Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Subclinical hypothyroidism in pregnancy: intellectual development of offspring.

BACKGROUND The effects of maternal subclinical hypothyroidism (M-SCH) on the neuropsychological development of the offspring are not clear. We evaluated the intellectual development of children of mothers who had M-SCH during the pregnancy for these children. METHODS Sixty-two children were recruited. After excluding those age < 4 or age > 15, 44 were enrolled. The mothers of these children were part of a sub-pool of 90, of 441 hypothyroid women of reproductive age seen in Tehran endocrine clinics between 1991 and 2003 and who were observed during gestation. Mothers were receiving levothyroxine (LT4) before gestation. Mothers of 19 children (control group) had normal serum thyrotropin (TSH) during the pregnancy that produced these children. Mothers of the other 25 children had increased TSH during the comparable pregnancy. Nineteen mothers had M-SCH (case group) and six had overt hypothyroidism. Serum TSH and free T4 (FT4) and urine iodine were measured, and seven cognitive performance and intelligence quotient (IQ) tests were performed. RESULTS Case children were similar to control children with respect to gender, age, parental education, maternal age at time of pregnancy and at the time of their hypothyroidism, percent mothers having thyroid peroxidase antibodies, LT4 dose of mothers during pregnancy, gestational age at delivery, birth weight, and duration of breast feeding. Maternal TSH (mean ± standard deviation) in the case group during their mother's pregnancies was 11.3 ± 5.3 and 1.4 ± 1.0 mU/L in the controls (p < 0.001). Serum TSH, FT4 and urinary iodine concentrations were similar in the two groups. Total IQ, performance IQ, and verbal IQ were similar, being 120 ± 14, 117 ± 12, and 121 ± 16, respectively, in the case group and 121 ± 11, 120 ± 7, and 117 ± 15 in the control group. Cognitive performance tests were similar in both groups. No relationships were observed between variables and IQ except for education level of the mother and neonatal weight. CONCLUSION IQ level and cognitive performance of children born to LT4-treated hypothyroid mothers is similar in those whose mothers have M-SCH during pregnancy compared with those whose mothers have normal serum TSH concentrations during pregnancy.
Comparative study on first and second order ILC-frequency domain analysis and experiments

Aspects of the behavior of a general second order iterative learning control (ILC) algorithm are presented from a frequency domain perspective. This includes stability as well as performance and robustness issues. The basis for the analysis is linear iterative systems and these are briefly described. A design algorithm for second order ILC schemes is proposed and analyzed both theoretically as well as in an experiment. In the experiment, done on a commercial industrial robot control system, the second order ILC design is compared with a first order ILC design. The results from both the analysis and the experiment show that the second order design is not better with respect to performance or robustness.
FotoFile: a consumer multimedia organization and retrieval system

FotoFile is an experimental system for multimediaorganization and retrieval, based upon the design goal of makingmultimedia content accessible to non-expert users. Search andretrieval are done in terms that are natural to the task. Thesystem blends human and automatic annotation methods. It extendstextual search, browsing, and retrieval technologies to supportmultimedia data types.
Liouville Brownian motion

We construct a stochastic process, called the Liouville Brownian motion which we conjecture to be the scaling limit of random walks on large planar maps which are embedded in the euclidean plane or in the sphere in a conformal manner. Our construction works for all universality classes of planar maps satisfying $\gamma <\gamma_c=2$. In particular, this includes the interesting case of $\gamma=\sqrt{8/3}$ which corresponds to the conjectured scaling limit of large uniform planar $p$-angulations (with fixed $p\geq 3$). We start by constructing our process from some fixed point $x\in \R^2$ (or $x\in \S^2$). This amounts to changing the speed of a standard two-dimensional brownian motion $B_t$ depending on the local behaviour of the Liouville measure ''$M_\gamma(dz) = e^{\gamma X} dz$'' (where $X$ is a Gaussien Free Field, say on $\S^2$). A significant part of the paper focuses on extending this construction simultaneously to all points $x\in \R^2$ or $\S^2$ in such a way that one obtains a semi-group $P_\t$ (the Liouville semi-group). We prove that the associated Markov process is a Feller diffusion for all $\gamma<\gamma_c=2$ and that for $\gamma<\sqrt{2}$, the Liouville measure $M_\gamma$ is invariant under $P_\t$ (which in some sense shows that it is the right quantum gravity diffusion to consider). This Liouville Brownian motion enables us to give sense to part of the celebrated Feynman path integrals which are at the root of Liouville quantum gravity, the Liouville Brownian ones. Finally we believe that this work sheds some new light on the difficult problem of constructing a quantum metric out of the exponential of a Gaussian Free Field (see conjecture \ref{c.metric}).
An explanation for the lack of trend in the hurricane frequency

The proposition that the tropical cyclogenesis increases with the size of the warm pool, the area enclosed by the 26 ◦ C SST isotherm, is tested by comparing the seasonal variation of the warm pool area with the seasonality of the number of tropical cyclones. A non-linear relationship of high statistical significance is found between the area and the number of cyclones, which may explain both why there is no linear trend in the number of cyclones over time and the recent upturn in the number of Atlantic hurricanes.
Prevalence and Correlates of Peripheral Arterial Disease in Nigerians with Type 2 Diabetes

Background. Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is a major risk factor for nonhealing foot ulcers in people with diabetes. A number of traditional risk factors have been reported to be associated with PAD; however, there may be a need to consider nontraditional risk factors especially in some vulnerable populations. This study determined the prevalence and risk factors associated with PAD in diabetics. Methods. One hundred and fifty type 2 diabetics and an equal number of age- and sex-matched apparently healthy controls were studied. Assessment of PAD was made using history, palpation of lower limb vessels, and measurement of ankle-brachial index (ABI). Statistically significant differences between categorical and continuous variables were determined using Chi square (χ 2) and Student t-tests, respectively. Regression analysis was done to determine the associated risk factors for PAD. Results. Prevalence of PAD using ABI was 22.0% and 8.0% among diabetic and nondiabetic populations, respectively. Peripheral arterial disease was associated with age, male gender, waist circumference, and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein. Conclusion. This study highlights the high prevalence of PAD in people with type 2 diabetes mellitus and in apparently healthy controls; age, male gender, abdominal obesity, and high hs-CRP values were the associated risk factors.
Effectiveness of the Flipped Classroom Strategy in Learning Outcomes (Bibliometric Study)

The aim of this study is to explore the effectiveness according to the flipped classroom strategy in learning outcomes. To achieve this, the descriptive method of "bibliometric analysis" was used. It analyzed (233) scientific studies and evaluated them in a critical manner in light of the study questions, within the range of eight years (2012-2019) in order to identify the variables that these studies sought to investigate on the strategy, its impact on those variables, and the justification behind its positive impact. The study results reveal that the flipped classroom can provide students with a more interactive environment that will lead to higher learning achievement and better preparation for 21st century learning and work environments. Many of the studies targeted by the present study have analyzed the advantages and privileges of this strategy and the importance of its application in different stages of education because of its obvious results in improving the range of learning outcomes. In view of its findings, the study recommended an expansion of teachers' use of the flipped classroom strategy because of its positive impact in learning outcomes. It also suggested conducting studies on the reasons behind the lack of a clear positive impact of the strategy in some studies. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.18. 3.6
Identifying Individuality Using Mental Task Based Brain Computer Interface

In recent years, numerous Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technologies have been developed to assist the disabled. In this paper, mental task based BCI is proposed for a different purpose: to identify the individuality of a person. The idea is based on the classification of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals recorded when a user thinks of either one or two mental tasks. As different individuals have different thought processes, this idea would be appropriate for individual identification. To increase the inter-subject differences, EEG data from six electrodes are used instead of one. Sixth order autoregressive features are computed from EEG signals and classified by Linear Discriminant classifier using a modified 10 fold cross validation procedure, which gave an average error of 0.95% when tested on 400 EEG patterns from four subjects. Though the method would have to undergo further development to obtain repeatable good accuracy; this initial study has shown the huge potential of the method over existing biometric identification systems as it is impossible to be faked.
Native and Non-native English Teachers’ Classroom Ideologies and its Implementation in ESL Classroom

The global spread of English language has led many classrooms in the post-colonial contexts that teach English as a second and foreign language to pursue a perpetual belief that native English teachers have different teaching ideologies and practices compared to non-native teachers. Although teachers’ ideologies are deemed to be influential in shaping their classroom pedagogical practices, not many studies have examined teachers’ ideologies and its actual implementation in classroom pedagogical practices. Many past studies in this area have focused either on teachers’ classroom beliefs or classroom practices. Thus far, there is no any empirical evidence that supports the existing belief that native and non-native English teachers pursue different teaching ideologies and practices. Thus, this study seeks to understand whether as suggested, the native and non-native English teachers pursue different teaching ideologies and practices in Malaysian ESL classroom context. This study provides insights and empirical evidences into teaching ideologies and actual classroom pedagogical practices of teachers in Malaysian ESL classroom context.
A boosted multi-HMM classifier for recognition of visual speech elements

A novel boosted classifier using multiple hidden Markov models (HMMs) is reported. The composite HMMs are specially trained to highlight certain group of training samples with the application of adaptive boosting technique. Experiments were carried out to identify the basic visual speech elements in English using the proposed boosted classifier. Comparing the results obtained using the proposed classifier and those obtained using the traditional single HMM classifier, it may be said that the proposed system is significantly better in terms of accuracy and robustness.
Urine markers as possible tools for prostate cancer screening: review of performance characteristics and practicality.

BACKGROUND In recent years, an increasing number of urine-based tests have been proposed as potential screening tests for prostate cancer. The goal of this review was to summarize the current status of evidence regarding performance characteristics of the proposed tests and their practicality under screening conditions. METHOD Relevant articles published up to and including May 2005 were identified in the PubMed database. At least 10 cases and 10 controls had to be analyzed for a study to be included in the review. Data concerning the study population, performance characteristics, and the collection and processing of urine samples were extracted from the reviewed articles. RESULTS In all, 34 retrospective studies evaluating 21 different markers complied with the inclusion criteria. Most of the studies were rather small and included heterogeneous clinical study populations. Promising results were reported for a few markers in single studies, but they have often not been replicated in subsequent larger studies. Some of the more promising results were obtained with 24-h urines or with specimen-handling procedures that might be difficult to perform under screening conditions. CONCLUSIONS Larger studies with a prospective design are required to confirm promising findings regarding performance characteristics of some novel markers recently reported in mostly small studies. Future studies should also pay particular attention to the practicality of the markers under screening conditions.
Replication on Affinity Propagation: Clustering by Passing Messages Between Data Points

In this project, I choose the paper, Clustering by Passing Messages Between Data Points [1], published in Science 2007, as the work to replicate. In [1], a new clustering algorithm named Affinity Propagation is proposed. In my report, three research hypothesizes in this paper that are related to the performance, evaluation and scalability of the algorithm are studied. I implement the algorithm and conduct extensive experiments to test these three research hypothesizes. Based on the results, some of the hypothesizes are accepted and some are rejected. I also try to use Affinity Propagation in the task of clustering tweets as the extension of this project.
Corneal topography and myopia. A cross-sectional study.

PURPOSE Central corneal curvature is known to vary with refractive error, but the relation between corneal topography and ametropia is less clear. The current study was conducted to determine whether a relation exists between corneal asphericity and myopia. Associations between corneal asphericity and each of the components of refraction also were examined. METHODS Corneal asphericity and apical radius of curvature were determined for 113 eyes (spherical equivalent refractive error +0.25 diopter [D] to -9.88 D) by fitting a conicoid equation to videokeratoscopic data. Computerized videokeratoscopic images were recorded using a Topographic Modeling System. Keratometry also was performed on each eye. Anterior chamber depth, lens thickness, vitreous chamber depth, and axial length were measured with a hand-held biometric ruler. RESULTS A low but statistically significant positive correlation was found between corneal asphericity (Q) and spherical equivalent refractive error (r = 0.275, P < 0.01). Significant relations also were observed between Q and vitreous chamber depth (r = 0.17, P < 0.1) and between Q and axial length (r = 0.24, P < 0.05). The association between Q and corneal radius of curvature was found not to be significant. Eyes with higher levels of myopia had steeper central corneal curvatures, deeper anterior and vitreous chambers, and greater axial lengths. CONCLUSIONS A tendency for the cornea to flatten less rapidly in the periphery with increasing myopia was shown. Decreased peripheral corneal flattening also was observed in association with increasing vitreous chamber depth and increasing axial length. These findings have implications for refractive surgery outcomes, schematic eye modeling, contact lens design, and ocular aberration analysis.
Equal Resources, Equal Outcomes? The Distribution of School Resources and Student Achievement in California

This report focuses on three crucial questions about resources in California's K-12 schools. The first is how resources vary among schools, measured in terms of class size, curriculum, and teachers' education. Second, do schools serving disadvantaged populations receive fewer resources? And lastly, do existing inequalities in school resources contribute to unequal student outcomes? The report presents detailed measures of resources at the school and classroom levels and relates them to student achievement as captured in the first statewide administration of the Stanford 9 achievement test in 1998. The study does find differences in curriculum and in the supply of highly qualified teachers based on geography and SES. Low SES schools are also likely to have the lowest test scores. (Public Policy Institute of California Monograph, February 2000.)
Detecting Information-Dense Texts in Multiple News Domains

We introduce the task of identifying information-dense texts,which report important factual information in direct, succinct manner. We describe a procedure that allows us to label automatically a large training corpus of New York Times texts.We train a classifier based on lexical, discourse and unlexicalized syntactic features and test its performance on a set of manually annotated articles from business, U.S. international relations, sports and science domains. Our results indicate that the task is feasible and that both syntactic and lexicalfeatures are highly predictive for the distinction. We observe considerable variation of prediction accuracy across domains and find that domain-specific models are more accurate.
Spectral shape of the UV ionizing background and He II absorption at redshifts 1.8 $<$ z $<$ 2.9

Aims. The shape of the UV ionizing background is reconstructed from optically thin metal absorption-line systems identified in spectra of HE 2347–4342, Q 1157+3143, and HS 1700+6416 in the redshift interval $1.8 Methods. The systems are analyzed by means of the Monte Carlo Inversion method completed with the spectral shape recovering procedure. Results. The UVB spectral shape fluctuates at $2.4 2.4$, the recovered spectral shapes show intensity depression between 3 and 4 Ryd due to $\ion{He}{ii}$ Ly α absorption in the IGM clouds (line blanketing) and continuous medium (true Gunn-Petersen effect). The mean $\ion{He}{ii}$ Ly α opacity estimated from the depth of this depression corresponds within 1-2 σ to the values directly measured from the $\ion{H}{i}$/$\ion{He}{ii}$ Ly α forest towards the quasars studied. The observed scatter in $\eta = N$($\ion{He}{ii}$)/ N ($\ion{H}{i}$) and anti-correlation between N ($\ion{H}{i}$) and η can be explained by the combined action of variable spectral softness and differences in the mean gas density between the absorbing clouds. Neither of the recovered spectral shapes show features which can be attributed to the putative input of radiation from soft sources like starburst galaxies.
Effects of Endogenous Signals and Fusarium oxysporum on the Mechanism Regulating Genistein Synthesis and Accumulation in Yellow Lupine and Their Impact on Plant Cell Cytoskeleton

The aim of the study was to examine cross-talk interactions of soluble sugars (sucrose, glucose and fructose) and infection caused by Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. lupini on the synthesis of genistein in embryo axes of Lupinus luteus L.cv. Juno. Genistein is a free aglycone, highly reactive and with the potential to inhibit fungal infection and development of plant diseases. As signal molecules, sugars strongly stimulated accumulation of isoflavones, including genistein, and the expression of the isoflavonoid biosynthetic genes. Infection significantly enhanced the synthesis of genistein and other isoflavone aglycones in cells of embryo axes of yellow lupine with high endogenous sugar levels. The activity of β-glucosidase, the enzyme that releases free aglycones from their glucoside bindings, was higher in the infected tissues than in the control ones. At the same time, a very strong generation of the superoxide anion radical was observed in tissues with high sugar contents already in the initial stage of infection. During later stages after inoculation, a strong generation of semiquinone radicals was observed, which level was relatively higher in tissues deficient in sugars than in those with high sugar levels. Observations of actin and tubulin cytoskeletons in cells of infected embryo axes cultured on the medium with sucrose, as well as the medium without sugar, showed significant differences in their organization.
Glycated haemoglobin and the incidence of end-stage renal disease in diabetics.

BACKGROUND The relationship between glycated haemoglobin and the incidence of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) in patients with diabetes remains uncertain, especially in those with decreased glomerular filtration rate (GFR). The aim of this study was to assess the appropriate HbA(1c) level for diabetics for minimizing the incidence of ESRD and all-cause mortality. METHODS A cohort of patients aged 25 years or older who had been treated for diabetes was generated from the Seoul National University Bundang Hospital database using diagnosis code and prescribed medication during 2004. The 4474 patients were classified into three groups according to the baseline HbA(1c) in 2004 (HbA(1c) < 6.50%, 6.50-7.49% and ≥ 7.50%; termed groups 1, 2 and 3, respectively). The outcomes were extracted from the database of Statistics Korea for mortality and registry in the Korean Society of Nephrology for ESRD incidence. RESULTS Ninety patients developed ESRD during 5.29 ± 1.22 years of mean follow-up period. Group 1 patients showed the lowest incidence of ESRD (P = 0.003). Compared with this group, the adjusted hazard ratio of ESRD was 2.915 and 4.219 in groups 2 and 3, respectively. The incidence of ESRD increased in patients with HbA(1c) ≥ 6.50% compared with the patients with HbA(1c) < 6.50%, regardless of GFR. However, HbA(1c) < 6.50% showed no benefit on ESRD development in patients older than 80 years and in patients with diabetic duration > 10 years. All-cause mortality was not associated with the level of HbA(1c). CONCLUSIONS HbA(1c) < 6.50% was associated with reduced development of ESRD in all patients and later stages of chronic kidney disease.
Knowledge-Driven Opto-Acoustic Scene Analysis based on an Object- Oriented World Modeling approach for Humanoid Robots

The perception of the environment using opto-acoustic scene analysis techniques [1] is an extremely important and challenging task for humanoid robots. Thereby, the acquisition of visual and acoustic information provides the basis of the perception and enables the robot to interact with humans and to assist in everyday tasks. Another step is the exploration that allows the robot to actively gather knowledge about the environment. Hereby, the object-oriented world modeling guarantees the maintenance of permanent situation awareness [2][3], which is important for opto-acoustic scene analysis, cognition and planning. Taking these considerations into account, this paper presents a concept for the knowledge-driven opto-acoustic scene analysis based on an object-oriented modeling approach. The focus of the paper is put on both, formal conditions and a practical realization of an integrated system.