Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Demographics of corneal transplantation in Canada in 2004.

BACKGROUND Penetrating keratoplasty (PKP) is the most frequently performed transplant surgery, and one of the most successful, yet no national study on the demographics of corneal transplantation in Canada has been published to date. The objectives of this study were to determine demographics of Canadian corneal transplant surgeons, donor tissue availability and waitlist length for each province, and limiting factors for the number of PKPs performed in Canada. METHODS An anonymous voluntary survey of all Canadian corneal transplant surgeons was conducted between June and September 2004, with a concurrent voluntary survey of all eye banks in Canada. RESULTS In 2004, there were 76 corneal transplant surgeons distributed as follows: British Columbia 17.1%, Alberta 11.8%, Saskatchewan 3.9%, Manitoba 7.9%, Ontario 36.8%, Quebec 17.1% and the Atlantic provinces 5.3%. The response rate of the Canadian corneal transplant surgeon survey was 69.7%. On average, each respondent performed 1 (SD 1) PKP/week, 40 (33) PKPs/year, and had a waitlist of 50 (63) patients. The mean wait time from date of referral to initial consultation was 10 (SD 7) weeks and from time of diagnosis to PKP was 51 (32) weeks. The most significant contributing factor to PKP waitlist selected by respondents in all provinces except Ontario was donor tissue shortage (64.7%); Ontario respondents (81.0%) believed that insufficient operating room time was the main factor. Ontario was the only province where all corneal transplant surgeons scheduled PKP electively and where surplus corneal tissue was regularly exported. INTERPRETATION Recommendations include standardizing the criteria for acceptable donor tissue across all eye banks in Canada to increase efficiency of distribution, introducing and properly implementing mandatory referral and request legislation to increase donor rates, and increasing availability of operating room time for corneal transplant surgeons, especially in Ontario.
Comparison of younger versus older B‐cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients for clinical presentation and prognosis. A retrospective study of 53 cases

Abstract: Fifty‐three patients affected with B‐cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) younger than 50 years and observed in two hematological institutions have been retrospectively evaluated in order to verify whether this disease has different clinico‐hematological features at presentation and different prognosis as compared to older cases. In our experience young cases with B‐CLL diagnosis, confirmed by immunophenotype in 90.5% of patients, accounted for 7.1% of the whole CLL population. Sex distribution, mean peripheral lymphocyte count, platelet count, distribution among Rai's and Binet's stages, total tumor mass (TTM) score, histological pattern of bone marrow infiltration and lymphocyte doubling time (LDT) were similar to a series of 201 CLL cases older than 50 years. Only hemoglobin mean level was significantly higher in younger patients (13.1 ± 2.1 vs 12.2 ± 2.6 g/dl; p<0.01). The overall median survival was 7.1 years. Rai and Binet staging classifications and TTM score system retained their prognostic value in this CLL population. In addition, cases fulfilling criteria of “smoldering” CLL, had a very long survival (75% survival probability at 16 years). Life‐expectancy of younger patients was significantly longer than that of older ones (median survival, 7.1 versus 4.1 years; p < 0.05). However, when the background mortality due to non‐CLL related deaths (i.e., cardiovascular complications, epithelial cancers) was removed, survival advantage of young cases disappeared. In conclusion this study confirms that prognosis of young CLL patients can be easily assessed using the current well‐defined criteria. Since age is not by itself a criterion for intensifying treatment, further efforts to identify those young CLL patients who qualify for more aggressive therapy should be made.
A Method to Accelerate Human in the Loop Clustering

Data analysis tasks often require grouping of information to identify trends and associations. However, as the number of elements rises to the hundreds and thousands the cost of having a person perform the groupings unassisted quickly becomes prohibitive. Previous approaches have combined traditional clustering techniques with manual interaction steps, yielding human-in-the-loop clustering algorithms that incorporate user feedback by reweighting features or adjusting a similarity function. But in the real world, many grouping tasks lack both a feature set and a well-deﬁned (dis)similarity metric, having only a subject matter expert with an implicit understanding of the correct relationships between elements based on the domain and the task at hand. We present a reﬁne-and-lock clustering interaction model and demonstrate its eﬀectiveness for cognitive-assisted human clustering over other interaction models such as split/merge and must-link/can’t-link. Our approach offers eﬀective automatic clustering assistance even in the absence of clear features or a deﬁnitive similarity metric; ensures that every cluster has ﬁnal user approval; and exhibits at least a 3.94x improvement over other interactive clustering approaches in time to completion.
Vibrational overtone induced elimination reactions within hydrogen-bonded molecular clusters: the dynamics of water catalyzed reactions in CH2FOH.H2On.

The dynamics of the light initiated OH-overtone induced elimination reactions CH(2)FOH. (H(2)O)(n) + hnu--> HF + CH(2)O + n(H(2)O), n = 1-3, are studied using classical trajectory simulations where the ab initio potential energy surface is computed "on-the-fly". Hydrogen bonding to the water is found to lower the barrier to reaction by over 20 kcal mol(-1) and modifies the mechanism to a concerted multiple H-atom transfer process. The reaction process is found to occur on a rapid timescale, <100 fs, and involves the hydronium ion as an intermediate. An essential aspect of dynamics is the successful competition of reaction with energy dissipation through water evaporation from the cluster.
Gremlin Regulates Podocyte Apoptosis via Transforming Growth Factor-β (TGF-β) Pathway in Diabetic Nephropathy

Background Gremlin has been reported to be up-regulated in glomerular mesangial cells in diabetic nephropathy (DN). However, the regulation of gremlin in podocytes is still rarely reported. This study aimed to investigate the underlying mechanisms by which gremlin mediates the pathogenesis of DN via transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) signaling pathways. Material/Methods Lentiviral and RNAi transfection were performed to increase and decrease gremlin expression in high-glucose conditions. Expression at the mRNA and protein level was detected by RT-qPCR and Western blotting. Results The expression of gremlin was significantly higher in high-glucose (HG, 30 mM) than normal-glucose (NG, 5.5 mM) conditions. The gremlin overexpression significantly suppressed the expression of nephrin and synaptopodin. The phosphorylation of canonical TGF-β signaling pathway components, including Smad2/3 and MKK, was increased in the gremlin-overexpressing group. In addition, the expression levels of Bax and cleaved caspase-3 were also higher in the gremlin-overexpressing group. TGF-β pathway inhibitor (SB505124) significantly inhibited TGF-β pathway activity and enhanced the expression of nephrin and synaptopodin. Conclusions These results indicate that gremlin can aggravate podocyte lesions through the TGF-β signaling pathway, providing a novel therapeutic target for DN.
Selecting a Representative Set of Diverse Quality Reviews Automatically

Online user reviews are important information for both consumers and vendors. More and more people make their purchase decisions based on online reviews. Vendors also pay more and more attention to online reviews. However, as the number of reviews increases rapidly, the information overload problem prevents us making full use of online reviews. In this paper, we study how to find a representative set of high quality reviews to cover diversified aspects of user opinions. Existing work cannot solve this problem well. To overcome the drawbacks of existing methods, we define a new problem of finding the minimum set of reviews to cover all of features with different sentiment polarity and high quality without user-defined parameters. To solve the problem efficiently, we define potential objective function and develop greedy algorithm to find the solution in polynomial-time with approximation guarantee. We also propose two strategies to further reduce the number of reviews and to prune the search space respectively. Comprehensive experiments conducted on real review sets show that the proposed methods are effective and outperform existing methods.
Chinese chess recognition algorithm based on computer vision

This paper introduces the Chinese chess recognition algorithm based on computer vision and image processing. In order to simplify processing and enhance efficiency, the images of chessboard and chessman need preprocessing in advance. The steps of preprocessing include of transformation from color images to gray images, images filtering with mean filter or median filter, and binaryzation of the gray images. The edges of chessboard and chessman are able to be extracted from the binarized images by image segmentation. Then the location of center of chessman and the circle edge of chessman can be calculated with an advanced Hough transformation, which can ascertain the location of chessman in the chessboard and the size of each chessman. According to the features of chess images, main recognition method is to analyze the radial chess pixel statistical data with mathematical morphology. Because the values of pixel coordination in any angle of chessman can keep same and stable, the recognition algorithm should be with a good recognition rate from the experimental results. The advanced and modified recognition algorithm is proved to be practical and applicative by the experimentation of computer vision system in Chinese chess games provided in this paper.
How Does Automatic Machine Translation Evaluation Correlate with Human Scoring as the Number of Reference Translations Increases?

Automatic machine translation evaluation is a very difficult task due to the wide diversity of valid output translations that may result from translating a single source sentence or textual segment. Recently a number of competing methods of automatic machine translation evaluation have been adopted by the research community, of these the some of the most utilized are BLEU, NIST, mWER and the F-measure. This work extends the work of others in the field looking at how closely these evaluation techniques match human performance at ranking the translation output. However, we focus on investigating how these systems scale up with increasing numbers of human-produced references. We measure the correlation of the automatic ranking of the output from nine different machine translation systems, with the ranking derived from the score assigned by nine human evaluators using up to sixteen references per sentence. Our results show that evaluation performance improves with increasing numbers of references for all of the scoring methods except NIST which only shows improvements with small numbers of references.
Relationship Between Early Opioid Prescribing for Acute Occupational Low Back Pain and Disability Duration, Medical Costs, Subsequent Surgery and Late Opioid Use

Study Design. Retrospective cohort study of workers’ compensation (WC) claims with acute disabling low back pain (LBP). Objective. To examine the association between early opioid use for acute LBP and outcomes: disability duration, medical costs, “late opioid” use (≥5 prescriptions from 30 to 730 days), and surgery in a 2-year period following LBP onset. Summary of Background Data. Opioid analgesics have become more accepted for acute pain management. However, treatment guidelines recommend limited opioid use for acute LBP management. Little is known about the long-term impact on outcomes of opioid use for acute LBP. Methods. The sample consisted of 8443 claimants from a large WC database with new-onset, disabling LBP that occurred between January 1, 2002 and December 31, 2003. Based on morphine equivalent amount (MEA) in milligrams received in the first 15 days (“early opioids”), claimants were divided into 5 groups (0, 1–140, 141–225, 226–450, 450+). The associations between early opioids and outcomes were evaluated using multivariate linear and logistic regression models. Covariates included age, gender, job tenure, and low back injury severity. Injury severity was classified using ICD-9 codes. Results. Twenty-one percent of claimants received at least 1 early opioid prescription. After controlling for the covariates, mean disability duration, mean medical costs, and risk of surgery and late opioid use increased monotonically with increasing MEA. Those who received more than 450 mg MEA were, on average, disabled 69 days longer than those who received no early opioids (95% confidence interval [CI], 49.2–88.9). Compared with the lowest MEA group (0 mg opioid), the risk for surgery was 3 times greater (95% CI, 2.4–4.0) and the risk of receiving late opioids was 6 times greater (95% CI, 4.9–7.7) in the highest MEA group. Low back injury severity was a strong predictor of all the outcomes. Conclusion. Given the negative association between receipt of early opioids for acute LBP and outcomes, it is suggested that the use of opioids for the management of acute LBP may be counterproductive to recovery.
Advancement of Knowledge of Brucella Over the Past 50 Years

Fifty years ago, bacteria in the genus Brucella were known to cause infertility and reproductive losses. At that time, the genus was considered to contain only 3 species: Brucella abortus, Brucella melitensis, and Brucella suis. Since the early 1960s, at least 7 new species have been identified as belonging to the Brucella genus (Brucella canis, Brucella ceti, Brucella inopinata, Brucella microti, Brucella neotomae, Brucella ovis, and Brucella pinnipedialis) with several additional new species under consideration for inclusion. Although molecular studies have found such high homology that some authors have proposed that all Brucella are actually 1 species, the epidemiologic and diagnostic benefits for separating the genus based on phenotypic characteristics are more compelling. Although pathogenic Brucella spp have preferred reservoir hosts, their ability to infect numerous mammalian hosts has been increasingly documented. The maintenance of infection in new reservoir hosts, such as wildlife, has become an issue for both public health and animal health regulatory personnel. Since the 1960s, new information on how Brucella enters host cells and modifies their intracellular environment has been gained. Although the pathogenesis and histologic lesions of B. abortus, B. melitensis, and B. suis in their preferred hosts have not changed, additional knowledge on the pathology of these brucellae in new hosts, or of new species of Brucella in their preferred hosts, has been obtained. To this day, brucellosis remains a significant human zoonosis that is emerging or reemerging in many parts of the world.
Comparison of 2 commercially available chlorhexidine mouthrinses.

BACKGROUND It has been shown that lowering the concentration of chlorhexidine (CHX) in mouthrinses from 0.2% to 0.12% does not adversely affect inhibition of plaque accumulation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the inhibition of plaque growth by 2 commercially available mouthrinses used according to the manufacturers' instructions, one with a 30-second and one with a 60-second rinsing time. METHODS The clinical investigation was a single-blind, randomized study involving 80 volunteers (40 female, 40 male; mean age 25.7 years). At the start of the trial, all participants received a dental prophylaxis to remove all plaque deposits. Subjects refrained from all mechanical oral hygiene procedures, but rinsed twice a day with the allocated CHX mouthrinse over a period of 72 hours. The chlorhexidine preparations compared were a 0.12% concentration used at a 15 ml dose for a rinsing time of 30 seconds and a 0.2% concentration used at a dose of 10 ml for 60 seconds. After 72 hours, the plaque index (PI) from all volunteers was recorded at 6 sites per tooth. All participants received a questionnaire to evaluate their perception of the mouthrinses. RESULTS After 72 hours, the 15 ml/30 second/0.12% CHX group had a mean whole mouth PI of 1.65 (SD 0.31) compared with a mean PI of 1.60 (SD 0.40) for the 10 ml/60 second/0.2% CHX group. The difference in plaque scores between the groups was not statistically significant. Results from the questionnaire showed no significant difference between the groups for taste perception, duration of taste, alteration in taste, or perceived plaque reduction; however, the panelists preferred the shorter rinsing time of 30 seconds and, for this parameter, the difference was statistically significant (P = 0.048). CONCLUSIONS The results of this short-term study showed that there was no statistically significant difference between both commercially available CHX mouthrinses with respect to plaque inhibition, although both differed in concentration and rinsing time. The subject preference phase of the study indicated that the shorter rinsing time of 30 seconds was favored.
Measurement Methods and Image Reconstruction in Electrical Impedance Tomography

In this work was shown a method to examine the non-destructive analysis defects of the objects by solving the inverse problem in the electrical impedance tomography. The measurements use point-like electrodes at the boundary of the object. By two of these current are injected. The representation of the shape of the boundary and its evolution during an iterative reconstruction process is achieved by the level set function and Chan-Vese model. The forward problem was solved by the finite element method. Streszczenie. W pracy zaprezentowano dwie metody pomiarow tomograficznych wybranych obiektow oraz rekonstrukcje obrazow ich nieznanych wlaściwości w wyniku rozwiązania zagadnienia odwrotnego. Algorytm rekonstrukcji oparty zostal na idei zbiorow poziomicowych a do rozwiązania zagadnienia prostego wykorzystano metode elementow skonczonych. Reprezentacje wyglądu obrazu badanego obiektu wykonano rozwiązując wielokrotnie zadanie proste tak, aby w procesie iteracyjnym otrzymac rozklad napiec maksymalnie zblizony do uzyskanego z pomiarow. (Metody pomiaru i konstrukcja obrazu metodą zbiorow poziomicowych w tomografii impedancyjnej).
Position control of X-Y table at velocity reversal using presliding friction characteristics

This paper aims at precision position control of the X-Y table of a computerized numeric control (CNC) machining center at velocity reversal. The characteristics of presliding friction are analyzed, and a simple and effective method is proposed to compensate the friction on the basis of these characteristics. A large position tracking error occurs at velocity reversal due to the sudden transition of friction between presliding regime and sliding regime. This paper investigates the transition time to reduce the tracking error, and derives a relationship between the transition time and the acceleration at zero velocity. This paper also proposes a method of estimating the transition time using this relationship, without having to measure velocity. Experimental observations confirm this correlation holds over a large dynamic range. In addition to friction, there is a large change in a torsional displacement at velocity reversal in a two-inertia system with finite stiffness like an X-Y table linked to a motor through a ballscrew. The proposed friction compensation scheme can be easily incorporated with the compensation method for torsional displacement to achieve good tracking performance. The experimental results are described to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Optimizing UNIX Resource Scheduling for User Interaction

Techniques for improving system responsiveness for interactive end users of Unix workstations are explored. After a discussion of the current state of resource scheduling, a model is presented in which dynamic input from the human user is combined with data from user interaction software to supply a centralized manager with the information necessary to determine what processes are involved with interacting with the user at any given moment. This service then communicates this process set information to the kernel, which uses it to manage memory and CPU resource allocation on the behalf of the user. Experience with a prototype of this environment is reported. An argument for an interactive scheduling class is made, along with other infrastructure changes needed to take advantage of it.
Acquired Echinocandin Resistance in a Candida krusei Isolate Due to Modification of Glucan Synthase

ABSTRACT A Candida krusei strain from a patient with acute myelogenous leukemia that displayed reduced susceptibility to echinocandin drugs contained a heterozygous mutation, T2080K, in FKS1. The resulting Phe655→Cys substitution altered the sensitivity of glucan synthase to echinocandin drugs, consistent with a common mechanism for echinocandin resistance in Candida spp.
Design of the "army-ant" cooperative lifting robot

This paper describes the design and development of a new class of mobile robot. These small robots are intended to be simple and inexpensive, and will all be physically identical, thus constituting a homogeneous team of robots. They derive their usefulness from their group actions, performing physical tasks and making cooperative decisions as a coordinated team. All mechanical and electrical design aspects are decided with the group-dynamical behavior in mind. Because of their behavioral resemblance to their insect counterparts, they have been named "army ant" robots. >
Clinical indicators and psychosocial aspects in peripheral arterial disease.

HYPOTHESIS Patients with peripheral arterial disease (PAD) often experience substantial impairment in health status and quality of life (QOL), but factors associated with these outcomes are unknown. We hypothesized that subjective pain symptoms in the legs and social support and stress (the degree to which situations are appraised as stressful) are associated with impaired health status and QOL. DESIGN Cross-sectional observational study. SETTING Vascular outpatient clinic of a teaching hospital. PATIENTS The study included consecutive patients seeking treatment for the first time because of walking pain. Diagnosis and severity of PAD were based on history, physical examination, treadmill-walking distance, and ankle-brachial pressure indexes (ABPIs). Patients with PAD (n = 188) and patients with atypical leg symptoms (n = 57) completed the 10-item version of the Perceived Stress Scale (perceived stress), the 12-item version of the Perceived Social Support Scale-Revised (social support), the RAND 36-Item Health Survey (health status), and the World Health Organization Quality of Life Assessment Instrument-100. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Health status and QOL. RESULTS Both groups had equally poor health status and QOL, with patients with atypical leg symptoms reporting more bodily pain (P = .004). In patients with PAD, the ABPI (P = .008) and perceived stress (P = .001) were associated with maximum walking distance. Furthermore, the health status domain of physical functioning was affected by the ABPI (P = .002), cardiac disease (P = .005), body mass index (P = .007), and perceived stress (P<.001). Overall QOL in patients with PAD was independently influenced by sex (P = .04), carotid disease (P = .03), and perceived stress (P<.001). CONCLUSIONS Subjective pain in the legs is associated with impaired health status and QOL. Stress adversely influences the health status and QOL of patients with PAD above and beyond the influence of clinical indicators. These findings indicate the importance of accounting for perceived stress in patients with PAD.