Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rat Pial Microvascular Changes During Cerebral Blood Flow Decrease and Recovery: Effects of Cyanidin Administration

The reactive oxygen species (ROS) are known to play a major role in many pathophysiological conditions, such as ischemia and reperfusion injury. The present study was aimed to evaluate the in vivo cyanidin (anthocyanin) effects on damages induced by rat pial microvascular hypoperfusion-reperfusion injury by cerebral blood flow decrease (CBFD) and subsequent cerebral blood flow recovery (CBFR). In particular, the main purpose was to detect changes in ROS production after cyanidin administration. Rat pial microvasculature was investigated using fluorescence microscopy through a cranial window (closed); Strahler's method was utilized to define the geometric features of pial vessels. ROS production was investigated in vivo by 2′-7′-dichlorofluorescein-diacetate assay and neuronal damage was measured on isolated brain sections by 2,3,5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride staining. After 30 min of CBFD, induced by bilateral common carotid artery occlusion, and 60 min of CBFR, rats showed decrease of arteriolar diameter and capillary perfusion; furthermore, increase in microvascular leakage and leukocyte adhesion was observed. Conversely, cyanidin administration induced dose-related arteriolar dilation, reduction in microvascular permeability as well as leukocyte adhesion when compared to animals subjected to restriction of cerebral blood flow; moreover, capillary perfusion was protected. ROS generation increase and marked neuronal damage were detected in animals subjected to CBFD and CBFR. On the other hand, cyanidin was able to reduce ROS generation and neuronal damage. In conclusion, cyanidin treatment showed dose-related protective effects on rat pial microcirculation during CBFD and subsequent CBFR, inducing arteriolar dilation by nitric oxide release and inhibiting ROS formation, consequently preserving the blood brain barrier integrity.
A Novel Approach to Part Name Discovery in Noisy Text

As a specialized example of information extraction, part name extraction is an area that presents unique challenges. Part names are typically multi-word terms longer than two words. There is little consistency in how terms are described in noisy free text, with variations spawned by typos, ad hoc abbreviations, acronyms, and incomplete names. This makes search and analyses of parts in these data extremely challenging. In this paper, we present our algorithm, PANDA (Part Name Discovery Analytics), based on a unique method that exploits statistical, linguistic and machine learning techniques to discover part names in noisy text such as that in manufacturing quality documentation, supply chain management records, service communication logs, and maintenance reports. Experiments show that PANDA is scalable and outperforms existing techniques significantly.
A Review about Parenting Style and Parenting Practices and Their Consequences in Disabled and Non Disabled Children

In order to explain the worst levels of adaptation showed by children with disabilities in relation to non disabled children, this paper aims to carry out a review of the most important advances achieved in recent decades in the study of parenting styles and parenting practices in relation to academic competence and behavior problems of children with and without disabilities. For this, we have carried out an analysis of the main works that show this relationship in the population, and then, we did the same including disability as a differentiating factor. In this sense, the authoritative style and specific parenting practices such as setting limits, communication, autonomy or monitoring are described as good predictors of adaptive behavior in children. However, we miss studies to confirm this relationship in children with disabilities. In this population, most of the papers refer, on the one hand, to expectations and, on the other hand, the stress in parenting and its effect on the parents’ mental health. In conclusion, the need to provide additional information about family relationships and disability is discussed.
Functioning and Disability Profile of Children with Microcephaly Associated with Congenital Zika Virus Infection

Introduction: The increase in the number of cases of microcephaly in Brazil and its association with the Zika virus (ZIKV) is a global public health problem. The International Classification of Functioning Disability and Health (ICF) model is a powerful tool and extremely relevant in managing disability. Objective: Describe the functioning profile of children with microcephaly associated with ZIKV in two states of northeastern Brazil. Methods: This is a descriptive cross-sectional study. The sociodemographic characteristics, head circumference, and other clinical data were collected from medical charts, physical examinations, measuring instruments, and interviews with the children and their parents. The Brazilian Portuguese version of the Brief Common ICF Core Set for cerebral palsy (CP) was used. Each ICF category was assigned a qualifier, which ranged from 0 to 4 (no problem, mild problem, moderate problem, severe problem, complete problem). For environmental factors, 0 represents no barrier and 4 represents complete barrier; +0, no facilitator and +4, complete facilitator. Results: A total of 34 children with microcephaly caused by ZIKV were recruited (18 girls and 16 boys) at four rehabilitation facilities in Rio Grande do Norte and Paraíba states, Brazil. The average age of the participants was 21 months, monthly income was ≈USD 300.00, and head circumference z-scores ranged between 0.92 and −5.51. The functioning profile revealed complete disability in most of the body function categories (b). The activity and participation areas (d) were highly impacted, particularly in mobility-related categories. With respect to environmental factors (e), most of the sample reported a complete facilitator for the immediate family, friends, and health services, systems, and policies, as well as a complete barrier to societal attitudes. Conclusion: This is the first study that describes the functioning profile of children with microcephaly associated with ZIKV, using a tool based on the ICF in Brazil. Our findings reinforce the need to maximize health care and access to information, based on the ICF, for multiprofessional teams, administrators, family members, and children.
Building your Cross-Platform Application with RHEEM

Today, organizations typically perform tedious and costly tasks to juggle their code and data across different data processing platforms. Addressing this pain and achieving automatic cross-platform data processing is quite challenging because it requires quite good expertise for all the available data processing platforms. In this report, we present Rheem, a general-purpose cross-platform data processing system that alleviates users from the pain of finding the most efficient data processing platform for a given task. It also splits a task into subtasks and assigns each subtask to a specific platform to minimize the overall cost (e.g., runtime or monetary cost). To offer cross-platform functionality, it features (i) a robust interface to easily compose data analytic tasks; (ii) a novel cost-based optimizer able to find the most efficient platform in almost all cases; and (iii) an executor to efficiently orchestrate tasks over different platforms. As a result, it allows users to focus on the business logic of their applications rather than on the mechanics of how to compose and execute them. Rheem is released under an open source license.
Transgraph: interactive intensity-based 2D/3D registration of x-ray and CT data

This paper presents work towards a system for intra-operative registration of 3D CT data to 2D X-ray radiographs. The registration procedure involves iterative comparison of Digitally Reconstructed Radiographs (DRRs) with X-ray images acquired during surgery. A new data structure called a Transgraph permits rapid generation of DRRS, and greatly speeds up the registration process. The underlying data structures are described, and the registration algorithm is evaluated for application to an existing image guided radiosurgery system.
Clinical outcomes with transcatheter aortic valve implantation at a single cardiac center in Saudi Arabia

BACKGROUND Transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) has been recognized as a valid alternative to surgery for severe aortic valve stenosis (AS) in high-risk surgical patients. OBJECTIVE Determine first-year clinical outcomes for TAVI at Madinah Cardiac Center (MMC) in Saudi Arabia. DESIGN Retrospective, analytical cross-sectional. SETTING Tertiary cardiac care center. PATIENTS AND METHODS All patients who underwent TAVI for severe AS between February 2013 and December 2016 were included. Clinical, imaging, and laboratory information at baseline and at one year follow-up were analyzed. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Clinical and echocardiography outcomes at discharge, at 1-month, and at end of follow-up; one-year mortality, complications and clinical response to TAVI procedure. SAMPLE SIZE AND CHARACTERISTICS N=80, mean (SD) age 79.5 (10.6) years, with severe AS and high-surgical risk. RESULTS Fifty-five (69.2%) patients received Core valves, and 25 (30.8%) received Edward valves. Peri-procedure mortality was 3.8% and 1-year post-operative mortality was 13.8%. Ten patients (12.5%) had life-threatening or major bleeding. Nineteen (23.8%) patients had vascular complications, which were mostly minor. Fourteen patients (17.5%) developed acute kidney injury and 86% of these patients recovered. Five patients (6.25%) had pericardial effusion. Two patients (2.5%) developed endocarditis and another 2 patients (2.5%) had cerebrovascular accidents. Five patients (6.25%) received pacemakers. Mean aortic valve gradient significantly reduced from a mean (SD) 47.6 (19) mm Hg to 10.7 (6.0) mm Hg (P<.001). New York Heart Association functional class was significantly reduced (P<.001). CONCLUSION The TAVI experience at MCC is encouraging and comparable to international outcomes in terms of success, morbidity, and mortality rate. LIMITATIONS Retrospective, relatively small sample size. Rate of minor bleeding was overestimated.
Glibenclamide Prevents Hypoglycemia-Induced Fatal Cardiac Arrhythmias in Rats

Sulfonylureas increase the incidence of severe hypoglycemia in people with type 2 diabetes and might increase the risk of sudden cardiac death. Sulfonylureas stimulate insulin secretion by closing pancreatic ATP-sensitive potassium ion (KATP) channels. To investigate the role of KATP channel modulators on cardiac arrhythmias and mortality in the setting of severe hypoglycemia, adult Sprague-Dawley rats underwent hyperinsulinemic (0.2 U/kg/min) severe hypoglycemic (10 to 15 mg/dL) clamps with continuous electrocardiography. The rats were randomized for treatment with intravenous vehicle (VEH), the sulfonylurea glibenclamide (GLIB; KATP channel blocker; 5 mg/kg/h), or diazoxide (DIAZ; KATP channel opener; 5 mg/kg/h). The results demonstrated that GLIB completely prevented first-degree heart block compared with VEH (0.18 ± 0.09/min) and DIAZ (0.2 ± 0.05/min). Second-degree heart block was significantly reduced with GLIB (0.12 ± 0.1/min) compared with VEH (0.6 ± 0.2/min) and DIAZ (6.9 ± 3/min). The incidence of third-degree heart block was completely prevented by GLIB compared with VEH (67%) and DIAZ (87.5%). Hypoglycemia-induced mortality was completely prevented by GLIB compared with VEH (60%) and DIAZ (82%). In conclusion, although GLIB increases the risk of hypoglycemia by increasing insulin secretion, these results have demonstrated a paradoxical protective role of GLIB against severe hypoglycemia-induced fatal cardiac arrhythmias.
A graph‐embedded deep feedforward network for disease outcome classification and feature selection using gene expression data

Motivation: Gene expression data represents a unique challenge in predictive model building, because of the small number of samples (n) compared with the huge amount of features (p). This ‘n ≪ p’ property has hampered application of deep learning techniques for disease outcome classification. Sparse learning by incorporating external gene network information could be a potential solution to this issue. Still, the problem is very challenging because (i) there are tens of thousands of features and only hundreds of training samples, (ii) the scale‐free structure of the gene network is unfriendly to the setup of convolutional neural networks. Results: To address these issues and build a robust classification model, we propose the Graph‐Embedded Deep Feedforward Networks (GEDFN), to integrate external relational information of features into the deep neural network architecture. The method is able to achieve sparse connection between network layers to prevent overfitting. To validate the method's capability, we conducted both simulation experiments and real data analysis using a breast invasive carcinoma RNA‐seq dataset and a kidney renal clear cell carcinoma RNA‐seq dataset from The Cancer Genome Atlas. The resulting high classification accuracy and easily interpretable feature selection results suggest the method is a useful addition to the current graph‐guided classification models and feature selection procedures. Availability and implementation: The method is available at https://github.com/yunchuankong/GEDFN. Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Association of Opioid-Related Adverse Drug Events With Clinical and Cost Outcomes Among Surgical Patients in a Large Integrated Health Care Delivery System

Importance Opioids are commonly used for pain control during and after invasive procedures. However, opioid-related adverse drug events (ORADEs) are common and have been associated with worse patient outcomes. Objectives To examine the incidence of ORADEs in patients undergoing hospital-based surgical and endoscopic procedures and to evaluate the association of ORADEs with clinical and cost outcomes. Design, Setting, and Participants In this retrospective study of clinical and administrative data, ORADEs were identified using International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision diagnosis codes for known adverse effects of opioids or by opioid antagonist use. Multivariable regression analysis was used to measure the association of ORADEs with outcomes after adjusting for potential confounding factors. The setting was 21 acute care hospitals in a large integrated health care delivery system. Participants were 135 379 patients (aged ≥18 years, admitted from January 1, 2013, to September 30, 2015) who underwent surgical and endoscopic procedures and were given opioids. Exposure Opioid use, reported as morphine milligram equivalent doses. Main Outcomes and Measures Opioid-related adverse drug events and their association with inpatient mortality, discharge to another care facility, length of stay, cost of hospitalization, and 30-day readmission. Results Among 135 379 adult patients in this study (67.5% female), 14 386 (10.6%) experienced at least one ORADE. Patients with ORADEs were more likely to be older, of white race/ethnicity, and male and have more comorbidities. Patients with ORADEs received a higher total dose of opioids (median morphine milligram equivalent dose, 46.8 vs 30.0 mg; P < .001) and for a longer duration (median, 3.0 vs 2.0 days; P < .001). In adjusted analyses, ORADEs were associated with increased inpatient mortality (odds ratio [OR], 28.8; 95% CI, 24.0-34.5), greater likelihood of discharge to another care facility (OR, 2.9; 95% CI, 2.7-3.0), prolonged length of stay (OR, 3.1; 95% CI, 2.8-3.4), high cost of hospitalization (OR, 2.7; 95% CI, 2.4-3.0), and higher rate of 30-day readmission (OR, 1.3; 95% CI, 1.2-1.4). ORADEs were associated with a 2.9% increase in absolute mortality, an $8225 increase in cost for the index hospitalization, and a 1.6-day increase in length of stay for the index hospitalization. Conclusions and Relevance Opioid-related adverse drug events were common among patients undergoing hospital-based invasive procedures and were associated with significantly worse clinical and cost outcomes. Hospital-acquired harm from ORADEs in the surgical patient population is an important opportunity for health systems to improve patient safety and reduce cost.
EML-Based Multi-Path Self-Interference Cancellation With Adaptive Frequency-Domain Pre-Equalization

In this letter, for the first time, we propose to employ the adaptive frequency-domain pre-equalization (FDPE) into an electro-absorption modulator laser (EML)-based optical self-interference cancellation (OSIC) system to suppress the time-varying multipath radio frequency (RF) self-interference (SI) signal, which is implemented for in-band full-duplex (IBFD) communication. Faced with time-varying multipath wireless channel, the OSIC system estimates multipath channel response using a least square estimation algorithm, and adjusts the coefficients of frequency-domain pre-equalizer adaptively to combat time-varying multipath SI. Based on the proposed FDPE-aided OSIC, the IBFD transmission of OFDM RF signals with time-varying multipath channel is demonstrated experimentally, achieving 30-dB OSIC depth over 1.22-GHz broad baseband.
Diabetic foot infection: A critical complication

The number of people in the world with diabetes has nearly quadrupled in the past 40 years. Current data show that 25% of these diabetics will develop a foot ulcer in their lifetime and that the cost of care for a diabetic foot ulcer (DFU) is over twice that of any other chronic ulcer aetiology. Microbial biofilm has been linked to both wound chronicity and infection. Close to 1 in 2 diabetics with a DFU are predicted to go on to develop a diabetic foot infection (DFI). The majority of these DFIs have been found to evolve even before the diabetic individual has received an initial referral for expert DFU management. Of these infected DFUs, less than half have been shown to heal over the next year; many of these individuals will require costly hospitalisation, and current data show that far too many DFIs will require extremity amputation to achieve infection resolution. The development of an infection in a DFU is critical at least in part because paradigms of infection prevention and management are evolving. The effectiveness of our current practice standards is being challenged by a growing body of research related to the prevalence and recalcitrance of the microbes in biofilm to topical and systemic antimicrobials. This article will review the magnitude of current challenges related to DFI prevention and management along with what is currently considered to be standard of care. These ideas will be compared and contrasted with what is known about the biofilm phenotype; then, considerations to support progress towards the development of more cost‐effective protocols of care are highlighted.
Capstone-based mentoring and the acquisition of professional skills.: Last TECSUP cycle

The following paper reflects a proposal for the implementation of the capstone project, where the figure of the mentor supports the development and implementation within the industry, the fulfillment of the hours required for the internships is contemplated, in addition to responding to the needs of the industrial sector with the purpose of the student obtaining the required competencies. The implementation process is defined in three stages and the model is based on the triple helix theory, which relates the academic institution — industry — state.
Hogna radiata males do not deplete their sperm in a single mating

Abstract To the extent that sperm production or mating opportunities are limited, males are expected to allocate their sperm optimally, so as to increase their overall fitness. Among spiders, sperm depletion and monogyny are known to be optimal male mating decisions either under strong sperm competition or as terminal investment strategies, when future mating opportunities are limited. In a medium-sized wolf spider, Hogna radiata (Latreille 1817), we investigated sperm depletion, terminal sperm investment and the potential for sperm competition in laboratory mating trials in which we allowed males and females to pair sequentially with two mates. Males mated with as many females as they encountered. We found no evidence of sperm depletion or terminal sperm investment, as mating duration and female fitness were unaffected by male mating history or age. Polyandry was rare and did not involve any clear fitness benefit to females, whereas pre-mating sexual cannibalism was a rather common outcome of mating interactions involving inseminated females. Our results indicate that H. radiata males are not sperm limited and support the hypothesis that the potential for sperm competition shapes the evolution of sperm allocation in this species. Monandrous females do not incur any fitness cost and could potentially benefit from cannibalizing their prospective mates.
Text to Game Characterization: A Starting Point for Generative Adversarial Video Composition

Recently, image generation using GAN is emerging as a new solution for unsupervised learning. However, a solution of generating data that have complex correlations such as video remain unclear. This paper proposes a generative adversarial network (GAN) for video generation. The proposed model can capture spatio-temporal dependency of a given data distribution by untangling a video using the temporal attention of natural languages and their associated spatial properties. The authors have experimented with GAN learning from the perspective of a GAN model to analyze the associated issues when compared to the baseline, and have attempted to find breakthroughs for providing a bridge for future research.
QoE-SDN APP: A Rate-guided QoE-aware SDN-APP for HTTP Adaptive Video Streaming

While video streaming has dominated the Internet traffic, video service providers (VSPs) compete on how to assure the best quality of experience (QoE) to their customers. HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) has become the de facto way that helps VSPs work-around potential network bottlenecks that inevitably cause stallings. However, HAS-alone cannot guarantee a seamless viewing experience, since this highly relies on the mobile network operators’ (MNOs) infrastructure and evolving network conditions. Software-defined networking (SDN) has brought new perspectives to this traditional paradigm where VSPs and MNOs are isolated, allowing the latter to open their network for more flexible, service-oriented programmability. This paper takes advantage of recent standardization trends in SDN and proposes a programmable QoE-SDN App, enabling network exposure feedback from MNOs to VSPs towards network-aware video segment selection and caching, in the context of HAS. The video selection problem is formulated using Knapsack optimization and relaxed to partial sub-problems that provide segment encodings that can mitigate stallings. Furthermore, a mobility prediction mechanism based on the Self-similar Least-Action Walk model is introduced, toward proactive segment caching. A number of use cases, enabled by the QoE-SDN App, are designed to evaluate the proposed scheme, revealing QoE benefits for VSPs and bandwidth savings for MNOs.