Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Feasibility of PROMIS CAT Administration in the Ambulatory Sports Medicine Clinic With Respect to Cost and Patient Compliance: A Single-Surgeon Experience

Background: Pay-for-performance reimbursement models are becoming increasingly popular, but the implementation of a routine patient-reported outcome (PRO) collection system places additional burden on both the patient and the provider. The Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) was developed in an effort to make PRO collection more practical and efficient, but providers may be reluctant to embrace a transition to a PROMIS-based clinical outcome registry. Hypothesis: PROMIS can be successfully incorporated into daily clinical practice, with an overall patient compliance rate of 80%. Study Design: Cross-sectional study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: As part of routine practice, all patients presenting to a single surgeon’s sports medicine clinic for an appointment were asked to complete a series of PROMIS computerized adaptive tests (CATs), including PROMIS Physical Function, Physical Function–Upper Extremity, Pain Interference, and Depression subscales. Overall compliance was calculated by dividing the number of survey sets completed by the number of eligible clinic visits. Compliance rates were further assessed by patient age, type of clinic visit, and location of injury. Costs associated with this system of routine PRO collection were categorized as start-up or maintenance costs. Results: From August 7, 2017, to December 8, 2017, there were 581 patients (1109 clinic encounters) who met inclusion criteria for the study. Of the 1109 clinic encounters, there was an overall compliance rate of 91.3% (1013/1109 visits during which the patient completed the entire PROMIS survey set). Overall, the full survey set consisted of a mean 15.3 questions and took a mean of 2.6 minutes to complete. Patients who were aged ≥62 years had a significantly lower compliance rate (81.8%; P < .0001) than each of the younger patient quartiles. When analyzing patients by the most common locations of injury (elbow, shoulder, hip, knee), the compliance rate for completing PROMIS was significantly higher for the hip than for the shoulder (95.1% vs 88.9%, respectively; P = .02). The cost of establishing a PROMIS-based registry using our project design and workflow was estimated at $2045, whereas the monthly maintenance cost was $1000. Conclusion: The routine electronic collection of PROMIS scores in the ambulatory orthopaedic clinic resulted in a compliance rate of over 90%, although older patients were generally less compliant than younger patients. Our system of data collection is practical and efficient in a high-volume orthopaedic clinic and places minimal financial burden on the provider.
Management of recurrent haemoptysis in malignancy with combined TISSEEL and intrabronchial valves

Management of recurrent haemoptysis poses a difficult clinical scenario. TISSEEL (Baxter Healthcare Corporation Deerfield, IL, USA) is a fibrin sealant often used in surgery to aid control of bleeding. However, when endoscopic TISSEEL is used independently, migration, dislodgement, or even expectoration of the fibrin clot is a common complication that may lead to recurrence of haemoptysis. Here we describe two patients with recurrent haemoptysis in the context of malignancy who underwent bronchoscopy, during which they were managed with application of topical TISSEEL to the bleeding area, followed by deployment of an intrabronchial valve, followed by a further application of TISSEEL over the valve. The combination of TISSEEL and intrabronchial valve appeared to control haemoptysis and was resistant to expectoration or migration in these two cases. Thus, this combination may provide a safe and effective therapeutic option for the control of bronchial bleeding secondary to malignancy.
Approval of First CAR-Ts: Have we Solved all Hurdles for ATMPs?

T cells are known as the most potent killer cells of the immune system, designed by nature to prevent unwanted challenges. The first class of therapeutic products harnessing the power of T cells for target-specific treatment of oncological diseases was bispecific antibodies. The first T-cell engaging bispecific antibodies that obtained approval were catumaxomab and blinatumomab 1,2 . Eight years later, the first chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cells received regulatory approval 3 . CAR-T cells are the cellular interpretation of T-cell engaging therapies and have shown remarkable clinical results. CAR-T cells belong to the regulatory group of advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs). Due to the cell-/gene-based complex nature, ATMPs are far more challenging to develop than other, more defined, medicinal products. Despite very encouraging clinical results, there have been many set-backs in the development of ATMPs during the past 20 years. Therefore, the approval of the first two CAR-Ts KYMRIAH and YESCARTA is highly encouraging for the field. In this article we review the current landscape of CAR-Ts as a special class of ATMPs. This comprises the pathway to approval including the use of dedicated regulatory tools and challenges that were faced during the procedure. Furthermore, we highlight important future trends in the field.
A Longitudinal Investigation of Sleep and Daytime Wakefulness in Children and Youth With Concussion

A high proportion of adults who sustain a concussion identify changes in their sleep during the acute stage, typically reporting an increased need for sleep or nonrestful sleep. Our understanding of sleep following concussion is less well understood within a pediatric population. In this study, we investigated the trajectory of sleep and daytime sleepiness in a prospective cohort of 40 children and youth (6–18 years old) with concussion, 40 age-and sex-matched healthy children and youth, and 40 with upper-extremity orthopedic injury. Evaluations occurred during the acute stage (<2 weeks) and at 3-, 6-, and 12-month postinjury using the Sleep Disturbance Scale for Children and the Postconcussion Symptom Scale. There were no significant differences within- or between-group differences in sleep across all four time points with analysis of the groups as a whole. When groups were divided by age (6–11 and 12– < 18 years), there was a significant difference in the ability to initiate sleep for the younger concussed group during the acute stage, compared with healthy controls, as well as significantly greater daytime nap duration that decreased over time. Significant correlations were also found between the frequency and duration of daytime naps and Postconcussion Symptom Scale total score and subscores (cognitive, physical/migraine, mood, and sleep) in the concussed group during the acute stage. Our results suggest that in a group with noncomplicated concussion, children and youth have transient alterations in daytime sleepiness that are related to concussion symptoms. Younger children may be more vulnerable to disturbances in sleep and daytime wakefulness.
TLR2 Arg753Gln Gene Polymorphism Associated with Tuberculosis Susceptibility: An Updated Meta-Analysis

Objective To date, a series of studies were conducted to investigate the association between TLR2 (Toll-like receptor 2) Arg753Gln gene polymorphism and tuberculosis (TB). However, the results were inconsistent. This meta-analysis was performed to elucidate the roles of TLR2 Arg753Gln gene polymorphism in TB. Methods All available articles were searched from online databases such as PubMed, Medline, CNKI, and Wanfang. Statistical analyses were performed using the STATA12.0 (Stata Corp LP, College Station, TX, United States) software. Results 32 case-control studies comprising 5943 cases and 5991 controls were identified in this meta-analysis. Overall, the TLR2 Arg753Gln gene polymorphism was associated with high TB risk in allele model (A vs. G: OR=2.20, 95%CI=1.60-3.04, P≤0.01), dominant model (AA+AG vs. GG: OR=2.70, 95%CI=2.00-3.65, P≤0.01), and heterozygote model (AG vs. GG contrast: OR=2.97, 95%CI=2.39-3.69, P≤0.01). Subgroup analysis by ethnicity indicated that the A allele increased susceptibility to TB in Asian (OR=3.35, 95%CI=2.36-4.74) and Caucasian populations (OR=2.62, 95%CI=1.77-3.87), but not in African (2.08, 95%CI=0.62-2.72) or mixed populations (OR=0.76, 95%CI=0.36-1.14). Stratified analysis by sample type suggested that the A allele associated with high pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) risks (OR=2.43, 95%CI=1.66-3.54), but not with extra pulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB) (OR=1.84, 95%CI=0.83-4.06). Conclusion this meta-analysis suggested the following: (1) TLR2 Arg753Gln polymorphism is significantly associated with high TB risk. (2) In subgroup analysis based on ethnicity, TLR2 Arg753Gln polymorphism elevates the risk of TB in Asian and Caucasian populations, but not in African or mixed populations. (3) Stratified by sample type, TLR2 Arg753Gln polymorphism is associated with increased PTB risk, but not with EPTB.
Eliminating Risk of Intubation in Very Preterm Infants with Noninvasive Cardiorespiratory Support in the Delivery Room and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Introduction Avoiding intubation and promoting noninvasive modes of ventilator support including continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) in preterm infants minimizes lung injury and optimizes neonatal outcomes. Discharge home on oxygen is an expensive morbidity in very preterm infants (VPI) with lung disease. In 2007 a standardized bundle was introduced for VPI admitted to the neonatal care unit (NICU) which included delayed cord clamping (DCC) at birth and noninvasive ventilation as first-line cardiorespiratory support in the delivery room (DR), followed by bubble CPAP upon NICU admission. Objective Our goal was to evaluate the risk of (1) intubation and (2) discharge home on oxygen after adopting this standardized DR bundle in VPI born at a regional perinatal center and treated in the NICU over a ten-year period (2008-2017). Materials and Methods We compared maternal and neonatal demographics, respiratory care processes and outcomes, as well as neonatal mortality and morbidity in VPI (< 33 weeks gestation) and extremely low birth weight (ELBW, < 1000 g) subgroup for three consecutive epochs: 2008-2010, 2011-2013, and 2014-2017. Results Of 640 consecutive inborn VPI, 55% were < 1500 g at birth and 23% were ELBW. Constant through all three epochs, DCC occurred in 83% of VPI at birth. There was progressive increase in maternal magnesium during the three epochs and decrease in maternal antibiotics during the last epoch. Over the three epochs, VPI had less risk of DR intubation (23% versus 15% versus 5%), NICU intubation (39% versus 31% versus 18%), and invasive ventilation (37% versus 30% versus 17%), as did ELBW infants. Decrease in postnatal steroid use, antibiotic exposure, and increase in early colostrum exposure occurred over the three epochs both in VPI and in ELBW infants. There was a sustained decrease in surfactant use in the second and third epochs. There was no significant change in mortality or any morbidity in VPI; however, there was a significant decrease in pneumothorax (17% versus 0%) and increase in survival without major morbidity (15% versus 41%) in ELBW infants between 2008-2010 and 2014-2017. Benchmarked risk-adjusted rate for oxygen at discharge in a subgroup of inborn VPI (401-1500 g or 22-31 weeks of gestation) is 2.5% (2013-2017) in our NICU compared with > 8% in all California NICUs and > 10% in all California regional NICUs (2014-2016). Conclusion Noninvasive strategies in DR and NICU minimize risk of intubation in VPI without adversely affecting other neonatal or respiratory outcomes. Risk-adjusted rates for discharge home on oxygen remained significantly lower for inborn VPI compared with rates at regional NICUs in California. Reducing intubation risk in ELBW infants may confer an advantage for survival without major morbidity. Prenatal magnesium may reduce intubation risk in ELBW infants.
Dynamic surface control for discrete-time strict-feedback systems with network-induced delays using predictive event-triggered strategy

ABSTRACT In this paper, a novel dynamic surface control methodology with a predictive event-triggered strategy is proposed for discrete-time strict-feedback systems. In order to evaluate immeasurable state variables, a least square evaluation method is adopted. A dynamic surface controller is designed for discrete-time strict-feedback systems. When the transmission time of Sensor-to-Controller (S–C) or Controller-to-Actuator (C–A) channel increases, the stability and dynamic performance of the system deteriorates are improved by the proposed predictive event-triggered control strategy. Furthermore, the proposed methodology decreases the use of network resources while the whole system still keeps stable and exhibits an acceptable dynamic performance. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed methodology is effective.
Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Science and Technology 1745 Model Checking of Software Systems under Weak Memory Models

Ngo, T. -P. 2019. Model Checking of Software Systems under Weak Memory Models. Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Science and Technology 1745. 61 pp. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. ISBN 978-91-513-0506-6. When a program is compiled and run on a modern architecture, different optimizations may be applied to gain in efficiency. In particular, the access operations (e.g., read and write) to the shared memory may be performed in an out-of-order manner, i.e., in a different order than the order in which the operations have been issued by the program. The reordering of memory access operations leads to efficient use of instruction pipelines and thus an improvement in program execution times. However, the gain in this efficiency comes at a price. More precisely, programs running under modern architectures may exhibit unexpected behaviors by programmers. The out-of-order execution has led to the invention of new program semantics, called weak memory model (WMM). One crucial problem is to ensure the correctness of concurrent programs running under weak memory models. The thesis proposes three techniques for reasoning and analyzing concurrent programs running under WMMs. The first one is a sound and complete analysis technique for finitestate programs running under the TSO semantics (Paper II). This technique is based on a novel and equivalent semantics for TSO, called Dual TSO semantics, and on the use of wellstructured transition framework. The second technique is an under-approximation technique that can be used to detect bugs under the POWER semantics (Paper III). This technique is based on bounding the number of contexts in an explored execution where, in each context, there is only one active process. The third technique is also an under-approximation technique based on systematic testing (a.k.a. stateless model checking). This approach has been used to develop an optimal and efficient systematic testing approach for concurrent programs running under the Release-Acquire semantics (Paper IV). The thesis also considers the problem of effectively finding a minimal set of fences that guarantees the correctness of a concurrent program running under WMMs (Paper I). A fence (a.k.a. barrier) is an operation that can be inserted in the program to prohibit certain reorderings between operations issued before and after the fence. Since fences are expensive, it is crucial to automatically find a minimal set of fences to ensure the program correctness. This thesis presents a method for automatic fence insertion in programs running under the TSO semantics that offers the best-known trade-off between the efficiency and optimality of the algorithm. The technique is based on a novel notion of correctness, called Persistence, that compares the behaviors of a program running under WMMs to that running under the SC semantics.
HSV Color Space Based Lighting Detection for Brake Lamps of Daytime Vehicle Images

: We propose a method for detecting the lit portion of brake lamps from rear images of vehicles. Its effectiveness was confirmed for 526 rear images. We used 526 Caltech Cars 2001 (Rear) images published by the California Institute of Technology as input images. These images were photographed in the daytime by the in-vehicle camera. The rear image of the car in front was captured. When the brake lamps were lit, the color was red, and the brightness was high. By determining this color from the image, the lighting of the brake lamps could be detected.
Advanced Factorization Models for Recommender Systems

Recommender Systems have become a crucial tool to serve personalized content and to promote online products and media, but also to recommend restaurants, events, news and dating profiles. The underlying algorithms have a significant impact on the quality of recommendations and have been the subject of many studies in the last two decades. In this thesis we focus on factorization models, a class of recommender system algorithms that learn user preferences based on a method called factorization. This method is a common approach in Collaborative Filtering (CF), the most successful and widely-used technique in recommender systems, where user preferences are learnt based on the preferences of similar users. We study factorization models from an algorithmic perspective to be able to extend their applications to a wider range of problems and to improve their effectiveness. The majority of the techniques that are proposed in this thesis are based on state-of-the-art factorization models known as Factorization Machines (FMs).
Twitter Spam Account Detection by Effective Labeling

In the last years, the widespread diffusion of Online Social Networks (OSNs) has enabled new forms of communications that make it easier for people to interact remotely. Unfortunately, one of the first consequences of such a popularity is the increasing number of malicious users who sign-up and use OSNs for non-legit activities. In this paper we focus on spam detection, and present some preliminary results of a system that aims at speeding up the creation of a large-scale annotated dataset for spam account detection on Twitter. To this aim, two different algorithms capable of capturing the spammer behaviors, i.e., to share malicious urls and recurrent contents, are exploited. Experimental results on a dataset of about 40.000 users show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Statistical Grouping Methods for Identifying User Profiles

This article contains data from a group of users, divided into subgroups according to their levels of knowledge about technology. Statistical hierarchical and non-hierarchical clustering methods were studied, compared and used in the creations of the subgroups from the similarities of the skill levels with these users' technology. The research sample consists of teachers who answered online questionnaires about their skills in the use of software and hardware with an educational bias. The statistical methods of the grouping were performed and showed the possibilities of groupings of the users. The analysis of these groups allowed the identification of the common characteristics among the individuals of each subgroup. Therefore, it was possible to define two subgroups of users, one with skills in technology and another without skills in technology. The partial results of the research showed two main algorithms for grouping with 92% similarity from groups of users with skills in technology and the other with little skill, confirming the accuracy of the techniques discriminating against individuals.
Fuzzy model-based controller synthesis for networked nonlinear systems with event triggering communication scheme

ABSTRACT In this paper, the problem of event-triggered piecewise controller design is concerned for discrete-time networked nonlinear systems represented by T–S fuzzy models. Based on the event triggering communication strategy, only the state information of the plant that violates a predefined triggering condition is transmitted in the shared communication channels. Considering that the premise variables of the plant in the form of T–S fuzzy representation are not synchronously available at the controller side, a novel approach to the piecewise state feedback controller design is proposed via some matrix inequality convexification techniques such that the closed-loop T–S fuzzy system is asymptotically stable with a guaranteed performance level. By introducing the Jensen inequality method, some cross products of two vectors are eliminated, which greatly facilitates the controller design procedure. Finally, some illustrative examples are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Algoritmos paralelos exatos e otimizações para alinhamento de sequências biológicas longas em plataformas de alto desempenho

A comparação de sequências biológicas é uma das operações mais básicas e relevantes na Bioinformática, sendo amplamente utilizada para determinar o grau de similaridade entre as sequências [Mount 2004] e inferir caracterı́sticas comuns entre espécies [Durbin et al. 2002]. Essa análise é de extrema importância, pois permite, dentre outros benefı́cios, identificar genes que causam doenças e determinar eventos evolucionários entre organismos. O resultado de uma operação de comparação de sequências biológicas pode ser (a) um escore que indica a similaridade entre as mesmas ou (b) o escore e o alinhamento, onde uma sequência (ou parte dela) é colocada sobre a outra (ou parte dela), de maneira a evidenciar as regiões de similaridades/diferenças [Mount 2004].
Sugar Protectants Improve the Thermotolerance and Biocontrol Efficacy of the Biocontrol Yeast, Candida oleophila

A variety of sugar compounds have been used as additives to protect various biocontrol yeasts from adverse environmental stresses. However, studies on maltose and lactose as sugar protectants are limited, and their protective effect is not clear. In the present study, exposure of the biocontrol yeast Candida oleophila cells to 45°C for 10 min, while immersed in either 5 or 10% (w/v) maltose or lactose, provided a significant protective effect. The addition of maltose and lactose significantly enhanced enzyme activity and gene expression of catalase, thioredoxin reductase, and glutathione reductase, relative to cells that have been immersed in sterile distilled water (controls) exposed to 45°C. In addition, C. oleophila cells suspended in maltose and lactose solutions also exhibited higher viability and ATP levels, relative to control cells. Notably, the biocontrol efficacy of C. oleophila against postharvest diseases of apple fruit was maintained after the yeast was exposed to the high temperature treatment while immersed in maltose and lactose solutions. These results demonstrate the potential of maltose and lactose as sugar protectants for biocontrol agent against heat stress.
Optimizing GPU programs by register demotion: poster

GPU utilization, measured as occupancy, is limited by the parallel threads' combined usage of on-chip resources. If the resource demand cannot be met, GPUs will reduce the number of concurrent threads, impacting the program performance. We have observed that registers are the occupancy limiters while shared metmory tends to be underused. The de facto approach spills excessive registers to the out-of-chip memory, ignoring the shared memory and leaving the on-chip resources underutilized. To mitigate the register demand, our work presents a novel compiler technique, called register demotion, that allows data in the register to be placed into the underutilized shared memory by transforming the GPU assembly code (SASS). Register demotion achieves up to 18% speedup over the nvcc compiler, with a geometric mean of 7%.