Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pooled frequency analysis for intensity–duration–frequency curve estimation

Rainfall intensity–duration–frequency (IDF) curves are used in the design of urban infrastructure. Their estimation is based on rainfall frequency analysis, usually performed on rainfall records from a single gauged station. However, available at‐site record length is often too short to provide accurate estimates for long return periods. In the present study, a general framework for pooled rainfall frequency analysis based on the index‐event model is proposed for IDF estimation at gauged stations. Pooling group formation is defined by the region of influence approach on the basis of the geographical distance similarity measure. Several pooled approaches are defined and evaluated by a procedure through which quantile estimation and uncertainty are assessed. Alternate approaches for the definition of a pooling group are based on different criteria regarding initial pooling group size (and the relationship between size and return period), approaches for assessing pooling group homogeneity, and the use of macroregions in pooling group formation. The proposed framework is applied to identify the preferred approach for pooled rainfall intensity frequency analysis in Canada. Pooled approaches are found to provide more precise estimates than the at‐site approach, especially for long return periods. Pooled parent distribution selection supported the use of the generalized extreme value distribution across the country. Recommendations for pooling group formation include increasing the pooling group size with increases in return period and identifying an appropriate trade‐off between pooling group homogeneity and size for long return periods.
Optimized On-chip-pipelining for Memory-intensive Computations on Multi-core Processors with Explicit Memory Hierarchy

Limited bandwidth to off-chip main memory tends to be a performance bottleneck in chip multiprocessors, and this will become even more problematic with an increasing number of cores. Especially for streaming computations where the ratio between computational work and memory transfer is low, transforming the program into more memory-efficient code is an important program optimization. On-chip pipelining reorganizes the computation so that partial results of subtasks are forwarded immediately between the cores over the high-bandwidth internal network, in order to reduce the volume of main memory accesses, and thereby improves the throughput for memory-intensive computations. At the same time, throughput is also constrained by the limited amount of on-chip memory available for buffering forwarded data. By optimizing the mapping of tasks to cores, balancing a trade-off between load balancing, buffer memory consumption, and communication load on the on-chip network , a larger buffer size can be applied, resulting in less DMA communication and scheduling overhead. In this article, we consider parallel mergesort as a representative memory-intensive application in detail, and focus on the global merging phase, which is dominating the overall sorting time for larger data sets. We work out the technical issues of applying the on-chip pipelining technique, and present several algorithms for optimized mapping of merge trees to the multiprocessor cores. We also demonstrate how some of these algorithms can be used for mapping of other streaming task graphs. We describe an implementation of pipelined parallel mergesort for the Cell Broadband Engine, which serves as an exemplary target. We evaluate experimentally the influence of buffer sizes and mapping optimizations, and show that optimized on-chip pipelining indeed speeds up, for realistic problem sizes, merging times by up to 70% on QS20 and 143% on PS3 compared to the merge phase of CellSort, which was by now the fastest merge sort implementation on Cell.
Cardiovascular disease in women: a statement for healthcare professionals from the American Heart Association. Writing Group.

Despite an overall reduction in the death rate due to cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the United States over the last several decades, the rate of decline is less for women than men and less for African-American women than white women.1 Due to an aging population, the absolute number of deaths due to CVD in women is actually increasing (Fig 1⇓). 2 In the year 2000 nearly 50 million American women will be older than 50 years. Because the risk of CVD increases with age, there is a need for an increased awareness of the importance of CVD as a major public health issue for older women. The estimated direct and indirect costs of CVD and stroke in men and women combined will exceed $250 billion in 1997.2 CVD ranks first among all disease categories in hospital discharges for women. The sheer magnitude of the epidemic in women necessitates a strong emphasis on prevention to reduce the burden of CVD in our society. Figure 1. CVD, particularly coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke, remains the leading killer of women in America and most developed countries. In 1994, the last year for which statistics are available, CVD claimed the lives of more than one half million women and accounted for 45.2% of all deaths in women, more than all forms of cancer combined.2 CVD is a particularly important problem among minority women. The death rate due to CVD is 69% higher in black women than white women. Misperceptions still exist that CVD is not a real problem for women, although it is estimated that 1 in 2 women will eventually die of heart disease or stroke, compared with 1 in 25 who will eventually die of breast cancer.2 This report discusses recent advances in knowledge of the occurrence, …
Prevalence and Associated Positive Psychological Variables of Depression and Anxiety among Chinese Cervical Cancer Patients: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background The prevalence of depression and anxiety and its associated factors in cervical cancer are not well evaluated in China. Meanwhile, with increasing attention given to positive psychological variables in oncology field, there is a need to conduct a study to explore the integrative effects of positive psychological variables on depression/anxiety so as to provide patients a more holistic cancer care. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of depression/anxiety as well as the integrative effects of hope, optimism and general self-efficacy on depression/anxiety among Chinese cervical cancer patients. Methods A multi-centre, cross-sectional study was conducted of consecutive inpatients at the Liaoning Cancer Hospital & Institute and the Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University in Liaoning Province, northeast China. A total of 224 cervical cancer patients eligible for this study completed questionnaires on demographic and clinic variables, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Herth Hope Index, Life Orientation Scale-Revised, and General Self-Efficacy Scale during February and August 2013. Results The prevalence of depression and anxiety was 52.2% and 65.6% in cervical cancer patients. The anxiety score was significantly higher in patients at the period of 4–6 months after diagnose and at cancer stage II. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that hope, optimism and general self-efficacy as a whole accounted for 31.3% variance of depression and 35.6% variance of anxiety. Under standardized estimate (β) sequence, hope, optimism and general self-efficacy significantly associated with depression, respectively; hope and optimism were also significant individual predictors of anxiety. Conclusions The high prevalence of depression and anxiety among cervical cancer patients should receive more attention in Chinese medical settings. More importantly, efforts to develop the integrated psychosocial interventions are effective and necessary to alleviate depression/anxiety in cervical cancer patients by synthesizing and integrating the individual protective effects of hope, optimism and general self-efficacy.
Feline immunodeficiency virus: an interesting model for AIDS studies and an important cat pathogen

The lentivirus feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) is a widespread pathogen of the domestic cat that is mainly transmitted through bites, although other means of transmission are also possible. Its prevalence ranges from 1 to 10% in different cat populations throughout the world, thus representing a large reservoir of naturally infected animals. FIV resembles the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in many respects. Similarities include the structural features of the virion, the general organization and great variability of the genome, the life cycle in the infected host, and most importantly, the pathogenic potential. Infection is associated with laboratory signs of immunosuppression as well as with a large variety of superinfections, tumors, and neurological manifestations. Our understanding of FIV is steadily improving and is providing important clues to the pathogenesis of immunodeficiency-inducing lentiviruses. The cellular receptor for FIV is different from the feline equivalent of the human CD4 molecule used by HIV; nevertheless, the major hallmark of infection is a progressive loss of CD4+ T lymphocytes as in HIV infection. The mechanisms by which FIV escapes the host's immune responses are being actively investigated. FIV causes lysis of infected T cells and also appears to predispose these cells to apoptosis. Infection of macrophages and other cell types has also been documented. For reasons yet to be understood, antibody-mediated neutralization of fresh FIV isolates is very inefficient both in vitro and in vivo. Vaccination studies have provided some encouraging results, but the difficulties encountered appear to match those met in HIV vaccine development. FIV susceptibility to antiviral agents is similar to that of HIV, thus providing a valuable system for in vivo preclinical evaluation of therapies. It is concluded that in many respects FIV is an ideal model for AIDS studies.
Socio-demographic risks of child injury in a Greek region

UNLABELLED Child injuries are a growing global public health problem and the aim of this research was to study child accidents, their causes and risk factors in a northern part of Greece, Thrace. METHODS 1,516 high school children completed an anonymous questionnaire regarding the cause, type, activity before the accident, and result of their accident. RESULTS The Chi square method showed a high correlation between accidents and variables such as gender (OR .55, 95% CI: .437-.687, P < .001), grade (P < .05), maternal education level (P < .001), paternal education level (P < .001), and social group each child belongs to (P < .001). The odds ratio was 3.3 (95% CI: 1.760-6.296) for Non-natives compared with Native Christians and Native Muslims. The latter had half odds in comparison with Native Christians (OR .4, 95% CI: .328-.545). CONCLUSIONS Young boys (7th grade), non-natives, and children whose parents received higher education were at greater risk of being injured.
Data-rate-aware FPGA-based acceleration framework for streaming applications

In heterogeneous architectures, FPGAs are not only expected to provide higher performance, but also to provide a more energy efficient solution for computationally intensive tasks. While parallelism and pipelining enhance performance on FPGA platforms, the data transfer rate from/to off-chip memory can cause performance degradation. We propose an automated high-level synthesis framework for FPGA-based acceleration of nested loops on large multidimensional input data sets. Given the high-level of parallelism in such applications, our proposed data prefetching algorithm determines the data rate for each parallel datapath. The empirical results on a case study in scientific computing show that FPGA mapping of such nested loops accelerates the application compared to traditional mapping on multicores. The FPGA-accelerated computation results in 3x speedup in runtime and 27x energy-delay-product savings compared to multicore computation.
Design of a robust and low-cost monocone antenna element for use in vehicle roof-mounted antenna arrays

We present the design of a wideband monocone antenna element having more than one octave impedance as well as pattern bandwidth. It is optimized for use in vehicle roof-mounted antenna arrays for spatial processing in an ultra-wideband local positioning secondary radar system, operating in the frequency range from 5 GHz to 8 GHz. We focus on a low-cost design, offering mechanical robustness, being ruggedized towards environmental influence, and achieving small physical dimensions using a protective dielectric-encapsulated design. In addition, we suggest a solderless and robust interconnection between coaxial connector and antenna element. The antenna element allows for arbitrary planar array geometries with grid spacing at the order of the lowest frequency of operation and a simple integration in any vehicle with a metallic roof.
Prevalence of feline leukaemia virus and antibodies to feline immunodeficiency virus and feline coronavirus in stray cats sent to an RSPCA hospital

A total of 517 stray cats at an RSPCA veterinary hospital were tested for feline leukaemia virus (FeLV), feline coronavirus (FCov) and feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV). The prevalence of FeLV was 3.5 per cent in all the cats, 1.4 per cent in healthy cats and 6.9 per cent in sick cats. FeLv positivity was associated only with disease of non-traumatic origin. Antibodies to FCoV were present in 22.4 per cent of the cats, and their prevalence was significantly higher in cats over two years old and in feral/semiferal cats. The prevalence of antibodies to FIV was 10.4 per cent in all the cats, 4.9 per cent in healthy cats and 16.7 per cent in sick cats. The prevalence of FIV antibodies was significantly higher in entire males and neutered males than in females, in cats over two years old compared with younger cats, and in cats suffering disease of non-traumatic origin rather than in healthy cats or cats suffering only from trauma. Sex, age and health status were each independently highly associated with FIV antibodies.
Large-scale deep unsupervised learning using graphics processors

The promise of unsupervised learning methods lies in their potential to use vast amounts of unlabeled data to learn complex, highly nonlinear models with millions of free parameters. We consider two well-known unsupervised learning models, deep belief networks (DBNs) and sparse coding, that have recently been applied to a flurry of machine learning applications (Hinton & Salakhutdinov, 2006; Raina et al., 2007). Unfortunately, current learning algorithms for both models are too slow for large-scale applications, forcing researchers to focus on smaller-scale models, or to use fewer training examples. In this paper, we suggest massively parallel methods to help resolve these problems. We argue that modern graphics processors far surpass the computational capabilities of multicore CPUs, and have the potential to revolutionize the applicability of deep unsupervised learning methods. We develop general principles for massively parallelizing unsupervised learning tasks using graphics processors. We show that these principles can be applied to successfully scaling up learning algorithms for both DBNs and sparse coding. Our implementation of DBN learning is up to 70 times faster than a dual-core CPU implementation for large models. For example, we are able to reduce the time required to learn a four-layer DBN with 100 million free parameters from several weeks to around a single day. For sparse coding, we develop a simple, inherently parallel algorithm, that leads to a 5 to 15-fold speedup over previous methods.
Osteoporosis Associated with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Recent epidemiological studies have revealed that osteoporosis is closely associated with common chronic diseases including diabetes, hypertension, chronic kidney disorders, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). COPD is a chronic inflammatory airway disease but now well known to be associated with various systemic comorbidities including osteoporosis. Osteoporosis and osteoporotic fractures are extremely common in COPD patients, which have significant impacts on their quality of life (QOL), activities of daily life (ADL), respiratory function, and possibly their prognosis. COPD-associated osteoporosis is however extremely under-recognized, hence undertreated. Recent studies have suggested that both decreased bone mineral density (BMD) and impaired bone quality compromise bone strength causing fractures in COPD. In COPD patients, various general clinical risk factors for osteoporosis are present including smoking, older age, low body weight, and physical inactivity. In addition, disease-related risk factors such as decreased pulmonary function, inflammation, glucocorticoid use and vitamin D deficiency/insufficiency have been linked to the development of osteoporosis in COPD. Increased awareness of osteoporosis in COPD, especially that of high prevalence of vertebral fractures is called upon among general physicians as well as pulmonologists. Routine screening for osteoporosis and risk assessment of fractures will enable physicians to diagnose COPD patients with comorbid osteoporosis at an early stage. Timely prevention of developing osteoporosis together with appropriate treatment of established osteoporosis may improve QOL and ADL of the COPD patients, preserve their lung function and eventually result in better prognosis in these patients.
Partially melted zone in aluminum welds -- Liquation mechanism and directional solidification

Aluminum Alloy 2219 was welded by gas metal arc welding and the microstructure was examined in the partially melted zone (PMZ), which is a narrow region immediately outside the fusion zone. Extensive liquation was observed at three different locations: at large {theta} (Al{sub 2}Cu) particles, along grain boundaries (GBs) and at numerous isolated points within grains. Liquation was initiated at the eutectic temperature T{sub E}, by the eutectic reaction {alpha} + {theta} {r_arrow} L{sub E} and intensified by further melting, above T{sub E}, of the {alpha} matrix surrounding the eutectic liquid (L{sub E}). The microstructure of the liquated-and-solidified GB material is intriguing. First, the material consisted of a new GB of mostly thin, divorced eutectic and a eutectic-free strip of {alpha} immediately next to it. Second, within an individual grain, the strip was along the top and the side facing the weld. Third, with respect to the weld, the strip was always behind the new GB. These three characteristics point to an important phenomenon, that is, solidification of the liquated GB is directional - upward and toward the weld, as a result of the temperature gradients across the PMZ. A thin, brittle eutectic GB and a soft ductile {alpha} stripmore » side by side are expected to be much weaker than a normal GB before welding. « less
Semidefinite Approximations for Global Unconstrained Polynomial Optimization

We consider the problem of minimizing a polynomial function on ${\mathbb R}^n$, known to be hard even for degree 4 polynomials. Therefore approximation algorithms are of interest. Lasserre [SIAM J. Optim. , 11 (2001), pp. 796--817] and Parrilo [Math. Program. , 96 (2003), pp. 293--320] have proposed approximating the minimum of the original problem using a hierarchy of lower bounds obtained via semidefinite programming relaxations. We propose here a method for computing tight upper bounds based on perturbing the original polynomial and using semidefinite programming. The method is applied to several examples.
Factors Associated with Dropout from Group Psychotherapy with Depressed Adolescents *

Attempts to determine the characteristics of those individuals who drop out from psychotherapy have yielded few consistent findings. Clinically depressed adolescents who completed a course of brief group therapy were compared with those who failed to complete treatment. Although no differences were found on a number of clinical and demographic variables, those who dropped out were more likely to be one grade behind in school and to have a history of alcohol and/or drug abuse. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.
Posterior Cruciate Ligament : Injury , Diagnosis , and Management

Posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) injuries represent a minority of isolated ligamentous injuries to the knee. However the sequelae of these injuries can have a significant negative impact on function leading to instability, pain, and arthritis. A thorough understanding of the anatomy, mechanism of injury, and, pathophysiological changes that can occur with impaired PCL function can help the clinician formulate a specific treatment algorithm.Up to this point, there has been no consensus on optimal treatment for these injuries. The vast majority of isolated PCL injuries are treated conservatively including grade I, grade II, and even some grade III tears. However, a myriad of operative options exist in grade III tears and concomitant knee ligamentous injuries. These include single-bundle (SB), doublebundle (DB), tibial inlay, and anteriomedial or anteriolateraltranstibial reconstruction techniques. This review will provide an introduction to PCL injuries, how they are diagnosed both on physical examination and on imaging studies, and how best to treat these injuries. The authors’ preferred algorithm for conservative versus operative treatments is also presented. Review Article
Effect of seasonal allergic rhinitis on airway mucosal absorption of chromium-51 labelled EDTA.

BACKGROUND--Hyperpermeability of the airway mucosa is thought to be characteristic of allergic rhinitis and asthma. Nine subjects with seasonal rhinitis caused by birch pollen were studied and the nasal mucosal absorption of chromium-51 labelled EDTA was examined both in an asymptomatic period before the season and late into the season when significant allergic rhinitis symptoms were present. METHODS--A nasal pool device was used to keep a concentration of the absorption tracer in contact with a larger part of the mucosa of the ipsilateral nasal cavity. Absorption was allowed for 15 minutes and measured as the radioactivity appearing in the 24 hour urine sample. RESULTS--The nasal absorption of 51Cr-EDTA in subjects with seasonal allergic rhinitis was less during active disease than before the season. CONCLUSIONS--An airway epithelial barrier that is subject to prolonged eosinophilic inflammation may not be disrupted but may rather increase its functional tightness.
Performance of an Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay for Detection of Clonorchis sinensis Infestation in High- and Low-Risk Groups

ABSTRACT Clonorchis sinensis is still a common parasite in South Korea. An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was developed to replace the usual intradermal test, and its performance in an area of endemicity was evaluated. From 2004 to 2006, 182 adults were included. The patient group consisted of 51 adults; 43 patients showed fluke eggs by microscopy, and 8 had their disease diagnosed clinically. The negative-control group included 131 adults: 98 at low risk and 33 at high risk of infestation. Both intradermal testing and ELISA were performed for all patients, and the sensitivity and specificity were evaluated. Statistical analysis for specificity looked at two groups: those at high risk and those at low risk. The sensitivity of the C. sinensis ELISA was 80.4%, while that of the intradermal test was 56.9% (P = 0.019). The specificities of the C. sinensis ELISA in the low-risk and high-risk groups were 93.9% and 33.3%, respectively, while those of the intradermal test were 85.7% and 30.3%, respectively (P = 0.0968, P = 0.9979). The C. sinensis ELISA may be more useful than the intradermal test; however, because of its low specificity, it may not be used independently for the diagnosis of C. sinensis infestation or a prevalence survey in a high-risk group.