Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mitigating Adversarial Attack for Compute-in-Memory Accelerator Utilizing On-chip Finetune

Compute-in-memory (CIM) has been proposed to accelerate the convolution neural network (CNN) computation by implementing parallel multiply and accumulation in analog domain. However, the subsequent processing is still preferred to be performed in digital domain. This makes the analog to digital converter (ADC) critical in CIM architectures. One drawback is the ADC error introduced by process variation. While research efforts are being made to improve ADC design to reduce the offset, we find that the accuracy loss introduced by the ADC error could be recovered by model weight finetune. In addition to compensate ADC offset, on-chip weight finetune could be leveraged to provide additional protection for adversarial attack that aims to fool the inference engine with manipulated input samples. Our evaluation results show that by adapting the model weights to the specific ADC offset pattern to each chip, the transferability of the adversarial attack is suppressed. For a chip being attacked by the C&W method, the classification for CIFAR-10 dataset will drop to almost 0%. However, when applying the similarly generated adversarial examples to other chips, the accuracy could still maintain more than 62% and 85% accuracy for VGG-8 and DenseNet-40, respectively.
Detecting Escalation Level from Speech with Transfer Learning and Acoustic-Lexical Information Fusion

Textual escalation detection has been widely applied to e-commerce companies' customer service systems to pre-alert and prevent potential conflicts. Similarly, in public areas such as airports and train stations, where many impersonal conversations frequently take place, acoustic-based escalation detection systems are also useful to enhance passengers' safety and maintain public order. To this end, we introduce a system based on acoustic-lexical features to detect escalation from speech, Voice Activity Detection (VAD) and label smoothing are adopted to further enhance the performance in our experiments. Considering a small set of training and development data, we also employ transfer learning on several wellknown emotional detection datasets, i.e. RAVDESS, CREMA-D, to learn advanced emotional representations that is then applied to the conversational escalation detection task. On the development set, our proposed system achieves 81.5% unweighted average recall (UAR) which significantly outperforms the baseline with 72.2% UAR.
Tensor Processing Primitives: A Programming Abstraction for Efficiency and Portability in Deep Learning Workloads

During the past decade, novel Deep Learning (DL) algorithms/workloads and hardware have been developed to tackle a wide range of problems. Despite the advances in workload/hardware ecosystems, the programming methodology of DL systems is stagnant. DL workloads leverage either highly-optimized, yet platform-specific and inflexible kernels from DL libraries, or in the case of novel operators, reference implementations are built via DL framework primitives with underwhelming performance. This work introduces the Tensor Processing Primitives (TPP), a programming abstraction striving for efficient, portable implementation of DL workloads with high-productivity. TPPs define a compact, yet versatile set of 2D-tensor operators (or a virtual Tensor ISA), which subsequently can be utilized as building-blocks to construct complex operators on high-dimensional tensors. The TPP specification is platform-agnostic, thus code expressed via TPPs is portable, whereas the TPP implementation is highly-optimized and platform-specific. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach using standalone kernels and end-to-end DL workloads expressed entirely via TPPs that outperform state-of-the-art implementations on multiple platforms.
VR3Dense: Voxel Representation Learning for 3D Object Detection and Monocular Dense Depth Reconstruction

3D object detection and dense depth estimation are one of the most vital tasks in autonomous driving. Multiple sensor modalities can jointly attribute towards better robot perception, and to that end, we introduce a method for jointly training 3D object detection and monocular dense depth reconstruction neural networks. It takes as inputs, a LiDAR point-cloud, and a single RGB image during inference and produces object pose predictions as well as a densely reconstructed depth map. LiDAR point-cloud is converted into a set of voxels, and its features are extracted using 3D convolution layers, from which we regress object pose parameters. Corresponding RGB image features are extracted using another 2D convolutional neural network. We further use these combined features to predict a dense depth map. While our object detection is trained in a supervised manner, the depth prediction network is trained with both self-supervised and supervised loss functions. We also introduce a loss function, edge-preserving smooth loss, and show that this results in better depth estimation compared to the edge-aware smooth loss function, frequently used in depth prediction works.
The Pattern of Microorganisms and Drug Susceptibility in Pediatric Oncologic Patients with Febrile Neutropenia

Objective The study aimed to describe the pattern of causative microorganisms, drug susceptibility, risk factors of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection, and clinical impact of these organisms on pediatric oncology patients with febrile neutropenia. Methods A retrospective descriptive study of oncologic patients aged less than 15 years who were diagnosed with febrile neutropenia in King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital was conducted between January 2013 to December 2017. Characteristics and clinical outcomes of febrile neutropenia episodes, causative pathogens, and their antibiotic susceptibilities were recorded. Result This study included 267 patients with 563 febrile neutropenia episodes. The median (range) age was 5.1 years (1 month–15 years). The most common underlying disease was acute lymphoblastic leukemia (42.7%). Of 563 febrile episodes, there were 192 (34.1%) with microbiologically documented infection. Among these 192 episodes of microbiologically documented infection, there were 214 causative pathogens: 154 bacteria (72%), 32 viruses (15%), 27 fungus (12.6%), and 1 Mycobacterium tuberculosis (0.4%). Gram-negative bacteria (48.6%) accounted for most of the causative pathogens. Twenty-three percent of them were multidrug resistant, and 18% were carbapenem resistant. Among Gram-positive bacterial infection which accounted for 23.4% of all specimens, the proportion of MRSA was 20%. The 2-week mortality rate was 3.7%. Drug-resistant Gram-negative bacterial infection caused significant adverse events and mortality compared to nonresistant bacterial infection (p < 0.05). Conclusion There is high rate of drug-resistant organism infection in pediatric oncology patients in a tertiary-care center in Thailand. Infection with drug-resistant Gram-negative bacterial infection was associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Continuous surveillance for the pattern of drug-resistant infections is crucial.
Integrated Genomic and Transcriptomic Analysis reveals key genes for predicting dual-phenotype Hepatocellular Carcinoma Prognosis

Dual-phenotype hepatocellular carcinoma (DPHCC) expresses both hepatocyte and cholangiocyte markers, and is characterized by high recurrence and low survival rates. The underlying molecular mechanisms of DPHCC pathogenesis are unclear. We performed whole exome sequencing and RNA sequencing of three subtypes of HCC (10 DPHCC, 10 CK19-positive HCC, and 14 CK19-negative HCC), followed by integrated bioinformatics analysis, including somatic mutation analysis, mutation signal analysis, differential gene expression analysis, and pathway enrichment analysis. Cox proportional hazard regression analyses were applied for exploring survival related characteristics. We found that mutated genes in DPHCC patients were associated with carcinogenesis and immunity, and the up-regulated genes were mainly enriched in transcription-related and cancer-related pathways, and the down-regulated genes were mainly enriched in immune-related pathways. CXCL9 was selected as the hub gene, which is associated with immune cells and survival prognosis. Our results showed that low CXCL9 expression was significantly associated with poor prognosis, and its expression was significantly reduced in DPHCC samples. In conclusion, we explored the molecular mechanisms governing DPHCC development and progression and identified CXCL9, which influences the immune microenvironment and prognosis of DPHCC and might be new clinically significant biomarkers for predicting prognosis.
Prévalence de l´infertilité masculine dans un hôpital universitaire au Maroc

Introduction l´infertilité du couple est devenue ces dernières années un problème de santé publique, dont l´origine peut être féminine, masculine ou mixte. L´origine masculine est incriminée dans 40% des cas. Au Maroc, la plupart des publications ont été axées sur les étiologies et les facteurs de risque de l´infertilité masculine. L´objectif de notre étude est l´évaluation de la prévalence de l´infertilité masculine et le profil des paramètres spermatiques chez les hommes infertiles ou à risque d´infertilité au sein d´un hôpital tertiaire à Rabat. Méthodes analyse de 482 patients adressés pour bilan d´infertilité du couple ou dans le cadre du bilan préopératoire d´une varicocèle ou d´une ectopie testiculaire. Les données démographiques, les facteurs de risque d´infertilité, le caractère primaire ou secondaire de l´infertilité ont été enregistrées pour chaque patient. Les paramètres spermatiques ont été étudiés et interprétés selon les normes actualisées de l´OMS en 2010 avec études des facteurs associés à leur perturbation. Résultats l´âge moyen des patients était de 35,35±8,81 ans. L´infertilité était primaire dans 61,8%. Les facteurs de risque d´infertilité les plus fréquemment retrouvés sont le tabac suivi par la varicocèle et l´infection. Le spermogramme était perturbé dans 53,1%. L´anomalie la plus fréquente était la perturbation de la vitalité (36,9%) suivie par la concentration spermatique (29,7%) et la morphologie (29,3%). L´âge était le seul facteur ayant un impact significatif sur le spermogramme (p=0,002). Les anomalies de la mobilité se voient à partir de 31 ans, la vitalité est perturbée à 34 ans, la morphologie à 35 ans et la concentration à 37 ans. L´azoospermie a été retrouvée dans 16,4% essentiellement associée à l´infertilité primaire. L´oligo-asthéno-tératospermie était l´association la plus représentée (26,2%). Conclusion l´infertilité masculine est fréquente dans notre contexte, l´âge étant son principal facteur de risque. La mobilité est le paramètre le plus précocement atteint.
Sudden, Transient Intraoperative Hypotension During the Use of the Cantilever Technique for Correction of Adult Spine Deformity

Intraoperative hypotension is a common but critical complication of spinal surgery. However, it is uncommon to experience sudden transient intraoperative hypotension in patients undergoing surgery for adult spine deformity (ASD) without the presence of major vascular injury, spinal cord injury, or cardiac events. We report a patient who experienced sudden transient intraoperative hypotension during the use of the cantilever technique for correction of an ASD. A 58-year-old woman underwent two-stage surgery (anterior correction followed by posterior fusion) for an ASD that caused low back pain. During the posterior fusion procedure, she experienced sudden transient intraoperative hypotension during the use of a cantilever technique. As soon as we paused the use of this technique, her hypotension resolved. Postoperative radiography revealed excessive segmental lordosis at the L4/5 level, suggesting an accidental rupture of the anterior longitudinal ligament (ALL). We believe that the mechanism of our patient’s sudden hypotension was a decrease in venous return due to compression and stretching of the inferior vena cava at the time of rod application when the use of the cantilever technique caused ALL rupture. Sudden hypotension during posterior spinal correction surgery is possible, especially in patients with a ruptured ALL.
Efficacy and Safety of Ningmitai Capsules in Patients with Chronic Epididymitis: A Prospective, Parallel Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial

Objectives To evaluate the efficacy and safety of Ningmitai (NMT) capsules in patients with chronic epididymitis. Methods This prospective randomized controlled trial included 112 patients diagnosed with chronic epididymitis. The patients were randomized (1 : 1 : 1) to receive levofloxacin (LVX), NMT, or NMT combined with LVX for 4 weeks. The patients were followed up at 2 and 4 weeks after initiation of treatment and were evaluated in terms of Chronic Epididymitis Symptom Index (CESI) scores, epididymal nodules, and safety parameters. The primary endpoints were the CESI scores at the end of 2 and 4 weeks of treatment. The secondary endpoints included the mean epididymal nodule diameter and the clinical efficacy rate. Safety was evaluated by hepatorenal function tests and adverse event reports during the trial. Results After 2 weeks of treatment, the CESI score of the NMT group was significantly lower than that of the LVX group (P < 0.05). In addition, the clinical efficacy rate of the NMT group was significantly higher than that of the LVX group (55% vs. 8.33%, P < 0.0001), indicating that NMT has a rapid effect on chronic epididymitis. After 4 weeks of treatment, there was no significant difference in CESI scores or clinical efficacy rates between the two monotherapy regimens (P > 0.05); however, the mean diameter of epididymal nodules was significantly smaller in the NMT group than in the LVX group (P < 0.0001). Moreover, after 4 weeks of treatment, the patients in the LVX + NMT group, which had a clinical efficacy rate of 97.22%, had lower CESI scores (both P < 0.01) and a smaller epididymal nodule diameter (vs. LVX, P < 0.0001; vs. NMT, P < 0.05) than those in the other two groups. No adverse events or abnormal hepatorenal function were found during the study. Conclusion NMT significantly improved CESI scores and epididymal nodule diameter in patients with chronic epididymitis. The combination of NMT and LVX provides a much better effect than monotherapy, and this treatment regimen was well tolerated.
Palliative Thoracic Radiotherapy for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer in Outpatients: Reasons for Unplanned Hospitalization and Its Impact on Survival

Background The aims of the study were to examine the rates of and reasons for unplanned hospitalization after start of palliative radiotherapy or chemoradiation (CRT), and to study whether unplanned hospitalization deteriorates patients’ prognosis. In addition, risk factors were identified. Methods A retrospective review of 136 patients treated with palliative radiotherapy or CRT was performed. Inclusion criteria were prescribed total dose at least 30 Gy and outpatient at the start of treatment. Uni- and multivariate analyses were employed. Results Fifty-eight patients (43%) were hospitalized within 3 months from start of radiotherapy or CRT. Their median overall survival was 6.7 months as compared to 11.1 months in non-hospitalized patients (P = 0.09). The median length of hospitalization was 8 days (range 1 - 61). In patients with possibly treatment-related hospitalization (n = 32), median survival was 5.0 months, significantly shorter than the 11.1 months observed in the remaining patients (P = 0.006). In multivariate analysis, only one variable was significantly associated with higher risk of unplanned hospitalization: previous hospitalization in the last 4 weeks before commencing radiotherapy or CRT. Conclusions Unplanned hospitalization occurred frequently in a standard care setting without early involvement of a dedicated palliative team. Patients with preceding hospitalization might represent a group that is particularly vulnerable, thus qualifying for a targeted intervention aiming at continued outpatient care.
Effect of Lactobacillus Species Probiotics on Growth Performance of Dual-Purpose Chicken

Introduction In-feed probiotics are becoming attractive alternatives to antibiotics in the poultry industry due to the ever-growing strict prohibitions on antibiotic growth promoters (AGP) in animal production. Methods The study was conducted to investigate the effects of Lactobacillus paracaseis sparacasei and Lactobacillus rhamnosus on the growth performance of 120 day-olds randomly selected Sasso dual-purpose chicken. They were divided into four groups with two replicates per group and 15 chicks per replicate. The treatments were T1 (control), T2 (supplement diet with 4g probiotic), T3 (supplement diet with 2g probiotic), T4 (supplement diet with 1g probiotic). The experimental feeding trials were conducted after two weeks adaptation period. Results The present findings revealed that the chickens supplemented with Lactobacillus species probiotics during the first week of age have shown higher body weight than control (p < 0.05). The feed intake of week one of T2 and T3 were significantly higher (p< 0.05) than the T1 (control). However, there was no significant difference (p> 0.05) in feed intake in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th weeks of all treatment groups. The present result showed that there was a significant body weight gain (p< 0.05) in all probiotic fed groups than the control group. The highest body weight gain was observed in chickens found in the T4 treatment group. Whereas the body weight gains significantly higher and improved the feed conversion (p<0.05) in the T2 and T4 than the T1 (control). However, the feed conversion ratio was significantly influenced by probiotic inclusion in T3 as compared to the control group. Conclusion Overall, the results suggest that Lactobacillus paracaseis sparacasei and Lactobacillus rhamnosus have a positive effect on the growth performance of broilers.
Motion Direction Discrimination with Tactile Random-Dot Kinematograms

Motion detection is a fundamental sensory function for multiple modalities, including touch, but the mechanisms underlying tactile motion detection are not well understood. While previous findings supported the existence of high-level feature tracking, it remains unclear whether there also exist low-level motion sensing that directly detects a local spatio-temporal correlation in the skin-stimulation pattern. To elucidate this mechanism, we presented, on braille displays, tactile random-dot kinematograms, similar to those widely used in visual motion research, which enables us to independently manipulate feature trackability and various parameters of local motion. We found that a human observer is able to detect the direction of difficult-to-track tactile motions presented to the fingers and palms. In addition, the direction-discrimination performance was better when the stimuli were presented along the fingers than when presented across the fingers. These results indicate that low-level motion sensing, in addition to high-level tracking, contribute to tactile motion perception.
The Impact of Nerve Involvement on the Prognosis of Gastric Cancer Patients with Curative Gastrectomy: An International Multicenter Analysis

Background Several studies have been conducted to investigate the association between the presence of perineural invasion (PNI) and overall survival (OS) of gastric cancer (GC) patients who underwent curative resection, but no consensus has been reached. This study is aimed at determining the prognostic significance of PNI in gastric cancer. Study Design. The data of 2969 patients with gastric cancer and who had undergone curative gastrectomy from 2006 to 2010 in two high-volume hospitals of China and Korea were retrospectively analyzed. PNI positivity was identified when carcinoma cells were found to infiltrate into the perineurium or neural fascicles. The relationships between PNI and other clinicopathological factors were evaluated, and survival analyses were performed. Results The presence of PNI was detected in 1055 of the 2969 patients (35.5%). Nationality, age, tumor location, size of tumor, differentiation of the tumor, pT stage, pN stage, lymphatic invasion, and vascular invasion had been associated with PNI positivity. The mean survival time of patients with and without PNI was 62.5 months and 87.3 months, respectively (P < 0.001). However, the presence of PNI was not an independent prognostic factor for gastric cancer, except for patients in stage III (P = 0.037, hazard ratio: 1.21, 95% confidence interval: 1.01-1.44). Conclusion PNI occurs frequently in patients with gastric cancer, and the incidence of PNI increases with the staging of the tumor. The presence of PNI can provide additional information in predicting the survival outcome for those with stage III tumors.
Failed Surgery for Patellar Tendinopathy in Athletes: Midterm Results of Further Surgical Management

Background: Tendon injuries are commonly seen in sports medicine practice. Many elite players involved in high-impact activities develop patellar tendinopathy (PT) symptoms. Of them, a small percentage will develop refractory PT and need to undergo surgery. In some of these patients, surgery does not resolve these symptoms. Purpose: To report the clinical results in a cohort of athletes who underwent further surgery after failure of primary surgery for PT. Study Design: Case series; Level of evidence, 4. Methods: A total of 22 athletes who had undergone revision surgery for failed surgical management of PT were enrolled in the present study. Symptom severity was assessed through the Victorian Institute of Sport Assessment Scale for Patellar Tendinopathy (VISA-P) upon admission and at the final follow-up. Time to return to training, time to return to competition, and complications were also recorded. Results: The mean age of the athletes was 25.4 years, and the mean symptom duration from the index intervention was 15.3 months. At a mean follow-up of 30.0 ± 4.9 months, the VISA-P score improved 27.8 points (P < .0001). The patients returned to training within a mean of 9.2 months. Fifteen patients (68.2%) returned to competition within a mean of 11.6 months. Of these 15 patients, a further 2 had decreased their performance, and 2 more had abandoned sports participation by the final follow-up. The overall rate of complications was 18.2%. One patient (4.5%) had a further revision procedure. Conclusion: Revision surgery was feasible and effective in patients in whom PT symptoms persisted after previous surgery for PT, achieving a statistically significant and clinically relevant improvement of the VISA-P score as well as an acceptable rate of return to sport at a follow-up of 30 months.
Mitochondrial genome of Macrostemum floridum (Trichoptera)

Abstract Trichoptera are a group of the benthic organism, almost all of which live in water during their life cycle. Trichoptera usually develop through egg, larva, pupa, and moth stages. In its larval stage, Trichoptera usually live in water and are often called the caddisfly. In this study, the mitochondrial genome of Macrostemum floridum was analyzed. The total length of the mitochondrial genome is 15,424 bp and consists of 13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNA genes, 2 rRNA genes, and one control region. The genome has a typical mitochondrial gene sequence of Trichoptera. Phylogenetic analysis of the mitochondrial genomes of 23 species of Trichoptera and Lepidoptera showed that M. floridum forms a monophyletic group with other species of Lepidoptera.