Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Spatial‐Context‐Based Approach for Automated Spatial Change Analysis of Piece‐Wise Linear Building Elements

Changes of designs and construction plans often cause propagative design modifications, tedious construction coordination, cascading effects of errors, reworks, and delays in project management. Among various building elements, those having piece‐wise linear geometries (i.e., connected straight line segments), such as connected straight sections of ducts in mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems, frequently undergo spatial changes in response to the changes of their surroundings. On the other hand, the piece‐wise linear geometries pose challenges to analyzing and controlling changes in construction and facility management. State‐of‐the‐art 3D change detection algorithms often face ambiguities about which points belong to which objects when piece‐wise linear object are spacked in small spaces. This article examines a spatial‐context‐based framework that uses spatial relationships between piece‐wise linear building elements (ducts in this article) to enable fast and reliable association of 3D data with ducts in as‐designed models for supporting reliable change analysis. Three case studies showed that this framework outperformed a conventional change detection method, and could handle large dislocations of piece‐wise linear elements and occlusions.
Initial cytoplasmic and phagosomal consequences of human neutrophil exposure to Staphylococcus epidermidis

Microorganisms are recognized by specific phagocyte surface receptors. Liganded receptors then signal a series of events leading to phagocytosis and destruction of the organism by oxidative, lytic, and associated processes. Some organisms, such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), Cryptococcus neoformans (Cf), and others, evade such destruction, surviving and sometimes multiplying within the phagosome to later cause disease. To study such evasion, we developed protocols which permit simultaneous kinetic measurement of early cytoplasmic signaling and of phagosomal pH (pHp) and oxidative burst, on a cell‐by‐cell basis, of polymorphonuclear (PMN) leukocytes exposed to fluorescently labeled, nonpathogenic Staphylococcus epidermidis (Se). The availability of a new, highly sensitive pH probe, pHrodo™, permits observation of increasing pHp. Simultaneous labeling of the organism, applicable to any phagocyte target, with a probe insensitive to pH and oxidative species, such as AlexaFluor350™, permits distinction between binding and functional responses to it by ratioing fluorescences. Addition of an extracellular‐specific quencher (Trypan blue) permits distinction between bound and phagosome‐enclosed targets, so that conditions within the closed phagosome can be studied. We found that opsonization is required for functional activation of PMN by Se, that the organism causes early alkalinization of the phagosome (in contrast to Cf which hyperacidifies it), and that extracellular Ca2+ is not required for cytoplasmic Ca2+ signaling but contributes markedly to binding of Se to PMN and to ensuant bactericidal functions. These findings lead to a new approach to the study of select organisms, like Cf and Mtb, which evade killing by manipulating the phagosomal environment. © 2009 International Society for Advancement of Cytometry
How patients choose hospitals: Using the stereotypic content model to model trustworthiness, warmth and competence

In many countries, policy initiatives force the implementation of demand-driven healthcare systems to encourage competition among providers. When actively choosing hospitals, consumers can compare data on the quality of hospital performance among providers. However, patients do not necessarily take full advantage of comparative quality information but instead use a number of readily available proxies to evaluate provider trustworthiness. According to the stereotypic content model, organizational trustworthiness is built on stereotypical perceptions of hospitals' competence and warmth, reflected by visible hospital characteristics such as ownership and teaching status, and size. We introduce a theoretical framework on stereotypic quality perceptions that brings together fragmented findings in health services research on patient quality expectations of hospital characteristics. The model provides a basis for further research and recommendations for improved hospital communication strategies. The study suggests that researchers as well as hospital management should pay more attention to stereotypical patient quality perceptions and their impact on hospital choice to understand patients' quality evaluations better.
The phosphodiesterase 5 inhibitor sildenafil stimulates angiogenesis through a protein kinase G/MAPK pathway

cGMP‐degrading pathways have received little attention in the context of angiogenesis. In the present study we set out to determine whether cGMP‐specific phosphodiesterase 5 (PDE5) inhibition affects new blood vessel growth. Incubation of chicken chorioallantoic membranes (CAMs) in vivo with sildenafil increased vascular length in a dose‐dependent manner. Moreover, incubation of cultured endothelial cells (ECs) with the PDE5 inhibitor promoted proliferation, migration, and organization into tube‐like structures. The effects of sildenafil on the angiogenesis‐related properties of EC could be blocked by pre‐treatment with the soluble guanylyl cyclase (sGC) inhibitor ODQ or the protein kinase G (PKG) I inhibitor DT‐3. In addition, over‐expression of sGC in EC led to an enhanced growth and migratory response to sildenafil. To study the signaling pathways implicated in the sildenafil‐stimulated angiogenic responses we determined the phosphorylation status of mitogen‐activated protein kinase (MAPK) members. Incubation of cells with sildenafil increased both extracellular signal regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) and p38 phosphorylation in a time‐dependent manner. Inhibition of MEK by PD98059 and p38 with SB203580 blocked sildenafil‐induced proliferation and migration, respectively, suggesting that these MAPK members are downstream of PDE5 and mediate the angiogenic effects of sildenafil. PDE5 inhibitors could, thus, be used in disease states where neo‐vessel growth is desired. J. Cell. Physiol. 211: 197–204, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Chronic interstitial lung disease in children

Children's interstitial lung diseases (chILD) are increasingly recognised and contain many lung developmental and genetic disorders not yet identified in adult pneumology. Worldwide, several registers have been established. The Australasian Registry Network for Orphan Lung Disease (ARNOLD) has identified problems in estimating rare disease prevalence; focusing on chILD in immunocompetent patients, a period prevalence of 1.5 cases per million children and a mortality rate of 7% were determined. The chILD-EU register highlighted the workload to be covered per patient included and provided protocols for diagnosis and initial treatment, similar to the United States chILD network. Whereas case reports may be useful for young physicians to practise writing articles, cohorts of patients can catapult progress, as demonstrated by recent studies on persistent tachypnoea of infancy, hypersensitivity pneumonitis in children and interstitial lung disease related to interferonopathies from mutations in transmembrane protein 173. Translational research has linked heterozygous mutations in the ABCA3 transporter to an increased risk of interstitial lung diseases, not only in neonates, but also in older children and adults. For surfactant dysfunction disorders in infancy and early childhood, lung transplantation was reported to be as successful as in adult patients. Mutual potentiation of paediatric and adult pneumologists is mandatory in this rapidly extending field for successful future development. This brief review highlights publications in the field of paediatric interstitial lung disease as reviewed during the Clinical Year in Review session presented at the 2017 European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress in Milan, Italy. It was commissioned by the ERS and critically presents progress made as well as drawbacks. Successful developments in chILD are register/consortia based and potentiate paediatric and adult pneumology http://ow.ly/dgrO30hBbRJ
Practical Applications in Immunohistochemistry: Carcinomas of Unknown Primary Site.

CONTEXT -Identification of the site of origin of carcinoma of unknown primary using immunohistochemistry is a frequent requirement of anatomic pathologists. Diagnostic accuracy is crucial, particularly in the current era of targeted therapies and smaller sample sizes. OBJECTIVES -To provide practical guidance and suggestions for classifying carcinoma of unknown primary using both proven and new antibodies, as well as targeting panels based on integration of morphologic and clinical features. DATA SOURCES -Literature review, the authors' practice experience, and authors' research. CONCLUSIONS -With well-performed and interpreted immunohistochemistry panels, anatomic pathologists can successfully identify the site of origin of carcinoma of unknown primary. It is crucial to understand not only the diagnostic uses of the many available antibodies but also the potential limits and pitfalls.
Echocardiographic Parameters of Right Ventricular Function Predict Mortality in Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome: A Pilot Study

Right ventricular (RV) dysfunction in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) contributes to increased mortality. Our aim is to identify reproducible transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) parameters of RV dysfunction that can be used to predict outcomes in ARDS. We performed a retrospective single-center cohort pilot study measuring tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion (TAPSE), Tei index, RV-fractional area change (RV-FAC), pulmonary artery systolic pressure (PASP), and septal shift, reevaluated by an independent blinded cardiologist (JK). Thirty-eight patients were included. Patients were divided on the basis of 30-day survival. Thirty-day mortality was 47%. Survivors were younger than nonsurvivors. Survivors had a higher pH, PaO2: FiO2 ratio, and TAPSE. Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II), Simplified Acute Physiology Score II (SAPS II), and Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) scores were lower in survivors. TAPSE has the strongest association with increased 30-day mortality from date of TTE. Accordingly, TAPSE has a strong positive correlation with PaO2: FiO2 ratios, and Tei index has a strong negative correlation with PaO2: FiO2 ratios. Septal shift was associated with lower PaO2: FiO2 ratios. Decrease in TAPSE, increase in Tei index, and septal shift were seen in the severe ARDS group. In multivariate logistic regression models, TAPSE maintained a significant association with mortality independent of age, pH, PaO2: FiO2 ratios, positive end expiratory pressure, PCO2, serum bicarbonate, plateau pressures, driving pressures, APACHE II, SAPS II, and SOFA scores. In conclusion, TAPSE and other TTE parameters should be used as novel predictive indicators for RV dysfunction in ARDS. These parameters can be used as surrogate noninvasive RV hemodynamic measurements to be manipulated to improve mortality in patients with ARDS and contributory RV dysfunction.
Facial Adiposity: A Cue to Health?

Facial symmetry, averageness, sexual dimorphism, and skin colour/texture all serve as cues to attractiveness, but their role in the perception of health is less clear. This ambiguity could reflect the fact that these facial traits are not the only cues to health. We propose that adiposity is an important, but thus far disregarded, facial cue to health. Our results demonstrate two important prerequisites for any health cue. First, we show that facial adiposity, or the perception of weight in the face, significantly predicts perceived health and attractiveness. Second, we show that perceived facial adiposity is significantly associated with measures of cardiovascular health and reported infections. Perceived facial adiposity, or a correlate thereof, is therefore an important and valid cue to health that should be included in future studies.
Advances in non-radiative resonant inductive coupling wireless Power Transfer: A comparison of alternative circuit and system models driven by emergent applications

Recent research in wireless power transfer (WPT) using resonant inductive coupling has demonstrated very high efficiencies at large distances compared to the transmitting element dimensions, thereby increasing the number of potential applications of WPT. Since resonant inductive coupling is a very multidisciplinary field of research, different approaches have been proposed to predict the behaviour of these systems from the physical theory of resonators (coupled-mode theory) and circuit theory. Although the equivalence of these models for a point-to-point link has already been studied together with the performance metrics Power Transferred to the Load (PTL) and Power Transfer Efficiency (PTE), the new challenges and applications of this technology emphasize the necessity of analytical models to predict and assess the behavior of Multiple Input - Multiple Output (MIMO) links. In this article we revisit the current analytical models from the MIMO perspective, derive the analytical equations for the equivalent performance metrics PTE and PTL and demonstrate how to maximize them in a non-radiative resonant wireless power transfer link from a circuit-centric point of view, providing design guidelines in terms of optimal source and load impedances. This work concludes with a prospective discussion on open challenges of WPT.
An on-line Japanese character recognition method using length-based stroke correspondence algorithm

Because most Japanese characters consist of several strokes, many recognition methods determine stroke correspondence before calculating the distance between the input character and the template character. When the writing style is cursive, however, the stroke number is changeable. If stroke numbers differ between the input and template characters, stroke correspondence is not one-to-one, and it is not easy to determine the correspondence. The method proposed, uses stroke length, because these lengths are relatively stable even when the writing is cursive. The calculation of recognition using stroke lengths is faster than that of recognition using other multidimensional feature values such as the coordinates. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.
A Data Cleaning Framework for Enabling User Preference Profiling through Wi-Fi Logs

Nowadays mobile devices have become a ubiquitous medium supporting various forms of functionality and are widely accepted for commons. In this study, we investigate using Wi-Fi logs from a mobile device to discover user preferences. The core ideas are two folds. First, every Wi-Fi access point is with a network name, normally a human-readable string, called SSID (Service Set Identifier). Since SSIDs are often with semantics, from which we can infer the place where the user stayed. Second, a Wi-Fi log is produced when the user is near a Wi-Fi access point. A high frequency of a consecutively observed SSID implies a long stay duration at a place. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first attempting to understand users from the collected Wi-Fi logs from mobile devices. However, Wi-Fi logs are essentially of various information types and with noises. How to assess the information types, eliminate irrelevant information, and clean up the noises within partial-informative SSIDs are therefore keys for profiling user preferences over Wi-Fi logs. In this paper, we propose a data cleaning and information enrichment framework for enabling the user preference understanding through collected Wi-Fi logs, and introduce a data clean framework for cleaning, correcting, and refining Wi-Fi logs. In addition, a comprehensive experiment with data collected from users is made to verify the effectiveness of the proposed techniques for cleaning noisy Wi-Fi data for user preferences profiling. We believe that this work opens a new direction for understanding users from a different perspective, and we make available the code and the collected data set used in this study to encourage further research in this direction.
Pesticide Availability for US Food Crops: Understanding Market and Safety Forces in Product Entry, Maintenance, and Withdrawal Decisions

COURBOIS, Claude-Bertrand. Pesticide Availability for US Food Crops: Understanding Market and Safety Forces in Product Entry, Maintenance, and Withdrawal Decisions. (Under the direction of Gerald Carlson.) Pesticide firms in the United States must undertake costly, crop-specific Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) safety tests to register their pesticides for sale to farmers of commercial crops. Firms also must pay annual registration fees and periodically undertake additional safety tests on each pesticide’s crop-specific registrations. These requirements create a market unlike others because firms may not freely enter or remain in a crop’s pesticide market. The EPA can raise and lower registration requirements to discourage or encourage registration of pesticides with certain safety characteristics on crops with particular production or consumption patterns. Used effectively, these powers can enable the EPA to promote safety by encouraging registration of the safest pesticides in the widest number of markets, while limiting availability of unsafe pesticides. Used poorly, these powers can restrict even safe pesticides from reaching markets, especially minor ones. This dissertation evaluates the success of the pesticide regulatory system. A model that includes the EPA’s standard-setting process and a representative pesticide firm’s registration decision-making is used to demonstrate how registrations come about. The model shows how EPA and firm behavior cause registrations to depend on the characteristics of pesticides and crops. The study required compilation of an extensive dataset of crop and pesticide characteristics and registration data through the 1990s. The data are used in logit analysis to evaluate the relative importance of crop and chemical characteristics in determining registrations. The results show some evidence that the system successfully encourages registration of safer pesticides. Pesticides that are less likely to cause chronic health damage are more likely to be registered. Pesticides that are safer for the eyes of farm workers are more likely to be registered. The results also show undesirable relationships. Crops with lower national value are less likely to have registrations. After controlling for crop value, herbicides are less likely to be registered for fruits and vegetables and for crops with high per-acre value. Pesticides that are more dangerous if eaten are more likely to gain registrations. There is only limited evidence that EPA initiatives have caused safety to become a more important determinant of pesticide registrations during the 1990s.
A Comparison of Lipid Profile Between Sedentary and Non Sedentary Workers

In different epidemiological studies, an association between sedentary life style and incidence of cardiovascular diseases has been demonstrated. Dyslipidaemia is one of the important risk factors of cardiovascular disease. An association of dyslipidaemia with sedentary life style has been considered. This study was carried out among 50 sedentary workers (teachers, office staffs, bank employees) at Pabna District and 50 individuals with non-sedentary jobs matched for age group and sex for the control group to see the association. Body mass index (BMI), blood pressure (BP), plasma level of glucose, total cholesterol, low density lipoprotein (LDL), and triglycerides (Tgs) were found to be significantly higher whereas high density lipoprotein (HDL) was found to be significantly lower among the sedentary workers as compared with the control subjects. From the study, it appears that dyslipidaemia is more common in sedentary workers and the relative risk for cardiovascular disease is increased among them due to the sedentary nature of their jobs. DOI: 10.3329/taj.v22i1. 5014 TAJ 2009; 22(1): 10-14
Power Management and Handoff Evaluation of Mobile Telecommunication Infrastructure in Kuching, Sarawak

Mobile networks are changing and incorporating new services continuously. The Telecommunication industry in East Malaysia is still under progressing mode. The terrain and tropical rainforest conditions are the biggest challenge to design a good telecommunication infrastructure in Sarawak. This might be the reason that the service level figures are even poorer in Sarawak and the demand on mobile networks in Sarawak is comparatively high. This paper contains a performance evaluation of mobile telecommunication infrastructure in Kuching. The research has focused on propagation issues and the findings are the result of several propagation tests that in various propagation conditions. Since the paper has been written for research purposes, the vendors’ names in the study are not disclosed and are referred to as Provider A, B, and C. At the time of this research, only two vendors offered 4G services in Kuching.
Punching the Clock on a Smartphone App?: The Changing Nature of Work in America and Regulatory Barriers to Success

Common Law Definition of Employment:What is the difference between an employee and an independent contractor? Both do work for pay; I do a job, and you pay me for it. It’s not complicated — until government gets involved. Formal employees require paperwork, legal and regulatory compliance, and other red tape. Independent contractors have their own thickets to work through, though, and more may be on the way. The technical definition of “employee” is far more complicated than it should be. This makes it more difficult for people to find jobs than it should be.Why do corporations exist in the first place? Why don’t all business transactions simply go from one individual to another? On the other end of the spectrum, why isn’t society organized as one giant firm? Why is the real world somewhere in the between? The answer is transaction costs. It is easier to write a check or settle legal disputes with a single entity like McDonald’s or Walmart than it is to write separate checks and make individual legal deals with each of their hundreds of thousands of employees. But when a corporation becomes too big and bureaucratic, their own internal transaction costs can become more trouble than they’re worth. Time spent on paperwork between departments means time not spent on innovation or customer service; corporatization has opportunity costs as well as transaction costs. Transaction costs and opportunity costs put a natural limit on the size of corporations, even when it can’t be put into dollar terms. Employment contracts are an attempt to reduce transaction and opportunity costs, and governments should not get in their way.