Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Phenotypic and molecular consequences of stepwise temperature increase across generations in a coral reef fish

Global warming will have far‐reaching consequences for marine species over coming decades, yet the magnitude of these effects may depend on the rate of warming across generations. Recent experiments show coral reef fishes can compensate the metabolic challenges of elevated temperature when warm conditions are maintained across generations. However, the effects of a gradual temperature increase across generations remain unknown. In the present study, we analysed metabolic and molecular traits in the damselfish Acanthochromis polyacanthus that were exposed to +1.5°C in the first generation and +3.0°C in the second (Step +3.0°C). This treatment of stepwise warming was compared to fish reared at current‐day temperatures (Control), second‐generation fish of control parents reared at +3.0°C (Developmental +3.0°C) and fish exposed to elevated temperatures for two generations (Transgenerational +1.5°C and Transgenerational +3.0°C). Hepatosomatic index, oxygen consumption and liver gene expression were compared in second‐generation fish of the multiple treatments. Hepatosomatic index increased in fish that developed at +3.0°C, regardless of the parental temperature. Routine oxygen consumption of Step +3.0°C fish was significantly higher than Control; however, their aerobic scope recovered to the same level as Control fish. Step +3.0°C fish exhibited significant upregulation of genes related to mitochondrial activity and energy production, which could be associated with their increased metabolic rates. These results indicate that restoration of aerobic scope is possible when fish experience gradual thermal increase across multiple generations, but the metabolic and molecular responses are different from fish reared at the same elevated thermal conditions in successive generations.
Regular grids: an irregular approach to the 3D modelling pipeline

The 3D modelling pipeline covers the process by which a physical object is scanned to create a set of points that lay on its surface. These data are then cleaned to remove outliers or noise, and the points are reconstructed into a digital representation of the original object. The aim of this thesis is to present novel grid-based methods and provide several case studies of areas in the 3D modelling pipeline in which they may be effectively put to use. The first is a demonstration of how using a grid can allow a significant reduction in memory required to perform the reconstruction. The second is the detection of surface features (ridges, peaks, troughs, etc.) during the surface reconstruction process. The third contribution is the alignment of two meshes with zero prior knowledge. This is particularly suited to aligning two related, but not identical, models. The final contribution is the comparison of two similar meshes with support for both qualitative and quantitative outputs.
High-performance ASIC realization of orthogonal matching pursuit algorithm

: Compressive sensing (CS) is perceived as a breakthrough in sampling theory, as it proves that sparse signals can be reconstructed from fewer samples than required by the Shannon-Nyquist theorem. However, CS can hardly be applied to real-time applications because reconstruction algorithms are computationally demanding. To tackle this problem, in this paper, we propose a new high-speed architecture for implementing the orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP), which is one of the most popular algorithms for CS reconstruction. Speciﬁcally, a novel pipelined systolic architecture and an optimized scheduling strategy are proposed. From the synthesis results, we ﬁnd that the proposed design takes 1.638 µ s to reconstruct 16-sparse signal, which is 19.2 times faster than the existing VLSI implementation of the OMP.
BtPDR: Bluetooth and PDR-Based Indoor Fusion Localization Using Smartphones

: This paper presents a Bluetooth and pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR)-based indoor fusion localization approach (BtPDR) using smartphones. A Bluetooth and PDR-based indoor fusion localization approach can localize the initial position of a smartphone with the received signal strength (RSS) of Bluetooth. While a smartphone is moving, BtPDR can track its position by fusing the localization results of PDR and Bluetooth RSS. In addition, BtPDR can adaptively modify the parameters of PDR. The contributions of BtPDR include: a Bluetooth RSS-based Probabilistic Voting (BRPV) localization mechanism, a probabilistic voting-based Bluetooth RSS and PDR fusion method, and a heuristic search approach for reducing the complexity of BRPV. The experiment results in a real scene show that the average positioning error is < 2m, which is considered adequate for indoor location-based service applications. Moreover, compared to the traditional PDR method, BtPDR improves the location accuracy by 42.6%, on average. Compared to state-of-the-art Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) fingerprint + PDR-based fusion indoor localization approaches
Design of broadband power amplifier based on a continuous harmonic control mode

In this letter, a method for widening impedance matching spaces of power amplifier is proposed by expanding the voltage and current equations of class F power amplifiers. The proposed method can improve design flexibility and convenience of broadband power amplifiers while maintaining high output power and drain efficiency. To verify this theory, a power amplifier from 1 GHz to 3.5 GHz is designed. The measured experimental results show that the drain efficiency can reach 50.6%-63.4%, the output power is greater than 40 dBm, and the gain is greater than 10 dB.
Enhancing hydrogen‐dependent growth of and carbon dioxide fixation by Clostridium ljungdahlii through nitrate supplementation

Synthesis gas (syngas) fermentation via the Wood–Ljungdahl pathway is receiving growing attention as a possible platform for the fixation of CO2 and renewable production of fuels and chemicals. However, the pathway operates near the thermodynamic limit of life, resulting in minimal adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production and long doubling times. This calls into question the feasibility of producing high‐energy compounds at industrially relevant levels. In this study, we investigated the possibility of co‐utilizing nitrate as an inexpensive additional electron acceptor to enhance ATP production during H2 ‐dependent growth of Clostridium ljungdahlii, Moorella thermoacetica, and Acetobacterium woodii. In contrast to other acetogens tested, growth rate and final biomass titer were improved for C. ljungdahlii growing on a mixture of H2 and CO2 when supplemented with nitrate. Transcriptomic analysis, 13CO2 labeling, and an electron balance were used to understand how electron flux was partitioned between CO2 and nitrate. We further show that, with nitrate supplementation, the ATP/adenosine diphosphate (ADP) ratio and acetyl‐CoA pools were increased by fivefold and threefold, respectively, suggesting that this strategy could be useful for the production of ATP‐intensive heterologous products from acetyl‐CoA. Finally, we propose a pathway for enhanced ATP production from nitrate and use this as a basis to calculate theoretical yields for a variety of products. This study demonstrates a viable strategy for the decoupling of ATP production from carbon dioxide fixation, which will serve to significantly improve the CO2 fixation rate and the production metrics of other chemicals from CO2 and H2 in this host.
A novel miniaturized quarter mode substrate integrate waveguide tunable filter

A novel quarter mode substrate integrated waveguide (QMSIW) resonator is proposed, based on which a plane cascade QMSIW tunable filter is designed. Miniaturization of the filter is achieved, whose area is only g g   34 . 0 51 . 0  . The filter works at 1.2 GHz with the tunable range of 31.6% and the fabricated insertion loss less than 1.9dB and return loss greater than 15dB, respectively.
Autophagy Inhibition Promotes Bevacizumab-induced Apoptosis and Proliferation Inhibition in Colorectal Cancer Cells

Aim: Anti-VEGF therapy plays an important role in the treatment of malignant tumors, especially metastatic malignant tumors. However, resistance and an inefficient response to anti-VEGF therapy exist. The current study aimed to investigate whether autophagy plays a part in the anti-tumor effect of bevacizumab in colorectal cancer cells. Methods: VEGF-A expression was measured by immunohistochemical methods. Cell viability and cell apoptosis were detected using 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-3,5-diphenylformazan (MTT) and flow cytometry. Autophagy was assessed by a western blot, fluorescence microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. HIF-1α was measured using a western blot. A xenograft tumor model of colorectal cancer was constructed to determine the efficacy of the treatment of bevacizumab and chloroquine. Results: VEGF-A protein was upregulated in colorectal cancer tissue. Anti-VEGF (bevacizumab) inhibited cell viability and induced apoptosis. Moreover, bevacizumab induced autophagy. The inhibition of autophagy by chloroquine or by small interfering RNA promoted bevacizumab-induced apoptosis and proliferation inhibition. Further study showed that bevacizumab treatment significantly augmented HIF-1α. Furthermore, cells pretreated with YC-1, a HIF-1α inhibitor, displayed significantly attenuated bevacizumab-induced autophagy. Finally, a combinatory treatment of bevacizumab and chloroquine synergistically inhibited tumor growth in a xenograft tumor model of colorectal cancer cells. Conclusions: Our results showed that the inhibition of autophagy promoted the anti-tumor effect of bevacizumab and may offer a promising therapeutic strategy for colorectal cancer.
An efficient controlled LFSR hybrid BIST scheme

: A new hybrid built-in self-test (BIST) test scheme is proposed. The test scheme consists of two components: the free LFSR mode (pseudo-random test) and the controlled LFSR mode (deterministic test). In order to improve the test quality of pseudo-random test sequence, a forward-backward pseudo-random test generation method is proposed. As every shifted-in bit is fully used to generate the most e ﬃ cient test and the ratio of do not care bits is maximized in the remaining test pattern repository, the proposed controlled LFSR test generation method can ﬁnd the targeted pattern with the minimal number of shift, e ﬃ ciently embedding the deterministic test set into test-per-clock stream. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method considering for layout constraints shows great advantages in test data storage and test application time compared with previous methods.
Longitudinal Changes of Retinal Thicknesses in Branch Retinal Artery Occlusion: Spectral-Domain Optical Coherence Tomography Study.

Purpose To analyze longitudinal thickness changes in the overall macula, ganglion cell-inner plexiform layer (GC-IPL), and peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (pRNFL) using spectral-domain optical coherence tomography in branch retinal artery occlusion (BRAO). Methods A prospective analysis was conducted in patients with BRAO. The thicknesses of the overall macula, GC-IPL, and pRNFL were measured at the initial visit, and at 1, 3, 6, and 12 months. Changes in the occluded areas of the affected and unaffected eyes were analyzed, and the nonoccluded areas were compared. Results In the occluded areas of the affected eyes, the only overall macular thickness was significantly greater when compared with that of unaffected eyes at the initial visit. At 1 month, the thickness of GC-IPL alone in the occluded areas of affected eyes decreased significantly when compared with that of unaffected eyes. The average thicknesses of all parameters in the occluded areas at 3, 6, and 12 months were significantly reduced compared with those of the unaffected eyes. In addition, the thickness of pRNFL in the nonoccluded vertical mirror areas at 6 and 12 months was significantly reduced compared with those of the unaffected eyes. Conclusions In BRAO patients, the occluded areas of affected eyes showed significant changes in the overall macular, GC-IPL, and pRNFL thicknesses when compared with those at initial visits and normal fellow eyes. The time points at which each thickness changed significantly were different.
Negative Pressure Wound Therapy for Closed Laparotomy Incisions in General and Colorectal Surgery: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Importance Surgical site infections (SSIs) are common after laparotomy wounds and are associated with a significant economic burden. The use of negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) has recently been broadened to closed surgical incisions. Objective To evaluate the association of prophylactic NPWT with SSI rates in closed laparotomy incisions performed for general and colorectal surgery in elective and emergency settings. Data Sources The PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and Google Scholar databases were searched without language restrictions for relevant articles from inception until December 2017. The latest search was performed on December 31, 2017. The bibliographies of retrieved studies were further screened for potential additional studies. Study Selection Randomized clinical trials and nonrandomized studies were included. Unpublished reports were excluded, as were studies that examined NPWT (or standard nonpressure) dressings only without a comparator group. Studies that evaluated the use of NPWT in open abdominal incisions were also excluded. Disagreement was resolved by discussion, and if the question remained unsettled, the opinion of the senior author was sought. A total of 198 citations were identified, and 189 were excluded. Data Extraction and Synthesis This meta-analysis was conducted according to PRISMA guidelines. Data were independently extracted by 2 authors. A random-effects model was used for statistical analysis. Main Outcomes and Measures The primary outcome measure was SSI, and secondary outcomes included seroma and wound dehiscence rates. These outcomes were chosen before data collection. Results Nine unique studies (3 randomized trials and 2 prospective and 4 retrospective studies) capturing 1266 unique patients were included. Of these, 1187 patients with 1189 incisions were included in the final analysis (52.3% male among 7 studies reporting data on sex; mean [SD] age, 52 [15] years among 8 studies reporting data on age). Significant clinical and methodologic heterogeneity existed among studies. On random-effects analysis, NPWT was associated with a significantly lower rate of SSI compared with standard dressings (pooled odds ratio [OR], 0.25; 95% CI, 0.12-0.52; P < .001). However, no difference in rates of seroma (pooled OR, 0.38; 95% CI, 0.12-1.23; P = .11) or wound dehiscence (pooled OR, 2.03; 95% CI, 0.61-6.78; P = .25) was found. On sensitivity analysis, focusing solely on colorectal procedures, NPWT significantly reduced SSI rates (pooled OR, 0.16; 95% CI, 0.07-0.36; P < .001). Conclusions and Relevance Application of NPWT on closed laparotomy wounds in general and colorectal surgery is associated with reduced SSI rates but similar rates of seroma and wound dehiscence compared with conventional nonpressure dressings.
Features and methods for improving large scale face recognition

This thesis investigates vector representations for face recognition, and uses these representations for a number of tasks in image and video datasets. First, we look at different representations for faces in images and videos. The objective is to learn compact yet effective representations for describing faces. We first investigate the use of "Fisher Vector" descriptors for this task. We show that these descriptors are perfectly suited for face representation tasks. We also investigate various approaches to effectively reduce their dimension while improving their performance further. These "Fisher Vector" features are also amenable to extreme compression and work equally well when compressed by over 2000 times as compared to their non compressed counterparts. These features achieved the state-of-the-art results on challenging public benchmarks until the re-introduction of Convolution Neural Networks (CNNs) in the community. Second, we investigate the use of "Very Deep" architectures for face representation tasks. For training these networks, we collected one of the largest annotated public datasets of celebrity faces with minimum manual intervention. We bring out specific details of these network architectures and their training objective functions essential to their performance and achieve state-of-art result on challenging datasets. Having developed these representation, we propose a method for labeling faces in the challenging environment of broadcast videos using their associated textual data, such as subtitles and transcripts. We show that our CNN representation is well suited for this task. We also propose a scheme to automatically differentiate the primary cast of a TV serial or movie from that of the background characters. We modify existing methods of collecting supervision from textual data and show that the careful alignment of video and textual data results in significant improvement in the amount of training data collected automatically, which has a direct positive impact on the performance of labeling mechanisms. We provide extensive evaluations on different benchmark datasets achieving, again, state-of-the-art results. Further we show that both the shallow as well the deep methods have excellent capabilities in switching modalities from photos to paintings and vice-a-versa. We propose a system to retrieve paintings for similar looking people given a picture and investigate the use of facial attributes for this task. Finally, we show that an on-the-fly real time search system can be built to search through thousands of hours of video data starting from a text query. We propose product quantization schemes for making face representations memory efficient. We also present the demo system based on this design for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to search through their archive. All of these contributions have been designed with a keen eye on their application in the real world. As a result, most of chapters have an associated code release and a working online demonstration.
Fatal adverse events with molecular targeted agents in the treatment of advanced hepatocellular carcinoma: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Aims Concerns have increased about the risk of fatal adverse events (FAEs) associated with molecular targeted agents (MTAs) in the treatment of advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The purpose of this study is to investigate the overall incidence and risk of FAEs in advanced HCC with administration of MTAs by using a meta-analysis of available clinical trials. Materials and methods Electronic databases were searched for relevant articles before March 2017. Eligible studies were selected according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) statement. Pooled incidence, Peto ORs and 95% CIs were calculated according to the heterogeneity of selected studies. Results A total of 4,716 HCC participants from 10 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were finally considered for this meta-analysis. The pooled incidence of death due to MTAs was 2.1% (95% CI 1.6%–2.8%) with a Peto OR of 1.79 (95% CI 1.07–3.01; p=0.027) in comparison with controlled groups. Subgroup analysis according to biological agents showed that brivanib treatment in HCC patients significantly increased the risk of developing FAEs (Peto OR 3.97; 95% CI 1.17–13.51; p=0.028) but not for sorafenib (Peto OR 1.78; 95% CI 0.54–5.89; p=0.34) and other MTAs (Peto OR 1.43; 95% CI 0.75–2.76; p=0.28). Sensitive analysis showed that the pooled results were influenced by removing each single trial. The most common causes of FAEs were hepatic failure (22.2%) and hemorrhage (13.3%), respectively. Conclusion Clinicians should be aware of the risks of FAEs during the administration of MTAs in advanced HCC patients, especially for patients with abnormal liver function. However, the use of sorafenib remains justified in its approved indications due to their potential survival benefits and limited toxicities.
Do cognitive deficits persist into adolescence in autism?

The three cognitive domains (ToM, EF, and LB) were examined in a group of high‐functioning children (age: 8–12, mean 10.85; IQ: 78–139, mean 105.48) with ASD and a matched group of children with neurotypical development (NTD) (IQ: 75–145, mean: 109.47), and several tasks were used within each domain to ensure the validity of the cognitive measures. Approximately 3 years later (mean age: 14.34), all children and their families were invited to participate in the follow‐up (ASD, N = 21; NTD, N = 30). While the understanding of other's minds does improve from childhood to adolescence, ToM impairment persists in adolescents with ASD relative to their peers. Likewise, a development in EF was observed in the ASD group, while no significant improvement was seen in the NTD group, leading the ASD group to catch up in this domain. We did not detect any group differences at any time point regarding local bias processing (LB). Individual patterns of development were seen, but remarkably, ToM deficits were present in every child with ASD in whom we could detect any cognitive impairment at baseline, and a similar pattern was found at follow‐up. These findings indicate that ToM is a persistent cognitive deficit in ASD. Autism Res 2018, 11: 1229–1238. © 2018 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Narrative medicine: A comparison of terminal cancer patients’ stories from a Dutch hospice with those of Anatole Broyard and Christopher Hitchens

Abstract Not all physicians readily discuss death with their terminal patients. To explore whether physicians discuss dying with their terminal patients and to pursue an in-depth understanding of patients’ perceptions of death, we interviewed terminal cancer patients in a Dutch hospice and compared their stories to quotes from two autobiographies on dying from cancer, Christopher Hitchens’ Mortality and Anatole Broyard’s Intoxicated by my illness. This narrative medicine study could potentially teach physicians they should discuss impending death to prevent the use of an invasive medical treatment that typically extends the quantity, but not the quality, of life.
Variable-length and high-precision FFT processors based on configurable constant factor multipliers and memory reallocations

: A variable-length, high-precision ﬁ xed-point pipeline FFT processor design methodology is proposed in this article. As an example for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging processing, a radix-2 5 single-path delay feedback (SDF) 32768-point FFT is implemented. By analyzing both the two ’ s complement and canonic signed digit (CSD) representations of the constant factors, the proposed con ﬁ gurable constant factor multipliers (CCFM) can be con ﬁ gured to generate any constant factors applied in the radix-2 5 algorithm. The variable length architecture can be built up by a simple permutation and combination of radix-2 butter ﬂ y operations and CCFM. With the look-up table (LUT) division technique, the twiddle factor storage requirement is signi ﬁ cantly reduced. The high precision ﬁ xed-point calculation performance is achieved based on a memory reallocation (MR) technique. When performing the non-maximum size FFT, by reallocating the idle memory resources, the ﬁ xed-point calculation precision is improved. Compared with conventional design methodology, the proposed ﬁ xed-point FFT achieves an SQNR improvement of at least 18 dB and the circuit area is reduced by at least 10%.