Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Laboratory confirmation of measles in elimination settings: experience from the Republic of the Marshall Islands, 2003.

OBJECTIVE To highlight the complications involved in interpreting laboratory tests of measles immunoglobulin M (IgM) for confirmation of infection during a measles outbreak in a highly vaccinated population after conducting a mass immunization campaign as a control measure. METHODS This case study was undertaken in the Republic of the Marshall Islands during a measles outbreak in 2003, when response immunization was conducted. A measles case was defined as fever and rash and one or more of cough, coryza or conjunctivitis. Between 13 July and 7 November 2003, serum samples were obtained from suspected measles cases for serologic testing and nasopharyngeal swabs were taken for viral isolation by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). FINDINGS Specimens were collected from 201 suspected measles cases (19% of total): of the ones that satisfied the clinical case definition, 45% were IgM positive (IgM+) and, of these, 24% had received measles vaccination within the previous 45 days (up to 45 days after vaccination an IgM+ result could be due to either vaccination or wild-type measles infection). The proportion of IgM+ results varied with clinical presentation, the timing of specimen collection and vaccination status. Positive results on RT-PCR occurred in specimens from eight IgM-negative and four IgM+ individuals who had recently been vaccinated. CONCLUSION During measles outbreaks, limiting IgM testing to individuals who meet the clinical case definition and have not been recently vaccinated allows for measles to be confirmed while conserving resources.
Dynamic pilot allocation over Markovian fading channels: A restless bandit approach

We investigate a pilot allocation problem in wireless networks over Markovian fading channels. In wireless systems, the Channel State Information (CSI) is collected at the Base Station (BS) through either a feedback channel (FDD mode) or a pilot-aided channel estimation method (TDD mode). This paper focuses on the latter. Typically, there are less available pilots than users, hence at each slot the scheduler needs to decide an allocation of pilots to users with the goal of maximizing the long-term average throughput. A trade-off emerges between exploiting users with up-to-date CSI for immediate gains or, exploring users with outdated CSI for a potential larger future gain. As we show, the arising pilot allocation problem is a restless bandit problem and thus its optimal solution is out of reach. In this paper, we propose a Lagrangian relaxation approach to obtain a Whittle index policy, which represents a low-complexity heuristic solution with remarkably good performance.
Community detection in large-scale social networks

Recent years have seen that WWW is becoming a flourishing social media which enables individuals to easily share opinions, experiences and expertise at the push of a single button. With the pervasive usage of instant messaging systems and the fundamental shift in the ease of publishing content, social network researchers and graph theory researchers are now concerned with inferring community structures by analyzing the linkage patterns among individuals and web pages. Although the investigation of community structures has motivated many diverse algorithms, most of them are unsuitable for large-scale social networks because of the computational cost. Moreover, in addition to identify the possible community structures, how to define and explain the discovered communities is also significant in many practical scenarios. In this paper, we present the algorithm ComTector(Community DeTector) which is more efficient for the community detection in large-scale social networks based on the nature of overlapping communities in the real world. This algorithm does not require any priori knowledge about the number or the original division of the communities. Because real networks are often large sparse graphs, its running time is thus O(C × Tri2), where C is the number of the detected communities and Tri is the number of the triangles in the given network for the worst case. Then we propose a general naming method by combining the topological information with the entity attributes to define the discovered communities. With respected to practical applications, ComTector is challenged with several real life networks including the Zachary Karate Club, American College Football, Scientific Collaboration, and Telecommunications Call networks. Experimental results show that this algorithm can extract meaningful communities that are agreed with both of the objective facts and our intuitions.
Temporally stable population-specific differences in run timing of one-sea-winter Atlantic salmon returning to a large river system

The understanding of migration patterns can significantly contribute to conservation and management. The spawning migrations of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) cover thousands of kilometers from the feeding areas at sea to their natal rivers to reproduce. Migrating salmon are exposed to intensive harvest, but little is known of the population‐specific differences in migration behavior. In this study, timing of return migration was investigated among one‐sea‐winter Atlantic salmon within a river system. By utilizing knowledge of the genetic population structure, population of origin was reliably identified for c. 1500 fish caught in mixed stock fisheries after adopting an approach to minimize the complications arising from potential nonsampled populations. Results demonstrated significant and temporally stable differences among populations as well as between sexes. Generally, female salmon from tributary populations entered fresh water first. Run timing was not however related to in‐river migration distance. Rather, one‐sea‐winter salmon from larger populations and with a higher proportion of multi‐sea‐winter females arrived later in the season. These findings are a significant step toward a more thorough understanding of the salmon migration behavior and behavioral ecology, providing concrete tools for the management and conservation of the remaining indigenous Atlantic salmon stocks.
OPTIMAL MULTISTAGE SCHEDULING OF PMU PLACEMENT FOR POWER SYSTEM OBSERVABILITY

The standards of power system monitoring, control and protection are elevated by Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) as an auspicious tool. It is the purpose of this paper to determine the optimal number and locations of PMUs so as to make the system measurement model observable and also estimate the power system state. The proposed modelling approach which models PMU placement as an integer linear programming problems, is extended and generalized to satisfy various aspects of optimal phasor measurement unit (PMU) placement problem. Cases with and without zero injection measurements are considered. The optimal PMU placement problem can be achieved by using linear constraints. This implies that optimal PMU placement problem with zero injection busses can now be solved by standard ILP solvers. Subsequently, we also develop a simple and an effective methodology to handle single PMU outage as well as single line outage in the system. The robust performance of the proposed approach is confirmed on the IEEE 9, 14 and 57-bus test systems. The results obtained in this paper are compared with those published before in literature.
Steady-State Distribution Convergence for GI/GI/1+GI Queues in Heavy Traffic

We establish the validity of the heavy traffic steady-state approximation for a single server queue, operating under the FIFO service discipline, in which each customer abandons the system if his waiting time exceeds his generally-distributed patience time. This follows from early results of Kingman when the loading factor approaches one from below, but has not been shown in more generality. We prove the convergence of the steady-state distributions of the offered waiting time process and their moments both under the assumption that the hazard rate of the abandonment distribution is scaled and that it is not scaled. As a consequence, we establish the limit behavior of the steady-state abandonment probability and mean queue-length.
Prevalence of Extensively Drug Resistant Tuberculosis among Archived Multidrug Resistant Tuberculosis Isolates in Zimbabwe

We conducted a cross-sectional study of second line drug resistance patterns and genetic diversity of MDR-TB isolates archived at the BRTI-TB Laboratory, Harare, between January 2007 and December 2011. DSTs were performed for second line antituberculosis drugs. XDR-TB strains were defined as MDR-TB strains with resistance to either kanamycin and ofloxacin or capreomycin and ofloxacin. Strain types were identified by spoligotyping. No resistance to any second line drugs was shown in 73% of the isolates, with 23% resistant to one or two drugs but not meeting the definition of XDR-TB. A total of 26 shared types were identified, and 18 (69%) matched preexisting shared types in the current published spoligotype databases. Of the 11 out of 18 clustered SITs, 4 predominant (>6 isolates per shared type) were identified. The most and least abundant types were SIT 1468 (LAM 11-ZWE) with 12 (18%) isolates and SIT 53 (T1) with 6 (9%) isolates, respectively. XDR-TB strains are rare in Zimbabwe, but the high proportion of “pre-XDR-TB” strains and treatment failure cases is of concern. The genetic diversity of the MDR-TB strains showed no significant association between SITs and drug resistance.
Evolution of the velocity dispersion of self-gravitating particles in disc potentials

The ratio of the vertical velocity dispersion to the radial one (σz /σR) of self-gravitating bodies in various disc potentials is investigated through two different numerical methods (statistical compilation of two-body encounters and N-body simulations). The velocity dispersion generated by two-body relaxation is considered. The ratio of dispersions is given as a function of a disc potential parameter, κ/Ω, where κ and Ω are the epicycle and circular frequencies (the parameters κ/Ω=1 and 2 correspond to Kepler rotation and solid-body rotation). For 1κ/Ω≲1.5, the velocity dispersion increases keeping some anisotropy (σzσR∼0.5–0.7) if the amplitude of radial excursion is larger than the tidal radius, while σzσR≪1 for smaller amplitude. On the other hand, for 1.5≲κ/Ω2.0, we found an isotropic state (σzσR≃1) in the intermediate-velocity regime, while an anisotropic state (σzσR<1) still exists for higher and lower velocity regimes. The range of the intermediate-velocity regime expands with κ/Ω. In the limit of solid-body rotation, the regime covers all of the velocity space. Thus, the velocity dispersion generally has two different anisotropic states for each disc potential (1κ/Ω<2) and one isotropic state for 1.5≲κ/Ω<2 where the individual states correspond to different amplitudes of velocity dispersion, while in the limit of solid-body rotation (κ/Ω=2.0), the entire velocity space is covered by the isotropic state.
A Descriptive Study of the Use of Music During Naptime in Louisiana Child Care Centers

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to describe the use of recorded music in child care centers during naptime. Using a cross-sectional survey design, administrators and teachers from 62 child care centers in Louisiana responded to an online questionnaire designed to gather information about children’s sleep habits and teacher perceptions of music surrounding naptime at child care centers. Questionnaire items were grouped into the following sections: (1) teacher demographics, (2) classroom demographics, (3) use of music during naptime, (4) perceptions about efficacy of using music during naptime, and (5) selection criteria for music to be used during naptime. Results corroborated previous research regarding the necessity of and healthy benefits associated with naptime and music’s effectiveness in this regard. Overall, child care centers have similar naptime routines, and most students take more than 30 minutes to fall asleep. The music is typically provided by the child care center, and most teachers prefer to use the same music each day. The use of religious music is very common throughout the state, although classical-instrumental music is the most widely played genre. Teachers perceived that music’s soothing effect is the most important aspect when choosing music for naptime.
Efficient matrix completion for seismic data reconstruction

ABSTRACTDespite recent developments in improved acquisition, seismic data often remain undersampled along source and receiver coordinates, resulting in incomplete data for key applications such as migration and multiple prediction. We have interpreted the missing-trace interpolation problem in the context of matrix completion (MC), and developed three practical principles for using low-rank optimization techniques to recover seismic data. Specifically, we strive for recovery scenarios wherein the original signal is low rank and the subsampling scheme increases the singular values of the matrix. We use an optimization program that restores this low-rank structure to recover the full volume. Omitting one or more of these principles can lead to poor interpolation results, as we found experimentally. In light of this theory, we compensate for the high-rank behavior of data in the source-receiver domain by using the midpoint-offset transformation for 2D data and a source-receiver permutation for 3D data to red.
Aspects of cellular planning for emergency and safety services in mobile WiMax networks

This work addresses cellular planning aspects for a WiMax (worldwide interoperability for microwave access) point-to-multipoint wireless network to be developed in the region of Beira Interior. It is concentrated in more detail in the district of Covilha, and, particularly, in the urban area of the city, in order to guarantee communications from the Health Science Faculty of University of Beira Interior (HSF/UBI)/ Hospital Pero da Covilha to all central urban area of the city. By having aspects related with the carrier-to-noise and carrier-to-interference ratios into account, one concluded that it is necessary to consider a cellular structure with sectorisation, and cell coverage distances around 3 km. Because this zone is very hilly, the optimization of the choice of the location for base stations is essential; the potentialities of the GIS (geographic information systems) tools were explored to optimise the existence of line of sight coverage in coverage. Future research directions regarding architectures for interoperability and mobile IP, security, and the impact of multimedia applications are also addressed.
Finding Nemo: Searching and Resolving Identities of Users Across Online Social Networks

An online user joins multiple social networks in order to enjoy dierent services. On each joined social network, she creates an identity and constitutes its three major dimensions namely prole, content and connection network. She largely governs her identity formulation on any social network and therefore can manipulate multiple aspects of it. With no global identier to mark her presence uniquely in the online domain, her online identities remain unlinked, isolated and dicult to search. Earlier research has explored the above mentioned dimensions, to search and link her multiple identities with an assumption that the considered dimensions have been least disturbed across her identities. However, majority of the approaches are restricted to exploitation of one or two dimensions. We make a rst attempt to deploy an integrated system Finding Nemo which uses all the three dimensions of an identity to search for a user on multiple social networks. The system exploits a known identity on one social network to search for her identities on other social networks. We test our system on two most popular and distinct social networks { Twitter and Facebook. We show that the integrated system gives better accuracy than the individual algorithms. We report experimental ndings in the paper.
Imaging Imageability: Behavioral Effects and Neural Correlates of Its Interaction with Affect and Context

The construct of imageability refers to the extent to which a word evokes a tangible sensation. Previous research (Westbury et al., 2013) suggests that the behavioral effects attributed to a word's imageability can be largely or wholly explained by two objective constructs, contextual density and estimated affect. Here, we extend these previous findings in two ways. First, we show that closely matched stimuli on the three measures of contextual density, estimated affect, and human-judged imageability show a three-way interaction in explaining variance in LD RTs, but that imagebility accounts for no additional variance after contextual density and estimated affect are entered first. Secondly, we demonstrate that the loci and functional connectivity (via graphical models) of the brain regions implicated in processing the three variables during that task are largely over-lapping and similar. These two lines of evidence support the conclusion that the effect usually attributed to human-judged imageability is largely or entirely due to the effects of other correlated measures that are directly computable.
Deep Model Compression: Distilling Knowledge from Noisy Teachers

The remarkable successes of deep learning models across various applications have resulted in the design of deeper networks that can solve complex problems. How- ever, the increasing depth of such models also results in a higher storage and runtime complexity, which restricts the deployability of such very deep models on mobile and portable devices, which have limited storage and battery capacity. While many methods have been proposed for deep model compression in recent years, almost all of them have focused on reducing storage complexity. In this work, we extend the teacher-student framework for deep model com- pression, since it has the potential to address runtime and train time complexity too. We propose a simple method- ology to include a noise-based regularizer while training the student from the teacher, which provides a healthy im- provement in the performance of the student network. Our experiments on the CIFAR-10, SVHN and MNIST datasets show promising improvement, with the best performance on the CIFAR-10 dataset. We also conduct a comprehensive empirical evaluation of the proposed method under related settings on the CIFAR-10 dataset to show the promise of the proposed approach.
Exploring the Prevalence of Disrespect and Abuse during Childbirth in Kenya

Background Poor quality of care including fear of disrespect and abuse (D&A) perpetuated by health workers influences women’s decisions to seek maternity care. Key manifestations of D&A include: physical abuse, non-consented care, non-confidential care, non-dignified care, discrimination, abandonment, and detention in facilities. This paper describes manifestations of D&A experienced in Kenya and measures their prevalence. Methods This paper is based on baseline data collected during a before-and-after study designed to measure the effect of a package of interventions to reduce the prevalence of D&A experienced by women during labor and delivery in thirteen Kenyan health facilities. Data were collected through an exit survey of 641 women discharged from postnatal wards. We present percentages of D&A manifestations and odds ratios of its relationship with demographic characteristics using a multivariate fixed effects logistic regression model. Results Twenty percent of women reported any form of D&A. Manifestations of D&A includes: non-confidential care (8.5%), non-dignified care (18%), neglect or abandonment (14.3%), Non-consensual care (4.3%) physical abuse (4.2%) and, detainment for non-payment of fees (8.1). Women aged 20-29 years were less likely to experience non-confidential care compared to those under 19; OR: [0.6 95% CI (0.36, 0.90); p=0.017]. Clients with no companion during delivery were less likely to experience inappropriate demands for payment; OR: [0.49 (0.26, 0.95); p=0.037]; while women with higher parities were three times more likely to be detained for lack of payment and five times more likely to be bribed compared to those experiencing there first birth. Conclusion One out of five women experienced feeling humiliated during labor and delivery. Six categories of D&A during childbirth in Kenya were reported. Understanding the prevalence of D&A is critical in developing interventions at national, health facility and community levels to address the factors and drivers that influence D&A in facilities and to encourage clients’ future facility utilization.
Stationary Probability Model for Bitplane Image Coding Through Local Average of Wavelet Coefficients

This paper introduces a probability model for symbols emitted by bitplane image coding engines, which is conceived from a precise characterization of the signal produced by a wavelet transform. Main insights behind the proposed model are the estimation of the magnitude of wavelet coefficients as the arithmetic mean of its neighbors’ magnitude (the so-called local average), and the assumption that emitted bits are undercomplete representations of the underlying signal. The local average-based probability model is introduced in the framework of JPEG2000. While the resulting system is not JPEG2000 compatible, it preserves all features of the standard. Practical benefits of our model are enhanced coding efficiency, more opportunities for parallelism, and improved spatial scalability.
Thoracoscopy: general overview and place in the diagnosis and management of pleural effusion

SERIES “INTERVENTIONAL PULMONOLOGY” Edited by J.P. Janssen, M. Noppen and K.F. Rabe Number 3 in this Series Thoracoscopy is not a new technique; H.C. Jacobeus, the Swedish internist, was the first to perform thoracoscopy in 1910, as a diagnostic procedure for exudative pleuritis 1. H.C. Jacobeus published the first series of thoracoscopy cases in 1921, describing the value of thoracoscopy in the diagnosis of tuberculous and malignant effusions. However, in the following decades, thoracoscopy was used mainly as a therapeutic tool for adhesiolysis in patients with tuberculosis (TB), in order to obtain a “therapeutic” pneumothorax. After the decline of thoracoscopic interventions as a treatment for TB, some centres in continental Europe continued to use thoracoscopy as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool in other disorders, such as pneumothorax and pleural effusion. Pioneers like Swierenga et al. 2, Brandt 3 and Boutin et al. 4 confirmed its value in publications in the 1970s. In the UK and the USA, thoracoscopy was not a widespread procedure, and open thoracotomy was the preferred procedure to obtain a diagnosis in pleuro-pulmonary disease. Around 1990, instruments such as endoscopic stapler devices, scissors, grasping and biopsy forceps were developed for surgical interventions by means of thoracoscopy in the thorax. The development of endoscopic video systems and instrumentation lead to the widespread use, by (thoracic) surgeons, of therapeutic thoracoscopy for a wide variety of major thoracic procedures (video-assisted thoracic surgery; VATS). However, the present article does not deal with VATS itself, but with the thoracoscopic procedure that was performed by pulmonologists for many decades and subsequently became referred to as “medical thoracoscopy”. Medical thoracoscopy is generally characterised as thoracoscopy performed under local anaesthesia in the endoscopy suite with the use of nondisposable instruments, and is generally for diagnostic purposes. In contrast, VATS is described as a …