Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Treatment of low grade dysplasia in Barrett’s esophagus with a new-generation cryoballoon device

A 53-year-old man with Barrett’s esophagus (BE; C1M4), who was under regular surveillance, developed multifocal low grade dysplasia (LGD) without visible lesions (▶Fig. 1 a). The diagnosis of LGD was confirmed by a second expert pathologist. As radiofrequency ablation for LGD is not reimbursed in our country, and given the previous experience with cryotherapy, we decided to treat the patient with cryoablation (C2-CryoBalloon Focal Ablation System; C2 Therapeutics, Redwood City, California, USA) (▶Video1). Cryotherapy can successfully eradicate neoplastic BE by inducing extreme cold to tissue, which causes cell necrosis of the superficial esophageal layers [1]. CryoBalloon is a device that has been developed to deliver cryotherapy, with a single spray hole in the shaft covered by a compliant balloon [2, 3]. The device was recently adapted to include a foot pedal control, allowing the endoscopist to self-control the axial and radial position of the diffuser head and the application of nitrous oxide. The addition of axial control avoids the need to reposition the balloon. The cryoballoon catheter was introduced through the working channel, and the circular component of BE was treated in a 4-quadrant fashion, using the radial control, followed by axial adjustments to ablate the upper segments of BE (▶Fig. 1 b). The technique was repeated until complete cryoablation of BE had been achieved (▶Fig. 1 c). The treatment lasted for 15 minutes. Two weeks later, the patient developed severe thoracic pain and heartburn. Endoscopy revealed grade D esophagitis and no other complications. Symptoms resolved after optimization of anti-acid therapy. At the 3-month follow-up endoscopy, complete regeneration of BE to neosquamous epitheliumwas observed, withmild inflammation of the Z-line (▶Fig. 1d). Video 1 Cryotherapy with the novel cryoballoon system to treat Barrett’s esophagus with low grade dysplasia. ▶ Fig. 1 Endoscopic images. a Barrett’s esophagus (C1M4) before treatment. b The cryoballoon during the application of nitrous oxide. c The final aspect of the esophageal mucosa immediately after cryoablation. d Endoscopy at 3-month follow-up, showing complete eradication of the dysplastic Barrett’s esophagus after one session of cryotherapy. E-Videos
Desmoplasia in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma: insight into pathological function and therapeutic potential

Extensive desmoplasia is a prominent feature of the pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) microenvironment. Initially, studies demonstrated that desmoplasia promotes proliferation, invasion and chemoresistance in PDAC cells. While these findings suggested the therapeutic potential of targeting desmoplasia in PDAC, more recent studies utilizing genetically-engineered mouse models of PDAC, which lack key components of desmoplasia, demonstrated accelerated progression of PDAC. This contrast calls into question the paradigm that desmoplasia unilaterally promotes PDAC progression and the premise of desmoplasia-targeted therapy. This review briefly examines the major reports of the tumor-promoting and -restraining roles of desmoplasia in PDAC with commentary on the gaps in our current understanding of desmoplasia in PDAC. Additionally, we discuss the studies demonstrating the heterogeneous and multifaceted nature of desmoplasia in PDAC and advocate for future areas of research to thoroughly address the various facets of desmoplasia in PDAC, reconcile seemingly contradictory reports of the role of desmoplasia in PDAC progression, and discover aspects of desmoplasia that are therapeutically actionable.
Game Theory-Based Anti-Jamming Strategies for Frequency Hopping Wireless Communications

In frequency hopping (FH) wireless communications, finding an effective transmission strategy to properly mitigate jamming has been recently considered as a critical issue, due to the inherent broadcast nature of wireless communications. Recently, game theory has been proposed as a powerful tool for dealing with the jamming problem, which can be considered as a player (jammer) playing against a user (transmitter). Different from existing results, in this paper, a bimatrix game framework is developed for modeling the interaction process between the transmitter and the jammer, and the sufficient and necessary conditions for Nash equilibrium (NE) strategy of the game are obtained under the linear constraints. Furthermore, the relationship between the NE solution and the global optimal solution of the corresponding quadratic programming is presented. In addition, a special analysis case is developed based on the continuous game framework in which each player has a continuum of strategies. Finally, we show that the performance can be improved based on our game theoretic framework, which is verified by numerical investigations.
Emulation of an Electric Naval Propulsion System Based on a Multiphase Machine Under Healthy and Faulty Operating Conditions

The main objective of this paper is the design of an Electric Naval Propulsion System (ENPS) emulator based on a low power multiphase machine. The whole drive system (control, power electronics, and electric machine) is tested and the mechanical part is emulated based on a Hardware-in-the-Loop principle. First, the modeling of all system components including mechanical and electrical parts are reviewed, and the total hull resistance forces are also developed. Then, a pure software simulation of the ENPS is carried out. After that, the designed emulator architecture is presented, and for adaption purpose, a scaling factor is introduced. The developed emulation tool allows to validate optimal control strategies for the propulsion system under a realistic navigation cycle under healthy and faulty operating conditions. Finally, simulation and experimental results are compared to investigate the accuracy and the performance of the developed emulator, and the effectiveness of the proposed control strategies.
Software Defined Networking and Network Function Virtualisation Cooperation-Experiments

Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) represent two recent and complementary solutions of high interest in future networking. Traditional network technologies (using dedicated hardware-software entities) have many limitations related to low flexibility, low programmability and abstraction, vendor dependency, of the operators, difficulties in management, low-compatibility with cloud computing, etc. SDN and NFV bring novel and powerful capabilities by decoupling the Data Plane and Control Plane (SDN), and moving in software (NFV) a lot of functions, traditionally performed in dedicated hardware-software units. However, many open issues exist in both SDN and NFV and especially in their cooperation in integrated implementations. This paper develops a couple of experiments of an SDN environment and the usage of NFV to manage traffic flow. Given the novelty and complexity of the topics, this paper can serve also as a short guideline to help experimenters to begin development of a complex framework SDN-NFV.
Flow Control with Max-Min Fairness and Path Constraints in Software-Defined Networks

The emerging software-defined networks (SDNs) have made centralized flow control practical. In this paper, we study the flow control problem with consideration of path constraints and user flow requirements. Two problems are formulated according to path constraints, namely, the flow control with independent paths (FC-IDP) problem and the flow control with destination-rooted trees (FC-DRT) problem. It is shown that a flow rate allocation vector is weighted max-min fair if and only if each flow has a weighted bottleneck link. The optimality conditions are analyzed for the FC-IDP problem without fairness constraints. A weighted water filling algorithm is proposed for flow control with fairness constraints and predetermined flow paths. Without fairness constraints, evolutionary strategy is proposed to optimize the flow paths and flow rate allocation vectors. The algorithms are tested on random networks and it is shown that fairness constraints may have a great impact on flow control performance.
Overexpression of a High-Affinity Nitrate Transporter OsNRT2.1 Increases Yield and Manganese Accumulation in Rice Under Alternating Wet and Dry Condition

Nitrate and manganese (Mn) are necessary elements for the growth and development of rice in paddy soil. Under physiological conditions, we previously reported that the uptake of Mn in roots can be improved by the addition of external nitrate but not ammonium. To investigate the mechanism(s) of this phenotype, we produced plant lines overexpressing OsNRT2.1 and assessed Mn uptake under alternating wet and dry (AWD) and waterlogged (WL) conditions. Under AWD condition, we observed a 31% reduction in grain yields of wild type (WT) plants compared to WL condition. Interestingly, the overexpression of OsNRT2.1 could recover this loss, as OsNRT2.1 transgenic lines displayed higher grain yields than WT plants. We also observed 60% higher grain Mn in the transgenic lines in AWD condition and approximately 30% higher Mn in the grain of transgenic lines in WL condition. We further found that the overexpression of OsNRT2.1 did not alter Mg and Fe in the seeds in either growth condition. The reasons for the increased Mn content in OsNRT2.1 transgenic seeds in AWD condition could be explained by the elevated expression of OsNRAMP family genes including OsNRAMP3, OsNRAMP5, and OsNRAMP6 in node I, the panicle-neck, and the flag leaves. The mechanism(s) underpinning the upregulation of these genes requires further investigation. Taken together, our results provide a new function of OsNRT2.1 in improving rice yields and grain Mn accumulation during water-saving cultivation patterns. This represents a new strategy for maintaining yield and improving food quality in a sustainable agricultural system.
Quantum Algorithms for Autocorrelation Spectrum

In this paper we design quantum algorithms for studying the autocorrelation spectrum of a Boolean function and its individual coefficients. Informally, the autocorrelation coefficient of a Boolean function f() at some point a measures the average correlation among the values f(x) and f(x xor a). The Walsh spectrum is a related concept that is well-studied primarily due to its connection to the quantum circuit for the Deutsch-Jozsa problem but the autocorrelation spectrum has not received similar attention that we attempt to deliver in this paper. We propose efficient probabilistic algorithms for several problems regarding the autocorrelation spectrum. First and foremost, we give an algorithm that samples from the Walsh spectrum of any derivative of f(); the derivative of a Boolean function is an extension of autocorrelation to correlation among multiple values of f(). Using a relation between the 1st-order derivative and the autocorrelation coefficients, we design an algorithm to sample the input points according to squares of the autocorrelation coefficients. Then we given a different set of algorithms for estimating the square of a particular coefficient or cumulative sum of their squares. Our last algorithm combines the technique of amplitude estimation and amplification in a novel manner to find points with high values of autocorrelation coefficients. `
Gaze as a Proxy for Cognition and Communication

We investigate the potential of gaze as a predictor for the quality of dialogue and the level of understanding in collaborative problem-solving. We unveil a triangular relation among collaborators' dialogue, their gaze pattern, and their performance in the context of a pair programming task. Pairs of participants were asked to understand a JAVA program while their gaze was synchronously recorded. The performance was measured as the level of understanding attained by the pair at the end of the program comprehension task. Gaze patterns were analyzed based on probabilistic hit based areas of interest called gaze tokens. A novel dialogue coding scheme was developed to capture the program description as well as collaboration management aspect of pair program understanding. Both the areas of interest and the dialogue codes reflect top-down and bottom-up program comprehension strategies. Results show that it is possible to relate gaze to the level of abstraction in dialogue and to the level of understanding.
Growth Responses and Photosynthetic Indices of Bamboo Plant (Indocalamus latifolius) under Heavy Metal Stress

Investigating factors involved in the alleviation of the toxic effects of heavy metals (HMs) on plants is regarded as one of the important research concerns in the environmental field. The southern regions of China are severely impacted by human-induced heavy metal (HM) contamination, which poses an impediment to growth and productivity of bamboo (Indocalamus latifolius) plants. This necessitates the investigation of the effects of HMs on growth and physiological properties of bamboo. Therefore, the aim of the study was to evaluate some gas exchange and growth parameters in two-year-old bamboo species under HMs stress. A greenhouse-based experiment was conducted at Nanjing Forestry University, where the bamboo plant was treated with three HMs (Cu, Pb, and Zn) at four different concentrations (0, 500, 1000, and 2000 mg kg-1). The results illustrated that excessive HMs (1000 and 2000 mg kg−1) triggered a decline in a number of photosynthetic-related indices including the rate of photosynthesis (μmol CO2 m−2 s−1), intercellular CO2 concentration (μmol CO2 mol−1), conductance to H2O (mol H2O m−2 s−1), and net assimilation as well as transpiration. Morphological indices were also depressed as a result of the adverse influence of HMs, leading to decreased shoot length (10 to 73%) and reduced number of emerged plants (6 to 57%). Also, the results indicated that Pb had the greatest harmful impact on the growth indices.
Spectral and Energy Efficiency Tradeoff for Massive MIMO

Achieving a good tradeoff between spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE) is important for the emerging wireless communication systems. Motivated by this, we study multiuser downlink beamforming in massive multiple-input multiple-output systems for maximizing a new metric of resource efficiency (RE), which is defined as a weighted combination of EE and SE. The new measure has more flexibility in striking the balance between SE and EE, but brings enormous difficulties in solving the resulting problem. To this end, we first investigate an uplink–downlink duality for the RE maximization. The conventional uplink–downlink duality only applies in the SE or the capacity region, and has yet not been explicitly established for the EE or the RE. In this paper, we prove with rigorous derivation that the duality has a more general form, which can be directly used to tackle the EE or RE beamforming optimization problem. Based on the duality, we then develop an optimization algorithm to realize spectral and energy efficient multiuser beamforming with either instantaneous or statistical channel state information (CSI). Numerical results finally verify that the design based on statistical CSI is able to asymptotically achieve the performance obtained with instantaneous CSI, but with much lower complexity.
Building an Effective Software Issues Scorecard: An Action Research Report from the Automotive Domain

A large number of mature software companies use data and analytic for status monitoring of their projects and to help improve their decision making at different levels within the organization. Dashboards or scorecards also provide common platform for different stakeholders to access information they need for tracking the status of projects of their interest. Further data from software issues database can provide real and observable indicators to track the quality of given product during its development and testing. The study presented here reports on distinct and evolution of information needs of different stakeholder groups interested in tracking such data. The action research report documents the evolution of software issues scorecard as it is extended to meet information need of specific user groups. A roadmap for future into how such scorecard can be made more effective is also presented.
A Fast Distance Relay Based on Variable-Structure GDSC

This work presents a new Symmetrical Component Distance Relay (SCDR) algorithm based on Variable-Structure Generalized Delayed Signal Cancelation (VS-GDSC) for components estimation. The SCDR faces the technological limits for protective devices based on harmonic components: the need for faster analysis implies the use of a temporally narrower data window, making it difficult to evaluate the signal in the frequency domain and, consequently, the identification of specific harmonic components. To overcome this condition, we assembled, fitted and improved three independent algorithms: GDSC-based SCDR, VS-GDSC and a fast magnetizing current discriminator. As a result, the new VS-GDSC-based SCDR presents a reduction in the response time around 25 % of the fundamental period for the short-circuit test cases, relative to the GDSC-based SCDR.
Remote Estimation of Correlated Sources Under Energy Harvesting Constraints

Remote estimation with an energy harvesting sensor with a limited data and energy buffer is considered. The sensor node observes an unknown temporally correlated field and communicates its observations to a remote fusion center using the energy it harvested. The fusion center employs linear minimum mean-square error estimation to reconstruct the unknown field. We provide performance guarantees for the estimation error under a block transmission scheme, where at each transmission block, data and energy buffers are completely emptied. Our bounds provide insights into how statistical properties of the energy harvesting process and buffer sizes may affect the estimation error. In particular, these bounds suggest insensitivity of the performance to buffer sizes for signals with low degree of freedom and suggest performance improvements with increasing buffer sizes for signals with relatively higher degree of freedom. Depending only on the mean, variance, and finite support of the energy arrival process, these results provide insights for the energy and data buffer sizes for deployment in future energy harvesting wireless sensing systems.
Interactive Control Paradigm-Based Robust Lateral Stability Controller Design for Autonomous Automobile Path Tracking With Uncertain Disturbance: A Dynamic Game Approach

Stability as well as robustness is the major concerns in the design of a trajectory tracking controller for an autonomous vehicle. In this paper, a novel lateral stability controller design for vehicle path tracking is developed. First, using dynamic game theory as a general framework, vehicle lateral stability can be viewed as a dynamic difference game so that its two players, namely, the active front steering (AFS) system and active rear steering (ARS) system can work together to provide more stability for vehicle path tracking control. The interactive steering control strategies between AFS and ARS are obtained by noncooperative closed-loop feedback Stackelberg game theory to ensure optimal performance for vehicle path tracking. Then, based on the proposed path-following shared control paradigm, by applying the method of zero-sum game theory, a finite-time robust regulator is developed to make the interaction model more robust to uncertain lateral disturbances. Finally, double-lane change and serpentine driving condition with and without uncertain time-varying lateral disturbance are used to evaluate the proposed control algorithm. Simulation and hardware-in-loop implementation results show that the proposed shared control paradigm based robust path-tracking controller can robustly provide better lateral stability when time-varying lateral disturbances are bounded.
Fault Diagnosis of Linear Discrete Time-Varying System with Multiplicative Noise Based on Parity Space Method

The paper is concerned with the fault diagnosis problem for linear discrete time-varying (LDTV) system with multiplicative noise. A new criteria represented by expectations of relevant matrices is presented to design the parity vector. The process of searching the optimal parity vector is transformed into solving a minimization problem. The optimal parity vector is confirmed as an eigenvector of two matrices whose expressions are also given. Based on Randomized Algorithms (RA), two kinds of methods to set appropriate threshold is discussed. Simulation result is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in the end.
Willingness to pay and moral stance: The case of farm animal welfare in Germany

This study examines the impact of ethical attitude on the willingness to pay for farm animal welfare improvement in Germany. Little is known about the pluralism of moral attitudes that may exist behind farm animal welfare issues and its relationship to customers' willingness to pay for it. Via a large survey (n = 1334) we are able to identify different moral dimensions by employing validated scales. We find utilitarian alongside deontological attitudes as well as a mixture of both. Thus, presupposing a standard moral attitude is too simple. This has implications for decision-making on markets, since the implicit normative assumptions of a utilitarian position in economics has to be critically assessed. Furthermore, we asked for the willingness to pay for various aspects of farm animal welfare improvement. We find significant positive correlations between willingness to pay and environmental concern, altruism and less apathy. Measured in Euro, a higher environmental concern has the strongest effect on WTP for all five moral scales. Outliers with higher bids are willing to pay almost five times for any aspect of farm animal welfare than the rest of the sample. A more detailed analysis of outliers demonstrates that market-based approaches have restrictions in capturing certain moral values. Moreover, the motivations behind zero bids reveal that moral concerns outweigh indifference towards animal welfare by far. This has implications how policy can be designed to serve people’s demand for higher animal welfare standards. Two other findings are of interest. First, we find a very high number of people assigning an intrinsic value to animals (90%). Second, zero bids and outlier treatment in WTP-studies deserves more careful consideration, since WTP-estimates are easily skewed by excluding these groups.
Modified Sphere Decoding for Sparse Code Multiple Access

Sparse code multiple access (SCMA), a novel non-orthogonal multiple access scheme for fifth generation wireless, has drawn much attention. Since optimal SCMA detection incurs high computational complexity, we develop a modified single tree search (MSTS) to obtain soft outputs for coded SCMA. The MSTS algorithm incorporates the sorting of the channel matrix and computing a non-zero low bound before searching in order to reduce complexity during the search stage. The simulation results show that MSTS not only has lower computational complexity than detectors based on the message passing algorithm (MPA) and repeat tree search but also keeps its performance level close to that of MPA.
I V ] 1 4 A ug 2 01 8 Extrinsic Calibration of Multiple RGB-D Cameras Based on Descriptor-based Patterns

This letter presents a novel method to estimate the relative poses between RGB-D cameras with minimal overlapping fields of view in a panoramic RGB-D camera system. This calibration problem is relevant to applications such as indoor 3D mapping and robots navigation that can benefit from a 360◦ field of view using RGB-D cameras. The proposed approach relies on descriptor-based patterns to provide well-matched 2D keypoints in the case of a minimal overlapping field of view between cameras. Integrating the matched 2D keypoints with corresponding depth values, a set of 3D matched keypoints are constructed to calibrate multiple RGB-D cameras. Experiments validate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed calibration approach.