Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exploring the Performance of Select-based Internet Servers

Internet servers, Web servers, performance, select, event dispatching Several previous studies have examined techniques for improving Internet server performance by investigating and improving operating system support for event-dispatching mechanisms. These studies have been mainly motivated by the commonly held belief that the overhead incurred in obtaining network I/O events using the select system call was too high to be used in environments with high request loads and large numbers of concurrent connections. However, recent work by Chandra and Mosberger [6] shows that a properly implemented selectbased server can outperform servers that utilize new and improved event-dispatching mechanisms that are significantly more scalable than select.
Medical management of osteoarthritis of the knee and hip joints

Osteoarthritis is a common, chronic condition which requires an individualised management plan involving multiple kinds of treatment. Exercise programs and the Arthritis Self‐Management Program reduce pain and disability associated with osteoarthritis. Paracetamol is the most appropriate first‐line analgesic. Non‐steroidal anti‐inflammatory drugs may be used as second‐line analgesia on an as‐needed basis (including continuous use), but must be used with caution. Cyclo‐oxygenase‐2‐specific inhibitors are used if there are risk factors for upper‐gastrointestinal complications, but only after considering cardiovascular risk. Glucosamine sulfate is a safe and effective over‐the‐counter treatment. Intra‐articular therapies are used when others have failed.
Chronic pain conditions and depression in the Ibadan Study of Ageing

ABSTRACT Background: Chronic pain is quite common in the elderly and is often associated with comorbid depression, limitation of functioning and reduced quality of life. The aim of this study was to ascertain whether there is a differential risk of depression among persons with pain in different anatomical sites and to determine which pain conditions are independent risk factors for depression. Methods: Data are from the Ibadan Study of Ageing (ISA), a community-based longitudinal survey of persons aged 65 years and older from eight contiguous Yoruba-speaking states in Nigeria (n = 2152). Data were collected in face-to-face interviews; depression was assessed using the World Mental Health initiative version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI) while chronic pain was assessed by self-report (response rate = 74%). Results: Estimates of persistent pain (lasting more than six months), in different anatomical sites range from 1.3% to 12.8%, with the commonest being joint pains (12.8%), neck or back (spinal) pain (7.6%) and chest pain (3.0%). Significantly more pain conditions were reported by females and by respondents who were aged over 80 years. The risk for depression was higher in respondents with spinal, joint and chest pain. However, only chest pain was independently associated with depression after adjustments were made for pains at other sites and for functional disability. Conclusion: Our data suggests that, among elderly persons, there is a differential association of depression with chronic pain that is related to the anatomical site of the pain.
Image deconvolution using multigrid natural image prior and its applications

The natural image prior has been proven to be a powerful tool for image deblurring in recent years, though its performance against noise in various applications has not been thoroughly studied. In this paper, we present a multigrid natural image prior for image deconvolution that enhances its robustness against noise, and afford three applications of image deconvolution using this prior: deblurring, super-resolution, and denoising. The prior is based on a remarkable property of natural images that derivatives with different resolutions are subject to the same heavy-tailed distribution with a spatial factor. It can serve in both blind and non-blind deconvolutions. The performances of the proposed prior in different applications are demonstrated by corresponding experimental results.
Comparison of Cervical Cancer Screening Results Among 256,648 Women in Multiple Clinical Practices

In the United States, human papillomavirus (HPV) and Papanicolaou (Pap) testing (cotesting) for cervical screening in women ages 30 to 65 years is the preferred strategy, and cytology alone is acceptable. Recently, a proprietary automated test for identifying high‐risk HPV types for primary cervical screening was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. The objective of the current study was to document extensive cervical screening among these screening options.
Water Footprint of Industrial Tomato Cultivations in the Pinios River Basin: Soil Properties Interactions

Industrial tomatoes are cultivated in about 4000 ha of the Pinios river basin (central Greece), providing significant income to the farmers. In this study, the water footprint (WF) of industrial tomatoes between planting and harvest was estimated in 24 different farms for three consecutive years. The selected farms were representative of the main agro-climatic zones and soil textural classes within the river basin. Green, blue and grey WF calculations were based on datasets of the experimental plots for each farm, including irrigation water volume, meteorological, soil, and crop yield data. The results showed that the WF of tomatoes ranged from 37 to 131 m3 water/ton tomatoes with an average of 61 m3/ton. The WF variation depended mainly on crop yield, local agro-climatic and soil conditions. The green, blue, and grey WF components averaged 13, 27 and 21 m3/ton, respectively. The results reveal the importance of WF in understanding how tomato production relates to the sustainable use of freshwater and pollution at local level.
Coarse extrinsic geometry: a survey

This paper is a survey of some of the developments in coarse extrinsic geometry since its inception in the work of Gromov. Distortion, as measured by comparing the diameter of balls relative to different metrics, can be regarded as one of the simplist extrinsic notions. Results and examples concerning distorted subgroups, especially in the context of hyperbolic groups and symmetric spaces, are exposed. Other topics considered are quasiconvexity of subgroups; behaviour at infinity, or more precisely continuous extensions of embedding maps to Gromov boundaries in the context of hyperbolic groups acting by isometries on hyperbolic metric spaces; and distortion as measured using various other filling invariants.
Optical transport networks

The key technologies required for the development of optical transport networks, namely, optical fiber transmission and digital transport, which includes transmission signal multiplexing, transport nodes, and network operation functions, are highlighted. The trends in transport technology, the impact of synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), the role of telecommunications management networks, and network integrity enhancement techniques are elucidated. It is demonstrated that these technologies have brought about a great change in transport network design and performance. Further innovations are required to fully realize a high-performance computer communication network, a cost-effective nationwide B-ISDN, and local networks for video distribution. These include the realization of an optical access transport network and the extension of trunk network capabilities which will be possible with optical path layer technologies. >
MOLECULAR TYPING OF Candida albicans ISOLATES FROM HOSPITALIZED PATIENTS

SUMMARY Introduction: The majority of nosocomial fungal infections are caused by Candida spp. where C. albicans is the species most commonly identified. Molecular methods are important tools for assessing the origin of the yeasts isolated in hospitals. Methods: This is a study on the genetic profifiles of 39 nosocomial clinical isolates of C. albicans using two typing methods: random amplifified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and microsatellite, two different primers for each technique were used. Results: RAPD provided 10 and 11 different profiles with values for SAB of 0.84 ± 0.126 and 0.88 ± 0.08 for primers M2 and P4, respectively. Microsatellite using two markers, CDC3 and HIS3, allowed the observation of six and seven different alleles, respectively, with combined discriminatory power of 0.91. Conclusions: Although genetic variability is clear, it was possible to identify high similarity, suggesting a common origin for at least a part of isolates. It is important to emphasize that common origin was proven from yeasts isolated from colonization (urine, catheter or endotracheal secretions) and blood culture from the same patient, indicating that the candidemia must have started from a site of colonization. The combination of RAPD and microsatellite provides a quick and efficient analysis for investigation of similarity among nosocomial isolates of C. albicans.
Crossing the Termination Shock into the Heliosheath: Magnetic Fields

Magnetic fields measured by Voyager 1 show that the spacecraft crossed or was crossed by the termination shock on about 16 December 2004 at 94.0 astronomical units. An estimate of the compression ratio of the magnetic field strength B (± standard error of the mean) across the shock is B2/B1 = 3.05 ± 0.04, but ratios in the range from 2 to 4 are admissible. The average B in the heliosheath from day 1 through day 110 of 2005 was 0.136 ± 0.035 nanoteslas, ∼4.2 times that predicted by Parker's model for B. The magnetic field in the heliosheath from day 361 of 2004 through day 110 of 2005 was pointing away from the Sun along the Parker spiral. The probability distribution of hourly averages of B in the heliosheath is a Gaussian distribution. The cosmic ray intensity increased when B was relatively large in the heliosheath.
Physician Assistants Contribution to Emergency Department Productivity

Introduction The objective of this report is to determine physician assistant (PA) productivity in an academic emergency department (ED) and to determine whether shift length or department census impact productivity. Methods A retrospective chart review was conducted at a tertiary ED during June and July of 2007. Productivity was calculated as the mean number of patients seen each hour. Analysis of variance was used to compare the productivity of different length shifts, and linear regression analysis was used to assess the relationship between productivity and department volume. Results One hundred sixty PA shifts were included. Shifts ranged from 4 to 13 hours. Mean productivity was 1.16 patients per hour (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.12–1.20). Physician assistants generated a mean of 2.35 relative value units (RVU) per hour (95% CI = 1.98–2.72). There was no difference in productivity on different shift lengths (P = 0.73). There was no correlation between departmental census and productivity, with an R2 (statistical term for the coefficient of determination) of 0.01. Conclusion In the ED, PAs saw 1.16 patients and generated 2.35 RVUs per hour. The length of the shift did not affect productivity. Productivity did not fluctuate significantly with changing departmental volume.
Properties , entity correlates of properties , and existentials

Such examples, he argued, show that some predicates denote true properties of properties. His analysis, as we will see below in greater detail, technically did not involve assigning nominalizations such as fun or goodness to type <e,t> or its intensional counterpart; rather, he chose to treat the nominalization as an ENTITY CORRELATE OF A PROPERTY, a sort within type e deeply similar to a Carlsonian kind. Thus, (1a) could be translated as in (2), where fun is of type <e,t> and f stands for the entity correlate of the property “fun”.
Separable bilateral filtering for fast video preprocessing

Bilateral filtering is an edge-preserving filtering technique that employs both geometric closeness and photometric similarity of neighboring pixels to construct its filter kernel. Multi-dimensional bilateral filtering is computationally expensive because the adaptive kernel has to be recomputed at every pixel. In this paper, we present a separable implementation of the bilateral filter. The separable implementation offers equivalent adaptive filtering capability at a fraction of execution time compared to the traditional filter. Because of this efficiency, the separable bilateral filter can be used for fast preprocessing of images and videos. Experiments show that better image quality and higher compression efficiency is achievable if the original video is preprocessed with the separable bilateral filter.
HandSee: Enabling Full Hand Interaction on Smartphone with Front Camera-based Stereo Vision

We present HandSee, a novel sensing technique that can capture the state and movement of the user's hands touching or gripping a smartphone. We place a right angle prism mirror on the front camera to achieve a stereo vision of the scene above the touchscreen surface. We develop a pipeline to extract the depth image of hands from a monocular RGB image, which consists of three components: a stereo matching algorithm to estimate the pixel-wise depth of the scene, a CNN-based online calibration algorithm to detect hand skin, and a merging algorithm that outputs the depth image of the hands. Building on the output, a substantial set of valuable interaction information, such as fingers' 3D location, gripping posture, and finger identity can be recognized concurrently. Due to this unique sensing ability, HandSee enables a variety of novel interaction techniques and expands the design space for full hand interaction on smartphones.
Myocardial Repair Achieved by the Intramyocardial Implantation of Adult Cardiomyocytes in Combination with Bone Marrow Cells

Various cytokines produced by bone marrow cells can protect adult cardiomyocytes against apoptosis. Thus, we investigated the feasibility of implanting adult cardiomyocytes in combination with bone marrow cells for myocardial repair. Ventricular cardiomyocytes were isolated from adult rats and cocultured with bone marrow cells. Using a rat model of doxorubicin-induced cardiomyopathy, we injected 6 × 105 adult cardiomyocytes, 3 × 107 bone marrow cells, or both into damaged hearts, for myocardial repair. Coculture of the cardiomyocytes with the bone marrow cells enhanced the expression of integrin-β1D and focal adhesion kinase in cardiomyocytes, resulting in increased survival and decreased apoptosis of the cardiomyocytes after 7 days of culture. Compared with the baseline levels, cardiac function was preserved by the implantation of bone marrow cells alone and by the implantation of cardiomyocytes in combination with bone marrow cells, but it was decreased significantly 28 days after the implantation of cardiomyocytes alone. Furthermore, apoptosis of the host cardiomyocytes was decreased significantly after the implantation of bone marrow cells alone, or in combination with cardiomyocytes, compared with that after the implantation of cardiomyocytes alone (p < 0.01). Interestingly, the implantation of adult cardiomyocytes in combination with bone marrow cells resulted in a dramatic increase in the survival of donor cardiomyocytes, and induced the myogenic differentiation of donor bone marrow stem cells. Our findings indicate that cardiomyocytes and bone marrow cells can assist and compliment each other; thus, the implantation of adult cardiomyocytes in combination with bone marrow cells shows promise as a feasible new strategy for myocardial repair.
4: Final Report on the Safety Assessment of Sorbic Acid and Potassium Sorbate

Sorbic acid is a straight-chain monocarboxylic acid used in cosmetic formulations as a preservative at concentrations up to 1.0%. Sorbic acid and potassium sorbate were practically nontoxic to rats and mice in acute oral toxicity studies. In subchronic studies no significant adverse effects were observed in rats, mice, or dogs when 10% sorbic acid was included in the diet. Sorbic acid and potassium sorbate at concentrations up to 10% were practically nonirritating to the rabbit eye. Both ingredients at concentrations up to 10% were at most only slightly irritating. Sorbic acid and potassium sorbate have been tested for mutagenic effects using the Ames test, genetic recombination tests, reversion assays, rec assays, tests for chromosomal aberrations, sister chromatid exchanges, and gene mutations. Results have been both positive and negative. Potassium sorbate at 0.1% in the diet or 0.3% in drinking water of rats for up to 100 weeks produced no neoplasms. In other chronic studies, no carcinogenic effect was demonstrated by sorbic acid in rats or mice fed diets containing up to 10% sorbic acid. No teratogenic effects have been observed in pregnant mice and rats administered potassium sorbate. In three repeat insult patch tests, sorbic acid had overall sensitization rates of 0, 0.33, and 0.8%. All of the subjects sensitized were inducted with 20% sorbic acid and challenged with 5% sorbic acid. Formulations containing up to 0.5% sorbic acid and or potassium sorbate were not significant primary or cumulative irritants and not sensitizers at this test concentration. A formulation containing 0.01% sorbic acid was not a photosensitizer. On the basis of the available data, it is concluded that sorbic acid and potassium sorbate are safe as cosmetic ingredients in the present practices of use and concentration.
A Short Prehistory of the Bootstrap

The contemporary development of bootstrap methods, from the time of Efron's early articles to the present day, is well documented and widely appreciated. Likewise, the relationship of bootstrap techniques to certain early work on permutation testing, the jackknife and cross-validation is well understood. Less known, however, are the connections of the bootstrap to research on survey sampling for spatial data in the first half of the last century or to work from the 1940s to the 1970s on subsampling and resampling. In a selective way, some of these early linkages will be explored, giving emphasis to developments with which the statistics community tends to be less familiar. Particular attention will be paid to the work of P. C. Mahalanobis, whose development in the 1930s and 1940s of movingblock sampling methods for spatial data has a range of interesting features, and to contributions of other scientists who, during the next 40 years, developed half-sampling, subsampling and resampling methods.
Relationships within the melanogaster species subgroup of the genus Drosophila (Sophophora) - II. Phylogenetic relationships between six species based upon polytene chromosome banding sequences

The melanogaster species subgroup of Drosophila comprises six sibling species. The interrelationship between these species has been studied by analysis of the banding patterns of their polytene chromosomes. The species fall into two groups: (1) melanogaster, simulans and mauritiana and (2) erecta, teissieri and yakuba. The former group are chromosomally closely related, indeed simulans and mauritiana are homosequential. The latter group (all African endemic species) are less closely related although they all share eight autosomal inversions of the standard (i. e. melanogaster) sequence. From this shared sequence the chromosomes of the three African endemic species have diverged considerably by many paracentric inversions. Both D. teissieri and D. yakuba are polymorphic; we describe nine and four inversion sequences in them respectively. D. erecta is monomorphic although our sample size is very small (only two populations). We discuss both the origin of interspecific inversions, especially the problem of inversion breakpoint coincidence, and the light this study throws upon evolutionary relationships within this group of species.
Higher Physical Activity Is Associated with Increased Attentional Network Connectivity in the Healthy Elderly

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the potential alterations in structural network properties related to physical activity (PA) in healthy elderly. We recruited 76 elderly individuals with normal cognition from Samsung Medical Center in Seoul, Korea. All participants underwent the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery and 3.0T brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Participants were subdivided into quartiles according to the International Physical Activity Questionnaire scores, which represents the amount of PA. Through graph theory based analyses, we compared global and local network topologies according to PA quartile. The higher PA group demonstrated better performance in speed processing compared to the lower PA group. Regional nodal strength also significantly increased in the higher PA group, which involved the bilateral middle frontal, bilateral inferior parietal, right medial orbitofrontal, right superior, and middle temporal gyri. These results were further replicated when the highest and the lowest quartile groups were compared in terms of regional nodal strengths and local efficiency. Our findings that the regional nodal strengths associated with the attentional network were increased in the higher PA group suggest the preventive effects of PA on age-related cognitive decline, especially in attention.
The Adventures of Older Authors: Exploring Futures through Co-Design Fictions

This paper presents co-design fiction as an approach to engaging users in imagining, envisioning and speculating not just on future technology but future life through co-created fictional works. Design fiction in research is often created or written by researchers. There is relatively little critical discussion of how to co-create design fictions with end-users, with the concomitant opportunities and challenges this poses. To fill this gap in knowledge, we conducted co-design fiction workshops with nine older creative writers, utilising prompts to inspire discussion and engage their imaginative writing about the trend towards tracking and monitoring older people. Their stories revealed futures of neither dystopia nor utopia but of social and moral dilemmas narrating their wish not just to "maintain their independence", but a palpable desire for adventure and very nuanced senses of how they wish to take control. We discuss inherent tensions in the control of the co-design fiction process; balancing the author's need for freedom and creativity with the researcher's desire to guide the process toward the design investigation at hand.
On Distributed Optimization Using Peer-to-Peer Communications in Wireless Sensor Networks

We describe and evaluate a suite of distributed and computationally efficient algorithms for solving a class of convex optimization problems in wireless sensor networks. The problem class has wide applications in estimation, detection, localization, coordination and resource-sharing. We focus on peer-to-peer algorithms where nodes only exchange data with their immediate neighbors, and consider three distinct alternatives: a dual-based broadcast algorithm, a novel stochastic unicast algorithm, and a linear broadcast algorithm tailored for least-squares problems. We implement the algorithms in the network simulator NS2 and present extensive simulation results for random topologies.