Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Feature Matching with Bounded Distortion

We consider the problem of finding a geometrically consistent set of point matches between two images. We assume that local descriptors have provided a set of candidate matches, which may include many outliers. We then seek the largest subset of these correspondences that can be aligned perfectly using a nonrigid deformation that exerts a bounded distortion. We formulate this as a constrained optimization problem and solve it using a constrained, iterative reweighted least-squares algorithm. In each iteration of this algorithm we solve a convex quadratic program obtaining a globally optimal match over a subset of the bounded distortion transformations. We further prove that a sequence of such iterations converges monotonically to a critical point of our objective function. We show experimentally that this algorithm produces excellent results on a number of test sets, in comparison to several state-of-the-art approaches.
Restart: The Resurgence of Computer Science in UK Schools

Computer science in UK schools is undergoing a remarkable transformation. While the changes are not consistent across each of the four devolved nations of the UK (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), there are developments in each that are moving the subject to become mandatory for all pupils from age 5 onwards. In this article, we detail how computer science declined in the UK, and the developments that led to its revitalisation: a mixture of industry and interest group lobbying, with a particular focus on the value of the subject to all school pupils, not just those who would study it at degree level. This rapid growth in the subject is not without issues, however: there remain significant forthcoming challenges with its delivery, especially surrounding the issue of training sufficient numbers of teachers. We describe a national network of teaching excellence which is being set up to combat this problem, and look at the other challenges that lie ahead.
A Framework for Hierarchical Ensemble Clustering

Ensemble clustering, as an important extension of the clustering problem, refers to the problem of combining different (input) clusterings of a given dataset to generate a final (consensus) clustering that is a better fit in some sense than existing clusterings. Over the past few years, many ensemble clustering approaches have been developed. However, most of them are designed for partitional clustering methods, and few research efforts have been reported for ensemble hierarchical clustering methods. In this article, a hierarchical ensemble clustering framework that can naturally combine both partitional clustering and hierarchical clustering results is proposed. In addition, a novel method for learning the ultra-metric distance from the aggregated distance matrices and generating final hierarchical clustering with enhanced cluster separation is developed based on the ultra-metric distance for hierarchical clustering. We study three important problems: dendrogram description, dendrogram combination, and dendrogram selection. We develop two approaches for dendrogram selection based on tree distances, and we investigate various dendrogram distances for representing dendrograms. We provide a systematic empirical study of the ensemble hierarchical clustering problem. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed approaches.
Non-Communicable Diseases in Jamaica : Moving from Prescription to Prevention

Reducing the burden of Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Jamaica is a national policy. The Government of Jamaica has recognized the importance of preventing and controlling NCDs and created the National Health Fund (NHF) to reduce the cost of treating them by providing free or subsidized medicines to patients with NCD conditions and finance some prevention programs. The World Bank undertook a study to learn from Jamaica's experience in tackling major NCDs and related risk factors, provide policy options for Jamaica to improve the NCD Program, and share with other Caribbean countries lessons learned from this experience. The study answered three questions: (i) whether Jamaica's NHF and its drug subsidy Program have reduced out of pocket spending on NCD treatment; (ii) whether access to treatment of NCDs has improved in the country; and (iii) what is the economic burden on patients with NCDs and their families.
A physically active lifestyle-public health's best buy?

Leaders A physically active lifestyle public health's best buy? Times have changed. Many people spend most of their working time in the office, sitting behind computer terminals , PCs or laptops. Death is no longer from a mono-causal, infectious disease, but by multi-causal chronic diseases. Lifestyle factors, such as smoking, excessive alcohol intake, nutrition (for example, a too high intake of dietary fat or an excessive intake of polysaturated fatty acids, or both) and physical inactivity, play an important part in the aetiology of such chronic diseases, like coronary heart disease (CHD), hypercholesterolaemia, hyperten-sion, stroke, non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM), and certain forms of cancer. The first three factors are considered "classic" independent risk factors for multi-causal chronic disease. The role of physical inactivity as an independent lifestyle risk factor has been the subject of debate and controversy. This debate seems, however, to have come to an end with the publication of consensus statements1-3 and policy documents" on the health benefits of a physically active lifestyle. Not only will the individual person's health benefit from a reduced risk of the chronic diseases mentioned above but the public health status of a nation will benefit tremendously from a physically active lifestyle. The public health burden of a sedentary lifestyle can be quantified by calculating the population attributable risk (PAR) of such a lifestyle. PAR is an estimate of the proportion of the public health burden caused by a particular risk factor, for example , a sedentary lifestyle. By calculating PAR we may estimate the proportion of deaths from chronic diseases (CHD, NIDDM, cancer, etc) that would not occur if everyone in a population was sufficiently physically active.7 To calculate PAR, we need to know the relative risk (as a measure of the strength of the relation between a risk factor and the public health burden) and the prevalence of the risk factor. The "true" relative risk is constant because it is biologically determined and will therefore not change, even though estimates of relative risk may change because of improvement of scientific measurement.7 Consequently changes in PAR are highly dependent on changes in prevalence and not on changes in relative risk. Based on available information on both relative mortality risks and preva-lences of a sedentary lifestyle Powell and Blair7 estimated the PAR of sedentary living for mortality from CHD, colon cancer, and diabetes mellitus to be 35%, 32%, and 35% respectively, meaning …
Health claims and labeling regulation: how will consumers learn about functional foods?

Phytochemicals, for example, have recently been the focus of intense research efforts because of their cancer preventive properties. Phytochemicals are non-nutrient, physiologically active plant components present in relatively small amounts compared to the macronutrients (fats, carbohydrates, and proteins). Epidemiological studies have demonstrated that populations consuming phytochemicals through a plant-based diet high in grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables have a markedly reduced incidence of cancer. For example, lycopene in tomatoes is a phytochemical that acts as an antioxidant, and has been shown to be especially effective in preventing prostate cancer (Giovannucci, 1999). Research has also identified functional foods that reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. One study widely reported in the popular press has identified a mechanism by which a component in red wine reduces hardening of the arteries (Renaud & DeLorgeril, 1992). Many studies have shown that soy protein reduces blood cholesterol (Anderson, Johnstone, & CookNewell, 1995). Yet another example of a functional food is cranberry juice, which reduces the incidence of urinary tract infections (Avorn et al., 1994).
ROS1 as a ‘druggable’ receptor tyrosine kinase: lessons learned from inhibiting the ALK pathway

ROS1 is one of 58 receptor tyrosine kinases, and one of two orphan receptor tyrosine kinases where its ligand is unknown. ROS1 is evolutionarily related to ALK. ROS1 rearrangement was discovered in glioblastoma in 1987, in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in 2007, and in cholangiocarcinoma in 2011. While the clinicopathologic characteristics of ROS1-rearranged glioblastoma and cholangiocarcinoma patients remain to be defined, the clinicopathologic characteristics of ROS1-rearranged NSCLC patients have recently been described. Although ROS1 shares only 49% amino acid sequence homology with ALK in the kinase domains, several ALK inhibitors have demonstrated in vitro inhibitory activity against ROS1. With the recent US approval of crizotinib, a multi-targeted ALK/MET kinase inhibitor, for the treatment of ALK-rearranged NSCLC, attention has turned to ROS1-rearranged tumors, especially NSCLC. The next few years should witness a rapid pace of clinical research in ROS1-rearranged tumors utilizing available ALK inhibitors.
Identificação de necessidades e expectativas dos pacientes de uma clínica de catarata

PURPOSE: To identify patients' needs and expectations in a cataract clinic connected with a university public hospital - Cataract Institute - Department of Ophthalmology - Paulista School of Medicine (UNIFESP). METHOD: A descriptive transverse study was carried out with the patients enrolled in the clinic, distributed in two groups: those who were operated on and those who were not. Patients were approached in two stages: 1) conduct the study in four focus groups to identify the patients' most valued attributes (qualitative study); 2) a questionnaire was designed based on the main attributes and was submitted to a sample of patients (quantitative study). RESULTS: The patients' main expectations are related to: 1) the treatment results; 2) more comfortable waiting facilities; 3) be treated with respect by all the caregivers; and 4) the technological devices used in their treatments. The highest rates of satisfaction were the information material, physician care, and medical devices; the lowest rates of satisfaction were telephone service, physical environment, queue arrangements, and making contact. CONCLUSIONS: The evaluation of the services as well as the institution's public image is positive. The main reasons for choosing the clinic are related to economic and financial aspects and the majority of the patients would use the services again and would also recommend the clinic to other people.
State-of-the-art in string similarity search and join

String similarity search and its variants are fundamental problems with many applications in areas such as data integration, data quality, computational linguistics, or bioinformatics. A plethora of methods have been developed over the last decades. Obtaining an overview of the state-of-the-art in this field is difficult, as results are published in various domains without much cross-talk, papers use different data sets and often study subtle variations of the core problems, and the sheer number of proposed methods exceeds the capacity of a single research group. In this paper, we report on the results of the probably largest benchmark ever performed in this field. To overcome the resource bottleneck, we organized the benchmark as an international competition, a workshop at EDBT/ICDT 2013. Various teams from different fields and from all over the world developed or tuned programs for two crisply defined problems. All algorithms were evaluated by an external group on two machines. Altogether, we compared 14 different programs on two string matching problems (k-approximate search and k-approximate join) using data sets of increasing sizes and with different characteristics from two different domains. We compare programs primarily by wall clock time, but also provide results on memory usage, indexing time, batch query effects and scalability in terms of CPU cores. Results were averaged over several runs and confirmed on a second, different hardware platform. A particularly interesting observation is that disciplines can and should learn more from each other, with the three best teams rooting in computational linguistics, databases, and bioinformatics, respectively.
Regional 3D superimposition to assess temporomandibular joint condylar morphology.

OBJECTIVES To investigate the reliability of regional three-dimensional registration and superimposition methods for assessment of temporomandibular joint condylar morphology across subjects and longitudinally. METHODS The sample consisted of cone beam CT scans of 36 patients. The across-subject comparisons included 12 controls, mean age 41.3 ± 12.0 years, and 12 patients with temporomandibular joint osteoarthritis, mean age 41.3 ± 14.7 years. The individual longitudinal assessments included 12 patients with temporomandibular joint osteoarthritis, mean age 37.8 ± 16.7 years, followed up at pre-operative jaw surgery, immediately after and one-year post-operative. Surface models of all condyles were constructed from the cone beam CT scans. Two previously calibrated observers independently performed all registration methods. A landmark-based approach was used for the registration of across-subject condylar models, and temporomandibular joint osteoarthritis vs control group differences were computed with shape analysis. A voxel-based approach was used for registration of longitudinal scans calculated x, y, z degrees of freedom for translation and rotation. Two-way random intraclass correlation coefficients tested the interobserver reliability. RESULTS Statistically significant differences between the control group and the osteoarthritis group were consistently located on the lateral and medial poles for both observers. The interobserver differences were ≤0.2 mm. For individual longitudinal comparisons, the mean interobserver differences were ≤0.6 mm in translation errors and 1.2° in rotation errors, with excellent reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient >0.75). CONCLUSIONS Condylar registration for across-subjects and longitudinal assessments is reliable and can be used to quantify subtle bony differences in the three-dimensional condylar morphology.
Trading risks for markets: The international harmonisation of pharmaceuticals regulation

Drawing on interviews and documentary research, this paper explores the nature of international harmonisation of pharmaceutical regulation. The relationships between international harmonisation, trade interests in market expansion and the regulatory state are examined. Particular attention is given to the implications of this harmonisation for drug safety, risk assessment and public health. It is argued that this process is lowering regulatory standards regarding drug safety and is making the regulatory state more vulnerable to capture by industrial interests. This is accentuated by the misrepresentation of societal and political judgements as technical calculations and a concomitant lack of public accountability.
Evaluation of intensity of artefacts in CBCT by radio-opacity of composite simulation models of implants in vitro.

OBJECTIVES The aim was to compare the intensity of artefacts in CBCT images caused by different percentages of radio-opacifying material in composite simulation models of implants. Titanium and zirconia models of implants were used as a reference for the evaluation of the intensity of artefacts. METHODS Seven different percentages of radio-opacifying BaAlSiO2 fillers were added to composite resin to fabricate seven step wedges and simulation models of implants. Titanium and zirconia simulation models of implants were also fabricated. Aluminium step wedge was used as a reference for the measurement of grey values in intraoral radiographs. Step wedges were exposed with a Planmeca Intra X-ray machine (Planmeca Oy, Helsinki, Finland). All composite, titanium and zirconia simulation models of implants were exposed with a SCANORA(®) 3D dental X-ray machine (Soredex, Tuusula, Finland). Images and grey values were analysed with ImageJ software (National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD). To demonstrate possible artefacts between all the simulation models of implants, the images were also visually compared with each other using ImageJ software. RESULTS Artefacts were clearly present in CBCT images caused by titanium and zirconia and when the composite material consisted at least 20% BaAlSiO2. The intensity of artefacts increased when the radio-opacity of the composite material increased. CONCLUSIONS Materials containing less radio-opacity produce less pronounced artefacts. The cut-off point for artefacts is at 20% radio-opaque filling material in composite material.
The 4C framework: principles of interaction in digital ecosystems

Recent years have seen an increased research interest in multi-device interactions and digital ecosystems. This research addresses new opportunities and challenges when users are not simply interacting with one system or device at a time, but orchestrate ensembles of them as a larger whole. One of these challenges is to understand what principles of interaction work well for what, and to create such knowledge in a form that can inform design. Our contribution to this research is a framework of interaction principles for digital ecosystems, which can be used to analyze and understand existing systems and design new ones. The 4C framework provides new insights over existing frameworks and theory by focusing specifically on explaining the interactions taking place within digital ecosystems. We demonstrate this value through two examples of the framework in use, firstly for understanding an existing digital ecosystem, and secondly for generating ideas and discussion when designing a new one.
Intra-Seasonal Short-Time Up-Dosing with SQ-Standardised Subcutaneous Immunotherapy in Patients with Intermittent Allergic Rhinoconjunctivitis is Well Tolerated during Routine Application: A Non-Interventional, Observational Study

Background: For patients with pollen induced allergic rhinoconjunctivitis, a pre-seasonal start of subcutaneous specific immunotherapy is generally recommended in international guidelines. In a placebo-controlled trial intraseasonal up-dosing of subcutaneous immunotherapy to 10,000 SQ-U (Alutard SQ®) was shown to be well tolerated and to induce significant immunologic effects. The aim of our study was to investigate the feasibility of intra-seasonal up-dosing during routine application. Methods: In an open, non-interventional observational study, data on tolerability of subcutaneous immunotherapy (Alutard SQ®) in patients with grass pollen induced allergic rhinoconjunctivitis were recorded by 110 physicians between May and November 2009 in Germany. Therapy was initiated within grass pollen season according to a 6-injection up-dosing schedule from 100 to 10,000 SQ-U with 1-3 days intervals, repeating this dose after 2 and 4 weeks during and up-dosing to the final maintenance dose of 100,000 SQ-U after the end of grass pollen season. Results: Data for 250 patients could be evaluated, 198 patients had been up-dosed up to the peak grass pollen season and 52 after the peak. Adverse drug reactions were observed in 61.6% of patients with up-dosing up to the peak grass pollen season and in 48.1% with up-dosing after the peak with swelling at the injection site as most common reaction. The overall rate of systemic allergic reactions was low in both groups. Mild to moderate respiratory symptoms were more frequently reported in patients up-dosed up to the peak grass pollen season. Overall tolerability was assessed as “very good” or “good” by >90% of patients and physicians. Conclusions: Intra-seasonal short-time up-dosing with Alutard SQ® grasses and rye by 6 injections from 100 to 10,000 SQ-U with 1-3 days interval was observed to be well-tolerated during routine application and thus confirms data obtained from the placebo-controlled clinical trial.
Acute cardioembolic stroke: an update

Cardioembolic infarction is the most severe ischemic stroke subtype, but some clinical characteristics of the disease are still poorly defined. An update of relevant aspects related to clinical manifestations, biological characteristics, prognostic implications and treatment is presented in this article. Topics discussed include epidemiology and risk factors, clinical features and prognosis, cardiac work-up studies, patent foramen ovale, complex atheromatosis of the aortic arch, blood biomarkers, heart failure, and thrombolytic and anti-thrombotic therapy. Cardioembolic infarction is an important topic at the frontier between cardiology and vascular neurology, occurs frequently in daily practice, has a high impact for patients, healthcare systems and society, and merits an updated review of current clinical issues, advances and controversies.
Effects of amlodipine plus atorvastatin association in hypertensive hypercholesterolemic patients

Therapies that lower blood pressure or lipid levels slow the progression of atherosclerosis, and reduce morbidity and mortality in patients with hypertension or atherosclerotic disease. A combination tablet containing both amlodipine besylate and atorvastatin calcium has recently been approved for the treatment of hypertension and dyslipidemia in a growing number of countries. We decided to undertake a thorough literature search to evaluate the effects of amlodipine and atorvastatin in hypertensive hypercholesterolemic patients on blood pressure values, lipid profile values and, when available, data on small- and large-artery compliance, left ventricular mass index, and inflammatory parameters. From the data collected, it emerged that in hypertensive and hypercholesterolemic patients, the combination of amlodipine plus atorvastatin is more effective than the single drugs alone in reducing blood pressure and in improving lipid profile. Furthermore the combination of amlodipine plus atorvastatin also improved small-artery compliance, inflammatory markers, left ventricular hypertrophy and reduced uric acid faster and more effectively than the single drugs taken alone. For these reasons, the combination of amlodipine plus atorvastatin could be the treatment of choice in hypertensive and hypercholesterolemic patients.
Evaluation of the diagnostic efficacy of two cone beam computed tomography protocols in reliably detecting the location of the inferior alveolar nerve canal.

OBJECTIVES Reliable three-dimensional localization of the inferior alveolar nerve canal (IANC) is valuable for a variety of dentoalveolar procedures. Although conventional CBCT offers three-dimensional information at a reasonably low dose, it is still a significant amount of radiation. In this ex vivo study, we evaluated the ability of a 180° rotational CBCT acquisition protocol with lower number of basis projections to create a CBCT data set for reliable localization of the IANC compared with a conventional 360° rotational CBCT acquisition. METHODS 50 dry human skulls were imaged using 180° and 360° rotational CBCT protocols. Measurements of the IANC throughout its course in the mandible were carried out. Two raters evaluated the measurements and rated the scans based on their ability to visualize the IANC, and the measurements were carried out. RESULTS The IANC length measurements for the 180° and 360° protocols were identical. There was no difference between evaluations by the two raters for the two protocols. Interexaminer reliability values were >90% for the two protocols. The sensitivity values for the two protocols were >95%. The specificity for both protocols was 100%. CONCLUSIONS 180° CBCT acquisition protocol is able to accurately locate the IANC with high reliability and is comparable to a conventional 360° protocol.