Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of ADCs using a non-iterative procedure

This paper describes procedures to obtain optimum error models for ADCs using a non-iterative technique. The goal of "phase-plane" compensation for ADCs is to determine the error which is introduced by a converter as a function of the ADC state and the (estimated) slope of the input signal. Past calibration schemes have been frustrated by uncertainties about the input calibration signal. In this paper, the error characteristic is expressed as a linear combination of a set of basis functions, which is then optimised to minimize the harmonic distortion in the output sample sequence. Degradation in performance due to inaccurate estimates of the input signal is avoided. The theories developed in this paper are applied to an 8-bit ADC sampling at 204.8 MSPS. Experimental results show that dynamic range performance can be improved by as much as 12 dB over the Nyquist band. A further interesting result is that an error function measured for one ADC is found to work equally well for another ADC taken from the same production run. The errors determined are thus found to be unique to the ADC design and production, and not to the test and representation methods. It is believed that this is the first time that results of this nature have been reported in the literature. <<ETX>>
Correlates of self-reported colorectal cancer screening accuracy in a multi-specialty medical group practice.

PURPOSE We assessed whether accuracy of self-reported screening for colorectal cancer (CRC) varied by respondent characteristics or healthcare utilization. METHODS From 2005 to 2007, 857 respondents aged 51 - 74 were recruited from a multi-specialty medical group practice to answer a questionnaire about their CRC screening (CRCS) behaviors. Self-reports were compared with administrative and medical records to assess concordance, sensitivity, specificity, and report-to-records ratios for overall CRCS (fecal occult blood test, sigmoidoscopy, and/or colonoscopy). RESULTS Concordance was good (≥0.8 to <0.9) or fair (≥0.7 to <0.8) for most subgroups; respondents with >5 visits outside the clinic had poor (<0.7) concordance. Sensitivity estimates were mostly excellent (≥0.9) or good but poor for respondents whose healthcare provider did not advise a specific CRCS test. Specificity was poor for the following respondents: 65+ years, males, college graduates, family history of CRC, >5 visits outside of the clinic, or whose healthcare provider advised a specific CRCS test. Respondents 65+ years and with >5 outside visits over-reported CRCS. CONCLUSIONS With few exceptions, self-reports of CRCS in an insured population is reasonably accurate across subgroups. More work is needed to replicate these findings in diverse settings and populations to better understand subgroup differences and improve measures of CRCS.
Evaluation of macular choroidal thickness using spectral‐domain optical coherence tomography in patients with obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome: comment

We read with interest the article from Bayhan et al., which assessed changes in choroidal thickness (CT) with obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS). The authors reported that patients with OSAS had thinner CT nasal to the fovea. When comparing CT between different groups of patients, it is important to consider the topographic variation of the choroid. One potential limitation of this study is that the authors measured point CT measurements nasally and temporally along a horizontal Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) B-scan. In order to fully appreciate the effects of OSAS on CT, it would be interesting to know whether there were corresponding changes in CT in the superior and inferior regions of the macula along a vertical OCT B-scan. In addition, the choroid is a complex three-dimensional structure with a highly interconnected network of blood vessels. The disadvantage of point thickness measurements is that they can be influenced to a greater extent by local changes in CT or irregularities in the choriod–scleral border, compared with mean thickness measurements. Hence, measuring mean CT and choroidal volume using the Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study grid will provide more comprehensive information of the change of choroidal topography due to OSAS than single point thickness measurements. The error of manual measurements should also be determined to differentiate clinical change from measurement variability. It has been reported from a study regarding the repeatability of manual measurements of CT in healthy subjects imaged by spectral-domain OCT using the enhanced depth imaging technique that a subfoveal CT change of more than 32μm is likely to exceed inter-observer variability. In the current study, the differences of
Experimental investigation and optimization of machining parameters for sustainable machining

ABSTRACT A detailed investigation on the effects of cutting parameters and different cooling environments on machinability of austenitic stainless steel AISI 304 is presented in this study. The need for sustainable manufacturing and better surface quality urged to explore the merits of cryogenic cooling over the other conventional cooling techniques. The end milling experiments were designed based on three parameter and three-level design considering dry, wet, and cryogenic machining environments to have a comparative study. The machinability studies such as surface roughness, tool wear, cutting forces, chip morphology, and chip reduction coefficient were investigated and compared with different machining environments. The machining parameters were optimized using Taguchi-based grey relational analysis. The cryogenic machining had the most influence on milling of AISI 304 steel and resulted in the reduction of cutting forces, surface roughness, and chip reduction coefficient in comparison with the conventional wet and dry machining.
Investigating Thought Disorder in Schizophrenia: Evidence for Pathological Activation

Background Previous research has yielded evidence for enhanced semantic priming in formal thought-disordered schizophrenia patients, a result that fits well with the hypothesis of disinhibited processes of spreading activation in this population. Objective The current study examined whether hyper priming among schizophrenia patients is an outcome of further spreading of activation of a node or a result of farther activation of nodes in the semantic network. We also try to shed light on the fate of this activation. Methods The present study tested this hypothesis by using semantic and identical priming in two different experiments. SOA (stimulus onset asynchrony) was manipulated (240 ms vs. 740 ms) within block. It is assumed that among healthy individuals, performance relies on a balance between activation and inhibition processes, contrary to in schizophrenic individuals. In order to examine this hypothesis, we compared formal thought-disordered schizophrenia patients, non thought-disordered schizophrenia patients, and healthy controls. Results For thought-disordered schizophrenia patients, we found a large positive semantic effect and identical priming effect (129 ms and 154 ms, respectively) only with short SOA. SOA and type of priming did not modulate priming effects in the control groups. Conclusions This result supports the claim that there is a lack of inhibitory processes among thought-disordered patients. Hyper priming in the thought-disorder group may be an outcome of hyper activation followed by rapid decay below baseline threshold.
On Characterizing High-Resolution SAR Imagery Using Kernel-Based Mixture Speckle Models

At high resolution, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) speckle tends to be non-Gaussian distributed and diversely textured. Many parametric speckle distributions have been developed to fit specific in-scene content. In contrast, mixture models offer an empirical approximation with the potential to fit arbitrary variations. In this letter, we investigate the feasibility and the efficiency of using finite mixture models of an identical parametric kernel to characterize the wide range of high-resolution speckle. We evaluate and compare the capability of mixture fitting with gamma, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal{K}$</tex-math></inline-formula>, and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathcal{G}^{0}$</tex-math></inline-formula> kernels against various scene types. Despite the characterization disparity among these base kernels, we show that using any of them in a mixture setting rapidly improves speckle modeling. Finite gamma mixtures, even with a simple kernel form, are applicable to high-resolution SAR imagery for consistent description of complex textured speckle variations.
An Integrated Switching DC-DC Converter With Dual-Mode Pulse-Train/PWM Control

This brief presents an integrated switching converter with a dual-mode control scheme. A pulse-train (PT) control employing a combination of four pulse control patterns is proposed to achieve optimal regulation performance under various operation scenarios. Meanwhile, a high-frequency pulsewidth modulation (PWM) control is adopted to ensure low output ripples and avoid digital limit cycling in steady state. The converter was fabricated with a 0.35- mum digital CMOS n-well process. The entire die area, including the on-chip pads and power devices, is 1.31 mm2 . Experimental results show that, in the steady state, the output voltage is well regulated at 1.5 V with plusmn12.5-mV ripples in the PWM mode. The measured maximum efficiency is 91%, and the efficiency stays above 70% within the entire 500-mW power range. In transient measurements, with a 100% load step change from 50 to 100 mA, the output voltage of the converter settles within 345 ns due to the fast response of the PT control, with a maximum voltage variation of 164 mV. The converter functions well when the input supply voltage frequently varies between 2.2 and 3.3 V, with a line regulation of 29.1 mV/V.
Advancement of women in dental education: trends and strategies.

Dr. Sinkford is Associate Executive Director and Director, Center for Equity and Diversity; Dr. Valachovic is Executive Director; and Ms. Harrison is Director, Program Services, Center for Equity and Diversity, all at the American Dental Education Association. Direct correspondence and requests for reprints to Dr. Jeanne Sinkford, American Dental Education Association, 1625 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. , Washington, DC 20036; 202-667-9433 phone; 202-667-0642 fax; sinkfordj@adea.org.
Patterns of Emotion Attribution are Affected in Patients with Schizophrenia

Abstract Deficits in facial affect recognition have been repeatedly reported in schizophrenia patients. The hypothesis that this deficit is caused by poorly differentiated cognitive representation of facial expressions was tested in this study. To this end, performance of patients with schizophrenia and controls was compared in a new emotion-rating task. This novel approach allowed the participants to rate each facial expression at different times in terms of different emotion labels. Results revealed that patients tended to give higher ratings to emotion labels that did not correspond to the portrayed emotion, especially in the case of negative facial expressions (p < .001, η 2 = .131). Although patients and controls gave similar ratings when the emotion label matched with the facial expression, patients gave higher ratings on trials with "incorrect" emotion labels (p s < .05). Comparison of patients and controls in a summary index of expressive ambiguity showed that patients perceived angry, fearful and happy faces as more emotionally ambiguous than did the controls (p < .001, η 2 = .135). These results are consistent with the idea that the cognitive representation of emotional expressions in schizophrenia is characterized by less clear boundaries and a less close correspondence between facial configurations and emotional states.
Topographical effects of Gutta Percha immersed in different concentration of Sodium Hypochlorite disinfection at different time interval: An atomic force microscopy study

Background: Aim of the study to evaluate the topographical effects of more than 5 min immersion of gutta-percha in different concentration of sodium hypochlorite with the help of Atomic Force Microscope. Materials and Methods: This investigation was carried out on four standardized gutta percha (GP) cones (ISO size 60). The gutta-percha cones were cut 3mm from their tip and then immersed in 0.5%, 2.5%, 5.25% NaOCL and de-ionized water for 2mins, 5mins and 10 mins immersion time interval. De-ionized water served as a control. The topographical analysis in atomic force microscope (AFM) were performed for each cone on twelve different points (n=12) located between 1 and 2 mm from the cone tip after every immersion time period. After the immersion, the samples were thoroughly rinsed with 5 ml of distilled water to remove sodium /chloride crystals, and the region around the cone was dried with filter paper. Results: The surface roughness of the gutta percha was evaluated by using AFM. The mean values of root mean square (RMS) for different groups were calculated and subjected to statistical analysis. Statistical analysis was done by one way Anova test & multiple comparison with Post–hoc Tukeys test. There was a statistically significant difference in the RMS values between 0.5%, 2.5% and 5.25% NaOCL groups (p<0.05) but there was no statistically significant difference between 0.5%NaOCL and control group (p>0.05). Conclusion: Sodium hypochlorite immersion significantly decreased the RMS values of gutta-percha as the concentration of sodium hypochlorite was increased from 0.5% to 5.25%. 5.25% NaOCl immersion till 5 minutes decreased surface roughness but roughness increased significantly at 10 min with 5.25% NaOCl.
Effect of Hospital Volume on Surgical Outcomes After Pancreaticoduodenectomy: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Objective:The aim of the study was to evaluate the relationship between hospital volume and outcome after pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD). Summary Background Data:Previous reviews for the hospital volume-outcome relationship after pancreatic resection were limited owing to clinical or methodological heterogeneity, resulting from differences in surgical procedures and high-volume hospital (HVH) definitions across studies. Methods:We conducted a rigorous meta-analysis on the influence of hospital volume on various outcomes after PD using strict inclusion criteria and single cutoff values for HVHs. Results:Thirteen studies based on nationwide databases from 11 countries, and including 58,023 patients in total, were included in this study. The overall pooled odds ratio (OR) for mortality favoring the HVH group was 2.37 [95% confidence interval (CI): 1.95–2.88] with high heterogeneity (I2 = 63%). We therefore classified all included studies into categories according to the cutoff values for HVH as defined in each individual study. The pooled OR for each category of 1 to 19, 20 to 29, and ≥30 PDs per year was 1.94, 2.34, and 4.05, respectively. There were significant differences among these categories (I2 = 58.9%, P = 0.09). The 2 former categories showed no statistical interstudy heterogeneities. The data did not suggest publication bias. These trends persisted in all subgroup analyses. Postoperative length of stay in the HVH group was significantly shorter with mild interstudy heterogeneity. Conclusions:This meta-analysis included studies from different countries with disparate health care systems and provided strong evidence for an inverse association between higher hospital volume and lower mortality after PD. Variations in HVH cutoff values across studies majorly influenced the overall heterogeneity.
Personal‐discount sensitivity prediction for mobile coupon conversion optimization

The high adoption of smart mobile devices among consumers provides an opportunity for e‐commerce retailers to increase their sales by recommending consumers with real time, personalized coupons that take into account the specific contextual situation of the consumer. Although context‐aware recommender systems (CARS) have been widely analyzed, personalized pricing or discount optimization in recommender systems to improve recommendations' accuracy and commercial KPIs has hardly been researched. This article studies how to model user‐item personalized discount sensitivity and incorporate it into a real time contextual recommender system in such a way that it can be integrated into a commercial service. We propose a novel approach for modeling context‐aware user‐item personalized discount sensitivity in a sparse data scenario and present a new CARS algorithm that combines coclustering and random forest classification (CBRF) to incorporate the personalized discount sensitivity. We conducted an experimental study with real consumers and mobile discount coupons to evaluate our solution. We compared the CBRF algorithm to the widely used context‐aware matrix factorization (CAMF) algorithm. The experimental results suggest that incorporating personalized discount sensitivity significantly improves the consumption prediction accuracy and that the suggested CBRF algorithm provides better prediction results for this use case.
Microbes – friends and foes of sugarcane

Sugarcane is an important cash crop for many countries because it is a major source of several products including sugar and bioethanol. To obtain maximum yields there is a need to apply large quantities of chemical fertilizers.Worldwide yields are also severely affected by more than sixty diseases, mostly caused by fungi but viruses, phytoplasmas, nematodes and other pests can also damage this crop. For most of these diseases, chemical control is not available and breeders are struggling with the development of pest resistant varieties. Many members of the grass family Poaceae establish associations with beneficial microbes which promote their growth by direct and indirect mechanisms. They can be used as means to reduce the need for chemical fertilizer and to minimize the impacts of pathogen invasion. This review highlights the diversity of the microbes associated with sugarcane and the role of beneficial microbes for growth promotion and biocontrol. More extensive use of beneficial microbes will help the sugarcane grower not only to reduce the use of chemical fertilizers but also minimize the disease. In this paper, a brief description of both the non‐pathogenic and pathogenic microbes associated with sugarcane is provided. Future prospects for the expanded use of beneficial microbes for sugarcane are also discussed and detailed herein.
Lymph node granulomas in immunoglobulin G4‐related disease

Immunoglobulin (Ig)G4‐related disease (IgG4‐RD) is an increasingly recognized fibroinflammatory condition that commonly exhibits multisystem involvement, with localized (e.g. inflammatory pseudotumours that can mimic malignancy) or diffuse (leading to organ dysfunction) patterns of tissue involvement. The 2012 Boston criteria have standardized the histopathological approach to the diagnosis of IgG4‐RD and require one or more of the cardinal morphological features with prominence of IgG4+ plasma cells and an IgG4+/IgG+ plasma cell ratio of at least 40%. The relative prevalence of the morphological criteria varies between anatomical sites, but granulomas are rarely found and, indeed, their presence would usually deter a pathologist from making this diagnosis. The aim was to characterize two cases of IgG4‐RD in which granulomas were present and to highlight this as an unusual feature of the condition.
A titration model for evaluating calcium hydroxide removal techniques

Objective Calcium hydroxide (Ca(OH)2) has been used in endodontics as an intracanal medicament due to its antimicrobial effects and its ability to inactivate bacterial endotoxin. The inability to totally remove this intracanal medicament from the root canal system, however, may interfere with the setting of eugenol-based sealers or inhibit bonding of resin to dentin, thus presenting clinical challenges with endodontic treatment. This study used a chemical titration method to measure residual Ca(OH)2 left after different endodontic irrigation methods. Material and Methods Eighty-six human canine roots were prepared for obturation. Thirty teeth were filled with known but different amounts of Ca(OH)2 for 7 days, which were dissolved out and titrated to quantitate the residual Ca(OH)2 recovered from each root to produce a standard curve. Forty-eight of the remaining teeth were filled with equal amounts of Ca(OH)2 followed by gross Ca(OH)2 removal using hand files and randomized treatment of either: 1) Syringe irrigation; 2) Syringe irrigation with use of an apical file; 3) Syringe irrigation with added 30 s of passive ultrasonic irrigation (PUI), or 4) Syringe irrigation with apical file and PUI (n=12/group). Residual Ca(OH)2 was dissolved with glycerin and titrated to measure residual Ca(OH)2 left in the root. Results No method completely removed all residual Ca(OH)2. The addition of 30 s PUI with or without apical file use removed Ca(OH)2 significantly better than irrigation alone. Conclusions This technique allowed quantification of residual Ca(OH)2. The use of PUI (with or without apical file) resulted in significantly lower Ca(OH)2 residue compared to irrigation alone.
ab 0 cd Defying the odds : initial conditions , reforms and growth in the first decade of transition

This paper investigates the relative importance of three sets of factors – initial conditions, macroeconomic stabilisation and structural reforms – as determinants of growth in transition economies during the first 10 years. The paper has two main results. First, average growth over the last 10 years was substantially determined by initial conditions, both directly and indirectly through their impact on structural reforms. Second, controlling for different starting points, there is strong evidence that reforms pay off, while the effect of initial conditions tends to diminish over time. In addition, we find that stabilisation measures are important for growth but there is little evidence of a feedback effect from growth to reforms. JEL Classification Number: O57; P24
Syndromic Approach to Parkinson's Disease: Role of Functional Imaging

Current evidence from monogenic Parkinson's disease (PD) supports the view that PD is a clinical syndrome, rather than a single disease entity, and that the heterogeneity of PD indeed reflects different pathogenesis. Recent developments in functional imaging have enabled the in vivo assessment of cellular and molecular pathology of PD with respect to temporal and topographical patterns. We propose that this new technology will be useful for linking monogenic and sporadic PD, and thus, for classifying PD based on the pathogenesis. It will be also useful in clinico-genetic studies exploring susceptibility factors and at-risk groups, which are important for neuroprotective treatment when it becomes available.
∑oφoς: Forward Secure Searchable Encryption

Searchable Symmetric Encryption aims at making possible searching over an encrypted database stored on an untrusted server while keeping privacy of both the queries and the data, by allowing some small controlled leakage to the server. Recent work shows that dynamic schemes -- in which the data is efficiently updatable -- leaking some information on updated keywords are subject to devastating adaptative attacks breaking the privacy of the queries. The only way to thwart this attack is to design forward private schemes whose update procedure does not leak if a newly inserted element matches previous search queries. This work proposes Sophos as a forward private SSE scheme with performance similar to existing less secure schemes, and that is conceptually simpler (and also more efficient) than previous forward private constructions. In particular, it only relies on trapdoor permutations and does not use an ORAM-like construction. We also explain why Sophos is an optimal point of the security/performance tradeoff for SSE. Finally, an implementation and evaluation results demonstrate its practical efficiency.