Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Channel equalization for synchronization of Ikeda maps

Many communication systems based on the synchronism of chaotic systems have been proposed as an alternative spread spectrum modulation that improves the level of privacy in data transmission. However, due to the lack of robustness of chaos synchronization, even minor channel imperfections are enough to hinder communication. In this paper, we propose an adaptive equalization scheme to recover a binary sequence modulated by a chaotic signal, which in turn is generated by Ikeda maps. The proposed scheme employs the normalized least-mean-squares (NLMS) algorithm with a modification to enable chaotic synchronization even when the communication channel is not ideal. Simulation results show that the modified NLMS can successfully equalize the channel in different scenarios.
Utilizing soft information in decoding of variable length codes

We present a method for utilizing soft information in decoding of variable length codes (VLCs). When compared with traditional VLC decoding, which is performed using "hard" input bits and a state machine, soft-input VLC decoding offers improved performance in terms of packet and symbol error rates. Soft-input VLC decoding is free from the risk, encountered in hard decision VLC decoders in noisy environments, of terminating the decoding in an unsynchronized state, and it offers the possibility to exploit a priori knowledge, if available, of the number of symbols contained in the packet.
Occupational stress and mental health among nurses in a medical intensive care unit of a general hospital in Bandar Abbas in 2013

Background: Many nurses have reported experiencing high levels of occupational stress in their work environment. Stress, as an outcome of stressful workplaces and tasks, affects nursing behavior in hospital wards. The objectives of this research were to determine the prevalence of occupational stress and mental health problems in nurses in the intensive care unit (ICU) at Shahid Mohammadi Hospital in Bandar Abbas in 2013 and to determine the relationship between occupational stress and mental health. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2013 on all of the nurses working in ICU at Shahid Mohammadi Hospital located in Bandar Abbas, Iran. Seventy-two nurses were selected as the population for this study, and all of them were female. Two questionnaires were used in this study, i.e., General Health Questionnaire-28 (GHQ-28) for assessing mental health and an occupational stress test for assessing job stress. Furthermore, the relationship between occupational stress and mental health was examined. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), independent samples t-test, and Pearson’s product-moment correlation test were used to analyze the data. Results: High and moderate levels of occupational stress were experienced by 83.9% and 10.7% of ICU nurses, respectively. The prevalence of mental disorders, somatic symptoms, anxiety, social dysfunction, and depression were 58.9, 60.7, 62.5, 71.4, and 10.7%, respectively. The findings of the independent samples t-test showed that somatic symptoms had significant relationships with age and working experience (p = 0.01). According to the independent samples t-test, there were no significant differences between somatic symptoms and working different shifts (p > 0.05). Conclusions: There was a high prevalence of occupational stress among ICU nurses. There was a significant relationship between occupational stress and mental health. Future interventions are needed to codify a comprehensive health program in this field to reduce occupational stress and enhance nurses’ levels of mental health.
Multiseeded Segmentation Using Fuzzy Connectedness

Fuzzy connectedness has been effectively used to segment out an object in a badly corrupted image. We generalize the approach by providing a definition which is shown to always determine a simultaneous segmentation of multiple objects. For any set of seed points, the segmentation is uniquely determined by the definition. An algorithm for finding this segmentation is presented and its output is illustrated. The algorithm is fast as compared to other segmentation algorithms in current use. We also report on an evaluation of the accuracy and robustness of the algorithm based on experiments in which several users were repeatedly asked to identify the seed points for the algorithm in a number of images.
Efficient Computation of Range Aggregate Against Uncertain Location-Based Queries

: Location based services have become increasingly important for many real time applications. In such applications queries are executed in a multi-dimensional space. In this paper we propose an algorithm to compute range aggregates such as count, average and sum that facilitate answering uncertain location based queries. We also developed a prototype application to test the efficiency of the proposed technique. The empirical results revealed that the application works with efficient computation of range aggregates and can be used in real world applications where location based services are required.
Vulnerability analysis of three remote voting methods

This article analyses three methods of remote voting in an uncontrolled environment: postal voting, internet voting and hybrid voting. It breaks down the voting process into different stages and compares their vulnerabilities considering criteria that must be respected in any democratic vote: confidentiality, anonymity, transparency, vote unicity and authenticity. Whether for safety or reliability, each vulnerability is quantified by three parameters: size, visibility and difficulty to achieve. The study concludes that the automatisation of treatments combined with the dematerialisation of the objects used during an election tends to substitute visible vulnerabilities of a lesser magnitude by invisible and widespread vulnerabilities.
REE partitioning between monazite and garnet: Implications for petrochronology

Rare‐earth element and Y partitioning between garnet and monazite was measured in metamorphic rocks from western Norway to provide more confidence in tying monazite U/Th–Pb dates to P–T conditions recorded in garnet. A subset of samples has low‐Y garnet mantles and low‐Y monazite cores that gave Y‐partitioning temperatures similar to independently determined metamorphic temperatures. In combination with previously published data, these monazite–garnet pairs have temperature‐dependent partitioning of the HREE from Dy to Lu, and nonsystematic partitioning of the LREE from La–Gd. The temperature‐dependent partitioning must be considered when using HREE to assess which portions of garnet and monazite might have coexisted, but experiments are needed to place the dependence on a firm footing.
CagA phosphorylation EPIYA-C motifs and the vacA i genotype in Helicobacter pylori strains of asymptomatic children from a high-risk gastric cancer area in northeastern Brazil

Helicobacter pylori infection is one of the most common infections worldwide and is associated with gastric diseases. Virulence factors such as VacA and CagA have been shown to increase the risk of these diseases. Studies have suggested a causal role of CagA EPIYA-C in gastric carcinogenesis and this factor has been shown to be geographically diverse. We investigated the number of CagA EPIYA motifs and the vacA i genotypes in H. pylori strains from asymptomatic children. We included samples from 40 infected children (18 females and 22 males), extracted DNA directly from the gastric mucus/juice (obtained using the string procedure) and analysed the DNA using polymerase chain reaction and DNA sequencing. The vacA i1 genotype was present in 30 (75%) samples, the i2 allele was present in nine (22.5%) samples and both alleles were present in one (2.5%) sample. The cagA-positive samples showed distinct patterns in the 3’ variable region of cagA and 18 of the 30 (60%) strains contained 1 EPIYA-C motif, whereas 12 (40%) strains contained two EPIYA-C motifs. We confirmed that the studied population was colonised early by the most virulent H. pylori strains, as demonstrated by the high frequency of the vacA i1 allele and the high number of EPIYA-C motifs. Therefore, asymptomatic children from an urban community in Fortaleza in northeastern Brazil are frequently colonised with the most virulent H. pylori strains.
Chondrosarcoma of the Skull Base

Chondrosarcoma of the skull base is an uncommon neoplasm that comprises 0.15% of all intracranial tumors and 6% of skull base lesions. Compression of vital neurologic structures by tumor expansion as well as the histologic characteristics contribute to the malignant potential of these neoplasms. Tumor recurrence has been associated with incomplete resection in this traditionally surgically inaccessible region. This review of five cases of chondrosarcoma of the skull base examines the surgical approaches to resection in a chronologic fashion to emphasize that total gross resection of these lesions has become possible through the evolution of lateral skull base techniques. The difficulty in pathologic diagnosis and the efficacy of postoperative radiotherapy in enhancing survival are also addressed.
Trends in corneal graft surgery in the UK

Aims The aims of this study were to examine trends over time and regional variation in rates of corneal graft surgery in the UK. Methods The hospital in-patient enquiry (HIPE) and hospital episode statistics (HES) were analysed for keratoplasty admissions in England from 1971 to 2006. NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) data were analysed for keratoplasty operations in the UK from 1999 to 2009. Results Annual rates of penetrating keratoplasty (PK) under HIPE and HES increased from 0.7 per 100 000 population (1971) to 3.9 (1992), then decreased to 3.1 (2006). Rates of lamellar keratoplasty (LK) increased from 0.1 (1971) to 0.9 (2006). Annual PK operations under NHSBT decreased from 1901 (1999/00) to 1473 (2008/9). Over the same period, deep anterior lamellar keratoplasty operations increased from 91 to 327 per year, while endothelial keratoplasty operations increased from 2 to 569 per year. Geographical analysis showed a wide variation across local authority areas in rates of keratoplasty around 1998–2004, especially for LK. Conclusion The total number of corneal graft operations performed in the UK has increased slowly over the past decade. The proportion of lamellar versus penetrating keratoplasty has increased, with LK performed at the highest rates in specialist centres distributed across the UK.
CTLA-4 and PD-1 Pathways

The cytotoxic T-lymphocyte–associated antigen 4 (CTLA-4) and programmed death 1 (PD-1) immune checkpoints are negative regulators of T-cell immune function. Inhibition of these targets, resulting in increased activation of the immune system, has led to new immunotherapies for melanoma, non–small cell lung cancer, and other cancers. Ipilimumab, an inhibitor of CTLA-4, is approved for the treatment of advanced or unresectable melanoma. Nivolumab and pembrolizumab, both PD-1 inhibitors, are approved to treat patients with advanced or metastatic melanoma and patients with metastatic, refractory non-small cell lung cancer. In addition the combination of ipilimumab and nivolumab has been approved in patients with BRAF WT metastatic or unresectable melanoma. The roles of CTLA-4 and PD-1 in inhibiting immune responses, including antitumor responses, are largely distinct. CTLA-4 is thought to regulate T-cell proliferation early in an immune response, primarily in lymph nodes, whereas PD-1 suppresses T cells later in an immune response, primarily in peripheral tissues. The clinical profiles of immuno-oncology agents inhibiting these 2 checkpoints may vary based on their mechanistic differences. This article provides an overview of the CTLA-4 and PD-1 pathways and implications of their inhibition in cancer therapy.
Ab initio prediction of peptide‐MHC binding geometry for diverse class I MHC allotypes

Since determining the crystallographic structure of all peptide‐MHC complexes is infeasible, an accurate prediction of the conformation is a critical computational problem. These models can be useful for determining binding energetics, predicting the structures of specific ternary complexes with T‐cell receptors, and designing new molecules interacting with these complexes. The main difficulties are (1) adequate sampling of the large number of conformational degrees of freedom for the flexible peptide, (2) predicting subtle changes in the MHC interface geometry upon binding, and (3) building models for numerous MHC allotypes without known structures. Whereas previous studies have approached the sampling problem by dividing the conformational variables into different sets and predicting them separately, we have refined the Biased‐Probability Monte Carlo docking protocol in internal coordinates to optimize a physical energy function for all peptide variables simultaneously. We also imitated the induced fit by docking into a more permissive smooth grid representation of the MHC followed by refinement and reranking using an all‐atom MHC model. Our method was tested by a comparison of the results of cross‐docking 14 peptides into HLA‐A*0201 and 9 peptides into H‐2Kb as well as docking peptides into homology models for five different HLA allotypes with a comprehensive set of experimental structures. The surprisingly accurate prediction (0.75 Å backbone RMSD) for cross‐docking of a highly flexible decapeptide, dissimilar to the original bound peptide, as well as docking predictions using homology models for two allotypes with low average backbone RMSDs of less than 1.0 Å illustrate the method's effectiveness. Finally, energy terms calculated using the predicted structures were combined with supervised learning on a large data set to classify peptides as either HLA‐A*0201 binders or nonbinders. In contrast with sequence‐based prediction methods, this model was also able to predict the binding affinity for peptides to a different MHC allotype (H‐2Kb), not used for training, with comparable prediction accuracy. Proteins 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Steps toward interstellar silicate mineralogy. V. Thermal Evolution of Amorphous Magnesium Silicates and Silica

The thermally induced amorphous-to-crystalline transition has been studied for bulk sheets and micrometre-sized particles of magnesium silicate glass (MgSiO3), nanometresized amorphous magnesium silicate (MgSiO3 and Mg2SiO4 smokes) and amorphous silica particles (SiO2). Silicate glass was produced by the shock-quenching of melts. Samples of nanometre-sized smoke particles have been obtained by the laser ablation technique. Both the MgSiO3 and the Mg2SiO4 smokes have been found to consist of two particle species; particles of smaller size ranging in diametre from 10 nm to about 100 nm and bigger size ranging from a few 100 nm to almost 3 micrometres in diametre. Nanometre-sized particles have been shown to be depleted in magnesium whereas the micrometre-sized particles were found to be enriched in Mg. Generally, the particles are composed of nonstoichiometric magnesium silicates with compositions varying even inside of the particles. Frequently, the particles contained internal voids that are assumed to have been formed by thermal shrinkage or outgassing of the particles’ interior during cooling. Annealing at 1000 K transformed the magnesium silicate smokes into crystalline forsterite (c-Mg2SiO4), tridymite (a crystalline modification of SiO2) and amorphous silica (a-SiO2) according to the initial Mg/Si-ratio of the smoke. Crystallization took place within a few hours for the Mg2SiO4 smoke and within one day for the MgSiO3 smoke. The MgSiO3 glass evolved more slowly because crystallization started at the sample surface. It has been annealed at temperatures ranging from 1000 to 1165 K. In contrast to the smoke samples, MgSiO3 glass crystallized as orthoenstatite (MgSiO3). Only after 50 hours of annealing at 1000 K, weak indications of forsterite and tridymite formation have been found in the X-ray diffraction spectra. At a temperature of 1000 K, amorphous silica nanoparticles showed distinctly lower rates of thermal evolution compared with the magnesium silicates. At 1220 K, the timescale of crystallization of a-SiO2 into cristobalite and tridymite amounts to 4.5 h. Send offprint requests to: D. Fabian (fabian@astro.uni-jena.de) From the experiments, crystallization parameters have been obtained: activation energy and velocity of crystal growth. The spectra shown in this study will be made publically available in the electronic database (http://www.astro.unijena.de).
Evaluation of inadequate anti-retroviral treatment in patients with HIV/AIDS.

INTRODUCTION Since the emergence of antiretroviral therapy, the survival of patients infected with human immunodeficiency virus has increased. Non-adherence to this therapy is directly related to treatment failure, which allows the emergence of resistant viral strains. METHODS A retrospective descriptive study of the antiretroviral dispensing records of 229 patients from the Center for Health Care, University Hospital, Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil, was conducted between January and December 2009. RESULTS The study aimed to evaluate patient compliance and determine if there was an association between non-adherence and the therapy. Among these patients, 63.8% were men with an average age of 44.0 ± 9.9 years. The most used treatment was a combination of 2 nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors with 1 non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (55.5%) or with 2 protease inhibitors (28.8%). It was found that patients taking lopinavir/ritonavir with zidovudine and lamivudine had a greater frequency of inadequate treatment than those taking atazanavir with zidovudine and lamivudine (85% and 83.3%, respectively). Moreover, when the combination of zidovudine/ lamivudine was used, the patients were less compliant (χ² = 4.468, 1 degree of freedom, p = 0.035). CONCLUSIONS The majority of patients failed to correctly adhere to their treatment; therefore, it is necessary to implement strategies that lead to improved compliance, thus ensuring therapeutic efficacy and increased patient survival.
Mercury in Commercial Fish: Optimizing Individual Choices to Reduce Risk

Most attention to the risks from fish consumption has focused on recreational anglers and on fish caught by individuals, but the majority of fish that people eat are purchased from commercial sources. We examined mercury levels in three types of fish (tuna, flounder, bluefish) commonly available in New Jersey stores, sampling different regions of the state, in communities with high and low per capita incomes, and in both supermarkets and specialty fish markets. We were interested in species-specific levels of mercury in New Jersey fish and whether these levels were similar to data generated nationally by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA; mainly from 1990 to 1992) on the same types of fish. Such information is critical for providing public health advice. We were also interested in whether mercury levels in three common species of fish differed by region of the state, economic neighborhood, or type of store. We found significant species differences, with tuna having the highest levels and flounder the lowest levels. There were no significant differences in mercury levels as a function of type of store or economic neighborhood. There was only one regional difference: flounder from fish markets along the Jersey shore had higher mercury levels than flounder bought in other markets. We also examined mercury levels in six other commonly available fish and two shellfish from central New Jersey markets. There were significant differences in availability and in mercury levels among fish and shellfish. Both shrimp and scallops had total mercury levels < 0.02 ppm (wet weight). Large shrimp had significantly lower levels of mercury than small shrimp. For tuna, sea bass, croaker, whiting, scallops, and shrimp, the levels of mercury were higher in New Jersey samples than those reported by the FDA. Consumers selecting fish for ease of availability (present in > 50% of markets) would select flounder, snapper, bluefish, and tuna (tuna had the highest mercury value), and those selecting only for price would select whiting, porgy, croaker, and bluefish (all with average mercury levels < 0.3 ppm wet weight). Flounder was the fish with the best relationship among availability, cost, and low mercury levels. We suggest that state agencies responsible for protecting the health of their citizens should obtain information on fish availability in markets and fish preferences of diverse groups of citizens and use this information to select fish for analysis of contaminant levels, providing data on the most commonly eaten fish that will help people make informed decisions about risks from fish consumption.
Impact of lung cancer screening results on smoking cessation.

BACKGROUND Lung cancer screening programs may provide opportunities to reduce smoking rates among participants. This study evaluates the impact of lung cancer screening results on smoking cessation. METHODS Data from Lung Screening Study participants in the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST; 2002-2009) were used to prepare multivariable longitudinal regression models predicting annual smoking cessation in those who were current smokers at study entry (n = 15489, excluding those developing lung cancer in follow-up). The associations of lung cancer screening results on smoking cessation over the trial period were analyzed. All hypothesis testing used two sided P values. RESULTS In adjusted analyses, smoking cessation was strongly associated with the amount of abnormality observed in the previous year's screening (P < .0001). Compared with those with a normal screen, individuals were less likely to be smokers if their previous year's screen had a major abnormality that was not suspicious for lung cancer (odds ratio [OR] = 0.811; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.722 to 0.912; P < .001), was suspicious for lung cancer but stable from previous screens (OR = 0.785; 95% CI = 0.706 to 0.872; P < .001), or was suspicious for lung cancer and was new or changed from the previous screen (OR = 0.663; 95% CI = 0.607 to 0.724; P < .001). Differences in smoking prevalence were present up to 5 years after the last screen. CONCLUSIONS Smoking cessation is statistically significantly associated with screen-detected abnormality. Integration of effective smoking cessation programs within screening programs should lead to further reduction in smoking-related morbidity and mortality.
Performance analysis of CO-OFDM FSO system under different weather conditions

FSO (free space optical communication) is less costly and use frequency spectrum which is license free. In this paper, to send the electrical signal in the form of optical signal and reconstruct it in electrical signal we will use coherent detection technique. We also used OFDM techniques, which mitigate the consequence of frequency selected fading and the inter-channel interference (ICI) effectively. The presence of motes, such as fog and clouds in the propagation channel introduces spatial and angular dispersion to the transmitted light signals. Data rate of transmission depend on dispersion due to channel. So we use coherent orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (CO-OFDM) technique to achieve maximum rang for given signal power. In this paper we have justified performance of CO-OFDM FSO system in different weather condition at data rate 2Gbps and 5Gbps.
Induction of toll‐like receptors by Propionibacterium acnes

Background The bacterium Propionibacterium acnes is involved in the induction and maintenance of the inflammatory phase of acne. Recent studies have found that keratinocytes express toll‐like receptors (TLRs) implicated in immediate immunity. No studies have, to date, been carried out on the action of P. acnes upon TLR activation in keratinocytes.