Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Principled exploitation of behavioural coupling

In robot building, attention tends to focus on internal signal processing and the way desired motor signals are generated. But equally important is the selection and configuration of the robot's sensory resources. The degree to which sensory input informs the process of output generation directly impacts internal complexity since the more informative input signals are, the less internal processing is required. In the extreme case, input signals may identify motor signals exactly and internal processing may then be eliminated completely. The paper presents an information theoretic model for measuring this tradeoff being input information and internal processing complexity, and establishes the conditions under which it is feasible to utilize the processing-free strategy of ‘direct connection’. The model is then used for purposes of analysing five robots, including two commercial products (Sony AIBO and WowWee's Robosapiens). The principled exploitation of very informative sensory input is then shown to be effective in an unexpectedly wide range of situations.
Information leakage through mobile analytics services

In this paper we investigate the risk of privacy leakage through mobile analytics services and demonstrate the ease with which an external adversary can extract individual's profile and mobile applications usage information, through two major mobile analytics services, i.e. Google Mobile App Analytics and Flurry. We also demonstrate that it is possible to exploit the vulnerability of analytics services, to influence the ads served to users' devices, by manipulating the profiles constructed by these services. Both attacks can be performed without the necessity of having an attacker controlled app on user's mobile device. Finally, we discuss potential countermeasures (from the perspectives of different parties) that may be utilized to mitigate the risk of individual's personal information leakage.
High dimensional similarity joins: algorithms and performance evaluation

Current data repositories include a variety of data types, including audio, images and time series. State of the art techniques for indexing such data and doing query processing rely on a transformation of data elements into points in a multidimensional feature space. Indexing and query processing then take place in the feature space. We study algorithms for finding relationships among points in multidimensional feature spaces, specifically algorithms for multidimensional joins. Like joins of conventional relations, correlations between multidimensional feature spaces can offer valuable information about the data sets involved. We present several algorithmic paradigms for solving the multidimensional join problem, and we discuss their features and limitations. We propose a generalization of the Size Separation Spatial Join algorithm, named Multidimensional Spatial Join (MSJ), to solve the multidimensional join problem. We evaluate MSJ along with several other specific algorithms, comparing their performance for various dimensionalities on both real and synthetic multidimensional data sets. Our experimental results indicate that MSJ, which is based on space filling curves, consistently yields good performance across a wide range of dimensionalities.
Lifestyle of the Employees Working in Hamadan Public Sectors: Application of the Trans-Theoretical Model

Background: A healthy lifestyle is a valuable source to reduce the prevalence of health problems, and promoteehealth. Objectives: The current study aimed to evaluate the lifestyle and obesity status of Hamadan public employees and their status based on the trans-theoretical model (TTM). Patients and Methods: This analytical cross-sectional study was performed in 2014 on 1200 public employees in Hamadan city, Iran selected through proportional stratified random sampling. Data collection was performed using a three-section questionnaire including demographic characteristics, The FANTASTIC lifestyle questionnaire, and the five-part algorithm. Data were analyzed by SPSS-20 using linear regression, Chi-square, Fisher exact test, and ANOVA. Results: The mean age of the employees was 38.12 ± 8.04 years. Most of the employees (61.7%) had favorable lifestyle. About half of the employees were at the preparation stage of TTM. Most of the employees were in a poor condition regarding the physical activity and healthy eating habits. In most of the evaluated items, females got higher scores than males. The associations between lifestyle and age, gender, work experience, income satisfaction, and marital status were significant. Moreover, the associations between obesity and work experience, marital status, number of offspring, and gender were significant (P < 0. 05). Significant predicting variables of obesity were age and work experience; they explained 31.2% variance of obesity (adjusted R2 = 0.312, R2 change = 0.01). Conclusions: Planning health education interventions for employees through effective approaches seems necessary.
Comparison of IP micromobility protocols

We present a performance comparison of a number of key micromobility protocols that have been discussed in the IETF Mobile IP Working Group over the past several years. IP micromobility protocols complement Mobile IP by offering fast and seamless handoff control in limited geographical areas, and IP paging in support of scalability and power conservation. We show that despite the apparent differences between IP micromobility protocols, the operational principles that govern them are largely similar. We use this observation to establish a generic micromobility model to better understand design and performance trade offs. A number of key design choices are identified within the context of the generic model related to handoff quality and route control messaging. We present simulation results for Cellular IP, Hawaii, and Hierarchical Mobile IP, and evaluate the handoff performance of these protocols. Simulation results presented in this article are based on the Columbia IP Micromobility Software (CIMS), which is freely available from the Web (comet.columbia. edu/micromobility) for experimentation.
Surgical treatment of carcinoma of the oesophagus.

Cancer of the oesophagus was described in China over 2000 years ago as Ye Ge, which means dysphagia and belching. "Those discovered to suffer from oesophageal cancer in the autumn," it was said, "will not live through the next summer. " In the second century Galen described "fleshy growths" as a cause of obstruction of the oesophagus associated with cachexia and a fatal outcome. Only 50 years ago a considered and realistic assessment of this disease was that it was beyond hope and help. This particular malignancy has proved to be one of the most difficult types of growth to treat successfully and, as ED Churchill wrote in 1960,2 surgeons have travelled a long road to bring their craft to its present position. The road can be measured by milestones of triumph and progress; also by tombstones of tragedy and prejudice. The journey cannot be described as a particularly sentimental one, but rather as a struggle in which stern realism has usually obscured any elements of romance. Only the words of those who have lighted the way remain to show the romance of surgery. They are the words of earnest men, the strength of whose convictions exceeded the techniques available for its expression. These men stand poles apart from today's "bright boys" who are so facile in wielding the techniques they have inherited.
Analyzing inter-application communication in Android

Modern smartphone operating systems support the development of third-party applications with open system APIs. In addition to an open API, the Android operating system also provides a rich inter-application message passing system. This encourages inter-application collaboration and reduces developer burden by facilitating component reuse. Unfortunately, message passing is also an application attack surface. The content of messages can be sniffed, modified, stolen, or replaced, which can compromise user privacy. Also, a malicious application can inject forged or otherwise malicious messages, which can lead to breaches of user data and violate application security policies. We examine Android application interaction and identify security risks in application components. We provide a tool, ComDroid, that detects application communication vulnerabilities. ComDroid can be used by developers to analyze their own applications before release, by application reviewers to analyze applications in the Android Market, and by end users. We analyzed 20 applications with the help of ComDroid and found 34 exploitable vulnerabilities; 12 of the 20 applications have at least one vulnerability.
Interaction ruling animal collective behavior depends on topological rather than metric distance: Evidence from a field study

Numerical models indicate that collective animal behavior may emerge from simple local rules of interaction among the individuals. However, very little is known about the nature of such interaction, so that models and theories mostly rely on aprioristic assumptions. By reconstructing the three-dimensional positions of individual birds in airborne flocks of a few thousand members, we show that the interaction does not depend on the metric distance, as most current models and theories assume, but rather on the topological distance. In fact, we discovered that each bird interacts on average with a fixed number of neighbors (six to seven), rather than with all neighbors within a fixed metric distance. We argue that a topological interaction is indispensable to maintain a flock's cohesion against the large density changes caused by external perturbations, typically predation. We support this hypothesis by numerical simulations, showing that a topological interaction grants significantly higher cohesion of the aggregation compared with a standard metric one.
CORE CREATION IN GALAXIES AND HALOS VIA SINKING MASSIVE OBJECTS

We perform a detailed investigation into the disruption of central cusps via the transfer of energy from sinking massive objects. Constant density inner regions form at the radius where the enclosed mass approximately matches the mass of the infalling body. We explore parameter space using numerical simulations and give an empirical relation for the size of the resulting core within structures that have different initial cusp slopes. We find that infalling bodies always stall at the edge of these newly formed cores, experiencing no dynamical friction over many dynamical times. As applications, we consider the resulting decrease in the dark matter annihilation flux due to centrally destroyed cusps, and we present a new theory for the formation of close binary nuclei—the “stalled binary” model. We focus on one particularly interesting binary nucleus system, the dwarf spheroidal galaxy VCC 128 which is dark matter dominated at all radii. We show that its nuclei would rapidly coalesce within a few million years if it has a central dark matter cusp slope steeper than r−1. However, if its initial dark matter cusp is slightly shallower than a logslope of −0.75 at ∼0.1% of the virial radius, then the sinking nuclei naturally create a core equal to their observed separation and stall. This is close to the logslope measured in a recent billion particle cold dark matter halo simulation.
Developing microbubble-nanodroplet composites for enhanced hydrophobic drug delivery

The modernisation of the pharmaceutical industry together with the sophistication of drug screening protocols have lead to a dramatic increase in the number of therapeutic agents developed annually. As per 2017, there are almost 1500 FDA approved anticancer drugs. Treatments with many of those are impaired by their toxicity, pharmacokinetic profile, reduced bioavailability or poor water solubility. In an effort to improve patient experience whilst offering the most effective anticancer treatment, numerous drug delivery vehicles have been developed in recent years. These systems often encapsulate the drug to prevent its degradation and help reduce the required doses by increasing the specificity of the treatments. Drug hydrophobicity presents an added challenge for the design of drug delivery systems, as they must be capable of transporting the therapeutic agents whilst preventing their agglomeration. This project has been concerned with the design of a delivery system for hydrophobic drugs. The microbubble-nanodroplets (MB-LONDs) architecture consists of an echogenic MB decorated with LONDs, which attach to the shell of the MB via biotin-NeutrAvidin chemistry. The LONDs are able to encapsulate hydrophobic drugs in their oil core, keeping them away from the aqueous solution and thus preventing drug agglomeration and degradation. The MB acts as a vehicle for the LONDs, and its ultrasound properties can be used for both imaging and controlling the release of the LONDs. A number of biocompatible oils were chosen and characterised in terms of their light absorption and emission properties, as well as their ability to solvate a number of hydrophobic drugs and drug mimics. Informed by the results obtained in this study squalane, triacetin and tripropionin were chosen as model oils for subsequent experiments on LOND formation. LONDs were produced in a two-step process, and generally exhibited sizes between 80 - 300 nm with good stability for at least 6 weeks when stored at 4 C. Encapsulation of the hydrophobic drug CA4 in triacetin and tripropionin LONDs was shown to be possible, with an encapsulation effciency of at least 76% in the case of tripropionin LONDs. To better understand the attachment of LONDs onto the MB shells, the attachment of LONDs to model membranes was investigated. This study explored three different attachment chemistries, namely the biotin-NeutrAvidin, maleimide-thiol and pyridyl-thiol. The results revealed the viability of the LONDs attachment using the different linkers, but also pointed to the existence of a high number of non-specific interactions between the LONDs and the membranes. The assembly of MB-LONDs was performed by a number of methods and with different LOND types. MB-LONDs prepared in a two-step process on-chip exhibited average sizes around 2 um, good stability over 2 h at 37 C and were found to be US responsive.
Recanalization and reuse of early occluded radial artery within 6 days after previous transradial diagnostic procedure

Late radial artery (RA) thrombosis occurs in 3–9% after transradial interventions. RA occlusion has made this approach unsuitable for repeat interventions and obviated the need for alternative vascular access for catheterization, e.g., left RA (with certain risk of bilateral RA occlusion) or femoral artery with its shortcomings and, sometimes, life‐threatening complications requiring surgical treatment (large groin hematoma, arterio‐venous fistula or false aneurysm, retroperitoneal hemorrhage). We demonstrate the possibility of retrograde RA recanalization, dilatation, and restoration of the RA patency within 6 days after first transradial coronary diagnostic catheterization complicated with acute RA occlusion. Thus we were able to recanalize previously occluded RA and reuse it for repeat transradial coronary interventions. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Suppression of Chronic Ventricular Arrhythmias with Propranolol

The antiarrhythmic efficacy of propranolol was evaluated in 32 patients with chronic high frequency ventricular arrhythmias in a placebo-controlled protocol. After a placebo control period, propranolol was begun and the dosage increased sequentially until arrhythmia suppression was achieved, side effects appeared, or a maximum dosage of 960 mg/day was reached. Computerized analysis of ambulatory recordings was used to quantify the arrhythmias. Twenty-four patients had 70-100% arrhythmia suppression at plasma levels ranging from 12-1100 ng/ml (end of dosing interval). Eight patients in this group had frequent episodes of ventricular tachycardia that were totally suppressed at or below the dosage that produced ⩽70% suppression of ventricular ectopic depolarizations (VEDs). A biphasic dose-response curve was seen in five patients who responded with a decrease in arrhythmia frequency in the lower ranges of dosages but had increased frequency of ectopic rhythms as the dosage was increased above the optimal level. Only one-third of patients responded at dosages ⩽160 mg/day. However, with dosages of 200-640 mg/day, an additional 40% responded. Propranolol appears to control ventricular arrhythmias safely and effectively in many patients. The finding that the antiarrhythmic effect in many patients required plasma concentrations greater than those that produce substantial f-adrenergic blockade raises a question whether blockade of cardiac d receptors can directly account for all of the antiarrhythmic actions of propranolol.
Postoperative Delirium in a Substudy of Cardiothoracic Surgical Patients in the BAG-RECALL Clinical Trial

BACKGROUND:Postoperative delirium in the intensive care unit (ICU) is a frequent complication after cardiac or thoracic surgery and is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. METHODS:In this single-center substudy of the BAG-RECALL trial (NCT00682825), we screened patients after cardiac or thoracic surgery in the ICU twice daily for delirium using the Confusion Assessment Method for the ICU. The primary outcome was the incidence of delirium in patients who had been randomized to intraoperative Bispectral Index (BIS)-guided and end-tidal anesthetic concentration-guided depth of anesthesia protocols. As a secondary analysis, a Bayesian stochastic search variable selection strategy was used to rank a field of candidate risk factors for delirium, followed by binary logistic regression. RESULTS:Of 310 patients assessed, 28 of 149 (18.8%) in the BIS group and 45 of 161 (28.0%) in the end-tidal anesthetic concentration group developed postoperative delirium in the ICU (odds ratio 0.60, 95% confidence interval, 0.35–1.02, P= 0.058). Low average volatile anesthetic dose, intraoperative transfusion, ASA physical status, and European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation were identified as independent predictors of delirium. CONCLUSIONS:A larger randomized study should determine whether brain monitoring with BIS or an alternative method decreases delirium after cardiac or thoracic surgery. The association between low anesthetic concentration and delirium is a surprising finding and could reflect that patients with poor health are both more sensitive to the effects of volatile anesthetic drugs and are also more likely to develop postoperative delirium. Investigation of candidate methods to prevent delirium should be prioritized in view of the established association between postoperative delirium and adverse patient outcomes.
Chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension: animal models

Chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) is a life-threatening disease due to pulmonary artery obstruction by persistent organised clots related to one or more episodes of acute pulmonary embolism. To date, the pathogenesis of CTEPH remains unexplained. Pulmonary endarterectomy removes obstruction from pulmonary vessels and can cure patients. However, some unreachable distal pulmonary obstruction and/or associated distal pulmonary vasculopathy could induce persistent pulmonary hypertension, the main postoperative complication. The pathophysiology of CTEPH is not fully understood and improving knowledge of this disease could improve our future surgical and medical management. Many attempts, conducted over several decades, have failed to reproduce this chronic disease in animals. However, several animal models have provided insights into the pathophysiology and pathogenesis of CTEPH. Here, we review all the animal models that have improved the comprehension of CTEPH and hold promise for further investigations. This short review analyses strengths and weaknesses of all animal models available to study the pathophysiology of CTEPH.
Short-term variability of pure-tone thresholds obtained with TDH-39P earphones

Abstract Objective: To estimate the short-term variability and correlates of variability in pure-tone thresholds obtained using audiometric equipment designed for occupational use, and to examine the justification for excluding 8 kHz as a mandatory threshold in occupational hearing conservation programs. Method: Pure-tone thresholds and other hearing-related tests (e.g. noise dosimetry, otoscopy, middle-ear assessment) were conducted with a group of 527 adults between 20 and 69 years of age. Five measurement visits were completed by participants within 14 days. Results: The 50% critical difference boundaries were − 5 and 0 dB at 4 kHz and below and − 5 and 5 dB at 6 and 8 kHz. The likelihood of spurious notches due to test-retest variability was substantially lower than the likelihood of failing to detect a notched configuration when present. Correlates of variability included stimulus frequency, baseline threshold, acoustic reflectance of the ear, average noise exposure during the previous eight hours, age, and the tester's level of education in audiology. Conclusion: The short-term variability in 8-kHz pure-tone thresholds obtained with the TDH-39P earphone was slightly greater than at other frequencies, but this difference was not large enough to justify the disadvantages stemming from the inability to detect a 6-kHz notch.
Independent Vector Analysis: Identification Conditions and Performance Bounds

Recently, an extension of independent component analysis (ICA) from one to multiple datasets, termed independent vector analysis (IVA), has been a subject of significant research interest. IVA has also been shown to be a generalization of Hotelling's canonical correlation analysis. In this paper, we provide the identification conditions for a general IVA formulation, which accounts for linear, nonlinear, and sample-to-sample dependencies. The identification conditions are a generalization of previous results for ICA and for IVA when samples are independently and identically distributed. Furthermore, a principal aim of IVA is identification of dependent sources between datasets. Thus, we provide additional conditions for when the arbitrary ordering of the estimated sources can be common across datasets. Performance bounds in terms of the Cramér-Rao lower bound are also provided for demixing matrices and interference to source ratio. The performance of two IVA algorithms are compared to the theoretical bounds.
Continue Measurement and Analysis of Geologically Induced Clutter in Seafloor Scattering

Abstract : The long-term goals of this effort are to: Characterize acoustic clutter in a manner that will lead to its mitigation. Improve the understanding of the effects of seafloor morphology and composition on scattering and clutter. Improve geo-acoustic parameter extraction from reverberation data. Improve our understanding of the multi-static physical mechanisms (below 5kHz) which scatter incident energy into a receiver and which can possess target-like characteristics (clutter). Construct suitable current high fidelity reverberation and scattering models for model/data comparison and inversion.