Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sputum gram stain assessment in community-acquired bacteremic pneumonia

A prospective study was performed over a 4.5-year period to determine the ability of a sputum Gram stain to predict the cause of community-acquired bacterial pneumonia. A blood culture isolate, rather than a sputum culture, served as the reference standard to provide precise identification of the etiologic agent. The study population comprised 59 bacteremic adults who expectorated a valid sputum sample. Data are presented that indicate that a physician, aided by the morphology of the stained sputum, could theoretically select appropriate monotherapy approximately 94% of the time when selective, defined criteria for the microbiology of valid sputum are met. Three of the five patients with pneumonia caused by Haemophilus influenzae, however, had sputum stains that suggested alternative pathogens. This study reaffirms that the Gram-stained sputum is a reliable, but not infallible, guide to direct initial antibiotic therapy in adults with community-acquired bacterial pneumonia.
Analysis and Data Mining of Moving Object Trajectories. (Analyse et fouille de donne'es de trajectoires d'objets mobiles)

In this thesis, we explore two problems related to managing and mining moving object trajectories. First, we study the problem of sampling trajectory data streams. Modern location-aware devices are capable of capturing and transmitting their position at very high rates. Storing the entirety of the trajectories provided by such devices can entail severe storage and processing overheads. Therefore, adapted sampling techniques are necessary in order to discard unneeded positions and reduce the size of the trajectories while still preserving their key spatiotemporal features. In streaming environments, this process needs to be conducted "on- the-fly" since the data are transient and arrive continuously. To this end, we introduce a new sampling algorithm called Spatiotemporal Stream Sampling (STSS). This algorithm is computationally-efficient and guarantees an upper bound for the approximation error introduced during the sampling process. Experimental results show that STSS achieves good performances and can compete with more sophisticated and costly approaches. The second problem we study is clustering trajectory data in road network environments. Most of prior work assumed that moving objects can move freely in an Euclidean space and did not consider the presence of an underlying road network and its influence on evaluating the similarity between trajectories. We present three approaches to clustering such data: the first approach discovers clusters of trajectories that traveled along the same parts of the road network; the second approach is segment-oriented and aims to group together road segments based on trajectories that they have in common; the third approach combines both aspects and simultaneously clusters trajectories and road segments. Through extensive case studies, we show how these approaches can be used to reveal useful knowledge about flow dynamics and characterize traffic in road networks. We also provide experimental results where we evaluate the performances of our propositions.
Distributed quality-attribute optimization of software architectures

A key challenge of software architecture design is how to satisfy quality-attribute requirements, which often conflict with each other. This is usually a complex task, because there are several candidates for architectural solutions meeting the same requirements, and quality-attribute tradeoffs of those solutions need to be considered by the architects. In this context, we present the SQuAT framework to assist architects in the exploration of design solutions and their tradeoffs. This framework provides a modular approach for integrating quality-attribute analyzers and solvers, and also features a distributed search-based optimization. In this paper, we report on an experience using SQuAT with Palladio architectural models, which integrates third-party tools for performance and modifiability, and shows the tradeoffs among candidate solutions to the architect. Furthermore, we enhance the standard search schema of SQuAT with a distributed negotiation technique based on monotonic concession, in order to provide better tradeoffs for the architect's decision making.
Software reliability measurement and assessment methods during operation phase and their comparisons

This paper attempts to relate the testing phase, which is the final stage of the software development and the operation phase after the release. It discusses the occurrence of the software failure due to the errors latent in the software. The event of detecting the software error in the testing phase is described by the software reliability growth model based on a nonhomogeneous Poisson process. As to the assessment of the software reliability in the operation phase, i.e., the operational reliability, three assessment techniques are discussed. They are the method to introduce the environment factor considering the number of errors remaining at the end of the testing, the method based on the hazard rate, and the method based on the cumulative failure rate. Finally, the result of the analysis of the software reliability data is presented. Numerical examples of the assessment methods for the operational reliability are discussed and the results are compared.
A Note on Including Phenotypic Information from Monozygotic Twins in Variance Components Qtl Linkage Analysis

Williams & Blangero (1999) derived closed form expressions for the power of a univariate variance components test of linkage for a variety of pedigree structures. We have extended their results by investigating the effect of including monozygotic twins in the design on the power to detect linkage. Specifically, we determined the power associated with a pedigree of size three, where individuals one and two were monozygotic twins and individual three was a full sibling to the twins. The power of this sampling unit was uniformly greater than the power obtained from a sib‐pair under the same genetic model. The reason for this was that addition of a second monozygotic twin provided another estimate of the sibling correlation for the particular IBD class. In addition, when the total heritability of the trait was <50%, the number of individuals that needed to be phenotyped was less than that with sib‐pairs alone. However, a pedigree consisting of a monozygotic pair and sibling was never as informative as a sib‐trio, presumably because the sib‐trio provided information about allele sharing between three individuals, whereas the monozygotic twins and sibling unit only provided one such relationship. We conclude that including a monozygotic twin in the analysis is an economical strategy, since only one twin needs to be genotyped.
Human Adenoviruses and Coliphages in Urban Runoff-Impacted Coastal Waters of Southern California

ABSTRACT A nested-PCR method was used to detect the occurrence of human adenovirus in coastal waters of Southern California. Twenty- to forty-liter water samples were collected from 12 beach locations from Malibu to the border of Mexico between February and March 1999. All sampling sites were located at mouths of major rivers and creeks. Two ultrafiltration concentration methods, tangential flow filtration (TFF) and vortex flow filtration (VFF), were compared using six environmental samples. Human adenoviruses were detected in 4 of the 12 samples tested after nucleic acid extraction of VFF concentrates. The most probable number of adenoviral genomes ranged from 880 to 7,500 per liter of water. Coliphages were detected at all sites, with the concentration varying from 5.3 to 3332 PFU/liter of water. F-specific coliphages were found at 5 of the 12 sites, with the concentration ranging from 5.5 to 300 PFU/liter. The presence of human adenovirus was not significantly correlated with the concentration of coliphage (r = 0.32) but was significantly correlated (r = 0.99) with F-specific coliphage. The bacterial indicators (total coliforms, fecal coliforms, and enterococci) were found to exceed California recreational water quality daily limits at 5 of the 12 sites. However, this excess of bacterial indicators did not correlate with the presence of human adenoviruses in coastal waters. The results of this study call for both a reevaluation of our current recreational water quality standards to reflect the viral quality of recreational waters and monitoring of recreational waters for human viruses on a regular basis.
Oncologic efficacy of CT-guided percutaneous radiofrequency ablation of renal cell carcinomas.

OBJECTIVE A single institution's experience with CT-guided percutaneous radiofrequency ablation of biopsy-proven renal cell carcinomas (RCCs) was studied to determine the disease-free survival and complication rate. MATERIALS AND METHODS Data from 125 RCCs in 104 patients treated with curative intent was reviewed. Radiofrequency ablation treatments were performed using conscious sedation and local anesthesia. Patients were followed with contrast-enhanced CT or MRI. Tumor control was defined as the absence of contrast enhancement in the tumor on CT or MRI. RESULTS Tumor size ranged from 0.6 to 8.8 cm (mean, 2.7 cm; SD, 1.5 cm). Of the 125 treated tumors, 116 (93%) were completely ablated (109 in a single ablation session, seven after a second ablation session) with a mean follow-up interval of 13.8 months. All 95 RCCs smaller than 3.7 cm were completely ablated, and 21 (70%) of 30 larger tumors were completely ablated, with nine showing evidence of residual viable tumor on follow-up scans. Tumor size smaller than 3.7 cm was significantly associated with achieving complete tumor eradication (p < 0.001). With each 1-cm increase in tumor diameter over 3.6 cm, the likelihood of tumor-free survival decreased by a factor of 2.19 (p < 0.001). There were 8 (8%) complications, none of which resulted in long-term morbidity. CONCLUSION CT-guided percutaneous radiofrequency ablation is a safe method to treat small RCCs. This study indicates that radiofrequency ablation can reliably eradicate RCCs smaller than 3.7 cm. Treatment of larger RCCs will result in an increased risk of residual RCC.
Estimation of required absorbing material dimensions inside metal cavities using neural networks

Committees of multilayer neural networks were used to estimate the appropriate surface area and thickness of RF absorbing material needed to achieve a desired quality factor (Q) inside a reverberation chamber. The networks were trained with Bayesian Regularization to avoid overfitting. Monte Carlo cross-validation was used to develop confidence bounds on the accuracy of the network committees.
Catecholamines Increase in Vitro Proliferation of Murine B16F10 Melanoma Cells

545 Acta Endocrinologica (Buc), vol. X, no. 4, p. 545-558, 2014 *Correspondence to: Daniel Boda MD, PhD, “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Dermatology Research Laboratory, 22-24 Gr. Manolescu, Sector 1, Bucharest, 0111234, Romania, E-mail: daniel.boda@yahoo.com Abstract Context. Melanoma is the most aggressive skin cancer, with significant morbidity and mortality, and one factor that may influence the course of disease is stress. Objective. Our aim was to evaluate the effect of corticosterone, norepinephrine, epinephrine on murine B16F10 melanoma cells in vitro proliferation. Methods. B16F10 melanoma cells were treated with different concentrations of tested hormones. The proliferative capacity of melanoma cells was quantified by MTS assay and the cell viability was quantified as membrane integrity evaluation measured by lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release. Results. B16F10 cells treated with corticosterone showed no significant changes. In contrast, norepinephrine exposure stimulated the cell proliferation (P = 0.0003). Treatment with 1 μM norepinephrine induced the highest increase in cell proliferation (OD 492 = 0.27 ± 0.02) statistically significant to both control (OD 492 = 0.17 ± 0.01; p = 0.0003), 10 nM norepinephrine (OD 492 = 0.16 ± 0.00; p = 0.0004) and 100 nM norepinephrine (OD 492 = 0.19 ± 0.01; p = 0.002). Likewise, treatment with epinephrine increased cell proliferation (p = 0.0004). Exposure to 5 μm epinephrine induced a stimulation of cell proliferation (OD 492 = 0.28 ± 0.02) significantly higher compared to controls (OD 492 = 0.17 ± 0.01; p = 0.0004), 50 nM epinephrine (OD 492 = 0.17 ± 0.00; p = 0.001) and 500 nM epinephrine (OD 492 = 0.173 ± 0.00; p = 0.001). Conclusions. Our results may open new perspectives concerning the link between stress hormones and melanoma, emphasizing a direct stimulating in vitro effect induced by catecholamines on melanoma B16F10 cells proliferation.
Relation between the Major Histocompatibility (B) Locus and Autoimmune Thyroiditis in Obese Chickens

Obese strain chickens develop circulating autoantibodies to thyroglobulin and lymphocytic infiltration of their thyroids during aging. Two alleles, B1 and B4, are found with high gene frequency at the major histocompatibility (B) locus. Greater pathology and higher antibody titers are observed in B1B1 and B1B4 birds than in their B4B4 siblings.
Maple-opt: a performance-oriented simultaneous technology mapping, placement, and global routing algorithm for FPGAs

A new field programmable gate array (FPGA) design algorithm, Maple-opt, is proposed for technology mapping, placement, and global routing subject to a given upper bound of critical signal path delay. The basic procedure of Maple-opt is viewed as top-down hierarchical bipartition of a layout region. In each bipartitioning step, technology mapping onto logic blocks of FPGAs, their placement, and global routing are determined simultaneously, which leads to a more congestion-balanced layout for routing. In addition, Maple-opt is capable of estimating a lower bound of the delay for a constrained path and of extracting critical paths based on the difference between the lower bounds and given constraint values in each bipartitioning step. Two delay-reduction procedures for the critical paths are applied; routing delay reduction and logic-block delay reduction. The routing delay reduction is done by assigning each constrained path to a single subregion when bipartitioning a region. The logic-block delay reduction is done by mapping each constrained path onto a smaller number of logic blocks. Experimental results for benchmark circuits demonstrate that Maple-opt reduces the maximum number of tracks per channel by a maximum of 38% compared with existing algorithms while satisfying almost all the path delay constraints.
Genetic specificity of face recognition

Significance Diverse cognitive abilities have typically been found to intercorrelate highly and to be strongly influenced by genetics. Recent twin studies have suggested that the ability to recognize human faces is an exception: it is similarly highly heritable, but largely uncorrelated with other abilities. However, assessing genetic relationships—the degree to which traits are influenced by the same genes—requires very large samples, which have not previously been available. This study, using data from more than 2,000 twins, shows for the first time, to our knowledge, that the genetic influences on face recognition are almost entirely unique. This finding provides strong support for the view that face recognition is “special” and may ultimately illuminate the nature of cognitive abilities in general. Specific cognitive abilities in diverse domains are typically found to be highly heritable and substantially correlated with general cognitive ability (g), both phenotypically and genetically. Recent twin studies have found the ability to memorize and recognize faces to be an exception, being similarly heritable but phenotypically substantially uncorrelated both with g and with general object recognition. However, the genetic relationships between face recognition and other abilities (the extent to which they share a common genetic etiology) cannot be determined from phenotypic associations. In this, to our knowledge, first study of the genetic associations between face recognition and other domains, 2,000 18- and 19-year-old United Kingdom twins completed tests assessing their face recognition, object recognition, and general cognitive abilities. Results confirmed the substantial heritability of face recognition (61%), and multivariate genetic analyses found that most of this genetic influence is unique and not shared with other cognitive abilities.
A differential branch-line coupler

A differential branch-line coupler is proposed in this paper. The branch-line coupler consists of a series of coupled microstrip lines and make it work properly for differential-mode signal. With this structure, it is easy to be connected with other differential circuits or antennas. The measured results are in good agreement with the simulated results.
Comparison of temporal artery thermometer to standard temperature measurements in pediatric intensive care unit patients

Objectives: To determine the accuracy of noninvasive infrared temporal artery thermometry compared with rectal, axillary, and pulmonary artery catheter measurements in pediatric intensive care patients, and to determine whether temporal artery temperatures are affected by circulatory shock or by vasopressor use. We hypothesized that temporal artery temperatures do not differ from axillary and rectal temperatures in critically ill children, but temporal artery accuracy is decreased by shock or vasopressor use. Design: Observational study, unblinded. Setting: Pediatric intensive care unit of a quarternary referral children’s hospital. Patients: Seventy-five temperature comparison pairs were obtained in 44 pediatric intensive care unit patients. Interventions: Temperature measurements were made using a temporal artery thermometer with simultaneously obtained rectal, axillary, and, when available, pulmonary artery catheter measurements. Measurements and Main Results: Mean bias was calculated between comparison pairs using each temperature method. Bland-Altman analysis demonstrated wide variability between methods. No significant differences in mean bias were seen between method pairs for all temperatures, but bias was significantly less in pulmonary artery catheter-rectal pairs compared with other method pairs. In febrile (>38°C) patients, bias in rectal-temporal artery and rectal-axillary was significantly greater than in temporal artery-axillary pairs (p < .001). Mean bias in pulmonary artery catheter-rectal pairs was also significantly smaller than in other pairs for all patients (p = .008) and febrile patients (p = .049). Presence of shock or vasopressor use did not significantly increase bias in any comparison pair. Sensitivity and specificity of both temporal artery and axillary for diagnosing fever were similar and improved with fever definition at temperatures >38.5°C. Conclusions: Temporal artery and axillary temperature measurements showed variability to rectal temperatures but had marked variability in febrile children. Neither was sufficiently accurate to recommend replacing rectal or other invasive methods. As temporal artery and axillary provide similar accuracy, temporal artery thermometers may serve as a suitable alternative for patients in whom invasive thermometry is contraindicated.
The Tissue Plasminogen Activator-Plasminogen Proteolytic Cascade Accelerates Amyloid-β (Aβ) Degradation and Inhibits Aβ-Induced Neurodegeneration

Accumulation of the amyloid-β (Aβ) peptide depends on both its generation and clearance. To better define clearance pathways, we have evaluated the role of the tissue plasminogen activator (tPA)-plasmin system in Aβ degradation in vivo. In two different mouse models of Alzheimer's disease, chronically elevated Aβ peptide in the brain correlates with the upregulation of plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) and inhibition of the tPA-plasmin system. In addition, Aβ injected into the hippocampus of mice lacking either tPA or plasminogen persists, inducing PAI-1 expression and causing activation of microglial cells and neuronal damage. Conversely, Aβ injected into wild-type mice is rapidly cleared and does not cause neuronal degeneration. Thus, the tPA-plasmin proteolytic cascade aids in the clearance of Aβ, and reduced activity of this system may contribute to the progression of Alzheimer's disease.
Detection of Glaucoma using Optic Disk and Incremental Cup Segmentation from Retinal Image 1

---------------------------------------------------------------ABSTRACT------------------------------------------------Medical researchers, detection of eye disease is very important because it may causes blindness. Glaucoma is one of the diseases that cause blindness. Standard procedure for detection glaucoma is to analysis of optic disk (OD) and cup region in retinal image. In this paper, introduce an automatic OD parameterized technique which is based on segmentation and Incremental Cup segmentation. The incremental cup segmentation method is based on anatomical evidence such as vessel bends at the cup boundary, considered relevant by glaucoma experts. Bends in a vessel are robustly detected using a region of support concept, which automatically selects the right scale for analysis. A multi-stage strategy is applied to derive a reliable subset of vessel bends called rbends followed by a local 2-D spline fitting to derive the desired cup boundary. The results are compared with existing methods using different retinal images.
Migrants, millenialists and mayhem: Kari-Kari, Ningi, Gwari, Kebbi, Kwatarkwashi and Zuru ‘enclaves’ in northern Nigeria

Abstract This study focuses on northern Nigerian ‘enclaves’ of northern resistance to the 19th century Sokoto Caliphate, including Kari-Kari, Ningi, Gwari, Kebbi and Zuru. Firstly, the Kari-Kari (Keri-Keri) people of north-eastern Nigeria are considered in some detail. They live in and around a heartland area between Jalam, Dambam and Potiskum, characterised by a cluster of unusual circular and ovoid earthwork enclosures in a zone otherwise featuring rectilinear town walls, many oriented towards Mecca. These ovoid ‘ganuwa’ underpin the integrity of much of the account presented here of Kari-Kari history. The people speak a distinct Chadic language, implying northern origins. A few centuries ago, they migrated north into the present heartland area, a migration which may have brought with it the two cultural characteristics anomalous to this area: shoulder load carrying and the ovoid/circular enclosures. This paper enumerates several of the characteristics of Kari-Kari material culture including the village plans, house construction methods, the clan system of social organisation, use of decorated calabashes, and the use of iron and iron smelting. The 19th-century history of other ‘enclaves’ is described, and relevant archaeological sites described, in particular the fortified settlements such as Birnin Gwari, Amina Banga and Katsina. The historical basis of the diversity evident amongst these ‘enclaves’ is examined, with particular reference to ironworking in the region.
Stop losing sleep over incomplete data type specifications

We give an algorithm to test the completeness of definitions holding on the rewrite systems that they generate. At the opposite of existing techniques that are very restrictive (left-hand sides of definitions must be linear) or rather inefficient our solution is both powerful and efficient. Also, the algorithm that we give detects ambigous or/and incomplete definitions and can tell you why they are ambigous or/and incomplete. It applies too to definitions in presence of equations.