Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dental Erosion and Dentin Hypersensitivity among Adult Asthmatics and Non-asthmatics Hospital-based: A Preliminary Study

Background: Asthma is a chronic inflammatory condition affecting the airways leading to spasm and swelling of the airways. The medications taken for the treatment of asthma can result in dental erosion and dentin hypersensitivity. Objectives: The aims of this study were to investigate the severity of dental erosion amongst adult asthmatics according to: gender, type and duration of medication taken and to compare dental erosion and dentin hypersensitivity between asthmatics and non-asthmatics. Subjects and Methods: Comparative, cross-sectional hospital based study among 40 asthmatics (M=15 & F=25) and 40 non-asthmatics (M=18 & F=22) in the age range of 18-60 year selected purposefully from Al-Shaab Teaching Hospital in Khartoum city. The Basic Erosive Wear Index was used for dental erosion assessment. Dentine hypersensitivity was determined by giving ice cold water and rated using the Visual Analogue Scale. Chi-square and Student’s t-test were used for statistical analysis with P value ≤. 05. Results: There was an association between severity of dental erosion and presence of asthma (P=0.03), where asthmatics had a higher degree of erosion (moderate and severe) and non-asthmatics a lower degree. No significant association was found between dental erosion and gender, type and duration of medication among asthmatics group. A statistically significant difference was revealed in the degree of dentin hypersensitivity (P=0.00) among asthmatics (35.13%) and non-asthmatics (14.13%). Conclusion: Asthmatic patients had a higher degree of dental erosion and dentin hypersensitivity compared to non-asthmatics. Among asthmatic patients there was no association between severity of dental erosion and gender, type and duration medication was taken for.
Weyl-Heisenberg Spaces for Robust Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing

Design of Weyl-Heisenberg sets of waveforms for robust orthogonal frequency division multiplex- ing (OFDM) has been the subject of a considerable volume of work. In this paper, a complete parameterization of orthogonal Weyl-Heisenberg sets and their corresponding biorthogonal sets is given. Several examples of Weyl-Heisenberg sets designed using this parameterization are pre- sented, which in simulations show a high potential for enabling OFDM robust to frequency offset, timing mismatch, and narrow-band interference.
Self-reorganizing TSK fuzzy inference system with BCM theory of meta-plasticity

The usage of online learning technique in neuro-fuzzy system (NFS) to address system variance is more prevalent in recent times. Since a lot of external factors have an effect on time-variant datasets, these datasets tend to experience changes in their pattern. While small changes (“drifts”) can be handled by the traditional self-organizing techniques, major changes (“shifts”) are not handled. Thus, there is a growing need for these systems to be able to self-reorganize their structures to adapt to major changes in data patterns. Hebb's theory for learning in NFSs, proposed that synaptic strengths could be determined by a simple linear relation of the pre- and post-synaptic signals. However this theory resulted in a unidirectional growth of synaptic strengths and destabilized the model. The Bienenstock-Cooper-Munro (BCM) theory of learning resolves these problems by incorporating synaptic potentiation (association or Hebbian) and depression (dissociation or anti-Hebbian), which is useful for time-variant data computations. There are two popular methods for fuzzy rule representation, namely: Mamdani and Takagi-Sugeno-Kang (TSK) model. Mamdani model focuses on interpretability and compensates on accuracy. Rules are created by associating an input fuzzy region to an output fuzzy region. However, the TSK model associates an input fuzzy region to a linear function/plane making it more accurate than the Mamdani model. Current TSK models like SAFIS, eTS, and DENFIS attempt to strike a balance between the accuracy and interpretability of the model. However, most of the models utilize offline learning algorithms and require multiple passes of the data samples. Furthermore, the models that use online learning mainly employ Hebb's theory of incremental learning. This paper proposes a neuro-fuzzy architecture that uses the BCM theory of online learning with extensive self-reorganizing capabilities. It also uses a first-order TSK model for knowledge representation, which allows for an accurate output calculation.
VYGOTSKY ’ S THEORY OF CONCEPT FORMATION AND MATHEMATICS EDUCATION

I argue that Vygotsky’s theory of concept formation (1986) is a powerful framework within which to explore how an individual at university level constructs a new mathematical concept. In particular, this theory is able to bridge the divide between an individual’s mathematical knowledge and the body of socially sanctioned mathematical knowledge. It can also be used to explain how idiosyncratic usages of mathematical signs by students (particularly when just introduced to a new mathematical object) get transformed into mathematically acceptable usages and it can be used to elucidate the link between usages of mathematical signs and the attainment of meaningful mathematical concepts by an individual.
Zebra Finch Song Phonology and Syntactical Structure across Populations and Continents—A Computational Comparison

Learned bird songs are often characterized by a high degree of variation between individuals and sometimes between populations, while at the same time maintaining species specificity. The evolution of such songs depends on the balance between plasticity and constraints. Captive populations provide an opportunity to examine signal variation and differentiation in detail, so we analyzed adult male zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) songs recorded from 13 populations across the world, including one sample of songs from wild-caught males in their native Australia. Cluster analysis suggested some, albeit limited, evidence that zebra finch song units belonged to universal, species-wide categories, linked to restrictions in vocal production and non-song parts of the vocal repertoire. Across populations, songs also showed some syntactical structure, although any song unit could be placed anywhere within the song. On the other hand, there was a statistically significant differentiation between populations, but the effect size was very small, and its communicative significance dubious. Our results suggest that variation in zebra finch songs within a population is largely determined by species-wide constraints rather than population-specific features. Although captive zebra finch populations have been sufficiently isolated to allow them to genetically diverge, there does not appear to have been any divergence in the genetically determined constraints that underlie song learning. Perhaps more surprising is the lack of locally diverged cultural traditions. Zebra finches serve as an example of a system where frequent learning errors may rapidly create within-population diversity, within broad phonological and syntactical constraints, and prevent the formation of long-term cultural traditions that allow populations to diverge.
Bilingual Experiments on Automatic Recovery of Capitalization and Punctuation of Automatic Speech Transcripts

This paper focuses on the tasks of recovering capitalization and punctuation marks from texts without that information, such as spoken transcripts, produced by automatic speech recognition systems. These two practical rich transcription tasks were performed using the same discriminative approach, based on maximum entropy, suitable for on-the-fly usage. Reported experiments were conducted both over Portuguese and English broadcast news data. Both force aligned and automatic transcripts were used, allowing to measure the impact of the speech recognition errors. Capitalized words and named entities are intrinsically related, and are influenced by time variation effects. For that reason, the so-called language dynamics have been addressed for the capitalization task. Language adaptation results indicate, for both languages, that the capitalization performance is affected by the temporal distance between the training and testing data. In what regards the punctuation task, this paper covers the three most frequent punctuation marks: full stop, comma, and question marks. Different methods were explored for improving the baseline results for full stop and comma. The first uses punctuation information extracted from large written corpora. The second applies different levels of linguistic structure, including lexical, prosodic, and speaker related features. The comma detection improved significantly in the first method, thus indicating that it depends more on lexical features. The second method provided even better results, for both languages and both punctuation marks, best results being achieved mainly for full stop. As for question marks, there is a small gain, but differences are not very significant, due to the relatively small number of question marks in the corpora.
Immune-maximizing (IMAX) therapy for cancer: Combination of dendritic cell vaccine and intensity-modulated radiation

A dendritic cell (DC)-based vaccine was combined with intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) or other conformal radiotherapy (RT), assuming minimal immunosuppression by such RT modalities. In this study, the outcomes in the first 40 patients are presented. The patients had recurrent, metastatic or locally advanced tumors. Nine had previously undergone full-course RT. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells obtained by leukapheresis were cultured with granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor, interleukin-4, OK-432 and prostaglandin E2 to generate DCs, which were pulsed with autologous tumor lysates or tumor-specific peptides, such as WT1. IMRT using tomotherapy, stereotactic irradiation or 3-dimensional conformal RT (3DCRT) was initially administered. The standard dose was 30 and 60 Gy in patients with and without previous RT, respectively. Every other week thereafter, up to a total of 7 times, DC vaccines were injected directly into the tumor (n=15) or administered intradermally when DCs were pulsed with tumor lysates or peptides. The tumor response was evaluated according to the response evaluation criteria in solid tumors (RECIST). RT and DC vaccines were well tolerated and there were no major complications. Three patients were not able to complete the planned DC therapy due to disease progression. For the 31 patients receiving full-dose RT, the response rate was 61% and for the 9 patients who had previously received RT, the response rate was 55%. In 9 patients, the tumor response outside the RT target volume was evaluable: 22% had a partial response (PR), 33% had stable disease (SD) and 44% had progressive disease (PD). In conclusion, a combination of IMRT (or 3DCRT) and DC vaccine is feasible and requires further investigation.
Is the activity level of HD 80606 influenced by its eccentric planet

Aims: Several studies suggest that the activity level of a planet-host star can be influenced by the presence of a close-by orbiting planet. Moreover, the interaction mechanisms that have been proposed, magnetic interaction and tidal interaction, exhibit a very different dependence on orbital separation between the star and the planet. A detection of activity enhancement and characterization of its dependence on planetary orbital distance can, in principle, allow us to characterize the physical mechanism behind the activity enhancement. Methods: We used the HARPS-N spectrograph to measure the stellar activity level of HD 80606 during the planetary periastron passage and compared the activity measured to that close to apastron. Being characterized by an eccentricity of 0.93 and an orbital period of 111 days, the system's extreme variation in orbital separation makes it a perfect target to test our hypothesis. Results: We find no evidence for a variation in the activity level of the star as a function of planetary orbital distance, as measured by all activity indicators employed log($R'_{HK}$), H$_\alpha$, NaI, and HeI. None of the models employed, whether magnetic interaction or tidal interaction, provides a good description of the data. Conclusions: We find no evidence for star-planet interaction in HD\,80606 at the moment of the periastron passage of its very eccentric planet. The straightforward explanation for the non-detection is the absence of interaction as a result of a low magnetic field strength on either the planet or the star and of the low level of tidal interaction between the two. However, we cannot exclude two scenarios: i) the interaction can be instantaneous and of magnetic origin, being concentrated on the substellar point and its surrounding area, and ii) the interaction can lead to a delayed activity enhancement. (abridged)
A hardware-friendly method for rate-distortion optimization of HEVC intra coding

The next generation standard of coding, High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) aims to provide significantly improved compression performance in comparison with all existing video coding standards, such as MPEG-4, H.263, and H.264/AVC. The tool of rate-distortion optimization (RDO) mode decision has proven to be extremely important. Due to the increase in the number of intra prediction directions and large size of coding unit (CU), prediction unit (PU) and transform unit (TU), the number involved in RDO process rises dramatically, which is an extremely timing-and-computation-consuming process. In this paper, we propose a four-pixel-strip based ESAD and quantized TU coefficients based linear model to estimate the distortion and rate part of the RD cost function respectively. Experimental results show that the proposed RD cost function provides 85.8% area reduction and 1260% throughput improvement in hardware design, with negligible loss of bitrate and PSNR.
Rivaroxaban Rebound Acute Coronary Event: A Post Marketing Experience

We present a 65-year-old male who received rivaroxaban therapy prior to and after left knee replacement surgery. The patient developed generalized weakness soon after stopping rivaroxaban. An electrocardiogram showed acute infero-lateral ischemia and an echocardiogram reported an akinetic antero-apical wall segment, an apical clot and a reduced systolic function. A subsequent coronary angiogram revealed two-vessel coronary artery thrombosis. The case illustrates a temporal relationship of coronary thrombosis following rivaroxaban cessation.
Selective Blockade of the Capsaicin Receptor TRPV1 Attenuates Bone Cancer Pain

Cancer colonization of bone leads to the activation of osteoclasts, thereby producing local tissue acidosis and bone resorption. This process may contribute to the generation of both ongoing and movement-evoked pain, resulting from the activation of sensory neurons that detect noxious stimuli (nociceptors). The capsaicin receptor TRPV1 (transient receptor potential vanilloid subtype 1) is a cation channel expressed by nociceptors that detects multiple pain-producing stimuli, including noxious heat and extracellular protons, raising the possibility that it is an important mediator of bone cancer pain via its capacity to detect osteoclast- and tumor-mediated tissue acidosis. Here, we show that TRPV1 is present on sensory neuron fibers that innervate the mouse femur and that, in an in vivo model of bone cancer pain, acute or chronic administration of a TRPV1 antagonist or disruption of the TRPV1 gene results in a significant attenuation of both ongoing and movement-evoked nocifensive behaviors. Administration of the antagonist had similar efficacy in reducing early, moderate, and severe pain-related responses, suggesting that TRPV1 may be a novel target for pharmacological treatment of chronic pain states associated with bone cancer metastasis.
Model-free HVAC control using occupant feedback

Optimal control of Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) is an important step towards reducing the carbon footprint of buildings and requires balancing energy reductions and occupant comfort. Conventional thermostats for temperature set points provide a centralised single point of user input, often leading to significant thermal discomfort for occupants. We propose to instead include users in the HVAC control loop through distributed smart-phone based votes about their thermal comfort for aggregated control of HVAC. Unlike existing approaches that require in-situ sensors or build complex comfort models of individual users, we propose a model- and sensor-free HVAC control algorithm that uses simple user input (hot/cold) and adapts to changing office occupancy or ambient temperature in real time. We develop an iterative data fusion algorithm that finds optimal temperature in offices with multiple users and propose techniques that can aggressively save energy by drifting indoor temperatures towards the outdoor temperature. Our evaluation is based on empirical data collected in 12 offices over a 3-week period and shows that adaptive HVAC control can save up to 60% of energy at a relatively small increase of 0.3°C in average occupant discomfort.
Enhancing Science Learning Through Dynamic Bilingual Practices

Language is one of the most important drivers of children's socialization and development of a sense of belonging within their school, community, and culture. For bilingual and multicultural children in particular, language plays a critical role in the development of their identity. If emergent language learners do not feel confident in their bilingual identities, they may find it more challenging to make meaning and construct knowledge in school. Dynamic language practices allow students to flexibly and dynamically shift between their various linguistic and knowledge resources, thus allowing their bilingual identities to thrive. In contrast to practices that restrict the use of the non-dominant language during specific times or while interacting with certain people, the use of dynamic language practices allows children who experience school in more than one language to see that drawing on all of their linguistic resources is a valid method for improving their academic literacy and learning.
Virtual redlining for civil engineering in real environments

Field workers of utility companies are regularly engaged in outdoor tasks such as network planning and inspection of underground infrastructure. Redlining is the term used for manually annotating either printed paper maps or a 2D geographic information system on a notebook computer taken to the field. Either of these approaches requires finding the physical location to be annotated on the physical or digital map. In this paper, we describe a mobile Augmented Reality (AR) system capable of supporting virtual redlining. The AR visualization delivered by the system is constructed from data directly extracted from a GIS used in day-to-day production by utility companies. We also report on encouraging trials and interviews performed with professional field workers from the utility sector.
A Computational Clonal Analysis of the Developing Mouse Limb Bud

A comprehensive spatio-temporal description of the tissue movements underlying organogenesis would be an extremely useful resource to developmental biology. Clonal analysis and fate mappings are popular experiments to study tissue movement during morphogenesis. Such experiments allow cell populations to be labeled at an early stage of development and to follow their spatial evolution over time. However, disentangling the cumulative effects of the multiple events responsible for the expansion of the labeled cell population is not always straightforward. To overcome this problem, we develop a novel computational method that combines accurate quantification of 2D limb bud morphologies and growth modeling to analyze mouse clonal data of early limb development. Firstly, we explore various tissue movements that match experimental limb bud shape changes. Secondly, by comparing computational clones with newly generated mouse clonal data we are able to choose and characterize the tissue movement map that better matches experimental data. Our computational analysis produces for the first time a two dimensional model of limb growth based on experimental data that can be used to better characterize limb tissue movement in space and time. The model shows that the distribution and shapes of clones can be described as a combination of anisotropic growth with isotropic cell mixing, without the need for lineage compartmentalization along the AP and PD axis. Lastly, we show that this comprehensive description can be used to reassess spatio-temporal gene regulations taking tissue movement into account and to investigate PD patterning hypothesis.
International Conference on Information Systems ( ICIS ) 2008 Banking Technology to Scale Microfinance : The Case of Correspondent Banking in Brazil

Significant population segments in developing countries have very limited access to basic financial services, such as bank accounts, savings or insurance. Meanwhile, the use of ICT is increasingly becoming an intrinsic part of banking business, rendering financial services easier and cheaper to develop and deliver. This paper focuses on ICT-based correspondent banking outlets, a technology that appeared in Brazil in recent years, which is considered a feasible alternative for delivering financial services to the poor. The aim of this paper is to investigate how the use of this particular technology was structured and how it has evolved over time to deliver an increasingly complex range of services. A conceptual model, combining three theoretical approaches, is proposed to make possible an original reading of the use of correspondent banking technology in Brazil and its implications for microfinance.
Self-Presentation and Verbal Deception: Do Self-Presenters Lie More?

This study examined the effects of self-presentation goals on the amount and type of verbal deception used by participants in same-gender and mixed-gender dyads. Participants were asked to engage in a conversation that was secretly videotaped. Self-presentational goal was manipulated, where one member of the dyad (the self-presenter) was told to either appear (a) likable, (b) competent, or (c) was told to simply get to know his or her partner (control condition). After the conversation, self-presenters were asked to review a video recording of the interaction and identify the instances in which they had deceived the other person. Overall, participants told more lies when they had a goal to appear likable or competent compared to participants in the control condition, and the content of the lies varied according to self-presentation goal. In addition, lies told by men and women differed in content, although not in quantity.
Extending the New Keynesian Monetary Model with Information Revision Processes: Real-time and Revised Data

This paper proposes an extended version of the New Keynesian Monetary (NKM) model which contemplates revision processes of output and inflation data in order to assess the influence of data revisions on the estimated monetary policy rule parameters. In line with the evidence provided by Aruoba (2008), by using the indirect inference principle, we observe that real-time data are not rational forecasts of revised data. This result along with the differences observed when estimating a model restricted to white noise revision processes provide evidence that policymakers decisions could be determined by the availability of data at the time of policy implementation.