Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
EVALUATION OF THE OPTICAL COUPLING BETWEEN OPTICAL FIBRES AND Er + 3 : Ti : LiNbO 3 OPTICAL WAVEGUIDES

In this paper we report some experimental and theoretical results concerning the characterization of the coupling between graded refractiveindex optical fibres and also between optical fibres and Ti:LiNbO 3 and Er + 3 :Ti:LiNbO 3 , respectively optical waveguides for λ =1.55 μ m using nondestructive methods. We evaluated the coupling loss coefficients between the above mentioned components by approximating the field profile with appropriate Gaussian functions. The refractive-index profiles of the Er + 3 :Ti:LiNbO 3 optical waveguides has been determined from near field intensity measurement using a standard optical fibre as receiver and also a CCD camera. Using the Helmholtz scalar equation and an original deconvolution procedure we evaluated some parameters which characterize Er + 3 :Ti:LiNbO 3 waveguides: the refractive-index difference and the penetration depth.
Expression of Na+/glucose co-transporter 1 (SGLT1) in the intestine of piglets weaned to different concentrations of dietary carbohydrate

Na+/glucose co-transporter 1 (SGLT1) transports dietary sugars from the lumen of the intestine into enterocytes. Regulation of this protein is essential for the provision of glucose to the body and, thus, is important for maintenance of glucose homeostasis. We have assessed expression of SGLT1 at mRNA, protein and functional levels in the intestinal tissue of 28 d old piglets weaned onto isoenergetic diets with differing concentrations of digestible carbohydrate (CHO). We show that expression of SGLT1 remains constant when piglets are fed up to 40 % CHO-containing diets. However, there is a significant increase in SGLT1 expression when the CHO content of the diet is>50 %. Morphometric analyses indicate that the increased expression is not due to a trophic effect. It has been proposed that in rat intestine, in response to a high-CHO diet, GLUT2 (the classical basolateral membrane monosaccharide transporter) is translocated to the luminal membrane of enterocytes to absorb excess dietary glucose. We show, using immunohistochemistry and Western blotting with antibodies raised to amino acids in different epitopes of GLUT2, that under all dietary conditions, low to high CHO, GLUT2 is expressed on the basolateral membrane of pig enterocytes. Furthermore, functional studies indicate that there is no uptake of 2-deoxy-d-glucopyranoside, a specific substrate of Na+-independent glucose transporters into brush-border membrane vesicles isolated from the intestines of piglets either maintained on low- or high-CHO diets. Thus, SGLT1 is the major route for absorption of dietary sugars across the luminal membrane of swine enterocytes.
Effectiveness of an audio‐visual aid on the knowledge of school teachers regarding the emergency management of dental injuries

BACKGROUND/AIM Traumatic dental injuries (TDI) occur frequently in the school environment. Many studies have shown that teachers' knowledge on the emergency management of TDI is inadequate. The aim of this study was to evaluate the knowledge level among schoolteachers in Chennai, India, regarding TDI using a questionnaire and to evaluate the effectiveness of a newly developed audio-visual aid (AV) as an educational tool by reapplying the questionnaire. METHODS The questionnaire was distributed to 345 teachers in 15 randomly selected schools. A pro forma document along with the questionnaire surveyed the teachers' demographic details and their knowledge regarding the emergency management of TDI. Then, a video containing evidence-based information about the emergency management of TDI in accordance with the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) guidelines was played for the participants. The questionnaire was readministered to test the teachers' knowledge after they viewed the video. RESULTS In total, 301 teachers responded to the questionnaire. Wilcoxon's signed-rank test/chi-square test showed that, after the teachers viewed the video, their knowledge had significantly improved relative to the handling of TDI (P < .0001). Their attitude towards the AV aid was positive, and all participants (100%) found the AV helpful. Almost 99.7% of the participants reported increased confidence in handling dental injuries. CONCLUSION There is a substantial lack of basic knowledge regarding the emergency TDI management among schoolteachers. The proposed AV aid is an effective tool for providing management strategies.
Coordinated static and dynamic cache bypassing for GPUs

The massive parallel architecture enables graphics processing units (GPUs) to boost performance for a wide range of applications. Initially, GPUs only employ scratchpad memory as on-chip memory. Recently, to broaden the scope of applications that can be accelerated by GPUs, GPU vendors have used caches in conjunction with scratchpad memory as on-chip memory in the new generations of GPUs. Unfortunately, GPU caches face many performance challenges that arise due to excessive thread contention for cache resource. Cache bypassing, where memory requests can selectively bypass the cache, is one solution that can help to mitigate the cache resource contention problem. In this paper, we propose coordinated static and dynamic cache bypassing to improve application performance. At compile-time, we identify the global loads that indicate strong preferences for caching or bypassing through profiling. For the rest global loads, our dynamic cache bypassing has the flexibility to cache only a fraction of threads. In CUDA programming model, the threads are divided into work units called thread blocks. Our dynamic bypassing technique modulates the ratio of thread blocks that cache or bypass at run-time. We choose to modulate at thread block level in order to avoid the memory divergence problems. Our approach combines compile-time analysis that determines the cache or bypass preferences for global loads with run-time management that adjusts the ratio of thread blocks that cache or bypass. Our coordinated static and dynamic cache bypassing technique achieves up to 2.28X (average 1.32X) performance speedup for a variety of GPU applications.
EURASIAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND FINANCE

High and sustainable economic growth, that is an important indicator of life quality, is an essential condition in the realization of economic growth. In this regard, achieving strong economic growth in developing countries which mostly need development today, is one of the most debated topics. For many years, physical capital has been recognized as the most important determinant of economic growth. New approaches to economic growth have been developed since 1980s. In this context, according to endogenous growth theory, it is stated that the most important determinant of economic growth is the human capital stock. Today, while the subject of economic growth is examined, the effect of human capital on economic growth is intensively investigated. In this study, the impact of human capital on economic growth for selected 32 developing countries is investigated by panel data analysis method using data from the period 2000-2014. The focus of the study is also the direction and degree of effect of the increase in the level of education on economic growth. According to empirical analysis results, it is founded that human capital positively affects economic growth. It has also been found that its positive effect on economic growth has reduced while the education level has increased. On the other hand, the results of the analysis indicate that physical capital has a positive impact and that the labor negatively affects economic growth in the studied countries. However, it has been determined that the effect of human capital on economic growth is lower than that of physical capital.
Sinuous breakdown in a flat plate boundary layer exposed to free-stream turbulence

In a flat plate boundary layer, perturbed with streaks, breakdown occurs due to a secondary instability acting on the streaks. An experimental study using a water channel with static turbulence grid revealed the presence of a sinuous secondary instability mode in the bypass transition process. Five sinuous instabilities are investigated in detail in the horizontal plane. The streamwise length scale of the sinuous instability is around 40δ300* and the spanwise scale equals around δ300*. Four main features are found in the underlying streak configuration and developing streak-streak interactions. Firstly, all instabilities arise in a streak configuration where two low-speed streaks are located at a small spanwise distance from each other. Patches of low-speed fluid (forming a discontinuity in the streak pattern) are present in the high-speed streaks surrounding the unstable low-speed streak. As a consequence of the streak-streak interactions at the discontinuities, vortices arise in a staggered configuratio.
Blood pressure response to resistance training in hypertensive and normotensive older women

Purpose The purpose of the present study was to identify the variability of blood pressure response to a 10-week resistance training (RT) program in hypertensive and normotensive elderly women. Participants and methods Twenty-seven untrained hypertensive and 12 normotensive elderly women participated in the present study. A whole-body RT program was performed on two nonconsecutive days per week for 10 weeks. The responsiveness of resting systolic blood pressure (SBP) was determined based on the percent decline between the pre- and post-training time points T1 and T4. The term responders were used to describe subjects who exhibited a percent SBP decline ≥−2.58% and the term nonresponders for subjects who exhibited a percent SBP decline <−2.58%, respectively. Results Both the responders and nonresponders in the hypertensive group presented significant changes in SBP (−7.83 ± 5.70 mmHg vs 3.78 ± 7.42 mmHg), respectively. Moreover, the responders and nonresponders in the normotensive group presented significant changes in SBP as well (−8.58 ± 5.52 mmHg vs 5.71 ± 3.84 mmHg). Conclusion SBP presents a heterogeneous response to a controlled RT program in hypertensive and normotensive elderly women. A different modality of training and additional therapies should be used for nonresponders in order to decrease resting SBP.
A multiphysics finite element model of the wood cell wall

Timber is a highly complex naturally occurring material, with properties adapted to its local environment. These properties, on its many length scales, determine its strength and stiffness and also how it interacts with moisture in the environment, causing dimensional instability both during drying and its lifetime as a construction material. Of particular importance is how the cell wall polymers interact with moisture in the environment and how this effects the properties, due to their strong dependence on intra-molecular hydrogen bonds. To model the dimensional behaviour of a wood cell under varying moisture conditions, the cell wall polymer matrix is modelled using a formulation of coupled deformation and moisture transport. These governing equations of mass and linear momentum conservation are strongly coupled and nonlinear, and solved using the Finite Element Method. The associated constitutive equations are complex. The free energy is described through the deformation of the polymer matrix and the mixing with solvent (in this case, water). It is assumed that the polymer chains and water molecules are incompressible so that a change in volume of the polymer matrix corresponds to a change in the number of solvent molecules. The viscoelastic behaviour is resolved using a Zener spring-dashpot model, capturing both creep and relaxation phenomena, and the moisture transport is resolved using Fick’s 2nd Law. The effects of wetting on the stiffness and relaxation characteristics of the polymer matrix is taken into account through the chemical kinetics of hydrogen bond dissociation. The implementation using the finite element method is discussed in detail and comprehensively verified using a series of numerical tests. Finally, the model is applied to wood cells and the behaviour of the polymers is compared to experimental findings. The resulting model is capable of predicting the interaction between viscoelastic material effects and diffusion and has the ability to predict viscoelastically limited diffusion within wood cell polymers. The model can also predict sorption hysteresis in wood cell wall polymers and therefore could be a valuable tool in future research into wood-water interactions.
Health Informatics via Machine Learning for the Clinical Management of Patients

Summary Objectives: To review how health informatics systems based on machine learning methods have impacted the clinical management of patients, by affecting clinical practice. Methods: We reviewed literature from 2010-2015 from databases such as Pubmed, IEEE xplore, and INSPEC, in which methods based on machine learning are likely to be reported. We bring together a broad body of literature, aiming to identify those leading examples of health informatics that have advanced the methodology of machine learning. While individual methods may have further examples that might be added, we have chosen some of the most representative, informative exemplars in each case. Results: Our survey highlights that, while much research is taking place in this high-profile field, examples of those that affect the clinical management of patients are seldom found. We show that substantial progress is being made in terms of methodology, often by data scientists working in close collaboration with clinical groups. Conclusions: Health informatics systems based on machine learning are in their infancy and the translation of such systems into clinical management has yet to be performed at scale.
Censoring Representations with an Adversary

In practice, there are often explicit constraints on what representations or decisions are acceptable in an application of machine learning. For example it may be a legal requirement that a decision must not favour a particular group. Alternatively it can be that that representation of data must not have identifying information. We address these two related issues by learning flexible representations that minimize the capability of an adversarial critic. This adversary is trying to predict the relevant sensitive variable from the representation, and so minimizing the performance of the adversary ensures there is little or no information in the representation about the sensitive variable. We demonstrate this adversarial approach on two problems: making decisions free from discrimination and removing private information from images. We formulate the adversarial model as a minimax problem, and optimize that minimax objective using a stochastic gradient alternate min-max optimizer. We demonstrate the ability to provide discriminant free representations for standard test problems, and compare with previous state of the art methods for fairness, showing statistically significant improvement across most cases. The flexibility of this method is shown via a novel problem: removing annotations from images, from unaligned training examples of annotated and unannotated images, and with no a priori knowledge of the form of annotation provided to the model.
Cell proliferation during blastema formation in the regenerating teleost fin

Epimorphic regeneration in teleost fins occurs through the establishment of a balanced growth state in which a blastema gives rise to all the mesenchymal cells, whereas definite areas of the epidermis proliferate leading to its extension, thus, allowing the enlargement of the whole structure. This type of regeneration involves specific mechanisms that temporally and spatially regulate cell proliferation. To understand how the blastema is formed and how this growth situation is set up, we investigated cell proliferation patterns in the regenerating fin of the goldfish Carassius auratus from the time of amputation to that of blastema formation by using proliferating cell nuclear antigen immunostaining and bromodeoxyuridine labeling. Wound closure and apical epidermal cap formation took place by epidermal migration and re‐arrangement, without the contribution of cell proliferation. As soon as the apical cap had formed, the epidermis started to proliferate at its lateral surfaces, in which all layers maintained cycling for the duration of the studied process. The distal epidermal cap, on the contrary, presented very few cycling cells, and its cytoarchitecture was indicative of continuous remodeling due to ray growth. The basal layer of this epidermal cap showed a typical morphology and remained nonproliferative whilst in contact with the proliferating blastema. Proliferation in the mesenchymal compartment of the ray started far from the amputation plane. Subsequently, cycling cells approached that location, until they formed the blastema in contact with the apical epidermal cap. Differences observed between the epidermis and mesenchyma, regarding activation of the cell cycle and the establishment of proliferative patterns, suggest that differential mechanisms regulate cell proliferation in each of these compartments during the initial stages of regeneration. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Successful replantation of the scalp with a good aesthetic outcome and return of sensation – a case report and literature update.

Abstract Replantation of a totally avulsed scalp is a demanding microsurgical procedure with no good alternatives. Here, we present a case of successful scalp replantation after 11 hours of cold ischemia in a 24-year-old woman. The steps of the procedure, the outcomes, and a review of the literature are presented. Adhering to the steps outlined in this report during replantation is vital for success, and allows the serious complications and pitfalls associated with this procedure to be avoided. Following basic plastic surgery principles leads to better aesthetic outcomes. We observed good, even hair growth, and the return of sensation to the skin and frontal muscle function. Replantation of an avulsed scalp is an effective treatment that allows the patient to return to normal life after severe physical and psychological trauma.
Title Two Simple Approximations to the Distributions of Quadratic Forms Permalink

Many test statistics are asymptotically equivalent to quadratic forms of normal variables, which are further equivalent to T = ∑d i=1 λiz 2 i with zi being independent and following N(0, 1). Two approximations to the distribution of T have been implemented in popular software and are widely used in evaluating various models. It is important to know how accurate these approximations are when compared to each other and to the exact distribution of T . The paper systematically studies the quality of the two approximations and examines the effect of λi’s and the degrees of freedom d by analysis and Monte Carlo. The results imply that one approximation can be as good as the exact distribution when d is large. When the coefficient of variation of the λi’s is small, another approximation is also adequate for practical model inference. The results are applied to a study of alcoholism and psychological symptoms.
Muscle Activation Onset Latencies and Amplitudes during Lane Change in a Full Vehicle Test

Vehicle occupant kinematics in the pre‐crash phase is strongly influenced by active muscle contribution. In order to determine the human response to low‐load situations prevalent in the pre‐crash phase 21 healthy male volunteers (co‐driver, age: 33.4±8.8 y, mass: 78.5±6.3 kg, height: 179.2±4.6 cm, sitting height: 91.0±2.0 cm) were subjected to a series of lane change maneuvers with peak accelerations of around 1 g in lateral direction. Three awareness conditions were realized: an unaware, an anticipated and an informed condition. Surface Electromyograms (EMG) were recorded bilaterally on three neck muscles (m. sternocleidomastoideus, m. trapezius p. cervicalis and p. descendens) and four trunk muscles (m. rectus abdominis, m. obliquus externus abdominis, m. latissimus dorsi, erector spinae (lumbar region)) and are supplemented with occupant and vehicle kinematics data. In the subsequent EMG analysis mean onset latencies between 0.106±0.020 s and 0.171±0.047 s were found, where neck extensors responded with the shortest latency. For selected conditions and muscles significantly shorter onset latency was recorded on the right side. Significantly higher activations of the right muscles were observed in the first part of the maneuver, while only a limited number of muscles showed an effect of the awareness condition.
New piecewise‐continuous hydraulic functions for modeling preferential flow in an intermittent‐flood‐irrigated field

Modeling water flow in macroporous field soils near saturation has been a major challenge in vadose zone hydrology. Using in situ and laboratory measurements, we developed new piecewise‐continuous soil water retention and hydraulic conductivity functions to describe preferential flow in tile drains under a flood‐irrigated agricultural field in Las Nutrias, New Mexico. After incorporation into a two‐dimensional numerical flow code, CHAIN_2D, the performance of the new piecewise‐continuous hydraulic functions was compared with that of the unimodal van Genuchten‐Mualem model and with measured tile‐flow data at the field site during a number of irrigation events. Model parameters were collected/estimated by site characterization (e.g., soil texture, surface/subsurface saturated/unsaturated soil hydraulic property measurements), as well as by local and regional‐scale hydrologic monitoring (including the use of groundwater monitoring wells, piezometers, and different surface‐irrigation and subsurface‐drainage measurement systems). Comparison of numerical simulation results with the observed tile flow indicated that the new piecewise‐continuous hydraulic functions generally predicted preferential flow in the tile drain reasonably well following all irrigation events at the field site. Also, the new bimodal soil water retention and hydraulic conductivity functions performed better than the unimodal van Genuchten–Mualem functions in terms of describing the observed flow regime at the field site.
Varying rates of diversification in the genus Melitaea (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) during the past 20 million years

The influence of Quarternary glacial cycles on the extant diversity of Holarctic species has been intensively studied. It has been hypothesized that palaeoclimatic changes are responsible for divergence events in lineages. A constant improvement in DNA sequencing and modeling methods, as well as palaeoclimatic reconstruction, permit a deeper exploration of general causes of speciation in geological time. In the present study, we sampled, as exhaustively as possible, the butterflies belonging to the genus Melitaea (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae), which are widely spread in the Palaearctic region. We conducted analyses to assess the phylogeny of the genus and estimated the timing of divergence and the most likely distribution of ancestral populations. The results obtained indicate that the systematics of the genus is in need of revision and that the diversity of the genus has been profoundly shaped by palaeoenvironmental changes during its evolutionary history. The present study also emphasizes that, when employed with caveats, major palaeoenvironmental events could represent very powerful tools for the calibration of the dating of divergences using molecular data.