Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intraoperative Misadventures: Complication Avoidance and Management in Aneurysm Surgery

This morning I am speaking on the subject of complication avoidance and management, which is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure. Although aneurysm surgery is my topic, these principles apply to all areas of intracranial neurosurgery. Avoiding complications begins with appropriate patient selection and includes the prevention of a number of misadventures, and as with all neurosurgical procedures, meticulous postoperative management is essential.
ANALYZING ANISOTROPY IN PERMEABILITY AND SKIN USING TEMPERATURE TRANSIENT ANALYSIS A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY RESOURCES ENGINEERING OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE

In many reservoir studies, anisotropic permeability values in orthogonal directions are often considered to have simple relationships. Often, this permeability anisotropy is modeled only between the vertical and horizontal directions as a certain ratio of values, while permeability values in a horizontal plane are considered equal. In reality, the depositional history of the reservoir results in more complex behavior. Knowledge of the permeability field has important implications in several different types of scenarios, thus it is important to have accurate estimates of these directional permeability values. A partially-penetrating well that allows for vertical flow to occur in the reservoir at depths below the bottom of the completed interval requires knowledge of vertical permeability anisotropy. In addition, improved estimates of horizontal permeability values would have significance for directional drilling purposes. In this work, the utility of temperature data as a matching parameter was investigated to estimate these directional permeability values. The study utilized a full physics reservoir simulator and a nonlinear, least-squares regression algorithm for parameter estimation. By modeling block temperatures near the well that are output from the simulator, the study attempted to replicate the temperature data gathered from a Distributed Temperature Survey (DTS) which uses fibers to measure temperature history at the well. Using this method, the directional permeability values in the two scenarios described previously were estimated successfully with a high degree of accuracy. Additionally, the effects of a damaged zone surrounding the well in the horizontal case were investigated. In this case, the near-well, damaged zone permeability values were estimated successfully using temperature signals as well.
Altered expression of bcl‐2 family member proteins in nonmelanoma skin cancer

Differentiation, proliferation, and cell death are coordinated tightly within the epidermis. Alterations within keratinocytes that disrupt these processes are believed to contribute to the development of nonmelanoma skin cancers (NMSC). In the current study the authors examined the expression of selected members of the bcl‐2 gene family in the skin and in case‐matched samples of NMSC.
Comparative Study on Content Based Image Retrieval Based on Color, Texture (GLCM & CCM) Features

: With the rapid development of multimedia and network technology, people can access a large number of multimedia information. For people who want to make full use of multimedia information resources, the primary question is how to query the multimedia information of interest. Text query can be applied to multimedia information retrieval, but it has inherent deficiencies. One hand, text annotation of multimedia information will spend a lot of manpower and resources and it is inefficient. On the other hand, annotated text is usually a person's perception of multimedia information. It is subject to impact of individual difference and state of human and environment, and the described results may be more one-sided. In addition, it is clearly incomplete to describe content-rich multimedia information with a small amount of text. Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) techniques appeared in 1990s. It solves the above problems well. It uses low-level features like color, texture and shape to describe image content, and breaks through the limitation of traditional text query technique. In this project we propose an image retrieval method based on multi-feature similarity score fusion using both GLCM and CCM. Single feature describes image content only from one point of view, which has a certain one-sided. Fusing multi-feature similarity score is expected to improve the system's retrieval performance. Here the retrieval results from color feature and texture feature are analyzed, and the method of fusing multi-feature similarity score is described. For the purpose of assigning the fusion weights of multi-feature similarity scores reasonably. For comparison, of different distance measurement methods and similarity measurements and also the texture features based on both GLCM and CCM methods are implemented. Finally the content based image retrieval based on color feature, texture feature and fusion of color-texture feature similarity score with equal weights.
Oral language disorders in preschool children with epilepsy: a speech-language screening.

BACKGROUND oral language disorder and epilepsy in childhood. AIM to verify the occurrence of oral language disorders in epileptic preschoolers attended at the Child Neurology Section of a university hospital. METHOD a prospective study with 30 epileptic children who were submitted to an oral speech-language evaluation. INCLUSION CRITERIA explicit diagnosis of epilepsy according to the ILAE (2005); ages between 3 to 6 years; normal neurological standard and neuropsychomotor development. EXCLUSION CRITERIA dubious diagnosis of epilepsy; altered neurological standard and neuropsychomotor development; children with associated pediatric disorders. Analyzed variables were: gender, age of first seizure, types of seizure and treatment regime. OR (odds ration) was determined, with a significance level of < 0.05. RESULTS 18 (60%) children with epilepsy presented oral language disorders and 12 (40%) presented normal language development. Regarding the observed disorders, 12 (67%) presented language disorder and 6 (33%) presented phonological disorder. Male children (OR = 2.03) and those with partial seizure (OR = 2.41) demonstrated to have a higher risk for oral language disorders. CONCLUSION the results indicate that preschoolers with epilepsy present a predominance of oral language development delay, and that the male gender and partial seizure are risk factors for this age group.
A Querying Method over RDF-ized Health Level Seven v2.5 Messages Using Life Science Knowledge Resources

Background Health level seven version 2.5 (HL7 v2.5) is a widespread messaging standard for information exchange between clinical information systems. By applying Semantic Web technologies for handling HL7 v2.5 messages, it is possible to integrate large-scale clinical data with life science knowledge resources. Objective Showing feasibility of a querying method over large-scale resource description framework (RDF)-ized HL7 v2.5 messages using publicly available drug databases. Methods We developed a method to convert HL7 v2.5 messages into the RDF. We also converted five kinds of drug databases into RDF and provided explicit links between the corresponding items among them. With those linked drug data, we then developed a method for query expansion to search the clinical data using semantic information on drug classes along with four types of temporal patterns. For evaluation purpose, medication orders and laboratory test results for a 3-year period at the University of Tokyo Hospital were used, and the query execution times were measured. Results Approximately 650 million RDF triples for medication orders and 790 million RDF triples for laboratory test results were converted. Taking three types of query in use cases for detecting adverse events of drugs as an example, we confirmed these queries were represented in SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL) using our methods and comparison with conventional query expressions were performed. The measurement results confirm that the query time is feasible and increases logarithmically or linearly with the amount of data and without diverging. Conclusions The proposed methods enabled query expressions that separate knowledge resources and clinical data, thereby suggesting the feasibility for improving the usability of clinical data by enhancing the knowledge resources. We also demonstrate that when HL7 v2.5 messages are automatically converted into RDF, searches are still possible through SPARQL without modifying the structure. As such, the proposed method benefits not only our hospitals, but also numerous hospitals that handle HL7 v2.5 messages. Our approach highlights a potential of large-scale data federation techniques to retrieve clinical information, which could be applied as applications of clinical intelligence to improve clinical practices, such as adverse drug event monitoring and cohort selection for a clinical study as well as discovering new knowledge from clinical information.
The thromboelastogram and circulating lupus anticoagulant.

Abnormal lupus anticoagulant (LA) levels, as measured with the activated partial tissue thromboplastin and tissue thromboplastin inhibition tests, are associated with a predisposition toward thromboembolic phenomena. Thromboelastogram (TEG) measurements have been proposed as a standardized assay to predict such a predisposition. We therefore correlated LA and TEG assessments in 46 women who were either apparently healthy controls or who had abnormal LA levels with such conditions as endometriosis and repeated pregnancy wastage. The coefficient of correlation (Rho) was . 3282 (P = .025). Seven patients with an abnormal LA demonstrated a normal TEG, and eight with a normal LA exhibited an abnormal TEG. Only nine had concomitant LA and TEG abnormalities. We conclude that LA and TEG apparently are not interchangeable as predictors of a hypercoagulable state. While this study did not address which of the two assays has a better predictive value for thromboembolic phenomena, it suggested that each can identify a different patient population.
Selecting for lactation curve and milk yield in dairy cattle.

Knowledge of genetic relationships between characteristics of lactation curves and lactation yields is essential for joint selection for both. An equation, yt = atbexp(-ct), was chosen to depict individual lactation curves for 5,927 first lactations by Holsteins in 557 herds in Michigan Dairy Herd Improvement where yt is daily milk yield at day t in lactation, a is yield at time zero, b is ascent to peak, and c is decline after peak. Genetic correlations for 305-day milk yield with initial production (a), ascent to peak (b), descent after peak (c), and peak yield were -. 37, . 40, 0, and . 91. From empirical results from applied selection indexes, selecting for both increase of ascent to peak and peak yield did not decrease 305-day milk substantially. Rankings of sires on these indexes were similar to their rankings on milk yield alone. Attempts to decrease peak yield and increase persistency decreased milk yield greatly.
Partial hepatectomy induced liver proteome changes in mice

Acceleration of liver regeneration could be of great clinical benefit in various liver‐associated diseases. However, at present little is known about therapeutic interventions to enhance this regenerative process. Our limited understanding and the complexity of the mechanisms involved have prevented the identification of new targets for treatment. Here we propose a broad‐range proteomic approach to this problem that makes possible the simultaneous study of different signaling and metabolic pathways on the liver proteome. Changes in protein expression in mouse livers (n = 5 per group) at 6 h and 12 h after partial hepatectomy and sham operation, as compared to untreated controls, were analyzed using two‐dimensional gel electrophoresis, mass spectrometry (MS), and mass fingerprinting. Twelve proteins, identified by MS, were up‐regulated by at least 2‐fold after partial hepatectomy. These included adipose differentiation‐related protein, gamma‐actin, enoyl coenzyme A hydratase 1, serum amyloid A and eukaryotic translation initiation factor 3. These results indicate that liver regeneration following partial hepatectomy affects various signaling and metabolic pathways.
Benzene and leukemia. A review of the literature and a risk assessment.

Benzene is widely recognized as a leukemogen, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is currently attempting to limit exposure to it more strictly. The proposed new regulation is a limit of an eight-hour time-weighted average of 1 ppm in place of the current limit of 10 ppm. The fundamental rationale for the change is a perception that the current standard is associated with an inordinate excess of leukemia. The epidemiologic literature on benzene and leukemia supports the inference that benzene causes acute myelocytic leukemia. However, the available data are too sparse, or suffer other limitations, to substantiate the idea that this causal association applies at low levels (i.e., 1-10 ppm) of benzene. Nonetheless, under the assumption that causation does apply at such low levels, a number of authors, including ourselves, have performed risk assessments using similar data but different methodologies. The assessments that we consider acceptable suggest that, among 1,000 men exposed to benzene at 10 ppm for a working lifetime of 30 years, there would occur about 50 excess deaths due to leukemia in addition to the baseline expectation of seven deaths. However, this estimate is speculative and whether or not enough confidence can be placed in it to justify a lower occupational benzene standard remains a decision for policy makers.
Responsibility of the therapist for the patients' actions (Tarasoff Rules): position of the psychiatrists.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Patient confidentiality and the therapists responsibility to society may present a challenge in the therapeutic relationship between the psychiatrist and the patient. We examined the attitudes of Israeli psychiatrists concerning the duty to warn and protect according to the Tarasoff Rule. METHODS Questionnaires to examine psychiatrists opinions concerning the implementation of the Tarasoff Rule in Israel were sent to senior psychiatrists involved in forensic psychiatry for anonymous completion. RESULTS 108 (64%) questionnaires were returned. 61 (57%) replied that they encountered similar situations. CONCLUSIONS Thorough understanding of the Tarasoff Rule, clarification of the patients potential dangerousness, and timely deliberation of the issues will assist the therapist. Investigation of the medical consensus of senior physicians, as performed in our study, is also a point of reference for formulating an opinion.
Steno-Occlusive Arterial Disease and Early Neurological Deterioration in Acute Ischemic Stroke

Aim: To evaluate the influence that steno-occlusive arterial disease may have on the development of early neurological deterioration (END) in a large series of patients with acute ischemic stroke. Methods: We studied a prospective cohort of 1,093 patients admitted to a single tertiary hospital with presence of neurological symptoms in the first 24 h after stroke onset. END was defined as any increase in the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score ≧4 points in the first 72 h. The arterial study assessed the presence of arterial occlusion or significative stenosis in the symptomatic territory. Additionally, age, initial stroke severity, blood pressure, glucose levels, vascular risk factors, lacunar stroke and prior use of antithrombotic treatment were also analyzed in a multivariable analysis. Results: END was detected in 179 patients (16.3%). Steno-occlusive disease (adjusted OR 3.60), initial blood pressure and abdominal obesity were independently associated with END. Both arterial stenosis (adjusted OR 2.33) or occlusions (adjusted OR 3.65) were associated with END. The higher adjusted OR (5.49) was obtained for steno-occlusive arterial disease in the vertebrobasilar system. Conclusions: An early arterial study may provide key data for the selection of patients with higher risk of END after acute ischemic stroke.
Strong stablizationof the non-linear Pendubot system

This paper concerns with the strong stabilization for a typical example of MIMO under-actuated robots called the Pendubot, which is a two-link under-actuated planar robot with a single actuator at the First joint. First, a study of the existing of blocking zeros is presented to check for strong stabilization condition. Then the paper presents a design method for observer-based dynamic strongly stabilizing controller for the upright equilibrium point of the Pendubot. Simulation results are presented to validate the theoretical results.
Two-dimensional blind deconvolution of medical ultrasound images

This paper uses a new ultrasound tissue model to propose an ultrasound image deconvolution algorithm for improving the quality of ultrasound images. This model incorporates random fluctuations of the tissue signal within the received ultrasound RF echo signal, which has not been considered in the existing ultrasound imaging algorithms. To deal with the tissue image formation and noise reduction problems, a two-dimensional (2-D) blind deconvolution algorithm is presented in which a nonorthogonal wavelet transform is designed to adaptively estimate the tissue response. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated based on realistic simulation. The deconvolved images can show significant improvement in both the signal-to-noise ratio and the contrast ratio.
New Lower Bounds for epsilon-Nets

Following groundbreaking work by Haussler and Welzl (1987), the use of small epsilon-nets has become a standard technique for solving algorithmic and extremal problems in geometry and learning theory. Two significant recent developments are: (i) an upper bound on the size of the smallest epsilon-nets for set systems, as a function of their so-called shallow-cell complexity (Chan, Grant, Konemann, and Sharpe); and (ii) the construction of a set system whose members can be obtained by intersecting a point set in R^4 by a family of half-spaces such that the size of any epsilon-net for them is at least (1/(9*epsilon)) log (1/epsilon) (Pach and Tardos). The present paper completes both of these avenues of research. We (i) give a lower bound, matching the result of Chan et al., and (ii) generalize the construction of Pach and Tardos to half-spaces in R^d, for any d >= 4, to show that the general upper bound of Haussler and Welzl for the size of the smallest epsilon-nets is tight.
Sorafenib inhibits growth and mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling in malignant peripheral nerve sheath cells

Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (MPNST) are soft-tissue tumors with a very poor prognosis and largely resistant to chemotherapy. MPNSTs are characterized by activation of the Ras pathway by loss of tumor suppressor neurofibromatosis type 1. In view of this, MPNST may be susceptible to inhibition of the activated Ras/Raf/mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway by the B-Raf inhibitor sorafenib. MPNST (MPNST and ST8814) and dedifferentiated liposarcoma (LS141 and DDLS) human tumor cell lines were characterized for Ras activation and B-Raf expression. Tumor cells were treated with sorafenib and examined for growth inhibition, inhibition of phospho-MEK, phospho-ERK, cell cycle arrest, and changes in cyclin D1 and pRb expression. MPNSTs were sensitive to sorafenib at nanomolar concentrations. This appeared to be due to inhibition of phospho-MEK, phospho-ERK, suppression of cyclin D1, and hypophosphorylation of pRb at the CDK4-specific sites, resulting in a G1 cell cycle arrest. These effects were not seen in the liposarcoma cells, which either did not express B-Raf or showed decreased Ras activation. Small interfering RNA–mediated depletion of B-Raf in MPNSTs also induced a G1 cell cycle arrest in these cells, with a marked inhibition of cyclin D1 expression and Rb phosphorylation, whereas depletion of C-Raf did not affect either. With growth inhibition at the low nanomolar range, sorafenib, by inhibiting the mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway, may prove to be a novel therapy for patients with MPNST. [Mol Cancer Ther 2008;7(4):890–6]
CTC Training of Multi-Phone Acoustic Models for Speech Recognition

Phone-sized acoustic units such as triphones cannot properly capture the long-term co-articulation effects that occur in spontaneous speech. For that reason, it is interesting to construct acoustic units covering a longer time-span such as syllables or words. Unfortunately, the frequency distribution of those units is such that a few high frequency units account for most of the tokens, while many units rarely occur. As a result, those units suffer from data sparsity and can be difficult to train. In this paper we propose a scalable data-driven approach to construct a set of salient units made of sequences of phones called M-phones. We illustrate that since the decomposition of a word sequence into a sequence of Mphones is ambiguous, those units are well suited to be used with a connectionist temporal classification (CTC) approach which does not rely on an explicit frame-level segmentation of the word sequence into a sequence of acoustic units. Experiments are presented on a Voice Search task using 12,500 hours of training data.
Hereditary colorectal cancer.

Colorectal cancers among patients with a familial risk of this disorder account for approximately one of five cases of this disease. Many cases can be prevented by the identification of those at risk and the use of appropriate colonoscopic screening. This article, part of the Genomic Medicine series, provides an in-depth review of the two most common forms of familial colorectal cancer.
Estimation of European wild boar relative abundance and aggregation: a novel method in epidemiological risk assessment

Wild boars are important disease reservoirs. It is well known that abundance estimates are needed in wildlife epidemiology, but the expense and effort required to obtain them is prohibitive. We evaluated a simple method based on the frequency of faecal droppings found on transects (FBII), and developed a spatial aggregation index, based on the runs test statistic. Estimates were compared with hunting data, and with porcine circovirus and Aujeszky's disease virus seroprevalences and Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex and Metastrongylus spp. prevalence. The FBII and the aggregation index were correlated with the hunting index, but both of the former estimates correlated better than the latter with the disease prevalences. Hence, at least in habitats with high wild boar densities, the FBII combined with the aggregation index constitutes a cheap and reliable alternative for wild boar abundance estimation that can be used for epidemiological risk assessment, even outside the hunting season and in areas with no available data on hunting activities.
Opportunities and Challenges in High-Rate Wireless Sensor Networking

Summary form only given. The first wave of embedded wireless sensor networks has generally been characterized by applications whose data rate requirements are quite low, usually less than tens of kilobits per second. The author believes that the next wave, characterized by applications in industrial process control, fabrication plants, structural health monitoring, fluid pipelining monitoring, and hydrology, will involve substantially higher data rates and will require new techniques for data delivery and for integrating computing and networking in sensor networks. This paper discusses these challenges at both the architectural and protocol levels, and suggests some research directions for the networking community. Many of these issues are also applicable in the context of Internet access over wireless "mesh" networks.