Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Variations in Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) and survival 1 year after stroke: five European population-based registers

Objective There were two main objectives: to describe and compare clinical outcomes and Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) collected using standardised procedures across the European Registers of Stroke (EROS) at 3 and 12 months after stroke; and to examine the relationship between patients’ Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) at 3 months after stroke and survival up to 1 year across the 5 populations. Design Analysis of data from population-based stroke registers. Setting European populations in Dijon (France); Kaunas (Lithuania); London (UK); Warsaw (Poland) and Sesto Fiorentino (Italy). Participants Patients with ischaemic or intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH) stroke, registered between 2004 and 2006. Outcome measures (1) HRQoL, assessed by the physical component summary (PCS) and mental component summary (MCS) of the Short-Form Health Survey (SF-12), mapped into the EQ-5D to estimate responses on 5 dimensions (mobility, activity, pain, anxiety and depression, and self-care) and utility scores. (2) Mortality within 3 months and within 1 year of stroke. Results Of 1848 patients, 325 were lost to follow-up and 500 died within a year of stroke. Significant differences in mortality, HRQoL and utility scores were found, and remained after adjustments. Kaunas had an increased risk of death; OR 2.34, 95% CI (1.32 to 4.14) at 3 months after stroke in Kaunas, compared with London. Sesto Fiorentino had the highest adjusted PCS: 43.54 (SD=0.96), and Dijon had the lowest adjusted MCS: 38.67 (SD=0.67). There are strong associations between levels of the EQ-5D at 3 months and survival within the year. The trend across levels suggests a dose–response relationship. Conclusions The study demonstrated significant variations in survival, HRQoL and utilities across populations that could not be explained by stroke severity and sociodemographic factors. Strong associations between HRQoL at 3 months and survival to 1 year after stroke were identified.
Multi-scale model analysis of boundary layer ozone over East Asia

Abstract. This study employs the regional Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model to examine seasonal and diurnal variations of boundary layer ozone (O3) over East Asia. We evaluate the response of model simulations of boundary layer O3 to the choice of chemical mechanisms, meteorological fields, boundary conditions, and model resolutions. Data obtained from surface stations, aircraft measurements, and satellites are used to advance understanding of O3 chemistry and mechanisms over East Asia and evaluate how well the model represents the observed features. Satellite measurements and model simulations of summertime rainfall are used to assess the impact of the Asian monsoon on O3 production. Our results suggest that summertime O3 over Central Eastern China is highly sensitive to cloud cover and monsoonal rainfall over this region. Thus, accurate simulation of the East Asia summer monsoon is critical to model analysis of atmospheric chemistry over China. Examination of hourly summertime O3 mixing ratios from sites in Japan confirms the important role of diurnal boundary layer fluctuations in controlling ground-level O3. By comparing five different model configurations with observations at six sites, the specific mechanisms responsible for model behavior are identified and discussed. In particular, vertical mixing, urban chemistry, and dry deposition depending on boundary layer height strongly affect model ability to capture observed behavior. Central Eastern China appears to be the most sensitive region in our study to the choice of chemical mechanisms. Evaluation with TRACE-P aircraft measurements reveals that neither the CB4 nor the SAPRC99 mechanisms consistently capture observed behavior of key photochemical oxidants in springtime. However, our analysis finds that SAPRC99 performs somewhat better in simulating mixing ratios of H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide) and PAN (peroxyacetyl nitrate) at flight altitudes below 1 km. The high level of uncertainty associated with O3 production in Central Eastern China poses a major problem for regional air quality management. This highly polluted, densely populated region would greatly benefit from comprehensive air quality monitoring and the development of model chemical mechanisms appropriate to this unique atmospheric environment.
Antimicrobial Activity Evaluation on Silver Doped Hydroxyapatite/Polydimethylsiloxane Composite Layer

The goal of this study was the preparation, physicochemical characterization, and microbiological evaluation of novel hydroxyapatite doped with silver/polydimethylsiloxane (Ag:HAp-PDMS) composite layers. In the first stage, the deposition of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) polymer layer on commercially pure Si disks has been produced in atmospheric pressure corona discharges. Finally, the new silver doped hydroxyapatite/polydimethylsiloxane composite layer has been obtained by the thermal evaporation technique. The Ag:HAp-PDMS composite layers were characterized by various techniques, such as Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Glow Discharge Optical Emission Spectroscopy (GDOES), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The antimicrobial activity of the Ag:HAp-PDMS composite layer was assessed against Candida albicans ATCC 10231 (ATCC—American Type Culture Collection) by culture based and confirmed by SEM and Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy (CLSM) methods. This is the first study reporting the antimicrobial effect of the Ag:HAp-PDMS composite layer, which proved to be active against Candida albicans biofilm embedded cells.
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Modeling Organic Aerosols during Milagro: Importance of Biogenic Secondary Organic Aerosols

The meso-scale chemistry-transport model CHIMERE is used to assess our understanding of major sources and formation processes leading to a fairly large amount of organic aerosols – OA, including primary OA (POA) and secondary OA (SOA) – observed in Mexico City during the MILAGRO field project (March 2006). Chemical analyses of submicron aerosols from aerosol mass spectrometers (AMS) indicate that organic particles found in the Mex-ico City basin contain a large fraction of oxygenated organic species (OOA) which have strong correspondence with SOA, and that their production actively continues downwind of the city. The SOA formation is modeled here by the one-step oxidation of anthropogenic (i.e. aromatics, alkanes), biogenic (i.e. monoterpenes and isoprene), and biomass-burning SOA precursors and their partitioning into both organic and aque-ous phases. Conservative assumptions are made for uncertain parameters to maximize the amount of SOA produced by the model. The near-surface model evaluation shows that predicted OA correlates reasonably well with measurements during the campaign, however it remains a factor of 2 lower than the measured total OA. Fairly good agreement is found between predicted and observed POA within the city suggesting that anthropogenic and biomass burning emissions are reasonably captured. Consistent with previous studies in Mexico City, large discrepancies are encountered for SOA, with a factor of 2–10 model underestimate. When only anthropogenic SOA precursors were considered, the model was able to reproduce within a factor of two the sharp increase in OOA concentrations during the late morning at both urban and near-urban locations but the discrepancy increases rapidly later in the day, consistent with previous results , and is especially obvious when the column-integrated SOA mass is considered instead of the surface concentration. The increase in the missing SOA mass in the afternoon coincides with the sharp drop in POA suggesting a tendency of the model to excessively evaporate the freshly formed SOA. Predicted SOA concentrations in our base case were extremely low when photochemistry was not active, especially overnight, as the SOA formed in the previous day was mostly quickly advected away from the basin. These nighttime discrepancies were not significantly reduced when greatly enhanced partitioning to the aerosol phase was assumed. Model sensitivity results suggest that observed night-time OOA concentrations are strongly influenced by a regional background SOA (∼1.5 µg/m 3) of biogenic origin which is transported from the coastal mountain ranges into the Mexico City basin. The presence of biogenic SOA …
Iterative Shrinkage Algorithms and Their Acceleration for L 1L 2 Signal and Image Processing Applications

Sparse, redundant representations offer a powerful emerging model for signals. This model approximates a data source as a linear combination of few atoms from a pre-speci ed and over-complete dictionary. Often such models are t to data by solving mixed `1-`2 convex optimization problems. Iterative Shrinkage algorithms constitute a new family of highly effective numerical methods for handling these problems, surpassing traditional optimization techniques. In this paper we give a broad view of this group of methods, derive some of them, show accelerations based on the Sequential Subspace Optimization (SESOP), FISTA and the Conjugate Gradients (CG), present a comparative performance, and discuss their potential in various applications, such as compressed sensing, computed tomography and deblurring.
Direct Measurements of Conformer-Dependent Reactivity of the Criegee Intermediate CH3CHOO

More Criegee Sightings The reaction of ozone with unsaturated hydrocarbons produces short-lived molecules termed Criegee intermediates. The simplest such molecule, H2CO2, was recently detected and monitored in the laboratory. Su et al. (p. 174; see the Perspective by Vereecken) have obtained its vibrational spectrum, which could ultimately enable direct measurements of its reactivity in the atmosphere. Taatjes et al. (p. 177; see the Perspective by Vereecken) report on the laboratory preparation and reactivity of the next heavier Criegee intermediate, which bears a methyl group in place of one of the hydrogen atoms. The reaction kinetics of an intermediate implicated in atmospheric ozone chemistry has been measured in the laboratory. [Also see Perspective by Vereecken] Although carbonyl oxides, “Criegee intermediates,” have long been implicated in tropospheric oxidation, there have been few direct measurements of their kinetics, and only for the simplest compound in the class, CH2OO. Here, we report production and reaction kinetics of the next larger Criegee intermediate, CH3CHOO. Moreover, we independently probed the two distinct CH3CHOO conformers, syn- and anti-, both of which react readily with SO2 and with NO2. We demonstrate that anti-CH3CHOO is substantially more reactive toward water and SO2 than is syn-CH3CHOO. Reaction with water may dominate tropospheric removal of Criegee intermediates and determine their atmospheric concentration. An upper limit is obtained for the reaction of syn-CH3CHOO with water, and the rate constant for reaction of anti-CH3CHOO with water is measured as 1.0 × 10−14 ± 0.4 × 10−14 centimeter3 second−1.
An Approach to Solve Winograd Schema Challenge Using Automatically Extracted Commonsense Knowledge

The Winograd Schema Challenge has recently been proposed as an alternative to the Turing test. A Winograd Schema consists of a sentence and question pair such that the answer to the question depends on the resolution of a definite pronoun in the sentence. The answer is fairly intuitive for humans but is difficult for machines because it requires commonsense knowledge about words or concepts in the sentence. In this paper we propose a novel technique which semantically parses the text, hunts for the needed commonsense knowledge and uses that knowledge to answer the given question.
A Particle Swarm Optimization-PID controller of a DC Servomotor for Multi-Fingered Robot Hand

In the construction of robot applications, controller is very important in producing good performance the robot system. This paper presents the modeling and simulation of multi fingered robot hand (MFRH) with the conventional and modern controllers where the output responses have been analyzed. A swarm algorithm known as Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) has been used to find optimum solutions in a large search space. Simulation of modern controller (PSO-PID) has produced better results than the conventional controller in terms of system parameters such as rise time, settling time steady state error and maximum overshoot in the DC Servomotor speed control MFRH.
Deconvolution of Impulse Response in Event-Related BOLD fMRI1


The temporal characteristics of the BOLD response in sensorimotor and auditory cortices were measured in subjects performing finger tapping while listening to metronome pacing tones. A repeated trial paradigm was used with stimulus durations of 167 ms to 16 s and intertrial times of 30 s. Both cortical systems were found to be nonlinear in that the response to a long stimulus could not be predicted by convolving the 1-s response with a rectangular function. In the short-time regime, the amplitude of the response varied only slowly with stimulus duration. It was found that this character was predicted with a modification to Buxton's balloon model. Wiener deconvolution was used to deblur the response to concatenated short episodes of finger tapping at different temporal separations and at rates from 1 to 4 Hz. While the measured response curves were distorted by overlap between the individual episodes, the deconvolved response at each rate was found to agree well with separate scans at each of the individual rates. Thus, although the impulse response cannot predict the response to fully overlapping stimuli, linear deconvolution is effective when the stimuli are separated by at least 4 s. The deconvolution filter must be measured for each subject using a short-stimulus paradigm. It is concluded that deconvolution may be effective in diminishing the hemodynamically imposed temporal blurring and may have potential applications in quantitating responses in eventrelated fMRI.
Effects of befriending on depressive symptoms and distress: systematic review and meta-analysis

Background High rates of emotional distress and depressive symptoms in the community can reflect difficult life events and social circumstances. There is a need for appropriate, low-cost, non-medical interventions for many individuals. Befriending is an emotional support intervention commonly offered by the voluntary sector. Aims To examine the effectiveness of befriending in the treatment of emotional distress and depressive symptoms. Method Systematic review of randomised trials of interventions focused on providing emotional support to individuals in the community. Results Compared with usual care or no treatment, befriending had a modest but significant effect on depressive symptoms in the short term (standardised mean difference SMD=−0.27, 95% CI −0.48 to −0.06, nine studies) and long term (SMD = −0.18, 95% CI −0.32 to −0.05, five studies). Conclusions Befriending has a modest effect on depressive symptoms and emotional distress in varied patient groups. Further exploration of active ingredients, appropriate target populations and optimal methods of delivery is required.
Teaching as Mentoring: How Secondary School Teachers Engage in the Mentoring of Students

This qualitative study explores the perspectiv s of five secondary school teachers and four former secondary students in a large, suburban Ontario city on their practice and experiences of mentoring non-at-risk students in a diverse, rapidly changing, academically underperforming area. In-depth interviews conducte d with teachers and students demonstrated that teachers incorporate elements found in the exi sting mentoring schemes, yet sometimes exceed such roles, integrating complex and intensiv psycho-social and academic modes of mentoring into their daily work with students. Wit hin this study, teachers and students define teaching as that which takes place within the conte xt of the classroom, while mentoring was seen as those one-on-one relationships that develop over a significant period of time. The findings of my study illustrate that teach ers who mentor their students produce insight into significant mentoring themes: teacher s who mentor sometimes act in ways similar to classical notions of mentors, in lieu of an absent parent; both teachers and students propose that cross-cultural mentoring and opposite-gender mentor ing should be encouraged, and that successful mentoring happens in an environment of c ompetence and duration; mentoring is necessary in a secondary school environment and tha t caring is vital in today’s relationships between teachers and students. The analysis also r eveals that though mentoring improves student achievement and engagement, there are risks involved in the practice of mentoring for both teachers and students alike.
Habilitation Universitaire

The aim of the topological sensitivity analysis is to obtain an asymptotic expansion of a functional with respect to the creation of a small hole in the domain. In this paper such an expansion is obtained for the Helmholtz equation with a Dirichlet condition on the boundary of a circular hole. Some applications of this work to waveguide optimization are presented.
EVOLUTION OF THE COLOR–MAGNITUDE RELATION IN GALAXY CLUSTERS AT z ∼ 1 FROM THE ACS INTERMEDIATE REDSHIFT CLUSTER SURVEY

We apply detailed observations of the color–magnitude relation (CMR) with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the Hubble Space Telescope to study galaxy evolution in eight clusters at z≈ 1. The early-type red sequence is well defined and elliptical and lenticular galaxies lie on similar CMRs. We analyze CMR parameters—scatter, slope, and zero point—as a function of redshift, galaxy properties and cluster mass. For bright galaxies (MB < −21 mag), the CMR scatter of the elliptical population in cluster cores is smaller than that of the S0 population, although the two become similar at faint magnitudes (MB > − 21 mag). While the bright S0 population consistently shows larger scatter than the ellipticals, the scatter of the latter increases in the peripheral cluster regions. If we interpret these results as due to age differences, bright elliptical galaxies in cluster cores are, on average, older than S0 galaxies and peripheral elliptical galaxies (by about 0.5 Gyr, using a simple, single-burst solar metallicity stellar population model). The CMR zero point, slope, and scatter in the (U − B)z = 0 rest-frame show no significant evolution out to redshift z ≈ 1.3 or significant dependence on cluster mass. Two of our clusters display CMR zero points that are redder (by ≈2σ) than the average (U − B)z = 0 of our sample. We also analyze the fraction of morphological early-type and late-type galaxies on the red sequence. We find that, while in the majority of the clusters most (80% to 90%) of the CMR population is composed of early-type galaxies, in the highest-redshift, low-mass cluster of our sample, the CMR late-type/early-type fractions are similar (≈50%), with most of the late-type population composed of galaxies classified as S0/a. This trend is not correlated with the cluster's X-ray luminosity, or with its velocity dispersion, and could be a real evolution with redshift.
Exact minimization of large fixed polarity dual form of reed-muller functions

Dual form of Reed-Muller (DFRM) expansions are implemented in OR/XNOR logic, which are based on the features of coincidence operation and known as fixed polarity canonical or coincidence (COC) expansions. An efficient minimization method is proposed to find the best polarity COC expansion for large functions. The method derives one expansion from another adjacent polarity expansion using gray code, resulting in small space complexity O(M) and time complexity O(2nMIogM) (n and M are the number of input variables and the number of on-set COC maxterms). Hence, it makes minimization for large functions practical
The effects of photoionization on galaxy formation - II. Satellite galaxies in the Local Group

We use a self-consistent model of galaxy formation and the evolution of the intergalactic medium to study the effects of the reionization of the Universe at high redshift on the properties of satellite galaxies like those seen around the Milky Way. Photoionization suppresses the formation of small galaxies, so that surviving satellites are preferentially those that formed before the Universe reionized. As a result, the number of satellites expected today is about an order of magnitude smaller than the number inferred by identifying satellites with subhaloes of the same circular velocity in high-resolution simulations of the dark matter. The resulting satellite population has an abundance similar to that observed in the Local Group, although the distribution of circular velocities differs somewhat from the available data. We explore many other properties of satellite galaxies, including their gas content, metallicity and star formation rate, and find generally good agreement with available data. Our model predicts the existence of many as yet undetected satellites in the Local Group. We quantify their observability in terms of their apparent magnitude and surface brightness, and also in terms of their constituent stars. A near-complete census of the Milky Way's satellites would require imaging to V≈20 and to a surface brightness fainter than 26 V-band magnitudes per square arcsecond. Satellites with integrated luminosity V=15 should contain of order 100 stars brighter than B=26, with central stellar densities of a few tens per square arcminute. Discovery of a large population of faint satellites would provide a strong test of current models of galaxy formation.
Comparison of Three Multiobjective Optimization Algorithms for Inverse Modeling of Vadose Zone Hydraulic Properties

Inverse modeling has become increasingly popular for estimating effective hydraulic properties across a range of spatial scales. In recent years, many different algorithms have been developed to solve complex multiobjective optimization problems. In this study, we compared the effi ciency of the Nondominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II), the Multiobjective Shuffl ed Complex Evolution Metropolis algorithm (MOSCEM-UA), and AMALGAM, a multialgorithm genetically adaptive search method for multiobjective estimation of soil hydraulic parameters. In our analyses, we implemented the HYDRUS-1D model and used observed pressure head data at three different depths from the Spydia experimental fi eld site in New Zealand. Our optimization problem was posed in a multiobjective context by simultaneously using three complementary RMSE criteria at each depth. We analyzed the trade-off between these criteria and the adherent Pareto uncertainty. The results demonstrate that all three algorithms were able to fia good approximation of the Pareto set of solutions, but differed in the rate of convergence to this distribution. Small differences in performance of the various algorithms were observed because of the relative high dimension of the optimization problem in combination with the presence of multiple local optimal solutions within the three-objective search space. The Pareto parameter sets yielded satisfactory results when simulating the transient tensiometric pressure at predetermined observation points in the investigated vadose zone profi le. The overall best parameter set was found by AMALGAM with RMSE values of 0.14, 0.11, and 0.17 m at the 0.4-, 1.0-, and 2.6-m depths, respectively. In contrast, the fi t errors were substantially higher at these respective depths, with RMSE values ranging from 0.87 to 1.49 m, when using soil hydraulic parameters derived from laboratory analysis of small vadose zone cores.