Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
REmote SUpervision to Decrease HospitaLization RaTe. Unified and integrated platform for data collected from devices manufactured by different companies: Design and rationale of the RESULT study

The number of patients with heart failure implantable cardiac electronic devices (CIEDs) is growing. Hospitalization rate in this group is very high and generates enormous costs. To avoid the need for hospital treatment, optimized monitoring and follow‐up is crucial. Remote monitoring (RM) has been widely put into practice in the management of CIEDs but it may be difficult due to the presence of differences in systems provided by device manufacturers and loss of gathered data in case of device reimplantation. Additionally, conclusions derived from studies about usefulness of RM in clinical practice apply to devices coming only from a single company. An integrated monitoring platform allows for more comprehensive data analysis and interpretation. Therefore, the primary objective of Remote Supervision to Decrease Hospitalization Rate (RESULT) study is to evaluate the impact of RM on the clinical status of patients with ICDs or CRT‐Ds using an integrated platform. Six hundred consecutive patients with ICDs or CRT‐Ds implanted will be prospectively randomized to either a traditional or RM‐based follow‐up model. The primary clinical endpoint will be a composite of all‐cause mortality or hospitalization for cardiovascular reasons within 12 months after randomization. The primary technical endpoint will be to construct and evaluate a unified and integrated platform for the data collected from RM devices manufactured by different companies. This manuscript describes the design and methodology of the prospective, randomized trial designed to determine whether remote monitoring using an integrated platform for different companies is safe, feasible, and efficacious (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02409225).
Comparative Microbial Analysis of Paired Amniotic Fluid and Cord Blood from Pregnancies Complicated by Preterm Birth and Early-Onset Neonatal Sepsis

Background 16S rRNA-based genomic analyses have revolutionized our understanding of infectious diseases. Many cases which were recognized as “idiopathic” are now known to have an infectious etiology. Here, we present a proof-of-concept study to examine the microbial link between intra-amniotic infection (IAI) and early-onset neonatal sepsis (EONS). Results Using culture independent methods, we analyzed paired amniotic fluid (AF) and cord blood (CB) samples from 36 singleton pregnancies complicated by preterm birth (PTB), IAI, and/or EONS. PTB cases were grouped as 1) Group 1– neonatal blood culture-positive EONS (n = 6). 2) Group 2– neonatal blood culture-negative presumed EONS with positive IAI (n = 16). 3) Group 3– neonatal blood culture-negative presumed EONS with no IAI (n = 7); 4) Group 4– no EONS or IAI (n = 7). In addition, samples from term healthy deliveries (n = 8) served as technical controls. A total of 31 species (15 non-redundant) were identified in AF, of which only 1/3 were cultivated. Significantly fewer microorganisms were detected in CB, with a total of 18 species (7 non-redundant) identified, of which only 2 (Escherichia coli, Streptococcus agalactiae) were cultivated. Of those, Bergeyella, Fusobacterium nucleatum, and Sneathia sanguinegens had not been detected in EONS before. The novel species identified in AF by PCR include Peptoniphilus harei and Lachnospiraceae sp. The majority (72%) of CB species were also detected in the matching AF, with E. coli and F. nucleatum as the most prevalent. The 16S rRNA sequences of paired AF and CB were 99.9–100% identical, while no identical sequences were found between different pregnancies. Conclusions Previously unrecognized, uncultivated or difficult-to-cultivate species are implicated in EONS. Microbial species in paired AF and CB likely share the same infectious origin. Given its prevalence in EONS, F. nucleatum should be placed on the same importance scale as E. coli.
Flexible egocentric and allocentric representations of heading signals in parietal cortex

Significance Body-centered (egocentric) and world-centered (allocentric) spatial reference frames are both important for spatial navigation. We have previously shown that vestibular heading signals, which are initially coded in a head-centered reference frame, are no longer head-centered in the ventral intraparietal (VIP) area, but instead are represented in either a body- or world-centered frame, as the two frames were not dissociated. Here, we report a flexible switching between egocentric and allocentric reference frames in a subpopulation of VIP neurons, depending on gaze strategy. Other VIP neurons continue to represent heading in a body-centered reference frame despite changes in gaze strategy. These findings suggest that the vestibular representation of heading in VIP is dynamic and may be modulated by task demands. By systematically manipulating head position relative to the body and eye position relative to the head, previous studies have shown that vestibular tuning curves of neurons in the ventral intraparietal (VIP) area remain invariant when expressed in body-/world-centered coordinates. However, body orientation relative to the world was not manipulated; thus, an egocentric, body-centered representation could not be distinguished from an allocentric, world-centered reference frame. We manipulated the orientation of the body relative to the world such that we could distinguish whether vestibular heading signals in VIP are organized in body- or world-centered reference frames. We found a hybrid representation, depending on gaze direction. When gaze remained fixed relative to the body, the vestibular heading tuning of VIP neurons shifted systematically with body orientation, indicating an egocentric, body-centered reference frame. In contrast, when gaze remained fixed relative to the world, this representation changed to be intermediate between body- and world-centered. We conclude that the neural representation of heading in posterior parietal cortex is flexible, depending on gaze and possibly attentional demands.
Title : PAP Signaling Delays the Circadian System 1 2 Corresponding

Short Title: PAP Signaling Delays the Circadian System 1 2 Corresponding Author: 3 Dr. Matt Jones, School of Biological Sciences, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, 4 Colchester, Essex, CO4 3SQ, United Kingdom; +44 (0) 1206-874740 (ph) 5 6 Article Title: 7 3'-Phosphoadenosine 5'-Phosphate Accumulation Delays the Circadian System 8 9 Authors and Affiliations: 10 Suzanne Litthauer a , Kai Xun Chan b , and Matthew Alan Jones a 11 a School of Biological Sciences, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex, 12 CO4 3SQ, United Kingdom 13 b Center for Plant Systems Biology, VIB, 9052 Ghent, Belgium 14 15 One Sentence Summary: 16 Accumulation of the stress-induced metabolite PAP delays the circadian system in 17 Arabidopsis thaliana. 18 19 List of Author Contributions: S.L. and M.A.J. performed the research and analysed data. 20 S.L. , K.X. C. , and M.A.J. designed the research and wrote the article. 21 22 Funding Information: This work was supported by the Leverhulme Trust (ECF-2012-358), 23 The Royal Society (grant no. RG130746), The Oppenheimer Memorial Trust (PhD 24 studentship to S.L.), The Gen Foundation (to S.L.), the University of Essex, and the 25 Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology (CE140100008). 26 27 Corresponding Author Email: matthew.jones@essex.ac. uk 28 Plant Physiology Preview. Published on February 27, 2018, as DOI:10.1104/pp.17. 01611
Collaborative Filtering on the Blockchain: A Secure Recommender System for e-Commerce

In collaborative filtering approaches, recommendations are inferred from user data. A large volume and a high data quality is essential for an accurate and precise recommender system. As consequence, companies are collecting large amounts of personal user data. Such data is often highly sensitive and ignoring users’ privacy concerns is no option. Companies address these concerns with several risk reduction strategies, but none of them is able to guarantee cryptographic secureness. To close that gap, the present paper proposes a novel recommender system using the advantages of blockchain-supported secure multiparty computation. A potential costumer is able to allow a company to apply a recommendation algorithm without disclosing her personal data. Expected benefits are a reduction of fraud and misuse and a higher willingness to share personal data. An outlined experiment will compare users’ privacy-related behavior in the proposed recommender system with existent solutions.
Fourier/Laplace Transforms and Ruin Probabilities

Abstract In this paper we use Fourier/Laplace transforms to evaluate numerically relevant probabilities in ruin theory as an application to insurance. The transform of a function is split in two: the real and the imaginary parts. We use an inversion formula based on the real part only, to get the original function. By using an appropriate algorithm to compute integrals and making use of the properties of these transforms we are able to compute numerically important quantities either in classical or non-classical ruin theory. As far as the classical model is concerned the problems considered have been widely studied. In what concerns the non-classical model, in particular models based on more general renewal risk processes, there is still a long way to go. In either case the approach presented is an easy method giving good approximations for reasonable values of the initial surplus. To show this we compute numerically ruin probabilities in the classical model and in a renewal risk process in which claim inter-arrival times have an Erlang(2) distribution and compare to exact figures where available. We also consider the computation of the probability and severity of ruin in the classical model.
Integrative Neuroscience Review Article Rehabilitation of Homonymous Hemianopia: Insight into Blindsight

Strong evidence of considerable plasticity in primary sensory areas in the adult cortex, and of dramatic cross-modal reorganization in visual areas, after short-or long-term visual deprivation has recently been reported. In the context of patient rehabilitation, this scientifically challenging topic takes on urgent clinical relevance, especially given the lack of information about the role of such reorganization on spared or newly emerged visual performance. Amongst the most common visual field defects found upon unilateral occipital damage of the primary visual cortex is homonymous hemianopia (HH), a perfectly symmetric loss of vision in both eyes. Traditionally, geniculostriate lesions were considered to result in complete and permanent visual loss in the topographically related area of the visual field (Huber, 1992). However, numerous studies in monkeys, and later, in humans, have demonstrated that despite destruction of the striate cortex, or even following a hemispherectomy, some patients retain a certain degree of unconscious visual function, known as blindsight. Accordingly, there have recently been attempts to restore visual function in patients by stimulating unconscious preserved blindsight capacities. Herein we review different visual rehabilitation techniques designed for brain-damaged patients with visual field loss. We discuss the hypothesis that explicit (conscious) visual detection can be restored in the blind visual field by harnessing implicit (unconscious) visual capacities. The results that we summarize here underline the need for early diagnosis of cortical visual impairment (CVI), and the urgency in rehabilitating such deficits, in these patients. Based on the research precedent, we explore the link between implicit (unconscious) vision and conscious perception and discuss possible mechanisms of adaptation and plasticity in the visual cortex.
Iterative algebras at work

Iterative theories, which were introduced by Calvin Elgot, formalise potentially infinite computations as unique solutions of recursive equations. One of the main results of Elgot and his coauthors is a description of a free iterative theory as the theory of all rational trees. Their algebraic proof of this fact is extremely complicated. In our paper we show that by starting with ‘iterative algebras’, that is, algebras admitting a unique solution of all systems of flat recursive equations, a free iterative theory is obtained as the theory of free iterative algebras. The (coalgebraic) proof we present is dramatically simpler than the original algebraic one. Despite this, our result is much more general: we describe a free iterative theory on any finitary endofunctor of every locally presentable category $\cal{A}$. Reportedly, a blow from the welterweight boxer Norman Selby, also known as Kid McCoy, left one victim proclaiming, ‘It's the real McCoy! ’.
Designing efficient small message transfer mechanism for inter-node MPI communication on InfiniBand GPU clusters

Increasing number of MPI applications are being ported to take advantage of the compute power offered by GPUs. Data movement on GPU clusters continues to be the major bottleneck that keeps scientific applications from fully harnessing the potential of GPUs. Earlier, GPU-GPU inter-node communication has to move data from GPU memory to host memory before sending it over the network. MPI libraries like MVAPICH2 have provided solutions to alleviate this bottleneck using host-based pipelining techniques. Besides that, the newly introduced GPU Direct RDMA (GDR) is a promising solution to further solve this data movement bottleneck. However, existing design in MPI libraries applies the rendezvous protocol for all message sizes, which incurs considerable overhead for small message communications due to extra synchronization message exchange. In this paper, we propose new techniques to optimize internode GPU-to-GPU communications for small message sizes. Our designs to support the eager protocol include efficient support at both sender and receiver sides. Furthermore, we propose a new data path to provide fast copies between host and GPU memories. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to propose efficient designs for GPU communication for small message sizes, using eager protocol. Our experimental results demonstrate up to 59% and 63% reduction in latency for GPU-to-GPU and CPU-to-GPU point-to-point communications, respectively. These designs boost the uni-directional bandwidth by 7.3x and 1.7x, respectively. We also evaluate our proposed design with two end-applications: GPULBM and HOOMD-blue. Performance numbers on Kepler GPUs shows that, compared to the best existing GDR design, our proposed designs achieve up to 23.4% latency reduction for GPULBM and 58% increase in average TPS for HOOMD-blue, respectively.
The Sandwich Theorem

This report contains expository notes about a function vartheta(G) that is popularly known as the Lovasz number of a graph G. There are many ways to define vartheta(G), and the surprising variety of different characterizations indicates in itself that vartheta(G) should be interesting. But the most interesting property of vartheta(G) is probably the fact that it can be computed efficiently, although it lies "sandwiched" between other classic graph numbers whose computation is NP-hard. I have tried to make these notes self-contained so that they might serve as an elementary introduction to the growing literature on Lovasz''s fascinating function.
Regularity Theory and Superalgebraic Solvers for Wire Antenna Problems

We consider the problem of evaluating the current distribution $J(z)$ that is induced on a straight wire antenna by a time-harmonic incident electromagnetic field. The scope of this paper is twofold. One of its main contributions is a regularity proof for a straight wire occupying the interval $[-1,1]$. In particular, for a smooth time-harmonic incident field this theorem implies that $J(z) = I(z)/\sqrt{1-z^2}$, where $I(z)$ is an infinitely differentiable function—the previous state of the art in this regard placed $I$ in the Sobolev space $W^{1,p}$, $p>1$. The second focus of this work is on numerics: we present three superalgebraically convergent algorithms for the solution of wire problems, two based on Hallen's integral equation and one based on the Pocklington integrodifferential equation. Both our proof and our algorithms are based on two main elements: (1) a new decomposition of the kernel of the form $G(z) = F_1(z) \ln\! |z| + F_2(z)$, where $F_1(z)$ and $F_2(z)$ are analytic functions on the real line; and (2) removal of the end-point square root singularities by means of a coordinate transformation. The Hallen- and Pocklington-based algorithms we propose converge superalgebraically: faster than $\mathcal{O}(N^{-m})$ and $\mathcal{O}(M^{-m})$ for any positive integer $m$, where $N$ and $M$ are the numbers of unknowns and the number of integration points required for construction of the discretized operator, respectively. In previous studies, at most the leading-order contribution to the logarithmic singular term was extracted from the kernel and treated analytically, the higher-order singular derivatives were left untreated, and the resulting integration methods for the kernel exhibit $\mathcal{O}(M^{-3})$ convergence at best. A rather comprehensive set of tests we consider shows that, in many cases, to achieve a given accuracy, the numbers $N$ of unknowns required by our codes are up to a factor of five times smaller than those required by the best solvers previously available; the required number $M$ of integration points, in turn, can be several orders of magnitude smaller than those required in previous methods. In particular, four-digit solutions were found in computational times of the order of four seconds and, in most cases, of the order of a fraction of a second on a contemporary personal computer; much higher accuracies result in very small additional computing times.
A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice

Introduction, 99. — I. Some general features of rational choice, 100. — II. The essential simplifications, 103. — III. Existence and uniqueness of solutions, 111. — IV. Further comments on dynamics, 113. — V. Conclusion, 114. — Appendix, 115.
Does It Really Pay to Be Green? An Empirical Study of Firm Environmental and Financial Performance: An Empirical Study of Firm Environmental and Financial Performance

Previous empirical work suggests that firms with high environmental performance tend to be profitable, but questions persist about the nature of the relationship. Does stronger environmental performance really lead to better financial performance, or is the observed relationship the outcome of some other underlying firm attribute? Does it pay to have cleanrunning facilities or to have facilities in relatively clean industries? To explore these questions, we analyze 652 U.S. manufacturing firms over the time period 1987–1996. Although we find evidence of an association between lower pollution and higher financial valuation, we find that a firm's fixed characteristics and strategic position might cause this association. Our findings suggest that “When does it pay to be green? ” may be a more important question than “Does it pay to be green? ”
Sprint performance and mechanical outputs computed with an iPhone app: Comparison with existing reference methods

Abstract The purpose of this study was to assess validity and reliability of sprint performance outcomes measured with an iPhone application (named: MySprint) and existing field methods (i.e. timing photocells and radar gun). To do this, 12 highly trained male sprinters performed 6 maximal 40-m sprints during a single session which were simultaneously timed using 7 pairs of timing photocells, a radar gun and a newly developed iPhone app based on high-speed video recording. Several split times as well as mechanical outputs computed from the model proposed by Samozino et al. [(2015). A simple method for measuring power, force, velocity properties, and mechanical effectiveness in sprint running. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports. https://doi.org/10.1111/sms.12490] were then measured by each system, and values were compared for validity and reliability purposes. First, there was an almost perfect correlation between the values of time for each split of the 40-m sprint measured with MySprint and the timing photocells (r = 0.989–0.999, standard error of estimate = 0.007–0.015 s, intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) = 1.0). Second, almost perfect associations were observed for the maximal theoretical horizontal force (F0), the maximal theoretical velocity (V0), the maximal power (Pmax) and the mechanical effectiveness (DRF – decrease in the ratio of force over acceleration) measured with the app and the radar gun (r = 0.974–0.999, ICC = 0.987–1.00). Finally, when analysing the performance outputs of the six different sprints of each athlete, almost identical levels of reliability were observed as revealed by the coefficient of variation (MySprint: CV = 0.027–0.14%; reference systems: CV = 0.028–0.11%). Results on the present study showed that sprint performance can be evaluated in a valid and reliable way using a novel iPhone app.
A sympathetic view of the sympathetic nervous system and human blood pressure regulation

New ideas about the relative importance of the autonomic nervous system (and especially its sympathetic arm) in long‐term blood pressure regulation are emerging. It is well known that mean arterial blood pressure is normally regulated in a fairly narrow range at rest and that blood pressure is also able to rise and fall ‘appropriately’ to meet the demands of various forms of mental, emotional and physical stress. By contrast, blood pressure varies widely when the autonomic nervous system is absent or when key mechanisms that govern it are destroyed. However, 24 h mean arterial pressure is still surprisingly normal under these conditions. Thus, the dominant idea has been that the kidney is the main long‐term regulator of blood pressure and the autonomic nervous system is important in short‐term regulation. However, this ‘renocentric’ scheme can be challenged by observations in humans showing that there is a high degree of individual variability in elements of the autonomic nervous system. Along these lines, the level of sympathetic outflow, the adrenergic responsiveness of blood vessels and individual haemodynamic patterns appear to exist in a complex, but appropriate, balance in normotension. Furthermore, evidence from animals and humans has now clearly shown that the sympathetic nervous system can play an important role in longer term blood pressure regulation in both normotension and hypertension. Finally, humans with high baseline sympathetic traffic might be at increased risk for hypertension if the ‘balance’ among factors deteriorates or is lost. In this context, the goal of this review is to encourage a comprehensive rethinking of the complexities related to long‐term blood pressure regulation in humans and promote finer appreciation of physiological relationships among the autonomic nervous system, vascular function, ageing, metabolism and blood pressure.