA Study) provided evidence of step-down therapeutic strategy with adalimumab or etanercept (1). Objectives We investigated if drug dosages and their antidrug antibodies (ADAb) could predict relapse during the 18 months of STRASS study. Methods We assessed 131 serum among the 137 included in STRASS study (60 and 71 for adalimumab and etanercept, respectively). Serum were collected at the time of randomisation. Adalimumab and etanercept blood concentrations and theirs ADAb were assessed by ELISA (Theradiag, Marne-La-Vallee, France). For this study, relapse was defined as DAS28>2.6 with DAS28 increase >0.6 since the previous study visit. Results Characteristics of the 131 patients similar to 137 from the initial STRASS study (data not shown). The median age was 54.5 [48.3–61.8] years. One hundred and two (77%) were female. The median disease duration was 6.5 [4.5–12.4] years. The median DAS28, ESR, and CRP were 2.0 [1.5–2.3], 10 [6–17], and 3 [2–4]mg/mL, respectively. Methotrexate was the main DMARDs used (n=91; 70%). No baseline characteristics were associated with relapse during tapering or not. In patients treated with etanercept, etanercept level was similar in case of relapse or not. Similarly, adalimumab level was comparable in case of relapse or not. However, in patients treated with adalimumab, ADABs was significantly higher in case of relapse compared to no relapse (0.94±0.27 ng/ml vs. 0.27±0.76 ng/ml; P=0.03, respectively). However, this difference was not clinically pertinent. Conclusions No difference was observed in adalimumab or etanercept blood level to predict relapse in RA patients with low disease activity. However, a slight increased of ADAb for adalimumab was observed. Its signification needs further investigation. References Fautrel B, Pham T, Alfaiate T, et al. Step-down strategy of spacing TNF-blocker injections for established rheumatoid arthritis in remission: results of the multicentre non-inferiority randomised open-label controlled trial (STRASS: Spacing of TNF-blocker injections in Rheumatoid ArthritiS Study). Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases 2016; 75: 59–67. Acknowledgement AbbVie provided funding for this study. Analysis was performed independently to AbbVie. Disclosure of Interest None declared
Overexpression of HO-1 attenuates MV-induced atrophy of the diaphragm

of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy OVEREXPRESSION OF HO-1 ATTENUATES MV-INDUCED ATROPHY OF THE DIAPHRAGM By Darin James Falk December 2007 Chair: Scott K. Powers Major: Health and Human Performance Mechanical ventilation (MV) is the primary means of support used in patients with respiratory muscle failure. The removal of patients from MV is termed ‘weaning’ and problems in weaning occur frequently. Importantly, weaning difficulties are attributed to diaphragmatic weakness characterized by atrophy and contractile dysfunction. Oxidative stress contributes to MV-induced diaphragmatic weakness. However, the sequence of events leading to oxidative stress has not been fully elucidated. A key stress sensitive enzyme, heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1), is rapidly induced in the diaphragm during MV. Paradoxically, HO-1 may function either as a proor antioxidant and the role that HO-1 plays in MV-induced oxidative stress in the diaphragm is unknown. To address this question we mechanically ventilated rats for 12 or 18 hours (MV) with subsets of animals that combined MV along with a HO-1 inducing agent, hemin (MVH); or MV with a HO-1 activity inhibitor, CrMPIX (MVI). Indices of oxidative stress, proteolytic activation, and atrophy were measured in the diaphragm following the experimental protocol. Our study reveals that hemin-induced elevation of HO-1 during MV provides protection against oxidative injury, proteolytic activation, and diaphragmatic atrophy. Specifically, hemin administration preserves glutathione levels and prevents lipid peroxidation in the diaphragm during MV. Further, overexpression of HO-1 decreased the MV-induced activation of calpain
End-to-End Learning Local Multi-View Descriptors for 3D Point Clouds

In this work, we propose an end-to-end framework to learn local multi-view descriptors for 3D point clouds. To adopt a similar multi-view representation, existing studies use hand-crafted viewpoints for rendering in a preprocessing stage, which is detached from the subsequent descriptor learning stage. In our framework, we integrate the multi-view rendering into neural networks by using a differentiable renderer, which allows the viewpoints to be optimizable parameters for capturing more informative local context of interest points. To obtain discriminative descriptors, we also design a soft-view pooling module to attentively fuse convolutional features across views. Extensive experiments on existing 3D registration benchmarks show that our method outperforms existing local descriptors both quantitatively and qualitatively.
Hereditary thrombophilia risk factors in patients with venous thromboembolism

The annual incidence of VTD is 0.001% in children and 0.1% in adults (1,2). The incidence increases with age, reaching 1% over the age of 85 years(1,2). Of the VTD patients, two thirds have lower limb deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and one third have pulmonary embolism (PE) (2). The major complications of VTD are post-thrombotic syndrome, major bleeding due to anticoagulation, recurrence and death (1,2).