Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modelling and Analysis of PKI-Based Systems Using Process Calculi

In this paper, we present a process algebra aimed at modelling PKI-based systems. The new language, SPIKY, extends the spi-calculus by adding primitives for the retrieval of certified/uncertified public keys as well as private keys belonging to users of the PKI-based system. SPIKY also formalises the notion of process ownership by PKI users, which is necessary in controlling the semantics of the key retrieval capabilities. We also construct a static analysis for SPIKY that captures the property of term substitutions resulting from message-passing and PKI/cryptographic operations. This analysis is shown to be safe and computable. Finally, we use the analysis to define the term secrecy and peer participation properties for a couple of examples of authentication protocols.
Pulmonary Vein Isolation for the Maintenance of Sinus Rhythm in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized, Controlled Trials

Background—Catheter ablation is an established yet evolving nonpharmacologic intervention for the maintenance of sinus rhythm in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). The efficacy and safety of pulmonary vein isolation (PVI) compared with medical therapy remain in question. Methods and Results—We conducted a meta-analysis of all randomized, controlled trials comparing PVI and medical therapy for the maintenance of sinus rhythm. The primary end point in this analysis was freedom from recurrent AF at 12 months. The relative efficacy of PVI was estimated using random-effects modeling according to intention to treat. We identified 6 trials that randomized a total of 693 patients with AF to PVI or control. PVI was associated with markedly increased odds of freedom from AF at 12 months of follow-up (n=266/344 [77%] versus n=102/346 [29%]; odds ratio, 9.74; 95% CI, 3.98 to 23.87). When we excluded the trial that only enrolled patients with persistent AF (Q-statistic, 2.485; P=0.647 after exclusion), PVI was associated with even greater odds of AF-free survival (15.78; 95% CI, 10.07 to 24.73). PVI was associated with a decreased hospitalization for cardiovascular causes (14 versus 93 per 100 person-years; rate ratio, 0.15; 95% CI, 0.10 to 0.23). Among those randomly assigned to PVI, 17% required a repeat PVI ablation before 12 months. The rate of major complications was 2.6% (n=9/344) in the catheter ablation group. Conclusions—Compared with a nonablation treatment strategy, PVI results in dramatically increased freedom from AF at 1 year. Although the procedure can be associated with major complications, the risk of these complications is comparable to other interventional procedures.
High gain two-stage amplifier with positive capacitive feedback compensation

A novel topology for a high gain two-stage amplifier is proposed. The proposed circuit is designed in a way that the non-dominant pole is at output of the first stage. A positive capacitive feedback (PCF) around the second stage introduces a left half plane (LHP) zero which cancels the phase shift introduced by the non-dominant pole, considerably. The dominant pole is at the output node which means that increasing the load capacitance has minimal effect on stability. Moreover, a simple and effective method is proposed to enhance slew rate. Simulation shows that slew rate is improved by a factor of 2.44 using the proposed method. The proposed amplifier is designed in a 0.18um CMOS process. It consumes 0.86mW power from a 1.8V power supply and occupies 3038.5um2 of chip area. The DC gain is 82.7dB and gain bandwidth (GBW) is 88.9 MHz when driving a 5pF capacitive load. Also low frequency CMRR and PSRR+ are 127dB and 83.2dB, respectively. They are 24.8dB and 24.2dB at GBW frequency, which are relatively high and are other important properties of the proposed amplifier. Moreover, Simulations show convenient performance of the circuit in process corners and also presence of mismatch.
Trauma teams and time to early management during in situ trauma team training

Objectives To investigate the association between the time taken to make a decision to go to surgery and gender, ethnicity, years in profession, experience of trauma team training, experience of structured trauma courses and trauma in the trauma team, as well as use of closed-loop communication and leadership styles during trauma team training. Design In situ trauma team training. The patient simulator was preprogrammed to represent a severely injured patient (injury severity score: 25) suffering from hypovolemia due to external trauma. Setting An emergency room in an urban Scandinavian level one trauma centre. Participants A total of 96 participants were divided into 16 trauma teams. Each team consisted of six team members: one surgeon/emergency physician (designated team leader), one anaesthesiologist, one registered nurse anaesthetist, one registered nurse from the emergency department, one enrolled nurse from the emergency department and one enrolled nurse from the operating theatre. Primary outcome HRs with CIs (95% CI) for the time taken to make a decision to go to surgery was computed from a Cox proportional hazards model. Results Three variables remained significant in the final model. Closed-loop communication initiated by the team leader increased the chance of a decision to go to surgery (HR: 3.88; CI 1.02 to 14.69). Only 8 of the 16 teams made the decision to go to surgery within the timeframe of the trauma team training. Conversely, call-outs and closed-loop communication initiated by the team members significantly decreased the chance of a decision to go to surgery, (HR: 0.82; CI 0.71 to 0.96, and HR: 0.23; CI 0.08 to 0.71, respectively). Conclusions Closed-loop communication initiated by the leader appears to be beneficial for teamwork. In contrast, a high number of call-outs and closed-loop communication initiated by team members might lead to a communication overload.
Therapy with Plasma Purified Alpha1-Antitrypsin (Prolastin®) Induces Time-Dependent Changes in Plasma Levels of MMP-9 and MPO

The common Z mutation (Glu342Lys) of α1-antitrypsin (A1AT) results in the polymerization and intracellular retention of A1AT protein. The concomitant deficiency of functional A1AT predisposes PiZZ subjects to early onset emphysema. Clinical studies have implied that, among the biomarkers associated with emphysema, matrix metalloproteinase 9 (MMP-9) is of particular importance. Increased plasma MMP-9 levels are proposed to predict the decline of lung function as well as greater COPD exacerbations in A1AT deficiency-associated emphysema. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of A1AT therapy (Prolastin) on plasma MMP-9 and myeloperoxidase (MPO) levels. In total 34 PiZZ emphysema patients were recruited: 12 patients without and 22 with weekly intravenous (60 mg/kg body weight) A1AT therapy. The quantitative analysis of A1AT, MMP-9 and MPO was performed in serum and in supernatants of blood neutrophils isolated from patients before and after therapy. Patients with Prolastin therapy showed significantly lower serum MMP-9 and MPO levels than those without therapy. However, parallel analysis revealed that a rapid infusion of Prolastin is accompanied by a transient elevation of plasma MMP-9 and MPO levels. Experiments with freshly isolated blood neutrophils confirmed that therapy with Prolastin causes transient MMP-9 and MPO release. Prolastin induced the rapid release of MMP-9 and MPO when added directly to neutrophil cultures and this reaction was associated with the presence of IgA in A1AT preparation. Our data support the conclusion that changes in plasma levels of MMP-9 and MPO mirror the effect of Prolastin on blood neutrophils.
Evolution of universes in quadratic theories of gravity

We use a dynamical systems approach to investigate Bianchi type I and II universes in quadratic theories of gravity. Due to the complicated nature of the equations of motion we focus on the stability of exact solutions and find that there exists an isotropic FRW universe acting as a past attractor. This may indicate that there is an isotropisation mechanism at early times for these kind of theories. We also discuss the Kasner universes, elucidate the associated centre manifold structure, and show that there exists a set of non-zero measure which has the Kasner solutions as a past attractor. Regarding the late-time behaviour, the stability shows a dependence of the parameters of the theory. We give the conditions under which the de Sitter solution is stable and also show that for certain values of the parameters there is a possible late-time behaviour with phantom-like behaviour. New types of anisotropic in ationary behaviour are found which do not have counterparts in general relativity.
Interhospital Transfer: An Independent Risk Factor for Mortality in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit

Interhospital transfer (IHT) is associated with mortality in medical and mixed intensive care units (ICUs), but few studies have examined this relationship in a surgical ICU (SICU) setting. We hypothesized that IHT is associated with increased mortality in SICU patients relative to ICU patients admitted within the hospital. We reviewed SICU and transfer center databases from a tertiary academic center over a 2-year period. Inclusion criteria included age 18 years or older and SICU admission 24 hours or greater. Demographic data, admission service, and Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) II scores were captured. The primary end point was ICU mortality. Univariate logistic regression was used to test the association between variables and mortality. Factors found to be associated with mortality at P < 0.1 were entered into a multivariable model. Of 4542 admissions, 416 arrived by IHT. Compared with the non-IHT group, the IHT group was older (age 58.3 years [interquartile range, 47.8 to 70.6] vs 57.8 years [interquartile range, 44.1 to 68.8] years, P = 0.036), sicker (APACHE II score 16.5 [interquartile range, 12 to 23] vs 14 [interquartile range, 10 to 20], P < 0.001), and more likely to be white (82% [n = 341] vs 69% [n = 2865], P < 0.001). Mortality rates in IHT patients were highest on the emergency surgery (18%), transplant surgery (16%), and gastrointestinal surgery (8%) services. After adjusting for age and APACHE II score, IHT remained a risk factor for ICU mortality (odds ratio, 1.60; 95% confidence interval, 1.04 to 2.45; P = 0.032) in SICU patients. Interhospital transfer is an independent risk factor for mortality in the SICU population; this risk is unevenly distributed through service lines. Further efforts to determine the cause of this association are warranted.
An overview of blade coating systems

This paper provides an overview of blade coating systems with applications to thin-film liquid coating of paper and board. The paper will focus on the more modern pressurized pond application systems. The flow instabilities in the pond and air entrainment at the dynamic contact line will be discussed in more detail. In particular, the three-dimensional behavior of the flow in the pond and at the blade will be discussed.
Evidences of Applicability of Implant Supported Overdentures during Present Decade; A Review

Implant overdenture was believed to be introduced since 40 years ago and showed various clinical success rate for a long time. In 2002 and 2009, there was an alternative treatment option approved for the rehabilitation of edentulous mandible rather than complete denture. Then implant overdentures showed a lot of high success rate in almost all aspects by various reliable reports over time gradually. This review aimed to collect and evaluate the updated evidences which developed increasingly in present decade and to be a brief clinical introduction for treatment options of edentulous patients.
Mitochondrial DNA Copy Number Is Associated with Breast Cancer Risk

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) copy number in peripheral blood is associated with increased risk of several cancers. However, data from prospective studies on mtDNA copy number and breast cancer risk are lacking. We evaluated the association between mtDNA copy number in peripheral blood and breast cancer risk in a nested case-control study of 183 breast cancer cases with pre-diagnostic blood samples and 529 individually matched controls among participants of the Singapore Chinese Health Study. The mtDNA copy number was measured using real time PCR. Conditional logistic regression analyses showed that there was an overall positive association between mtDNA copy number and breast cancer risk (Ptrend = 0.01). The elevated risk for higher mtDNA copy numbers was primarily seen for women with <3 years between blood draw and cancer diagnosis; ORs (95% CIs) for 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th quintile of mtDNA copy number were 1.52 (0.61, 3.82), 2.52 (1.03, 6.12), 3.12 (1.31, 7.43), and 3.06 (1.25, 7.47), respectively, compared with the 1st quintile (Ptrend = 0.004). There was no association between mtDNA copy number and breast cancer risk among women who donated a blood sample ≥3 years before breast cancer diagnosis (Ptrend = 0.41). This study supports a prospective association between increased mtDNA copy number and breast cancer risk that is dependent on the time interval between blood collection and breast cancer diagnosis. Future studies are warranted to confirm these findings and to elucidate the biological role of mtDNA copy number in breast cancer risk.
Mouse as a Model of Growth Retardation in Cystic Fibrosis

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is an autosomal recessive disease that results in lung failure and premature death. A long recognized symptom of CF is growth failure, which is clinically relevant because it correlates with the severity of lung disease. We describe growth retardation in a mouse model of CF and discuss its potential for modeling certain aspects of human growth retardation. Mice with a null mutation in Cftr (cystic fibrosis transmembrance conductance regulator) were compared with wild-type (WT) mice at 31, 45, and 84 d of age. CF mice were severely growth retarded in weight and length compared with wild-type controls. Serum insulin like growth factor I (Igf-1) was lower in CF mice by 31–55% (depending on age and sex) and it significantly correlated with the size of mice after controlling for gender, age, and Cftr genotype. There was a marginally significant deficiency of serum growth hormone (Gh) in CF females, but not males. Our findings were consistent with models of an energy deficit in rodents. We, therefore, assessed food intake and found no difference between CF and WT mice, suggesting that CF mice had a malabsorption-mediated energy deficit. We argue that CF mice are suited to study the effects of intestinal disease on growth as well as other proposed growth-modulating processes.
Bystander hyperactivation of preimmune CD8+ T cells in chronic HCV patients

Chronic infection perturbs immune homeostasis. While prior studies have reported dysregulation of effector and memory cells, little is known about the effects on naïve T cell populations. We performed a cross-sectional study of chronic hepatitis C (cHCV) patients using tetramer-associated magnetic enrichment to study antigen-specific inexperienced CD8+ T cells (i.e., tumor or unrelated virus-specific populations in tumor-free and sero-negative individuals). cHCV showed normal precursor frequencies, but increased proportions of memory-phenotype inexperienced cells, as compared to healthy donors or cured HCV patients. These observations could be explained by low surface expression of CD5, a negative regulator of TCR signaling. Accordingly, we demonstrated TCR hyperactivation and generation of potent CD8+ T cell responses from the altered T cell repertoire of cHCV patients. In sum, we provide the first evidence that naïve CD8+ T cells are dysregulated during cHCV infection, and establish a new mechanism of immune perturbation secondary to chronic infection. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.07916. 001
Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Zero-Shot Learning

Zero-shot learning (ZSL) can be considered as a special case of transfer learning where the source and target domains have different tasks/label spaces and the target domain is unlabelled, providing little guidance for the knowledge transfer. A ZSL method typically assumes that the two domains share a common semantic representation space, where a visual feature vector extracted from an image/video can be projected/embedded using a projection function. Existing approaches learn the projection function from the source domain and apply it without adaptation to the target domain. They are thus based on naive knowledge transfer and the learned projections are prone to the domain shift problem. In this paper a novel ZSL method is proposed based on unsupervised domain adaptation. Specifically, we formulate a novel regularised sparse coding framework which uses the target domain class labels' projections in the semantic space to regularise the learned target domain projection thus effectively overcoming the projection domain shift problem. Extensive experiments on four object and action recognition benchmark datasets show that the proposed ZSL method significantly outperforms the state-of-the-arts.
A Conceptual and Operational Definition of 'Social Role' in Online Community

Both online and off, people frequently perform particular social roles. These roles organize behavior and give structure to positions in local networks. As more of social life becomes embedded in online systems, the concept of social role becomes increasingly valuable as a tool for simplifying patterns of action, recognizing distinct user types, and cultivating and managing communities. This paper standardizes the usage of the term 'social role' in online community as a combination of social psychological, social structural, and behavioral attributes. Beyond the conceptual definition, we describe measurement and analysis strategies for identifying social roles in online community. We demonstrate this process in two domains, Usenet and Wikipedia, identifying key social roles in each domain. We conclude with directions for future research, with a particular focus on the analysis of communities as role ecologies.
Behavioral authentication of server flows

Understanding the nature of the information flowing into and out of a system or network is fundamental to determining if there is adherence to a usage policy. Traditional methods of determining traffic type rely on the port label carried in the packet header. This method can fail, however, in the presence of proxy servers that remap port numbers or host services that have been compromised to act as backdoors or covert channels. We present an approach to classify server traffic based on decision trees learned during a training phase. The trees are constructed from traffic described using a set of features we designed to capture stream behavior. Because our classification of the traffic type is independent of port label, it provides a more accurate classification in the presence of malicious activity. An empirical evaluation illustrates that models of both aggregate protocol behavior and host-specific protocol behavior obtain classification accuracies ranging from 82-100%.
Credit Constraints, Endogenous Innovations, and Price Setting in International Trade

We introduce credit frictions motivated by moral hazard in a general equilibrium model of international trade with two dimensions of heterogeneity and endogenous investments. Firms’ competitiveness consists of capabilities to conduct process and quality innovations at low costs, whereas investment outlays have to be financed by external capital. We show that the scope for vertical product differentiation in a sector determines how credit tightening affects investment and price setting. Consistent with recent empirical evidence, our model rationalizes positive as well as negative correlations of firm-level FOB prices with financial frictions and variable trade costs. Faced with an increase in the borrowing rate, producers reduce both types of innovation resulting in opposing effects on marginal production costs and prices. In general equilibrium, financial frictions intensify quality-based (cost-based) sorting of firms if the scope for vertical product differentiation is high (low). Consequently, credit tightening leads to firm exit, increased innovation activity among existing suppliers, and welfare losses that are larger in sectors with low investment intensity.
A comprehensive evaluation of the validity of Child-OIDP: further evidence from Peru.

OBJECTIVE To comprehensively assess the psychometric properties of the child version of the Oral Impacts on Daily Performance (Child-OIDP), by reporting additional validation methodologies and highlighting underlying constructs. METHODS Four of seven public schools linked to the Mother-Child Health Centre from Puente Piedra (Lima, Peru) were randomly selected as clusters. All their 903 11- to 12-year-old children were invited to participate. The Child-OIDP was cross-culturally adapted to Spanish and its content, face, criterion and construct validity as well as internal and external reliability evaluated in successive pilot studies and a main study. RESULTS For criterion validity, Child-OIDP scores were associated to self-perceived oral health status, self-perceived dental treatment need and satisfaction with oral health status (P < 0.001 in all cases). In relation to construct validity, an exploratory factor analysis provided three factors with eigenvalues greater than 1, which represented the physical, psychological and social health components. Cronbach's alpha varied between 0.62 and 0.65, whereas test-retest reliability was 0.85 (intra-class correlation coefficient). CONCLUSIONS The Spanish (Peru) Child-OIDP is a valid and reliable interviewer-administered instrument to measure the impact of the oral conditions on quality of life. This study provides new evidence in support of the psychometric properties of the Child-OIDP.
Oral health-related quality of life in patients with temporomandibular disorders.

AIMS To characterize the level of impairment of oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) in a temporomandibular disorder (TMD) patient population. METHODS OHRQoL was measured using the German version of the Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP-G) in a consecutive sample of 416 patients seeking treatment for their complaints in the masticatory muscles and temporomandibular joints and with at least 1 diagnosis according to the German version of the Research Diagnostic Criteria for Temporomandibular Disorders (RDC/TMD). The level of impairment of OHRQoL was characterized by the OHIP summary score mean and its 95% confidence interval. OHRQoL was described for each of the 8 RDC/TMD diagnoses (Axis I) and the RDC/TMD Axis II measures (Graded Chronic Pain Scale [GCPS], jaw disability list, depression, and somatization). These findings were compared with the level of impairment of OHRQoL in the adult general population derived from a national sample (n = 2,026). RESULTS Among the RDC/TMD Axis I measures, all diagnoses were correlated with much higher impacts compared to the normal population (means for all diagnoses were 32.8 to 53.7 versus 15.8 in the general population). All diagnoses had a similar level of impact except for disc displacement with reduction (which had a lower impact). There were larger differences in mean OHIP-G scores among subgroups of RDC/TMD Axis II measures than among subgroups of RDC/TMD Axis I characteristics. The strongest association was with GCPS, with mean OHIP scores of 33.3 for grade I, 48.1 for grade II, 71.7 for grade III, and 88.5 for grade IV. CONCLUSION OHRQoL was markedly impaired in TMD patients. The level of OHRQoL varied across diagnostic categories but more across Axis II, ie, the psychosocial axis; the variation was reflected especially in their level of graded chronic pain.