Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Why Use of Interventions Targeting Outdoor Biting Mosquitoes will be Necessary to Achieve Malaria Elimination

By definition, elimination of malaria means permanent reduction to zero of locally incidence of infections. Achieving this goal among other reasons, it requires fully understanding on where and when persons are most exposed to malaria vectors as these are fundamental for targeting interventions to achieve maximum impact. While elimination can be possible in some settings with low malaria transmission intensity and dominated with late and indoor biting of vectors using Long Lasting Insecticidal Nets (LLIN) and Indoor Residual Spraying (IRs), it’s difficult and even impossible in areas with high and where majority of human exposure to transmission occurs outside human dwellings. Recently in response to wide spread use of LLIN and IRS, human risk of exposure to transmission is increasingly spread across the entire night so that much of it occurs outdoors and before bed time. This modification of vector populations and behaviour has now been reported from across Africa, Asia and from the Solomon Islands. Historical evidence shows that even in areas with intervention coverage exceeding 90% of human population it was so hard to even push prevalence down below the pre elimination threshold of 1% being compromised mainly with the outdoor residual transmission. Malaria control experts must however continue to deliver interventions that tackle indoor transmission but considerable amount of resources that target mosquitoes outside of houses and outside of sleeping hours will therefore be required to sustain and go beyond existing levels of malaria control and achieve elimination.
Classification of dance music by periodicity patterns

This paper addresses the genre classification problem for a specific subset of music, standard and Latin ballroom dance music, using a classification method based only on timing information. We compare two methods of extracting periodicities from audio recordings in order to find the metrical hierarchy and timing patterns by which the style of the music can be recognised: the first method performs onset detection and clustering of inter-onset intervals; the second uses autocorrelation on the amplitude envelopes of band-limited versions of the signal as its method of periodicity detection. The relationships between periodicities are then used to find the metrical hierarchy and to estimate the tempo at the beat and measure levels of the hierarchy. The periodicities are then interpreted as musical note values, and the estimated tempo, meter and the distribution of periodicities are used to predict the style of music using a simple set of rules. The methods are evaluated with a test set of standard and Latin dance music, for which the style and tempo are given on the CD cover, providing a “ground truth” by which the automatic classification can be measured.
Pulsar magnetospheres: a general relativistic treatment

A fully general relativistic description of pulsar magnetospheres is provided. To be more specific, a study of pulsar magnetospheres is performed in the context of general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) employing the so-called Grad–Shafranov approach. Not surprisingly, the resulting Grad–Shafranov equations and all the other related general relativistic MHD equations turn out to take essentially the same structures as those for a (rotating) black hole magnetosphere. Other different natures between the two cases including the structure of singular surfaces of MHD flows in each magnetosphere are essentially encoded in the different space–time (metric) contents. In this way, pulsar and black hole magnetospheres can be described in a unified fashion. Particularly, the direction of poloidal currents circulating in the neutron star magnetosphere turns out to be the same as that of currents circulating in a black hole magnetosphere, which in turn leads to pulsar and black hole spin-down via ‘magnetic braking’.
On Private Information Retrieval Array Codes

Given a database, the private information retrieval (PIR) protocol allows a user to make queries to several servers and retrieve a certain item of the database via the feedbacks without revealing the identity of the specific item to any single server. Classic <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$k$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-server PIR protocols work on replicated databases, i.e., each of the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$k$ </tex-math></inline-formula> servers stores a whole copy of the database. Recently, new PIR models were proposed with coding techniques arising from the distributed storage system. In these new models, each server only stores a fraction <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1/s$ </tex-math></inline-formula> of the whole database, where <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$s>1$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is the given rational number. The PIR array codes are recently proposed by Fazeli, Vardy, and Yaakobi to characterize the new models. The central problem in designing a PIR array code with <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$m$ </tex-math></inline-formula> servers and the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$k$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-PIR property (which indicates that these <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$m$ </tex-math></inline-formula> servers may emulate a classic <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$k$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-server PIR protocol) is to maximize <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$k/m$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, known as the virtual server rate. Our main contribution to this problem is twofold. First, for the case <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1 < s\le 2$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, although the PIR array codes with optimal rate have been constructed recently by Blackburn and Etzion, the number of servers in their construction is rather large. We determine the minimum number of servers admitting the existence of a PIR array code with an optimal rate for a certain range of parameters. Second, for the case <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$s>2$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, a new upper bound on the rate of a PIR array code is presented. Besides, we also have some discussions on an asymptotically optimal construction by Blackburn and Etzion.
Laser technology for synthesis of AlN films: influence of the incident laser fluence on the films microstructure

Thin AlN films were synthesized by pulsed laser deposition at 800 °C by a KrF* excimer laser source (λ = 248 nm, τ = 25 ns, 3 Hz) at fluences of 4.8, 8.6 and 10 J/cm2 in nitrogen ambient at a dynamic pressure varying from 0.1 to 10 Pa. The film microstructurewas studied by X-ray diffractometry, while the film surface morphology of AlN films was examined by AFM imaging. At the low laser fluence (4.8 J/cm2), a stable hexagonal AlN phase was formed, while at the intermediate laser fluence (8.6 J/cm2), both hexagonal and metastable cubic crystallites were observed. At the high laser fluence (10 J/cm2), the films were "XRD amorphous". The surface roughness shows a tendency to increase with the increase in the nitrogen pressure. The root-mean-square roughness values are 0. 2 - 5 nm, depending on N2 pressure.
Oxidative response of neutrophils to platelet-activating factor is altered during acute ruminal acidosis induced by oligofructose in heifers

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) production is one of the main mechanisms used to kill microbes during innate immune response. D-lactic acid, which is augmented during acute ruminal acidosis, reduces platelet activating factor (PAF)-induced ROS production and L-selectin shedding in bovine neutrophils in vitro. This study was conducted to investigate whether acute ruminal acidosis induced by acute oligofructose overload in heifers interferes with ROS production and L-selectin shedding in blood neutrophils. Blood neutrophils and plasma were obtained by jugular venipuncture, while ruminal samples were collected using rumenocentesis. Lactic acid from plasma and ruminal samples was measured by HPLC. PAF-induced ROS production and L-selectin shedding were measured in vitro in bovine neutrophils by a luminol chemiluminescence assay and flow cytometry, respectively. A significant increase in ruminal and plasma lactic acid was recorded in these animals. Specifically, a decrease in PAF-induced ROS production was observed 8 h after oligofructose overload, and this was sustained until 48 h post oligofructose overload. A reduction in PAF-induced L-selectin shedding was observed at 16 h and 32 h post oligofructose overload. Overall, the results indicated that neutrophil PAF responses were altered in heifers with ruminal acidosis, suggesting a potential dysfunction of the innate immune response.
Hepatitis E: An overview and recent advances in clinical and laboratory research

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a non‐enveloped RNA (7.5 kb) virus that is responsible for large epidemics of acute hepatitis and a proportion of sporadic hepatitis cases in southeast and central Asia, the Middle East, parts of Africa and Mexico. Hepatitis E virus infection spreads by the faecal–oral route (usually through contaminated water) and presents after an incubation period of 8–10 weeks with a clinical illness resembling other forms of acute viral hepatitis. Clinical attack rates are the highest among young adults. Asymptomatic and anicteric infections are known to occur. Chronic HEV infection is not observed. Although the mortality rate is usually low (0.07–0.6%), the illness may be particularly severe among pregnant women, with mortality rates reaching as high as 25%. Recent isolation of a swine virus resembling human HEV has opened the possibility of zoonotic HEV infection. Studies of pathogenetic events in humans and experimental animals reveal that viral excretion begins approximately 1 week prior to the onset of illness and persists for nearly 2 weks; viraemia can be detected during the late phase of the incubation period. Immunoglobulin M antibody to HEV (anti‐HEV) appears early during clinical illness but disappears rapidly over a few months. Immunoglobulin G anti‐HEV appears a few days later and persists for at least a few years. There is no specific treatment available for hepatitis E virus infection. Ensuring a clean drinking water supply remains the best preventive strategy. Recombinant vaccines are being developed that may be particularly useful for travellers to disease‐endemic areas and for pregnant women.
Experiences of Health and Health Care Among Women Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence: Qualitative Findings From Germany

Through qualitative interviews with six female survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) in Germany, we explored their experiences with health and health care within the context of a universal access health system. Using phenomenological analysis, we learned that they view violence as a burden on health; expect health professionals to acknowledge the link between IPV and health with empathy; and experience barriers to acute mental health services despite a lack of financial barriers in seeking treatment. We discuss how our findings compare with other international research, as well as the implications for the health care system's response to IPV.
Halogen-bearing minerals from Airport Hill , Visakhapatnam , India

Coexisting biotite, hastingsite and apatite in a granulitic charnockite from Eastern Ghats, India, contain large amounts of chlorine and fluorine. The chlorine content in biotite is one of the highest ever recorded in this mineral. The hastingsite composition is quite similar to that of other chlorhastingsites reported elsewhere, except that it contains fluorine. The apatite crystals contain rare earth elements in addition to halogens.
Jamming-Resistant Multiradio Multichannel Opportunistic Spectrum Access in Cognitive Radio Networks

For achieving optimized spectrum usage, most existing opportunistic spectrum sensing and access protocols model the spectrum sensing and access problem as a partially observed Markov decision process by assuming that the information states and/or the primary users' (PUs) traffic statistics are known a priori to the secondary users (SUs). While theoretically sound, the existing solutions may not be effective in practice due to two main concerns. First, the assumptions are not practical, as before the communication starts, PUs' traffic statistics may not be readily available to the SUs. Second and more serious, existing approaches are extremely vulnerable to malicious jamming attacks. By leveraging the same statistic information and stochastic dynamic decision-making process that the SUs would follow, a cognitive attacker with sensing capability can sense and jam the channels to be accessed by SUs, while not interfering PUs. To address these concerns, we formulate the antijamming, multichannel access problem as a nonstochastic multi-armed bandit problem. By leveraging probabilistically shared information between the sender and the receiver, our proposed protocol enables them to hop to the same set of channels with high probability while gaining resilience to jamming attacks without affecting PUs' activities. We analytically show the convergence of the learning algorithms and derive the performance bound based on regret. We further discuss the problem of tracking the best adaptive strategy and characterize the performance bound based on a new regret. Extensive simulation results show that the probabilistic spectrum sensing and access protocol can overcome the limitation of existing solutions and is highly resilient to various jamming attacks even with jammed acknowledgment (ACK) information.
Turkish Heart Study: lipids, lipoproteins, and apolipoproteins.

We examined the plasma lipids, lipoproteins, and selected apolipoproteins in approximately 9,000 men and women from six different regions of Turkey with markedly different diets, ranging from an Aegean coast diet high in olive oil (plasma cholesteryl ester fatty acids enriched in monounsaturated fatty acids) to an inland Anatolian diet high in meat and dairy products (plasma cholesteryl esters enriched in saturated fatty acids). The rural population consuming an olive oil-rich diet had the lowest plasma cholesterol levels (men, 149 mg/dl; women, 150 mg/dl). The urban populations of Istanbul and Adana had higher plasma cholesterol levels (men, 202 and 184 mg/dl, respectively; women, 181 and 190 mg/dl, respectively). Affluent men had the highest cholesterol levels (207 mg/dl). The low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels tended to parallel the total cholesterol levels (highest for Istanbul men at 136 mg/dl and lowest for Aegean coast men and women at approximately 100 mg/dl). Strikingly, the Turkish people were found to have very low levels of high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (HDL-C) (mean values for all six regions: men, 34-38 mg/dl; women, 37-45 mg/dl) and total cholesterol/HDL-C ratios that were high (mean values for all six regions: men, 4.5-5.5; women, 3.9-5.0). The low HDL-C levels appear to be caused, at least in part, by a genetic factor. Triglyceride levels also tended to be high in Turkish men (approximately 120-150 mg/dl) and women (approximately 90-110 mg/dl). Thus, even though the total plasma cholesterol levels are not excessively elevated in comparison to those in other populations, the presence of low HDL-C or low HDL-C coupled with mildly elevated triglyceride levels may represent a significant risk factor for heart disease in the Turkish population. Affluence and higher education were associated with higher cholesterol levels. Lack of physical activity, smoking, and alcohol consumption also tended to be associated with a detrimental lipid profile. Lipoprotein[a] levels were identical among the regions surveyed (mean: 11-15 mg/dl) and displayed the typical distribution with an increased number of individuals with low levels. The 90th percentile value for lipoprotein[a] was about 30 mg/dl for both men and women. Smoking, a major risk factor for heart disease, was very prevalent in the Turkish population, especially in men (50-70% smokers) and women in urban areas (30-40% smokers). Hypertension, defined as a systolic pressure > 140 or a diastolic pressure of > 90 occurred in approximately 17% and 26% of the men and women surveyed, respectively. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
PageRank as a function of the damping factor

PageRank is defined as the stationary state of a Markov chain. The chain is obtained by perturbing the transition matrix induced by a web graph with a damping factor α that spreads uniformly part of the rank. The choice of α is eminently empirical, and in most cases the original suggestion α = 0.85 by Brin and Page is still used. Recently, however, the behaviour of PageRank with respect to changes in α was discovered to be useful in link-spam detection[21]. Moreover, an analytical justification of the value chosen for α is still missing. In this paper, we give the first mathematical analysis of PageRank when α changes. In particular, we show that, contrarily to popular belief, for real-world graphs values of α close to 1 do not give a more meaningful ranking. Then, we give closed-form formulae for PageRank derivatives of any order, and an extension of the Power Method that approximates them with convergence O (tk αt) for the k-th derivative. Finally, we show a tight connection between iterated computation and analytical behaviour by proving that the k-th iteration of the Power Method gives exactly the PageRank value obtained using a Maclaurin polynomial of degree k. The latter result paves the way towards the application of analytical methods to the study of PageRank.
Growth and development and other risk factors for osteosarcoma in children and young adults.

BACKGROUND Risk factors for osteosarcoma in young people were investigated in a population-based case-control study among residents of New York State, excluding New York City. METHODS Cases (n = 130) were diagnosed between 1978 and 1988 at < or = 24 years of age. Controls were randomly selected from birth certificates and were pair matched to cases on year of birth and sex. Exposure information was obtained by telephone interview with a subject and/or parent, and from birth certificates and school and medical records. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS A significant positive association was observed with height one year before diagnosis (P-value for trend = 0.02). No significant associations were observed between osteosarcoma and weight of body mass index one year before diagnosis, birth length, birthweight, gestational age, having reached puberty, having begun growth spurt, age at puberty, age growth spurt began, medical x-rays, antenatal exposures, family history of cancer, birth defects, or parental occupation.
Analyzing Refactorings on Software Repositories

Currently analysis of refactoring in software reposi- tories is either manual or only syntactic, which is time-consuming, error-prone, and non-scalable. Such analysis is useful to understand the dynamics of refactoring throughout development, especially in multi-developer environments, such as open source projects. In this work, we propose a fully automatic technique to analyze refactoring frequency, granularity and scope in software repositories. It is based on SAFEREFACTOR, a tool that analyzes transformations by generating tests to detect behavioral changes -- it has found a number of bugs in refactoring implementations within some IDEs, such as Eclipse and Netbeans. We use our technique to analyze five open source Java projects (JHotDraw, ArgoUML, SweetHome 3D, HSQLDB and jEdit). From more than 40,723 software versions, 39 years of software development, 80 developers and 1.5 TLOC, we have found that: 27% of changes are refactorings. Regarding the refactorings, 63,83% are Low level, and 71% have local scope. Our results indicate that refactorings are frequently applied before likely functionality changes, in order to better prepare design for accommodating additions.
On humanoid motion optimization

In this paper, we present a recursive method for the optimization of humanoid robot motions. The method is based on an efficient dynamics algorithm, which allows the calculation of the gradient function with respect to the control parameters analytically. The algorithm makes use of the theory of Lie groups and Lie algebra. The main objective of this method is to smooth the pre-calculated humanoid motions by minimizing the efforts, and at the same time improving the stability of the humanoid robot during the execution of the planned tasks. Experimental results using HRP-2 platform are provided to validate the proposed method.
Alterations of F Wave Parameters After Exercise in Symptomatic Lumbar Spinal Stenosis

Wallbom AS, Geisser ME, Haig AJ, Koch J, Guido C: Alterations of F wave parameters after exercise in symptomatic lumbar spinal stenosis. Am J Phys Med Rehabil 2008;87:270–274. Objectives:The purpose of the study is to investigate changes in F wave parameters after exercise in subjects with symptomatic lumbar spinal stenosis. Design:A total of 19 older patients with lumbar spinal stenosis and neurogenic claudication participated in this cohort study. No one withdrew for adverse effects. All subjects underwent physical therapy, with half performing additional interval-walking exercises. Groups were treated for eight sessions, returning for follow-up at weeks 4 and 8. Changes in F wave indices—minimal latency, chronodispersion, and persistence—were calculated. The treatment group demonstrated worsening of F wave persistence at 8-wk follow-up (P < 0.01). Conclusions:F wave indices worsened after an interval-walking exercise program. Subjects in the treatment group demonstrated worsening of F wave persistence at 8-wk follow-up.
The Psychology of Compensatory and Retributive Justice

How do observers respond when the actions of one individual inflict harm on another? The primary reaction to carelessly inflicted harm is to seek restitution; the offender is judged to owe compensation to the harmed individual. The primary reaction to harm inflicted intentionally is moral outrage producing a desire for retribution; the harm-doer tust be punished. Reckless conduct, an intermediate case, provokes reactions that involve elements of both careless and intentional harm. The moral outrage felt by those who witness transgressions is a product of both cognitive interpretations of the event and emotional reactions to it. Theory about the exact nature of the emotional reactions is considered, along with suggestions for directions forfuture research.
Relational queries over program traces

Instrumenting programs with code to monitor runtime behavior is a common technique for profiling and debugging. In practice, instrumentation is either inserted manually by programmers, or automatically by specialized tools that monitor particular properties. We propose Program Trace Query Language (PTQL), a language based on relational queries over program traces, in which programmers can write expressive, declarative queries about program behavior. We also describe our compiler, Partiqle. Given a PTQL query and a Java program, Partiqle instruments the program to execute the query on-line. We apply several PTQL queries to a set of benchmark programs, including the Apache Tomcat Web server. Our queries reveal significant performance bugs in the jack SpecJVM98 benchmark, in Tomcat, and in the IBM Java class library, as well as some correct though uncomfortably subtle code in the Xerces XML parser. We present performance measurements demonstrating that our prototype system has usable performance.