Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysis of the Comparison of Lancing Devices for Self-Monitoring of Blood Glucose regarding Lancing Pain

Reducing barriers to self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) remains an ongoing goal. One major reported barrier is lancing pain. This analysis was written in response to the article by Kocher and associates in this issue of Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology in which 157 patients with diabetes experienced in the use of SMBG compared high market share blood glucose monitoring systems and lancing devices. Upon review of their findings, we found that their conclusions—Accu-check systems and lancing devices were preferred—were valid within the limitations of the study. However, we noted some factors that would warrant further study and possibly change the outcome. Information from this and other studies on the topic will be useful as a reference for patients and providers in working towards removing barriers to SMBG.
Mitral valve rigid registration using 2D echocardiography and cardiac computed tomography

This study proposed a registration framework to register 2D echocardiography images with cardiac CT volume. The registration facilitates the fusion of CT and echocardiography to aid the diagnosis of mitral valve diseases. The image registration framework consists of two major steps: temporal synchronization and spatial registration. Temporal resolution utilizes the ECG data to identify frames that are at similar cardiac cycle phases as the CT volume. Spatial registration is an intensity-based normalized mutual information (NMI) method applied with pattern search optimization algorithm to produce interpolated cardiac CT image that matches the echocardiography image. Our proposed registration method has been applied on the four chamber view of the heart. Dice coefficient and Hausdorff distance for the intermodality assessments were 0.86±0.05 and 1.50±0.02 mm respectively. This accuracy is comparable to the gold standard manual registration by experts. Without the use of optical tracking devices, the outcomes indicate the applicability of this technique for effective registration of echocardiography with cardiac CT volume.
Uncertainties in the 2004 Sumatra–Andaman source through nonlinear stochastic inversion of tsunami waves

Numerical inversions for earthquake source parameters from tsunami wave data usually incorporate subjective elements to stabilize the search. In addition, noisy and possibly insufficient data result in instability and non-uniqueness in most deterministic inversions, which are barely acknowledged. Here, we employ the satellite altimetry data for the 2004 Sumatra–Andaman tsunami event to invert the source parameters. We also include kinematic parameters that improve the description of tsunami generation and propagation, especially near the source. Using a finite fault model that represents the extent of rupture and the geometry of the trench, we perform a new type of nonlinear joint inversion of the slips, rupture velocities and rise times with minimal a priori constraints. Despite persistently good waveform fits, large uncertainties in the joint parameter distribution constitute a remarkable feature of the inversion. These uncertainties suggest that objective inversion strategies should incorporate more sophisticated physical models of seabed deformation in order to significantly improve the performance of early warning systems.
Is QT Dispersion Associated with Sudden Cardiac Death in Patients with Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy?

QT dispersion is significantly greater in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) than that in healthy subjects. Few data exist regarding the prognostic value of QT dispersion in HCM. In this study, we retrospectively investigated the association between QT dispersion and sudden cardiac death in 46 patients with HCM (mean 33.1 ±; 15.5 years, 32 men). The case group consisted of 23 HCM patients who died suddenly, and the control group consisted of 23 HCM patients who survived uneventfully during follow‐up. Study patients were pair‐matched for age, gender, and maximum left ventricular wall thickness. QT dispersion (maximum minus minimum QT interval) was manually measured on early 12‐lead ECGs using a digitizing; board. An in‐house program was used for calculating QT interval, QT dispersion, JT interval, and JT dispersion (maximum minus minimum J point to T end interval). Patients in the case group tended to have shorter RR intervals than those in the control group (777 ±; 171 vs 856 ±; 192 ms, P = 0.08). Maximum corrected QT and JT intervals did not discriminate the case group from controls (489 ±; 29 vs 479 ±; 27 ms, P = NS; 375 ±; 36 vs 366 ±; 22 ms, P = NS, respectively). Greater QT dispersion and JT dispersion were found in the case group compared with controls (74 ±; 28 vs 59 ±; 21 ms, P = 0.02 and 76 ±; 32 vs 59 ±; 26 ms, P = 0.03, respectively). The measurements of maximum QT, JT, and T peak to T end intervals, precordial QT and JT dispersion, and T peak and T end dispersion were all comparable between the two groups (P = NS for all). No systematic changes in ECG measurements were found from late ECGs of the case group compared to those from early ECGs (P = NS). No correlation between maximum left ventricular wall thickness and QT dispersion, JT dispersion, maximum QTc or JTc intervals was observed (r < 0.29, P > 0.05 for all). Our results; show that increased QT dispersion and JT dispersion is weakly associated with sudden cardiac death in the selected patients with HCM. A.N. E. 2001; 6(3):209–215
Replication at the telomeres of the Streptomyces linear plasmid pSLA2

The Streptomyces linear plasmid pSLA2 initiates DNA replication bidirectionally towards its telomeres from a site located near the centre of the molecule; at the telomeres, the recessed ends of lagging strands are filled in by non‐displacing DNA synthesis. Here, we report experiments that test three proposed mechanisms for lagging‐strand fill‐in. We present data inconsistent with recombinational or terminal hairpin models for the formation of full‐length duplex pSLA2 DNA. Instead, we find that deletions in short, distantly separated homologous palindromes in the leading‐strand 3′ overhang prevent propagation of linear pSLA2 DNA, implicating a mechanism of palindrome‐mediated leading‐strand fold‐back in telomere replication. We further show that circularized pSLA2 DNA molecules are opened in vivo precisely at the terminal nucleotides of telomeres, generating functional linear replicons containing native telomeres covalently bound to a protein at their 5′ DNA termini. Together, our results support a model in which pairing of multiple widely separated pSLA2 palindromes anchors the 3′ end of the leading‐strand overhang to a site near the overhang's base — providing a recognition site for terminal‐protein‐primed DNA synthesis and subsequent endonucleolytic processing. Thus, the replication of Streptomyces plasmid telomeres may have features in common with the mechanism proposed for telomere replication in autonomous parvoviruses.
Perioperative Short-term Pulmonary Rehabilitation for Patients Undergoing Lung Volume Reduction Surgery

Although pulmonary rehabilitation is recommended for patients undergoing lung volume reduction surgery, the optimal method of pulmonary rehabilitation is unclear. The aim of this study was to determine the feasibility and safety of perioperative short-term pulmonary rehabilitation. We enrolled candidates for lung volume reduction surgery from 1999 to 2006 and retrospectively evaluated the feasibility and safety of perioperative short-term pulmonary rehabilitation for these patients. The program included the progressive exercise training on a treadmill for approximately 3 weeks. Two primary endpoints, feasibility and safety, were determined by the adherence rates of the program session and the adverse events. Pulmonary function and exercise capacity were evaluated at baseline and the termination of pre- and postoperative short-term pulmonary rehabilitation. Twenty-two patients were enrolled in this study. All patients completed our program without any serious adverse events. The mean values of adherence rates of the preoperative, postoperative, and overall period were, 89.1%, 95.1%, and 92.1%, respectively. All values of pulmonary function tests, except for forced vital capacity, significantly improved at the termination of postoperative short-term pulmonary rehabilitation in comparison to those at the termination of preoperative short-term pulmonary rehabilitation. The values of the 6-minute walk distance, total exercise time, and maximal workload on incremental exercise test were significantly improved by preoperative short-term pulmonary rehabilitation, and their values were maintained until the termination of postoperative short-term pulmonary rehabilitation. The results indicated that it is both feasible and safe to perform perioperative short-term pulmonary rehabilitation.
Invariant Curves and Explosion of Periodic Islands in Systems of Piecewise Rotations

Invertible piecewise isometric maps (PWIs) of the plane, in spite of their apparent simplicity, can show a remarkable number of dynamical features analogous to those found in nonlinear smooth area preserving maps. There is a natural partition of the phase space into an exceptional set, $\overline{\cE}$, consisting of the closure of the set of points whose orbits accumulate on discontinuities of the map, and its complement. In this paper we examine a family of noninvertible PWIs on the plane that consist of rotations on each of four atoms, each of which is a quadrant. We show that this family gives examples of global attractors with a variety of geometric structures. On some of these attractors, there appear to be nonsmooth invariant curves within $\overline{\cE}$ that form barriers to ergodicity of any invariant measure supported on $\overline{\cE}$. These invariant curves are observed to appear on perturbations of an "integrable" case where the exceptional set is a union of annuli and it decomposes into .
Discrete Energy Minimization, beyond Submodularity: Applications and Approximations

In this thesis I explore challenging discrete energy minimization problems that arise mainly in the context of computer vision tasks. This work motivates the use of such "hard-to-optimize" non-submodular functionals, and proposes methods and algorithms to cope with the NP-hardness of their optimization. Consequently, this thesis revolves around two axes: applications and approximations. The applications axis motivates the use of such "hard-to-optimize" energies by introducing new tasks. As the energies become less constrained and structured one gains more expressive power for the objective function achieving more accurate models. Results show how challenging, hard-to-optimize, energies are more adequate for certain computer vision applications. To overcome the resulting challenging optimization tasks the second axis of this thesis proposes approximation algorithms to cope with the NP-hardness of the optimization. Experiments show that these new methods yield good results for representative challenging problems.
Evaluation of speech in people with head and neck cancer: a pilot study.

BACKGROUND A paucity of information exists on the effects of cancer on speech, with what little literature exists focussing on the effects of treatment. Baseline assessment of speech in head and neck cancer patients before treatment is important to distinguish accurately the effects of treatment from the effects of the cancer itself. AIMS This prospective study had four major foci: (1) to determine if speech intelligibility and motor speech functions of patients with head and neck cancer before treatment differed from the normal population; (2) to determine if impairments in speech intelligibility and motor speech functions were specific to the original site of cancer; (3) to determine which motor speech functions were most related to overall speech intelligibility; and (4) to determine whether there was a relationship between self-report of speech intelligibility, motor speech functions and the clinical assessment thereof. This study aimed incidentally to determine whether the Frenchay Dysarthria Assessment is a practicable, valid and reliable tool for assessing speech functions in the head and neck cancer population. METHODS & PROCEDURES Twenty participants, between 47 and 76 years of age and all newly diagnosed with a cancer of the head and neck, participated in the pilot study. In examining speech, participants completed a self-report questionnaire pertaining to speech intelligibility and motor speech functions and were then assessed clinically using subscales of the Frenchay Dysarthria Assessment before the start of cancer treatment. The motor speech functions examined included: respiratory ability and functions of the lip, soft palate, larynx and tongue. OUTCOMES & RESULTS Results indicated that participants with head and neck cancer had a greater reduction in both speech intelligibility and in almost all aspects of speech when compared with the normal population. Results further demonstrated that the site of the cancer dictated the type of impairment experienced with respect to speech function. Not all motor speech characteristics correlated with overall speech intelligibility and, lastly, self-report and clinical assessment were significantly correlated with respect to motor speech characteristics, but they differed slightly in the assessment of speech intelligibility. CONCLUSIONS This pilot study has highlighted the critical importance of collecting baseline measures and reporting functional results according to the cancer site in future research. It has also shown the usefulness of the Frenchay Dysarthria Assessment as a practicable, valid and reliable protocol of motor speech assessment for the head and neck cancer population.
Classification with class imbalance problem: A review

Most existing classification approaches assume the underlying training set is evenly distributed. In class imbalanced classification, the training set for one class (majority) far surpassed the training set of the other class (minority), in which, the minority class is often the more interesting class. In this paper, we review the issues that come with learning from imbalanced class data sets and various problems in class imbalance classification. A survey on existing approaches for handling classification with imbalanced datasets is also presented. Finally, we discuss current trends and advancements which potentially could shape the future direction in class imbalance learning and classification. We also found out that the advancement of machine learning techniques would mostly benefit the big data computing in addressing the class imbalance problem which is inevitably presented in many real world applications especially in medicine and social media.
Nomograms Combining Ultrasonic Features With Clinical and Pathological Features for Estimation of Delphian Lymph Node Metastasis Risk in Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma

Background This work explores the clinical significance of Delphian lymph nodes (DLN) in thyroid papillary carcinoma (PTC). At the same time, a nomogram is constructed based on clinical, pathological, and ultrasonic (US) features to evaluate the possibility of DLN metastasis (DLNM) in PTC patients. This is the first study to predict DLNM using US characteristics. Methods A total of 485 patients, surgically diagnosed with PTC between February 2017 and June 2021, all of whom underwent thyroidectomy, were included in the study. Using the clinical, pathological, and US information of patients, the related factors of DLNM were retrospectively analyzed. The risk factors associated with DLNM were identified through univariate and multivariate analyses. According to clinical + pathology, clinical + US, and clinical + US + pathology, the predictive nomogram for DLNM was established and validated. Results Of the 485 patients with DLN, 98 (20.2%) exhibited DLNM. The DLNM positive group had higher positive rates of central lymph node metastasis (CLNM), lateral lymph node metastasis (LLNM), and T3b–T4b thyroid tumors than the negative rates. The number of CLNM and LLNM lymph nodes in the DLNM+ group was higher as compared to that in the DLNM- group. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that the common independent risk factors of the three prediction models were male, bilaterality, and located in the isthmus. Age ≥45 years, located in the lower pole, and nodural goiter were protective factors. In addition, the independent risk factors were classified as follows: (I) P-extrathyroidal extension (ETE) and CLNM based on clinical + pathological characteristics; (II) US-ETE and US-CLNM based on clinical + US characteristics; and (III) US-ETE and CLNM based on clinical +US + pathological features. Better diagnostic efficacy was reported with clinical + pathology + US diagnostic model than that of clinical + pathology diagnostic model (AUC 0.872 vs. 0.821, p = 0.039). However, there was no significant difference between clinical + pathology + US diagnostic model and clinical + US diagnostic model (AUC 0.872 vs. 0.821, p = 0.724). Conclusions This study found that DLNM may be a sign that PTC is more invasive and has extensive lymph node metastasis. By exploring the clinical, pathology, and US characteristics of PTC progression to DLNM, three prediction nomograms, established according to different combinations of features, can be used in different situations to evaluate the transfer risk of DLN.
A bandwidth accurate, flexible and rapid simulating multi-HMC modeling tool

Derived by the demand for ever increasing computing performance, a steadily widening performance gap between memory and processor architectures has emerged. While attempting to mitigate the effects for processing systems that already face the exascale barrier and beyond, energy-efficient computing was identified as the critical topic to provide further scaling. Memory architectures, persistently known as slow, energy-hungry and cost-intensive, require novel findings to aid in increasing the energy efficiency as well as bandwidth. A quick fix for the performance aspect seems to be 3D stacking of such planar memories, that is available in the form of the High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) and the Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC). With the latter allowing to embed custom logic, novel non-von Neumann architectures can be accomplished, overcoming the performance gap while achieving a new path for scaling the computing performance. Considering the broad spectrum of custom logic that could be integrated into a mesh of HMCs, comprehensive modeling tools are required, enabling holistic design-space explorations for computing systems in breadth and depth. Fulfilling this demand, an HMC-modeling tool was implemented, providing rapid simulation of multiple interconnected HMCs that can run either in a functional or in a bandwidth-accurate mode. Since flexibility is a key for subsequent studies, the HMC-modeling tool is parameterizable whereas internal components can be adjusted.
Lighted Stylet Tracheal Intubation: A Review

Tracheal intubation is older than the recognized his-tory of general anesthesia itself. In the late 18th cen-tury, The Royal Humane Society of London used tra-cheal intubation for resuscitating the near-drowned.Approximately 100 years later, MacEwan (1) per-formed a digital tracheal intubation in an awake pa-tient before a chloroform and air general endotrachealanesthetic for the resection of a tongue tumor, and in1928, Magill (2) incorporated blind nasal tracheal in-tubation as a part of a general anesthetic. Althoughlaryngoscopes were invented in the 19th century, tra-cheal intubation under direct visualization was greatlyenhanced by the development of a special laryngo-scope blade by Macintosh (3) in 1943.The first reported use of a lighted stylet used tofacilitate intubation came in 1957 when (by now SirRobert) Macintosh (4) described an 18-inch illumi-nated tracheal tube introducer, which was designed tostiffen the tube and better illuminate the cords bysupplementing the light of the laryngoscope. Berman(5) described a similar device in 1959 and said it wasuseful “when the fickle light of the laryngoscope hasgone out at the most inopportune time. ” In the sameyear, Yamamura et al. (6) described a light bulb-tippedwire that was inserted into the tracheal tube beforeblind nasal intubation in awake patients. The tubeposition was then determined by the medial transillu-mination of the external throat and neck.In 1977, Foster (7) used a transilluminating fiberop-tic bundle to facilitate tracheal intubation in a youngchild with trismus, and Ducrow (8), in the followingyear, used a flexible surgical light (Flexi-lum™, Con-cept Corporation, Clearwater, FL) to achieve the sameend by first passing a guide (two plastic suction cath-eters connected end-to-end) into the trachea followedby passage of the tracheal tube over the guide. In acorrespondence to the latter article, Rayburn (9) com-mented that the Flexi-lum™ could be positioned in-side the tracheal tube, thereby shortening the intuba-tion sequence and claimed that the technique,nicknamed “lightwand intubation,” had been used forsome years at the Brooke Army Medical Center.
The Wasting Heroine in German Fiction by Women 1770-1914

Richards, Anna. The Wasting Heroine in German Fiction by Women 17700 -1914. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004. 224 pp. $95.00 hardcover. Although images of women refusing to eat amidst plenty may appear to be linked inextricably to the social pressures and consumerism of today's industrialized countries, women's self-starvation and physical wasting, as well as the debate over their causes and symbolic meanings, have been around for centuries. In her engagingly written and meticulously researched study, Anna Richards addresses the representation of these phenomena in German fiction written by women during the long 19th century. This period deserves attention not only because of the prevalence of women's wasting as a literary motif, but also because wasting played a role in such varied medical conditions as chlorosis (Bleichsucht), tuberculosis, neurasthenia, melancholia, hysteria, and the forerunner of today's anorexia nervosa: anorexia hysterica. Richards's study explores how, in an environment in which male writers dominated the literary scene and women had virtually no voice in the medical professions, the emerging voices of women writers contributed to the on-going discussion of the meanings of women's wasting. The study's six chapters make impressive use of present-day scholarship, 19th-century medial texts, and over fifty fictional texts. Chapters One and Two examine representations of women's wasting in medical and fictional works by male authors. Chapters Three through Six turn to fiction by women, beginning with writers who accepted the traditional equation of women's wasting with biological weakness, and ending with writers whose depiction of wasting women served either as a vehicle of social criticism or as a means of redefining gender roles. The first two chapters build on the arguments of much recent scholarship that popular medical and fictional texts of the 19th century tended to associate women's roles and personalities with biology and reproductive function. With regard to forms of wasting, this was evident in the positive association of love-sickness, tuberculosis and the anemic condition of chlorosis with an assumed (and desired) female frailty, and in the negative association of self-starvation and hysteria with an unfeminine strength of will. A number of voices opposed this general trend, however, and one achievement of Richards's study is the nuance it brings to our understanding of the period. The male doctor, Carl Ludwig Klose, and the female physician, H. …