Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Standardization of Immunohistochemistry for Formalin-fixed, Paraffin-embedded Tissue Sections Based on the Antigen-retrieval Technique: From Experiments to Hypothesis

From a practical point of view, one of the most difficult issues in the standardization of IHC for FFPE tissue is the adverse influence of formalin upon antigenicity, as well as the great variation in fixation/processing procedures. Based on previous study, an additional study using four markers demonstrated the potential for obtaining equivalent IHC staining among FFPE tissue sections with periods of formalin fixation ranging from 6 hr to 30 days. On this basis, the following hypothesis is proposed. “The use of optimized AR protocols permits retrieval of specific proteins (antigens) from FFPE tissues to a defined and reproducible degree (expressed as R%), with reference to the amount of protein present in the original fresh/unfixed tissue”. This hypothesis may also be presented mathematically: the protein amount in a fresh cell/tissue, expressed as Pf, produces an IHC signal in fresh tissue of ∫ (Pf). When the identical IHC staining plus AR treatment is applied to a FFPE tissue section, the IHC signal may be represented as ∫ (Pffpe). The degree of retrieval after AR (R%) is calculated as follows: R% = ∫ (Pffpe)/ ∫ (Pf) × 100%. The amount of protein in the FFPE tissue may then be derived as follows: Pffpe = Pf × R%. In a situation where optimized AR is 100% effective, the IHC signal would then be of equal strength in fresh tissue and FFPE tissue, and Pffpe = Pf. Further studies are designed to test the limitations of the proposed hypothesis.
A Ramp Metering Method Based on Congestion Status in the Urban Freeway

In ramp metering methods, the ALINEA algorithm is a very effective way and has been applied widely. But the critical occupancy in ALINEA algorithm is often difficult to obtain and not particularly accurate. It will greatly affect the performance of ALINEA algorithm. In this paper, an improved ALINEA algorithm, named CS-ALINEA, is proposed. In this method, the traffic flow is used to replace the occupancy as the control parameter and the control rate can be selected according to the congestion status reclassified adaptively. In the existing ramp control methods, to guarantee the traffic efficiency of mainstream, the impact of ramp overflow on ground road traffic is often ignored. In order to resolve this issue, the segmented control method is adopted in this paper. When the ramp queuing length exceeds the critical queue length, the signal timing scheme is adjusted by selecting the control rate to avoid the ramp overflow. The SUMO simulation platform is used to simulate the ramp control and test the CS-ALINEA algorithm. The experimental results show that the proposed method can optimize the ramp queuing length and reduce waiting time of vehicles while the efficiency of urban freeway can be guaranteed.
Potential Substance Abuse

The authors administered an abbreviated revision of a previously field-tested, self-administered, brief screening test (the 30-item Drug and Alcohol Problem Quick Screen) to 355 consecutive middle-class adolescent patients seen at a five-pediatrician group practice setting. Ninety-six percent (341) of the subjects completed the 30-item screening questionnaire. Eighty-nine percent of the 341 responders wrote in their names in the space provided for that purpose. Fifty-two patients (approximately 15%) of the 341 responded "yes" to six or more items in the current study. Based on a previous study comparing scores from 200 adolescents from the same pediatric practice with answers from 100 identified adolescent drug abusers at a drug abuse treatment facility, those patients with a score of 6 or more were considered high risk for "red flag" behaviors, particularly drug or alcohol abuse. Forty (77%) of those patients who scored six or greater identified themselves by name. Four key items on the questionnaire accounted for 70 percent of the variation between those at high and those at low risk for drug or alcohol abuse. These four most important items encompassed 1) use of tobacco products; 2) accusation by others of having a drinking or drug problem; 3) school suspension; and 4) riding in a motor vehicle with a driver who drank too much. The DAP Quick Screen appears to be practical as a screening tool in physician's offices for detection of serious problems during adolescence.
Wide-field endoscopic mucosal resection versus endoscopic submucosal dissection for laterally spreading colorectal lesions: a cost-effectiveness analysis

Objective To compare the cost-effectiveness of endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) and wide-field endoscopic mucosal resection (WF-EMR) for removing large sessile and laterally spreading colorectal lesions (LSLs) >20 mm. Design An incremental cost-effectiveness analysis using a decision tree model was performed over an 18-month time horizon. The following strategies were compared: WF-EMR, universal ESD (U-ESD) and selective ESD (S-ESD) for lesions highly suspicious for containing submucosal invasive cancer (SMIC), with WF-EMR used for the remainder. Data from a large Western cohort and the literature were used to inform the model. Effectiveness was defined as the number of surgeries avoided per 1000 cases. Incremental costs per surgery avoided are presented. Sensitivity and scenario analyses were performed. Results 1723 lesions among 1765 patients were analysed. The prevalence of SMIC and low-risk-SMIC was 8.2% and 3.1%, respectively. Endoscopic lesion assessment for SMIC had a sensitivity and specificity of 34.9% and 98.4%, respectively. S-ESD was the least expensive strategy and was also more effective than WF-EMR by preventing 19 additional surgeries per 1000 cases. 43 ESD procedures would be required in an S-ESD strategy. U-ESD would prevent another 13 surgeries compared with S-ESD, at an incremental cost per surgery avoided of US$210 112. U-ESD was only cost-effective among higher risk rectal lesions. Conclusion S-ESD is the preferred treatment strategy. However, only 43 ESDs are required per 1000 LSLs. U-ESD cannot be justified beyond high-risk rectal lesions. WF-EMR remains an effective and safe treatment option for most LSLs. Trial registration number NCT02000141.
Multimodal Retrieval with Diversification and Relevance Feedback for Tourist Attraction Images

In this article, we present a novel framework that can produce a visual description of a tourist attraction by choosing the most diverse pictures from community-contributed datasets, which describe different details of the queried location. The main strength of the proposed approach is its flexibility that permits us to filter out non-relevant images and to obtain a reliable set of diverse and relevant images by first clustering similar images according to their textual descriptions and their visual content and then extracting images from different clusters according to a measure of the user’s credibility. Clustering is based on a two-step process, where textual descriptions are used first and the clusters are then refined according to the visual features. The degree of diversification can be further increased by exploiting users’ judgments on the results produced by the proposed algorithm through a novel approach, where users not only provide a relevance feedback but also a diversity feedback. Experimental results performed on the MediaEval 2015 “Retrieving Diverse Social Images” dataset show that the proposed framework can achieve very good performance both in the case of automatic retrieval of diverse images and in the case of the exploitation of the users’ feedback. The effectiveness of the proposed approach has been also confirmed by a small case study involving a number of real users.
Ethylene as an effector of wound-induced resistance to cellulase in oat leaves.

Peeling the abaxial epidermis from oat leaves (Avena sativa var. Victory) induces the formation of wound ethylene and the development of resistance to cellulolytic digestion of mesophyll cell walls. Ethylene release begins between 1 and 2 hours after peeling in the light or dark. Aminoethoxyvinylglycine (AVG, 0.1 millimolar), CoCl(2) (1.0 millimolar), propyl gallate (PG, 1.0 millimolar) or aminooxyacetic acid (AOA, 1.0 millimolar) inhibits, whereas AgNO(3) stimulates wound ethylene formation. Incubation on inhibitors of ethylene biosynthesis (AVG, CoCl(2), PG, AOA) or action (AgNO(3), hypobaric pressure or the trapping of ethylene with HgClO(4)) also prevents the development of wound-induced resistance to enzymic cell wall digestion. 1-Aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid (ACC, 1.0 millimolar) reverses AVG (0.1 millimolar) inhibition of the development of resistance. Exogenous ethylene partially induces the development of resistance in unwounded oat leaves.These results suggest that peeling of oat leaves induces ethylene biosynthesis, which in turn effects changes in the mesophyll cells resulting in the development of resistance to cellulolytic digestion.
Subjective and objective caregiver burden in Parkinson's disease.

PURPOSE Parkinson's disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disorder characterized by motor disabilities and increasing dependence on others for daily life activities with consequent impact on patients' and caregivers' quality of life. The aim of this study was to elucidate the burden on primary caregivers of patients with PD, and identify related factors. METHODS A cross-sectional descriptive study. Seventy-six primary caregivers of PD patients in a neurology outpatient clinic, Seoul, Korea completed structured questionnaires, of which 68 were analyzed. The structured self-report questionnaire included (1) demographic information on the caregivers, (2) information regarding the disease characteristics of the patients, and (3) the subjective and objective caregiver burdens as assessed on Montgomery, Gonyea, & Hooyman's scale. RESULTS The mean age of the caregivers was 54.56 years, and spouses represented the largest proportion(47.0%). Caregivers of PD patients experienced high levels of burden (mean scores on the subjective and objective burdens were 45.22 and 34.90, respectively), which were comparable to the caregiver burdens in stroke, and higher than the caregiver burdens in general chronic disease. Older caregivers and spousal caregivers experienced significantly higher burdens (p=.004 and p=.019, respectively). A greater motor disability and higher modified Hoehn and Yahr grade were related to higher caregiver burden (p=.001 and p=.018, respectively). CONCLUSION Caring for PD patients is associated with a high level of caregiver burden. Therefore, healthcare professionals should identify the burden of caregivers who look after PD patients and develop comprehensive management strategies both for patients and their caregivers.
Two-stage time-series clustering approach under reducing time cost requirement

Clustering is an essential task of unsupervised learning, which is valuable as a specific data mining tool and as an auxiliary stage of numerous highly demanded tasks, including recognizing structures, tuning of forecast parameters, detecting anomalies, and others. Significantly data-driven, especially of specific data such as time-series considered here, as well as with an impressive growth of the volume data, the computational cost becomes a vital critical issue. In the research presented, the authors developed a two-step approach to clustering based on the split of a massive dataset into two unequal parts under the control of the clusterability metric through the instance-based and feature-based combination of time-series clustering. The conducted experimental study on the well-known test data set confirmed the competitiveness of the proposed method under the conditions of the requirement to reduce time costs.
Near‐infrared Raman spectroscopy for optical diagnosis of lung cancer

Raman spectroscopy is a vibrational spectroscopic technique that can be used to optically probe the molecular changes associated with diseased tissues. The objective of our study was to explore near‐infrared (NIR) Raman spectroscopy for distinguishing tumor from normal bronchial tissue. Bronchial tissue specimens (12 normal, 10 squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and 6 adenocarcinoma) were obtained from 10 patients with known or suspected malignancies of the lung. A rapid‐acquisition dispersive‐type NIR Raman spectroscopy system was used for tissue Raman studies at 785 nm excitation. High‐quality Raman spectra in the 700–1,800 cm–1 range from human bronchial tissues in vitro could be obtained within 5 sec. Raman spectra differed significantly between normal and malignant tumor tissue, with tumors showing higher percentage signals for nucleic acid, tryptophan and phenylalanine and lower percentage signals for phospholipids, proline and valine, compared to normal tissue. Raman spectral shape differences between normal and tumor tissue were also observed particularly in the spectral ranges of 1,000–1,100, 1,200–1,400 and 1,500–1,700 cm–1, which contain signals related to protein and lipid conformations and nucleic acid's CH stretching modes. The ratio of Raman intensities at 1,445 to 1,655 cm–1 provided good differentiation between normal and malignant bronchial tissue (p < 0.0001). The results of this exploratory study indicate that NIR Raman spectroscopy provides significant potential for the noninvasive diagnosis of lung cancers in vivo based on the optic evaluation of biomolecules. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Abnormal expression of period 1 (PER1) in endometrial carcinoma

The development of endometrial carcinoma (EC) is a multiple‐step process, which includes inactivation of tumour suppressor genes, activation of oncogenes, and disturbance of cancer‐related genes. Recent studies have shown that the circadian cycle may influence cancer development and prognosis. In this study, the expression of a circadian gene, PER1, was examined in 35 ECs and paired non‐tumour tissues by real‐time quantitative reverse transcription‐polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR) and immunohistochemistry. Expression levels of PER1 were significantly decreased in EC, and mutational analysis of the coding regions, together with methylation analysis of cytosine‐phosphate guanosine (CpG) sites in the promoter area, was performed to investigate the possible mechanisms. The analyses detected four single nucleotide polymorphisms in both tumour and non‐tumour tissues, which had no relationship with the expression of PER1. In the promoter area of the PER1 gene, the CpG sites were methylated in 31.4% of ECs, but in 11.4% of paired non‐tumour tissues (p < 0.05). These results suggest that the down‐regulation of PER1 expression in EC was partly due to inactivation of the PER1 gene by DNA methylation of the promoter and partly due to other factors. Analysis of the relationships between the expression of PER1, P53, c‐MYC, cyclin A, cyclin B, and cyclin D1 showed no definite relationship. These results suggest that down‐regulation of the PER1 gene disrupts the circadian rhythm, which may favour the survival of endometrial cancer cells. Copyright © 2005 Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Progress toward establishing embryonic stem or induced pluripotent stem cell-based clinical translation

Purpose of reviewEmbryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells are pluripotent and therefore capable of differentiating into different cell types and tissues. However, their clinical potential, so far, has not been sufficiently probed. The major obstacle is the lack of protocols that allow efficient derivation of clinical grade cells or tissues. This review will address these questions and discuss the current state of the field. Recent findingsI will address some of the ongoing clinical trials using stem cell-derived retinal pigment epithelial cells, cardiomyocytes, neurons and attempts to establish insulin-producing cells for the treatment of type 1 diabetes. SummaryAre we there yet? The answer is clearly no. Progress in the different organs and tissues that are being generated is quite variable. Clearly, there has been more success in the derivation of retinal pigment epithelial cells, neuronal cells and cardiomyocytes than in any other tissues or organs. The derivation of insulin-producing cells and that of definitive hematopoietic progenitor cells in humans remains a challenge. Having said that the progress already made with other tissues is an encouraging sign that we may eventually see progress across the board.
A new dielectric grating antenna at millimeter wave frequency

The development of a dielectric grating antenna at K/sub a/ band is presented. The antenna performance is analyzed using perturbation analysis and a numerically based commercial software. The effect of the grating profile and various dimensions on the performance is presented. Based on the analytical results a rectangular profile grating antenna is designed. The antenna is optimized, fabricated and measured. Close agreement between the simulated and measured results is obtained.
Constitutive sensory transduction mutations in the Bordetella pertussis bvgS gene

The products of the bvgAS locus coordinately regulate expression of the Bordetella pertussis virulence regulon in response to environmental signals. Transcription of bvgAS-activated genes is nearly eliminated by several modulating conditions, including the presence of sulfate anion or nicotinic acid and growth at low temperature. We have isolated spontaneous mutations that result in the constitutive synthesis of multiple bvg-regulated loci. Several of these mutations have been analyzed and were found to result from single-nucleotide substitutions within bvgS, in a region encoding a 161-amino-acid segment which links the transmembrane sequence with cytoplasmic domains that appear to be involved in signaling events. The effect of signal transduction mutations in Escherichia coli was determined by measuring the expression of an fhaB-lacZYA transcriptional fusion, and that in B. pertussis was determined by measuring expression of both fhaB-cat and ptxA3201-cat fusions. The constitutive mutations have little effect on fhaB-cat or fhaB-lacZYA expression in the absence of modulating signals but result in a nearly complete insensitivity to MgSO4, nicotinic acid, or growth at low temperature. Furthermore, insertion and deletion mutations in bvgS sequences encoding the periplasmic domain eliminate activity of the wild-type product, whereas constitutive mutants remain active. In B. pertussis cultures grown in Stainer-Scholte broth, expression of ptxA3201-cat differed from that of fhaB-cat in several respects. In combination with a wild-type bvgS allele, ptxA3201-cat expression required the addition of heptakis-(2,6-O-dimethyl)-beta-cyclodextrin, and this requirement was eliminated by the presence of the constitutive mutations.
Flight size auto tuning for broadband wireless networks

The emergency of broadband wireless access technologies enables seamless Internet access in mobile environments. To fully utilize the broadband wireless bandwidth, it is critical to design a congestion control mechanism that can adjust the congestion window size according to the dynamics of the wireless network condition. A congestion window size that does not react properly to the degradation of channel quality injects excessive data segments into the network. This increases round trip time (RTT) and ultimately may cause packet losses. In the reverse setting, when the channel quality improves drastically, the congestion window should react fast enough to take advantage of the available bandwidth. This paper proposes Flight Size Auto Tuning (FS-AT) as a new TCP variant. FS-AT adjusts the transmission rate according to the estimated available throughput and fluctuations in throughput to mitigate the network congestion while maintaining high network utilization. Moreover, FS-AT provides mechanisms to differentiate between the losses caused by channel errors and those by network congestion. Accordingly, the proposed method avoids unnecessary throughput reduction in case of channel errors, a well-known impediment of standard TCP schemes. FS-AT estimates the current available bandwidth from the received acknowledgments without requiring any modification at the receiver. FS-AT is implemented on Linux and the effectiveness of FS-AT is validated by the measured performance of FS-AT over HSDPA and the simulated performance over a fixed network.
Forensic Speaker Identification: a tutorial

This paper presents an overview of the methodologies used in the forensic field for the identification of speakers. First, an introduction shows the interest of the forensic community in speaker recognition and its limitations. Then the history of the evolution of speaker recognition systems -from Bell Laboratories in the fifties to current i-vector/PLDA approach-, and the much older history of forensic speaker identification that dates back to the seventeenth century at the court of Charles I of England -from recognition techniques by listening to semi-automatic systems nowadays-, are presented. To clarify concepts, some important concepts as speaker recognition tasks: verification and identification, and speaker recognition modalities: text-dependent/independent, are defined. Topics covered in this work range from particularities of forensic speaker identification tasks and complexities of collecting and processing speech samples, to final presentation of results to judge. Finally, a classification of forensic speaker identification approaches: auditory-spectrographic, auditory-perceptual, phonetic-acoustic/linguistic, automatic, semi-automatic and combined, are analyzed in depth. An international vision of the institutions involved in this forensic area is completed with a detailed analysis of what happens in Argentina. The final conclusion suggests the implementation of the combined approach, standardization of processes and quality certification of the forensic laboratories.
An All-Digital Temperature Sensor with Process and Voltage Variation Tolerance for IoT Applications

The embedded temperature sensor which monitors the hot spots of the chip had become an essential circuit for improving the reliability of the system-on-a-chip (SoC). However, most of the temperature sensors cannot resist the influence of voltage variations and results in significant temperature errors. In this paper, the relative reference modeling (RRM)-based temperature sensor is presented. The proposed temperature sensor uses a low-temperature sensitivity voltage classifier and a low-voltage sensitivity proportional to absolute temperature (PTAT) circuit to resist the voltage variations. Addition, the process variations can be eliminated after the three-point calibration. The proposed temperature sensor was fabricated in TSMC 90nm CMOS process. The measured results show that the temperature error of the proposed design is from -1.47°C to 1.40°C with supply voltage 0.9 to 1.1V.