Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Low-power color TFT LCD display for hand-held embedded systems

An LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) is a standard display device for hand-held embedded systems. Today, color TFT (Thin-Film Transistor) LCDs are common even in cost-effective equipments. An LCD display system is composed of an LCD panel, a frame buffer memory, an LCD and frame buffer controller, and a backlight inverter and lamp. All of them are heavy power consumers, and their portion becomes much more dominant when running interactive applications. This is because interactive applications are often triggered by human inputs and thus result in a lot of slack time in the CPU and memory system, which can be effectively used for dynamic power management. In this paper, we introduce low-power LCD display schemes as a system-level approach. We accurately characterize the energy consumption at the component level and minimize energy consumption of each component without appreciable display quality degradation. We develop several techniques such as variable-duty-ratio refresh, dynamic-color-depth control and backlight luminance dimming with brightness compensation or contrast enhancement.
Case-fatality of adult tetanus at Jimma University Teaching Hospital, Southwest Ethiopia.

BACKGROUND Tetanus remains a major health problem in Ethiopia like in most other developing countries. OBJECTIVES To assess the clinical presentation, complications and outcome of tetanus patients. METHODS In this retrospective study, patients (age > 13 years) who were admitted to Jimma University Teaching Hospital from 1996 to 2009 were included. RESULTS Data from 171 patients were analyzed (129 males, 42 females, mean age 33 years). The mean hospital stay for patients discharged cured and deceased was 21.5 ± 12 and 6.5 ± 6.7 days, respectively. None of our patients was immunized for tetanus. Tracheostomy and mechanical ventilation (MV) was done in 10.5% and 11 %, respectively. The case-fatality was 38%. The mean annual admission and case-fatality increased over the study period from 9 to 20.5 and from 21 % to 51%, respectively. Establishment of intensive care unit (ICU) did not improve mortality due to infrequent tracheostomy and MV. CONCLUSIONS The case-fatality was high like in most other studies and the majority of patients died in the first few days indicating that adequate respiratory support was not given. Establishment of ICU did not improve mortality. Tetanus can be prevented by vaccination and if it occurs it needs well equipped ICU.
Full-FACE Poetry Generation

We describe a corpus-based poetry generation system which uses templates to construct poems according to given constraints on rhyme, meter, stress, sentiment, word frequency and word similarity. Moreover, the software constructs a mood for the day by analysing newspaper articles; uses this to determine both an article to base a poem on and a template for the poem; creates an aesthetic based on relevance to the article, lyricism, sentiment and flamboyancy; searches for an instantiation of the template which maximises the aesthetic; and provides a commentary for the whole process to add value to the creative act. We describe the processes behind this approach, present some experimental results which helped infine tuning, and provide some illustrative poems and commentaries. We argue that this is the first poetry system which generates examples, forms concepts, invents aesthetics and frames its work, and so can be assessed favourably with respect to the FACE model for comparing creative systems.
Heterogenous Nature of Flow-Mediated Dilatation in Human Conduit Arteries In Vivo: Relevance to Endothelial Dysfunction in Hypercholesterolemia

Abstract — Flow-mediated dilatation (FMD) of conduit arteries is dependent on an intact endothelium, although the mechanisms are not fully understood. Using high-resolution ultrasound, we examined the role of endothelial mediators in radial artery dilatation in response to transient (short period of reactive hyperemia) and sustained (prolonged period of reactive hyperemia, hand warming, or an incremental infusion of acetylcholine into the distal radial artery) hyperemia. After short episodes of reactive hyperemia, FMD was abolished by local infusion of the nitric oxide synthesis inhibitor NGmonomethyl-l-arginine (5.3±1.2% versus 0.7±0.7%, P <0.001). In contrast, basal vessel diameter and dilatation after prolonged episodes of reactive hyperemia, hand warming, and distal infusion of acetylcholine were not attenuated by nitric oxide synthesis inhibition. Inhibition of cyclooxygenase or local autonomic nervous system blockade also had no effect on FMD. Patients with hypercholesterolemia exhibited reduced FMD in response to transient hyperemia, but the response to sustained hyperemia was normal. These data suggest heterogeneity of endothelial responses to blood flow that are dependent on the characteristics of the flow stimulus. Dilatation after brief episodes of hyperemia is mediated by release of nitric oxide, whereas dilatation during sustained hyperemia is unaffected by NO synthesis inhibition. Hypercholesterolemia seems to differentially affect these pathways with impairment of the nitric oxide–dependent pathway and preservation of non nitric oxide–mediated dilatation to sustained flow stimuli.
Locoweed (Oxytropis sericea)—induced Lesions in Mule Deer (Odocoileius hemionus)

Locoweed poisoning has been reported in wildlife, but it is unknown whether mule deer (Odocoileius hemionus)are susceptible. In areas that are heavily infested with locoweed, deer and elk (Cervus elaphus nelsoni)have developed a spongiform encephalopathy, chronic wasting disease (CWD). Although these are distinct diseases, no good comparisons are available. The purpose of this study was to induce and describe chronic locoweed poisoning in deer and compare it with the lesions of CWD. Two groups of four mule deer were fed either a complete pelleted ration or a similar ration containing 15% locoweed (Oxytropis sericea). Poisoned deer lost weight and developed a scruffy, dull coat. They developed reluctance to move, and movement produced subtle intention tremors. Poisoned deer had extensive vacuolation of visceral tissues, which was most severe in the exocrine pancreas. Thyroid follicular epithelium, renal tubular epithelium, and macrophages in many tissues were mildly vacuolated. The exposed deer also had mild neuronal swelling and cytoplasmic vacuolation that was most obvious in Purkinje cells. Axonal swelling and dystrophy was found in many white tracts, but it was most severe in the cerebellar peduncles and the gracilis and cuneate fasciculi. These findings indicate that deer are susceptible to locoweed poisoning, but the lesions differ in severity and distribution from those of other species. The histologic changes of locoweed poisoning are distinct from those of CWD in deer; however, the clinical presentation of locoweed poisoning in deer is similar. Histologic and immunohistochemical studies are required for a definitive diagnosis.
Growth Hormone Induces Low-Density Lipoprotein Clearance but not Bile Acid Synthesis in Humans

Objective—Growth hormone (GH) induces hepatic low-density lipoprotein (LDL) receptors and lowers plasma cholesterol. We characterized the influence of GH treatment on plasma LDL clearance in normal humans and investigated the relative role of LDL receptor (LDLR) activity and stimulation of bile acid synthesis in subjects with different LDLR expression. Methods and Results—Plasma clearance of autologous 125I-LDL was measured before and during 3 weeks of treatment with GH (0.1 IU/kg per day) in 9 healthy young males. Plasma LDL cholesterol was reduced by 13% and the fractional catabolic rate of LDL increased by 27%. More marked changes were seen in a patient with hypopituitarism substituted with GH (0.07 IU/kg per day) for 3 months. In a second study, GH dose-dependently reduced LDL cholesterol and increased Lp(a) levels in 3 groups of males: younger and elderly healthy subjects and heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (FH). No effect on bile acid synthesis measured by the plasma marker 7&agr;-hydroxy-4-cholesten-3-one was observed. In an LDLR-deficient FH homozygote, LDL cholesterol was not affected by GH. Conclusions—GH treatment reduces plasma LDL cholesterol by inducing LDL clearance. In humans, LDLR expression is a prerequisite for this effect, whereas it is not related to stimulation of bile acid synthesis.
Agents, bookmarks and clicks: a topical model of web navigation

Analysis has shown that the standard Markovian model of Web navigation is a poor predictor of actual Web traffic. Using empirical data, we characterize several properties of Web traffic that cannot be reproduced with Markovian models but can be explained by an agent-based model that adds several realistic browsing behaviors. First, agents maintain bookmark lists used as teleportation targets. Second, agents can retreat along visited links, a branching mechanism that can reproduce behavior such the back button and tabbed browsing. Finally, agents are sustained by visiting pages of topical interest, with adjacent pages being related. This modulates the production of new sessions, recreating heterogeneous session lengths. The resulting model reproduces individual behaviors from empirical data, reconciling the narrowly focused browsing patterns of individual users with the extreme heterogeneity of aggregate traffic measurements, and leading the way to more sophisticated, realistic, and effective ranking and crawling algorithms.
Structural Parameters of Thin and Thick Disks in Edge-on Disk Galaxies

We analyze the global structure of 34 late-type, edge-on, undisturbed, disk galaxies spanning a wide range of mass. We measure structural parameters for the galaxies using two-dimensional least-squares fitting to our R-band photometry. The fits require both a thick and a thin disk to adequately fit the data. The thick disks have larger scale heights and longer scale lengths than the embedded thin disks by factors of ∼2 and ∼1.25, respectively. The observed structural parameters agree well with the properties of thick and thin disks derived from star counts in the Milky Way and from resolved stellar populations in nearby galaxies. We find that massive galaxies' luminosities are dominated by the thin disk. However, in low-mass galaxies (Vc ≲ 120 km s-1) thick disk stars contribute nearly half the luminosity and dominate the stellar mass. Thus, although low-mass dwarf galaxies appear blue, the majority of their stars are probably quite old. Our data are most easily explained by a formation scenario in which the thick disk is assembled through direct accretion of stellar material from merging satellites while the thin disk is formed from accreted gas. The baryonic fraction in the thin disk therefore constrains the gas richness of the merging pregalactic fragments. If we include the mass in H I as part of the thin disk, the thick disk contains ≲10% of the baryons in high-mass galaxies and ∼25%–30% of the baryons in low-mass galaxies. Our data, therefore, indicate that the fragments were quite gas rich at the time of merging (fgas = 75%–90%). However, because low-mass galaxies have a smaller fraction of baryons in their thin disks, the pregalactic fragments from which they assembled must have been systematically more gas poor. We believe this trend results from increased outflow due to supernova-driven winds in the lower mass pregalactic fragments. We estimate that ∼60% of the total baryonic mass in these systems was lost due to outflows. Pushing the episode of significant winds to early times allows the mass-metallicity relationship for disks to be established early, before the main disk is assembled, and obviates the difficulty in driving winds from diffuse disks with low star formation efficiencies. We discuss other implications of this scenario for solving the G dwarf problem, for predicting abundance trends in thick disks, and for removing discrepancies between semianalytic galaxy formation models and the observed colors of low-mass galaxies.
Using General Impressions to Analyze Discovered Classification Rules

One of the important problems in data mining is the evaluation of subjective interestingness of the discovered rules. Past research has found that in many real-life applications it is easy to generate a large number of rules from the database, but most of the rules are not useful or interesting to the user. Due to the large number of rules, it is difficult for the user to analyze them manually in order to identify those interesting ones. Whether a rule is of interest to a user depends on his/her existing knowledge of the domain, and his/her interests. In this paper, we propose a technique that analyzes the discovered rules against a specific type of existing knowledge, which we call general impressions, to help the user identify interesting rules. We first propose a representation language to allow general impressions to be specified. We then present some algorithms to analyze the discovered classification rules against a set of general impressions. The results of the analysis tell us which rules conform to the general impressions and which rules are unexpected. Unexpected rules are by definition interesting.
Treatment of melasma using kojic acid in a gel containing hydroquinone and glycolic acid.

BACKGROUND Melasma is difficult to clear. Many agents have been used, such as hydroquinone, and glycolic acid and glycolic acid peels, kojic acid, a tyrosinase inhibitor in the fungus Aspergilline oryzae. OBJECTIVE To see if the addition of 2% kojic acid in a gel containing 10% glycolic acid and 2% hydroquinone will improve melasma further. METHODS Forty Chinese women with epidermal melasma were treated with 2% kojic acid in a gel containing 10% glycolic acid and 2% hydroquinone on one half of the face. The other half was treated with the same application but without kojic acid. The side receiving the kojic acid was randomized. Determination of efficacy was based on clinical evaluation, photographs and self-assessment questionnaires at 4 weekly intervals until the end of the study at 12 weeks. The non-parametric Wilcoxon's rank sum test was used for statistical analysis. RESULTS All patients showed improvement in melasma on both sides of the face. The side receiving the kojic acid did better. More than half of the melasma cleared in 24/40 (60%) patients receiving kojic acid compared to 19/40 (47.5%) patients receiving the gel without kojic acid. In 2 patients, there was complete clearance of melasma, and this was on the side where kojic acid was used. Side effects include redness, stinging, and exfoliation. These were seen on both sides of the face, and they settled by the third week. CONCLUSION The addition of kojic acid to a gel containing 10% glycolic acid and 2% hydroquinone further improves melasma.
REVIEW: PART OF A SPECIAL ISSUE ON PLANT CELL WALLS Fruit softening and pectin disassembly: an overview of nanostructural pectin modifications assessed by atomic force microscopy

†Background One of the main factors that reduce fruit quality and lead to economically important losses is oversoftening. Textural changes during fruit ripening are mainly due to the dissolution of the middle lamella, the reduction of cell-to-cell adhesion and the weakening of parenchyma cell walls as a result of the action of cell wall modifying enzymes. Pectins, major components of fruit cell walls, are extensively modified during ripening. These changes include solubilization, depolymerization and the loss of neutral side chains. Recent evidence in strawberry and apple, fruits with a soft or crisp texture at ripening, suggests that pectin disassembly is a key factor in textural changes. In both these fruits, softening was reduced as result of antisense downregulation of polygalacturonase genes. Changes in pectic polymer size, composition and structure have traditionally been studied by conventional techniques, most of them relying on bulk analysis of a population of polysaccharides, and studies focusing on modifications at the nanostructural level are scarce. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) allows the study of individual polymers at high magnification and with minimal sample preparation; however, AFM has rarely been employed to analyse pectin disassembly during fruit ripening. †Scope In this review, the main features of the pectin disassembly process during fruit ripening are first discussed, and then the nanostructural characterization of fruit pectins by AFM and its relationship with texture and postharvest fruit shelf life is reviewed. In general, fruit pectins are visualized under AFM as linear chains, a few of which show long branches, and aggregates. Number- and weight-average values obtained from these images are in good agreement with chromatographic analyses. Most AFM studies indicate reductions in the length of individual pectin chains and the frequency of aggregates as the fruits ripen. Pectins extracted with sodium carbonate, supposedly located within the primary cell wall, are the most affected.
Analytical evaluation of P2P reputation systems

Despite widespread use of reputation mechanisms in P2P systems, little has been done in the area of analytical evaluation of these mechanisms. Current approaches for evaluation involve simulation and experimentation. These approaches provide evaluation of the mechanism in a few settings in which the experiment is designed; however, it is difficult to use these simulations for direct comparison of reputation mechanisms over a large number of systems and attacker models. In this paper, we present several analytical metrics and a utility-based method for evaluating reputation mechanisms. Further, we provide a case study of an evaluation of the EigenTrust reputation mechanism to demonstrate the use of these metrics and methods.
Full Predictive Cascaded Speed and Current Control of an Induction Machine

This paper presents and experimentally validates a new control scheme for electrical drive systems, named cascaded predictive speed and current control. This new strategy uses the model predictive control (MPC) concept. It has a cascaded structure like that found in field-oriented control or direct torque control. Therefore the control strategy has two loops, external and internal, both implemented with model predictive control. The external loop controls the speed, while the inner loop controls the stator currents. The inner control loop is based on Finite Control Set Model Predictive Control, and the external loop uses MPC deadbeat, making full use of the inner loop's highly dynamic response. Experimental results show that the proposed strategy has a performance that is comparable to the classical control strategies but that it is overshoot-free and provides a better time response.
On the Hyperbolicity of Small-World and Treelike Random Graphs

Hyperbolicity is a property of a graph that may be viewed as a “soft” version of a tree, and recent empirical and theoretical work has suggested that many graphs arising in Internet and related data applications have hyperbolic properties. Here we consider Gromov's notion of δ-hyperbolicity and establish several positive and negative results for small-world and treelike random graph models. First, we study the hyperbolicity of the class of Kleinberg small-world random graphs , where n is the number of vertices in the graph, d is the dimension of the underlying base grid B, and γ is the small-world parameter such that each node u in the graph connects to another node v in the graph with probability proportional to 1/dB (u, v)γ, with dB (u, v) the grid distance from u to v in the base grid B. We show that when γ=d, the parameter value allowing efficient decentralized routing in Kleinberg's small-world network,the hyperbolic δ is with probability 1−o(1) for every ϵ>0 independent of n. We see that hyperbolicity is not significantly improved in relation to graph diameter even when the long-range connections greatly improve decentralized navigation. We also show that for other values of γ, the hyperbolic δ is very close to the graph diameter, indicating poor hyperbolicity in these graphs as well. Next we study a class of treelike graphs called ringed trees that have constant hyperbolicity. We show that adding random links among the leaves in a manner similar to the small-world graph constructions may easily destroy the hyperbolicity of the graphs, except for a class of random edges added using an exponentially decaying probability function based on the ring distance among the leaves. Our study provides one of the first significant analytic results on the hyperbolicity of a rich class of random graphs, which sheds light on the relationship between hyperbolicity and navigability of random graphs, as well as on the sensitivity of hyperbolic δ to noises in random graphs.
Triggering of T cell proliferation through AIM, an activation inducer molecule expressed on activated human lymphocytes

In this report, we describe a novel activation antigen that appears very early after T cell activation and is absent in resting lymphocytes, through which agonistic proliferative signals can be triggered by mAb binding. It has been designated as activation inducer molecule (AIM) and is a disulphide-linked heterodimeric structure containing two polypeptide chains of Mr 33,000 and 27,000. The expression of AIM can be induced by different activation stimuli such as PMA, PHA, or anti-CD3 mAb, but not by the Ca2+ ionophore A23187, and it precedes the expression of other activation molecules such as 4F2 or the IL-2-R. Once AIM antigens are expressed on lymphocytes after stimulation with submitogenic doses of PMA, the binding of anti-AIM mAbs triggers a strong proliferative response. Furthermore, a comitogenic effect of the anti-AIM mAbs is exerted in the presence of either PHA or anti-CD3 mAb. The activation of lymphocytes through AIM antigens induces both IL-2 and IL-2-R receptor synthesis and is inhibited by anti-IL-2-R mAbs.